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FOSSPatents has refused categorically to speak about the jury and specifically about the jury misconduct claims. One might only imagine why. Florian, the self proclaimed patent expert, and a established and proven Oracle/Microsoft pail shill, could not find a logical sounding rethoric that could justify his pro-Apple stance because the Jury Foreman went on a interview giving spree and showcasing to the whole world how he "convinced" the entire jury with his experience and the famous "Aha moment". FOSSPatents is so damn atrocious at times in its bias that one might imagine when is the time that a court mandates Apple and Samsung to produce a list of paid shills and we might discover some shocking news! Quoting from FOSSPatents >Judge Koh acknowledges that "[t]his finding increases the likelihood of harm from continued infringement", which is an understatement. italics emphasis mine. Sulking by FOSSPatents, and whining on behalf of Apple. >Even a billion-dollar damages award would be strategically far less useful to Apple than a permanent injunction would have been, or could still be if it is granted after the appeal. Sulking? > Samsung had a strategy and continues to execute a strategy that is all about taking market share away from Apple. No kidding, a competitor in a Market has a strategy to gain more market share. Does Florian mean to say that Apple has a monopoly on the market share? The said strategy that Apple thinks is "slavish copy" and numerous courts all over the world think that it is not! LCD TVs / SLRs hello... keep two competitor products side by side and tell one apart from the other from a distance of more than 10 feet. Take a look at how the patent expert Florian tries to depict anti-Apple news. Short, curt and to the point. Just so that the news media who take cues from him and cite him as source do not try to create jazzy headlines! [Apple loss in Nokia-Sony-MPEG-LA](

FOSSPatents has refused categorically to speak about the jury and specifically about the jury misconduct claims. One might only imagine why Only if one's main interest is conspiracy. He's explained it well enough to most people's satisfaction why he doesn't care to comment on it. > Florian, the self proclaimed patent expert, and a established and proven Oracle/Microsoft pail shill That is not what was "proven". Regardless, I can't help but fail to notice that you're (poorly) criticizing the man , and not the argument . > could not find a logical sounding rethoric that could justify his pro-Apple stance because the Jury Foreman went on a interview giving spree and showcasing to the whole world how he "convinced" the entire jury with his experience and the famous "Aha moment". This is all conjecture nonsense with some sprinkles of misinformation. > FOSSPatents is so damn atrocious at times in its bias You've been reading too much Groklaw. I defy you to prove any sort of bias (edit: in the reporting ). I can show bias in every Groklaw article. > Sulking by FOSSPatents, and whining on behalf of Apple Bullshit. There is no rational and objective reading of that statement where you could conclude such. > Sulking? No. Not even close, in fact. How stupid and desperate are you? All he's doing is speculating on Apple's position, and I don't think anyone with half a brain would disagree with the analysis. Of course Apple would prefer the injunction to the damages. How is stating this "sulking" by any definition of the word? > No kidding, a competitor in a Market has a strategy to gain more market share You're pulling a random quote out of context and complaining that it's obvious? What's your point? > Does Florian mean to say that Apple has a monopoly on the market share? No, he doesn't. Nothing about that statement suggests anything close to that. > The said strategy that Apple thinks is "slavish copy" and numerous courts all over the world think that it is not! Thanks for your totally supported, expert opinion on the subject. It was totally solicited, too. > LCD TVs / SLRs hello... keep two competitor products side by side and tell one apart from the other from a distance of more than 10 feet. So you posting didn't actually have anything to do with what we were actually talking about, apparently, and is really you just wanting to rant about your displeasure with the verdict. Tough shit. > Take a look at how the patent expert Florian tries to depict anti-Apple news. Short, curt and to the point And? I'd vastly prefer that to the misinformation, bias, and hyperbole from Groklaw. > Just so that the news media who take cues from him and cite him as source do not try to create jazzy headlines! You think the reason that reputable publications quote him and wouldn't touch Groklaw with a 10 foot pole is because he's "curt and to the point"? >

I doubt that. The article in The Register points out that the EC decided to withdraw their request to the EU Court. If they didn't feel the need for a legal opinion/assessment on the compatibility of ACTA with EU treaties - they probably felt they already knew the result...

Edit : Sorry about my English, as it isn't my first language. ACTA is just going to be pushed through by adding bits of it into other legislation. Thats how the EU works, lobbyists influence the undemocratically appointed members in Brussels who CREATE legislation proposals, and democratically appointed europarliamentarians get to either accept or deny these proposals ( NOT amend them ). This makes it very easy to put little bits of bad legislation into larger packages of agreeable or necessary legislation, essentially forcing it down Europe's throat.

Lobbying is a dirty word, but the definition is just petitioning the government. In the USA, one of the reasons our constitution was written was to defend the idea that all citizens be allowed to make their voice heard to the government. Now obviously not every lobbyist is a concerned citizen looking out for the nation, but it is hard to draw a line for where the law should step in and say when people are not allowed to interact with their legislators. We dont want our lawmakers being corrupt, so there are laws against bribes, but what about campaign donations? Consider Jack Abramoff, he was a successful attorney who was involved in political clubs in college where he became friends with many future politicians. Companies would hire him to advocate their interests to his politician friends. Jack Abramoff went to prison because he gave gifts and campaign donations (among many other charges), but he crossed the line because he used these gifts (like expensive gold trips to Scotland) with the explicit agreement that the politician would vote in a particular way. But not all lobbying is so clear cut. I used to work for a senator, and he would try to keep in touch with his constituents as much as possible. A lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners would come to the office to talk with him and let him know how the laws are affecting their businesses. Its healthy for politicians to know the honest concerns of their constituents. Now consider a wind-energy start up. Not a huge company, just a couple of engineers with plans to develop renewable energy in the state. They needed the senator to look out for them because the process for setting up wind farms is huge and complicated. Many interests want to keep wind energy away. These guys were engineers, not lawyers, so they could talk with the senator but they would both be speaking a different language, or they could hire a law firm to talk to the senator. Obviously they werent giving the senator gifts or donations, or even taking him to lunch (I dont think cookies and coffee are a sizeable enough gift to warrant disclosure), but that is still lobbying.

The big thing, as I've learned now, is that there are certain forms of unprotected speech, and while they're getting better in terms of how well they are defined, a lot of things are illegal that perhaps shouldn't be. For example, there are tons of examples from during and after WWI of people being sent to jail for printing fliers against the government under the Espionage act. There was also the alien and sedition acts in 1798 but I won't get into those as they're somewhat out of the scope of the argument.

If you install Windows first and Linux after, all you need to do is use the on-board partition manager (gparted or something similar) that is on the installation disc which is more often than not in a graphical environment. You need 3 partitions, 2 if you don't want a swap partition. You shrink down your (hopefully) NTFS Windows partition and you create a new ext4 partition with the size you want it to be and you create a swap partition equal to the amount of RAM you have (which is not necessary but highly recommended). Most, if not all, Linux installations will automatically install GRUB boot manager which will handle all of the dual booting so you can select which OS you want to boot into, whether it be the newly installed Linux or Windows. PS: Your

Yeah I have a Gparted boot disc that I used back then. Thanks for the explanation, that does make sense. BTW my original paragraph consisted of 95 characters, wheras my

I'm no Linux guru but with my previous experience of partitioning a hard drive for Linux, there would always be three or four partitions for a standard install. While I have successfully dual-booted Windows XP and Ubuntu years ago, it wasn't the easiest process. I believe that I had to set-up a spare partition in addition to the partitions required by Linux and then installed Windows into that partition AFTER completing a Linux installation. Installing Windows first, then Linux after didn't work (I think it had to do with the MBR or something messing up).

It's not that simple. "Freedom to offend" is actually the fun, cupcake, sunny side of the deal. The ACTUAL dark side (which Alexis is saying he's okay with because retaining complete freedom of speech is a higher ideal, which is something I don't necessarily agree with) is the freedom to denigrate, lie, libel, and marginalize. For example, as a black man, I face discrimination on this site more often than I'm comfortable with. Very often, I'm told that I, and people others have decided are like me, are criminals and unintelligent, are scary or weird or debased. Adhering to a code that puts freedom of speech above all else means that other people are allowed to say this; it means that I have no recourse other than to tell them off. And it means that, by comment or downvote, I am often told that others agree that the other poster knows more about me and my moral standing and personal qualities than I do about myself. This comment - the one you're reading write now - is the outlet of a small portion of a much longer thought that has been churning inside me for a while now (and which I may or may not put to screen at some point in the future). This meditation is one aspect of a feeling, or sentiment, that has almost lead me to close my account and leave reddit for good. I cannot be the only one who has felt maligned by the "culture" of reddit, but I stay because the benefits I get (knowledge, community, etc) have outweighed the negatives (increased defensiveness in the face of discrimination, as I constantly have defend myself and my ethnicity; and, in turn, an increased tendency towards lashing out in "reverse" racism). So far. But don't let anyone tell you that a verbal free-for-all, great as its intentions are, is without its casualties. Not anymore than anarchy (freedom of action) is without casualty.

although to be fair, creepshots specifically stated no underage pictures of any kind, it also specified no downblouse or upskirt photos kinda like how srs says no brigading... see how that works? while va certainly was a creep and massively fucked in the head, the reasoning behind this type of strategy is bullshit, you cannot use "the ends justify the means" and then use the same tactics to prevent your own sub from being criticized "but we specifically forbid brigading!" this is what the co-founder is talking about when he says we allow the extremely offensive AND the regular, we must allow srs, asrs, mra, etc to exist because not to do so would be hypocritical of our staunch stance as redditors for free speech on this platform (and yes i know it is a corporation, but the corporation has chosen free speech as its business model, and guess what, it works, and you chucklefucks whining about your feelz being hurt by something offensive is not going to change that) if we want free speech for one subset of people, we must have free speech for all, we cannot pick and choose, HOWEVER we can hold all subs to the same accountability, if one sub gets members banned for doxxing, so should another which has been shown to dox repeatedly THAT is the problem currently facing reddit, the obscene amount of favoritism and special treatment that goes on between the subs, and THAT is what we need fixed

You're talking about Warren Farrell and you are taking a distorted, often propagated view which bears no resemblance to what he said. He's also not a leader of our movement, he's actually a feminist and was the first man elected to the chair of the National Organisation for Women. >He came to prominence in the 1970s as one of the leading male thinkers[2] championing the cause of second wave feminism , and serving on the New York City Board of the National Organization of Women (NOW) . He turned to men's rights after seeing many issues with boys such as a fall in education standards and suicide. If you wish to debate what was said by Mr Farrell head over to mensrights and start a new thread, as it's far far too long to discuss it here. Furthermore, radical feminists have a history of propagating violence, see what happened to Erin Pizzey (

I have quite a few scratches on the sapphire crystal of my Baume & Mercier Capeland. They scratch easily against other glass surfaces. Edit: Before people start trying to rip my comment apart, I was a service manager for Tourneau, and managed a small watch service center. I've seen hundreds of scratched sapphire crystals ranging from Tissot and Oris, all the way up to Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe. Edit sequel: My point is that people tend to have this misconception that sapphire crystals are scratchproof, when they're really scratch resistant. Also, as stated by others, it's more prone to shattering on hard surfaces such as concrete, marble, and ceramic tiles. Edit sequel sequel: Somebody messaged me asking why people purchase watches that cost many thousands of dollars, and I wanted to add this in case anyone reading might be wondering the same thing. One of the biggest reasons is the sheer appreciation of the craftsmanship that goes into the creation of a watch of that high a caliber. People buy watches to tell time, but a timepiece is set apart as a piece of art. People don't realize the hundreds of hours of meticulous work that goes into crafting things such as tourbillons, minute repeaters, perpetual calenders, and retrogrades. High-end timepieces are all hand-crafted, down to each screw on the mechanical movement, to the assembling of each link on a bracelet. If you were to look up pieces considered grand complications, you'll see the insane amount of parts that fit into such a small case. Many times, they will contain more components than an engine. Aside from that, people do often purchase them as status symbols and for their aesthetics. However, if you ask any real timepiece aficionado why they collect, most of them will tell you it's the respect and appreciation they have toward their quality and workmanship.

Here's a good analogy: A handful of sand not transparent A quartz crystal is transparent They are both Silcon Oxide. Additionally, aluminum oxide can come in a variety of forms based on whether it is a single crystal (in the example in the article), or amorphous solid or a polycrystalline solid.

The explanation in the article treats rain as if it was a one-drop thick sheet. But isn't there always another raindrop further away? At what point do you lose visibility completely because the camera is picking up too many raindrops? For safety I assume it'd have a minimum light projection, so it's not going to make rain "invisible", it will just reduce glare. And it's still useless in fog.

Have you considered that some people actually do understand the limitations of their cars, that some people own cars that can drive faster than other cars in the rain, and that very few accidents are caused through speed (the majority would be people turning into other cars, something i find the less-confident, slower driver far more prone to do).

No, it hasn't passed me by. What's passed you by is what the Google cars are: Cameras. To clarify, the purpose of these cars is to take pictures of absolutely fucking everything around them. There are no passengers whose very job is anything more than sit in the vehicle at most. This implies a number of things... a. Exactly none of these have any remote sense of hurry. These cars do not move at any neckbreaking speed. This to minimize risk of blurry, useless pictures. b. What exactly are you picturing these cars doing? Making hard decisions on how to handle traffic? They almost certainly don't even try. At best they perhaps recognize a red light. Odds are it comes to a crawling halt if a squirrel walks too close. The problem isn't developing a car that can follow the road. Nor is it creating a car that can read and respond to signs, etc. No, the problem is the live element. Wild animals appearing on the road. Inconsistent data, like GPS map saying you're going to take a right turn, but that's now a fucking brick wall. It's an endless list. It's why we still have a human driver. It's why airplanes still have pilots. There's a list that just doesn't stop adding new stuff to itself, and the driverless cars will have to know what to do in exactly all of these scenarios.

Obligatory: I am not a lawyer. The EFF brief makes a compelling argument here, but I am doubtful it will win over a judge who has already indicated that he finds "nothing improper about the purpose" of the defendant's takedown notice. Here's a quick and dirty rundown of the DMCA notice and takedown procedure for the uninitiated: A copyright holder issues a "takedown notice" to a website currently hosting allegedly infringing content. The hosting website scrambles to remove the content, and receives immunity from suit by the notice issuer. The content's original submitter can then either do nothing (which almost always ends the matter), or issue a "counter-notice" asserting that no copyright was infringed. If this counter-notice is issued, and no lawsuit is filed in the intervening time, the removed content is required to be restored by the hosting company within 10-14 days. In practice, very few counter-notices are issued. What, then, is to prevent copyright holders from (at least temporarily) silencing fair uses of the copyrighted work? "Good faith." Before issuing a takedown notice, copyright holders must consider fair use and form a "good faith belief" that the content in question is not a fair use of the copyrighted material (Lenz v. Universal, 572 F. Supp. 2d 1150). At first, this might sound like a reasonable protection for potential "fair users," but in practice requires very little of a notice issuer. To satisfy this requirement, the notice need only make the bare assertion that the required consideration and belief formation took place. No further details are required. The analysis and opinion do not need to be that of an attorney; even where the issuer is a public company with a sizeable legal department, a summer intern's signature on a short, boilerplate form is sufficient. Admittedly, fair use is fairly narrow, and certainly more narrow than the average lay person or crowing YouTube description would have you believe. Even still, the lax notice requirements have encouraged a flood of takedown notices, many of which target content likely to be found non-infringing if litigated. The author of content wrongly removed pursuant to a DMCA notice is then faced with two alternatives: accept censorship or issue the counter notice, potentially launching litigation to establish the legitimacy of the presumptively-infringing content. Many are hesitant to "poke the bear" and risk bringing the wrath of the MAFIAA legal team down upon themselves. Furthermore, the small potential upside typically renders this type of lawsuit prohibitively expensive even for the clearly non-infringing. However, there is potential (and a smattering of precedent outside this case's jurisdiction) for a "noticee" to recover damages under a different section of the DMCA, but only if the "bad faith" of the notice-issuer can be proven. This case presents a favorable set of facts to claim Section 512(f) damages based on a bad faith takedown notice. First, the use of the Finger Picture by Tuteur falls squarely within the fair use exception of commentary and criticism. Second, there is evidence indicating that Crosley-Corcoran sent at least one of the takedown notices after her attorney knew that the infringement claim was untenable. If 512(f) damages are imposed on Tuteur, and precedent in this jurisdiction thereby established, future copyright holders may be discouraged from issuing takedown notices for fair use and borderline fair use content. This deterrent effect is the end goal for the EFF, who devote more than three pages of their amicus brief to a policy argument about the DMCA's stated purpose of "promot[ing] online innovation and free expression." The brief ends by emphasizing the distinction between 512(f) damages intended to discourage bad takedown notices and the less valuable content restoration offered by the counter-notice procedure. Unfortunately, the Court's Motion to Dismiss Memorandum is less than encouraging for plaintiffs. To begin, the Judge makes mention of defendant's rejected settlement attempts within the first paragraph. Worse still, for plaintiff, is the lengthy leading discussion of jurisdictional issues, which seems an attempt to ditch this case in the weeds of the "purposeful availment" doctrine. The Court then sidesteps the central issue of fact in the case and suggests that since defendant "affirm[ed] her good faith belief ... that the copyrighted material is being used without her ... permission" that "there is no material misrepresentation of ... infringement." This line of reasoning simply ignores the statement of Crosley-Corcoran's attorney, and it implies that no inquiry will be made into the truthfulness of the affirmation. Once again, I am not a lawyer and this is purely opinion. Plus, this matter is still ongoing and so it remains to be seen whether plaintiff will clear the jurisdictional hurdles and whether the Court will then be receptive to the arguments raised by the EFF, but I'm not holding my breath for this one.

Ad clicks are ruined by the porn sites. Every time I click a video I want to watch and it just opens a new page with more videos taking me to another page with more videos. Im sitting here with my dick in my hand goin in circles clicking links.

Qualified Google Adwords Pro here - marketers spend a lot of their time making ads as relevant as possible. Define relevant: the landing page is as closely related to the search term as possible. If the user is in research stage: direct the user to an info page. If the user is ready to buy: direct to a product page. Marketers are incentivised to make ads as relevant as possible in order to reduce the cost of clicks. Landing page not matching the search term and the ad? Then refine the landing page copy. How is the cost of clicks reduced? Google gives marketers a metric called Quality Score. This is actually a multiplier from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. If your adwords keyword has a Quality Score of 10, your click is going to be cheaper than if it had a Quality Score of 9. Having the right landing page (i.e. matching the website content to the search term) is going to increase your quality score. Ad copy matching the landing page will increase Quality Score and if it doesn't, it will lower your Quality Score. How does Google know what quality score to assign to a marketer's keyword? Interaction rates such as historical Click-Through-Rate gives google an idea of how relevant users are finding ads. If you have a high Click-Through-Rate, then google will assume your ad is relevant and you get awarded with a higher Quality Score. Of course, marketers could still buy their way to the top by bidding ludicrous amounts for a keyword/search term even though their landing page and ad copy isn't relevant to the user's search term (which subsequently leads to a low Quality Score, therefore higher costs per click), however it's often not sustainable for the marketer. The reason why is because if the ad is not relevant, than the marketer is driving useless traffic to their product or service which means that the conversion rate will be awful. Low conversion rate = low profit.

I was half tongue in cheek. But my point is valid. If you really want to help out the brands/companies/products you like then you are better off skipping the ad and giving more money to the product directly. Of course this will hose brands you like that need ads. Also, my math changes if you also want to help google some. But my

It's tough to determine our return on specific sites, since we are often running a lot at the same time. We can see that the campaign starts, and sales in the store go up, but I can't go ask every consumer for their browser history (not that I'd want to if I could, haha). Instead I look at other metrics like impressions, click through rate, and cost per M views. So, within a digital buy, we can heavy up on some sites and de prioritize others the next time around. To be honest, we often can't tell if the tinkering of one site vs another is making things worse or better, but as long as the lift in sales meets our expectations, it's all good.

At this point though, i stopped caring about bandwidth and care about latency more. Even in my ass-backward country, i get a decent enough bandwidth that hour long, 720/1080 movies can be downloaded over a cup of tea/taking a leak. And as compression technology improves along with higher raw CPU power, it'll come to a point where bandwidth means a lot less - while average throughput and lower latency means a lot more.

I'm no expert but ISP is Internet Service Provider...like Comcast or Verizon. VPN is Virtual Private network and to my understanding it connects you to their own IPs (Internet Protocol) which encrypts your Internet use leaving everything you do online untraceable. These networks have low monthly/annual fees so they can keep their networks up to date and continually add more where there is demand. If you want to do this for your grandparents you should check out some of this sites listed above and read their FAQs/do some research over which one is good for you. I'm pretty sure once you subscribe to this service they provide an easy to use software that let's you connect to the network closest to you.

That could be, but then /u/I_DRINK_CEREAL comes to use. It's already hard to design something to work for 10 years. It's even more harder to make something break after 10 years (never before, not exactly 10, only after 10). It's also somewhat hard to predict the market today. Imagine planning for a future market in long term (10 years), for a product that works as a replacement of a broken product. This is much harder[1]. I base myself on harlon's razor here. Yeah, even in the case of worst quality products, it happens for a whole range of reasons -- cheaper base cost/higher profit marging, easier to sell, sometimes easier to design, not some (evil) plan to make you buy again and again. [1] IMO It's much easier to give a reason for people to replace your working product because the new one is better. Marketing is what changed, making less aware consumers more confident in buying worst products. The low cost of the new also plays a role in making this strategy more acessible, thus creating obsolencence out of working products. A business can then chose as a more viable economic strategy to make lower end products, because things break easy and they can then replace it. Ok, I concede that. But it doesn't affect engineering of a product way people talk. When you decide you are making something cheaper, the constraint on the design is ' do X that last Y under Z dolars', not ' do X that cost Z that will break after Y years'. So 'planned' obsolencence isn't planned, or the very least, it isn't design/engineering product planning. IMO, blame marketing for solding the idea that you have to buy their (cheap) product, or replacing working stuff.

It is incredibly easy to design a patent system which would be near impossible to exploit and at the same time protects the interests of inventors at all levels, from garage to pharma, while stimulating invention. Simply require that any patent has a maximum value which has to be stated in the application. This maximum value would also be capped by lets say 10x the total amount spent on r&d to create the patent. Once this amount has been gained the patent becomes obsolete. And any further patents become cheaper. For a single inventor this would mean that even a world revolutionary invention would not earn him more than at most 10x the average wage* his lifetime so far. Which is sufficient to protect all small inventors and still incentivise. Further if you have already recouped the investment cost on one patent only the difference to the next would be valid. For big pharma this isnt a problem at all, they could still finance secondary research, up to 10x with their successful patents. But at the same time there is a simple buyout any government or similar could perform, and when they do anyone can produce it for free. Finally as a patent reviewer you would not only ask yourself is this a crap patent which arguably is borderline, but also is it worth the 5000$ or the 5B$ the inventor is claiming. The latter is trivially easy to toss and would effectively render patent trolls obsolete. Finally requiring that a fee is payed proportional to the amount claimed for the investigation of the patent 0.0001 or so, would not hurt anyone seeking minor patents nor be a problem for pharma.( edit and ensure diligent processing)

What seems to get lost in the shuffle is [First to File vs. First to Invent]( in which the change to first to file was the major part of the patent reforms. The reform is much more favorable to those with capital to expend(hint-- big businesses). I actually know a guy that stopped being self-employed because he couldn't afford the legal fees to file every patent. He touched on a couple very niche industries, and each of his inventions would gross almost nothing, but when something would hit... it could hit big, and it would be able to feed him for another few years. He was the defintion of "high risk, high reward". Coughing up $30K for patents that most of the time would produce nearly $0 in revenue would break his back. He mentioned that he was regularly having some of the larger companies step into his IP, and his "first to invent" claim to it was about the only thing that was able to protect him(he never went to court, but it was at least an option). Instead of creating/inventing, he now works in an Accounting department for a big company. I guess all of those years of running his own little business helped hone his accounting skills. Anyways, I don't really know much about patents, other than discussions with that inventor and some news articles, so this may be a simplified view. But the reforms definitely aren't as rosey for the little guy as reddit seems to make it out to be. I'm sure people are going to rabble rabble about patent trolls or something, but I genuinely fail to see how the switch to First to File deals with the bulk of the Patent Troll issues(BTW, don't patent trolls generally only target cash-rich entities? I don't really hear about them going after the little guys...). If this nominee was AGAINST the switch to first-to-file, I actually may be much more supportive of him. I just am a bit confused by reddit hiveminds love for already passed patent reform since it doesn't fall in line with the looking out for the little guy/inventors. Lots of other comment sections on websites are pretty vocally against it, and The Economist comment section is pretty overwhelmingly condemning of the new 'reforms'. Maybe I'm missing something.

It's doable, but it's going to cost a whole lot more than $190m. Bulk purchases obviously reduces the cost per harddrive, but you're not running everything without any backups. You'll want solid error and hardware protection, so a bare minimum of raid 6 plus full off-site redundancy of that datacenter elsewhere in case it all goes to shit for one reason or another. Then you need to factor in the costs of all the controllers and actual servers to handle it as well as the creation and maintenancce of the software to handle and organize that amount of data. Power requirements will be massive so you'll need to either set up a huge deal with a local power company or build your own power plant and also set up cooling which is very expensive. Finally you need to account for hardware failures, as mechanical drives, depending on the models used, can have annual failure rates of anything from a few percent and up to as high as 15%+. For the amount of hardware you're employing you'll need a whole lot of techies running around the place 24/7 replacing components that have failed.

To me this is a combination of a technology/ cost issue. I never pirate music anymore. I haven't pirated a game in years. I pay for deezer and netflix monthly. For me, a huge part of these services use their versatility. I can watch Netflix on my phone, pc, ps4. Steam is loaded on my pc with over 1tb worth of legitimately bought games (which I'll never play!!) Deezer on chromecast, phone, etc. It's hugely convenient for me not to have to physically do anything to change anything before watching/playing/listening to something else. In this world we live in, we're not used to waiting and being patient in the way I'm sure older generations were. Therefore I'm more than willing to spend money on this convenience/versatility to consume the media I love on my time in the manner i wish. The reason I believe piracy is still so prevalent in the movie/television industry is that they have failed to realise people don't want dvds/blu rays! Well I'm not saying nobody does but up until I bought my ps4 I only had one blu ray player...if I wanted to watch something in hd, I had to watch it where the blu ray player was or move it...again note the inconvenience! Chromecast provides me an extremely convenient medium of watching Netflix (hd television) where ever I want at home very conveniently! I realize that there are digital copies of movies/shows you can buy online but the cost for a new movie is likely north of €20 which is ridiculous for 90 mins of entertainment!

But, if you don't know what the information is, then you don't really have an incentive to buy it. This is all well and good, but doesn't explain why the most pirated material is hugely popular. Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Transformers, Godzilla, etc. No one is torrenting these things thinking, "Oh, I wonder what this 'Game of Thrones is all about... never heard of it!" Your examples of Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead are all fine and dandy, but they were already super popular before and didn't personally care about making a profit. And how is this easier than any of the means that already exist? I can go into iTunes and buy an album significantly faster than I can find an artists site, sign up, enter credit card info, etc. etc. And I can do it from a phone. People keep bringing up the whole, "If only there was an easier way!" You can literally buy almost any album ever on iTunes, immediately, DRM free. Movies as well, although I don't know about DRM on their movies... there probably is some. Finally, in regards to crowdfunding, the cost of the movies and shows being made today (specifically the ones that are most popular) are typically well beyond what crowdfunding generates. The pilot episode of Lost cost >$10M; I'll admit that is an extreme example as it was the most expensive pilot ever. But movies regularly cost several hundred million.

At $50,000/mi, it would take about $900 billion to fiber the US ([which already has more fiber than all of Europe]( In a country of 300 million, that's about $6,000/taxpayer. Will you be paying that in a lump sum to the IRS, or over the next few years at a modest interest rate payment plan?

yeah, mind you they offer 500/500 for business connections... at a disgracefully whopping $400 a month if you want a static IP. That is absurdly expensive for half of what should be the standard speed, and they get away with price gouging like that because they don't have someone like Grande or Google Fiber in direct competition with them. Bullshit all around regardless of the fact that they offer double the speed for the same price as Comcast.

It depends on your risk tolerance. If you have zero risk tolerance (meaning you can't afford to lose any money or are just uncomfortable investing), you will want your money in a savings account- best rates I know of for less then $50k are .75% (Capital One 360 account). In this case, you would need the loan rate that is less then .75%. If the loan interest rate is, say, 3.5%, you would be better off putting money down, rather then financing. If you are comfortable with risk you could invest the money into say, the stock market. A very low risk stock is SPY, a fund that tracks the S&P500. It did very well last year- so if you took your money at the start of 2014 and put it into stock, it would have had a much higher return then the interest paid on the loan debt. However, if you did the same thing in 2008, it may not have worked out so well... but in general, unless you are professional, it is better to buy stocks for long term gains (more then one year), and buy diversified funds, like SPY.

Your comment made me remember a talk my wife and I had about our next car being 4WD vs AWD and the fact that I didn't really know the difference. So I looked it up. Anyway, the article right after it was this one: The model S is currently RWD but has fancy computer stuff (that's the technical term) to make it so "you don’t really need all-wheel drive". Despite that claim by Tesla they say they're planning on releasing AWD on S and X. Presumably by the time they release 3, which is after X, they'll have the AWD specs standard but that's just speculation.

Often times an insurance company will only want the work done by the manufacturers representative anyway,,, as is the case with most Audi and BMW etc. Back to my main point. The insurance on a tesla should be no worse than an equivalent gas powered Audi because of the fact that injury is the most expensive part of an accident, and if you're less likely to die or be seriously injured in a Tesla then your rates shouldn't be higher as a result of all the other factors.

I absolutely digged the premise. I watched the first three episodes, give or take. I was absolutely disappointed. The attempt at immersion did not exist in the writing of Sword Art Online--as soon as people were finding out they were stuck in the game forever, not a single character acted even remotely like they understood what the rules actually meant. I wanted everybody to be FREAKING THE ABSOLUTE FUCK OUT. Half of them crying, half of them in inanimate shock, half of them in the fetal position, half of them having seizures due to trauma, half of them going immediately full blown psychopath and killing everybody, half of them in denial, half of them killing themselves--and few of them to be intelligent/determined enough to soldier on and make it through (including the protagonist), while a few actually accept their position and decide to plan staying there forever, or something. All I saw was a cast of people looking like my local LARPing squad when they don't even play seriously. How old are they all supposed to be? Because even at 10 years old I think you'd somewhat absorb the implications of being merely stuck in a game, especially with all the other protocol that surrounded that plot, and be able to physically represent some type of behavior that acknowledges the understanding of that implication. It's as if the plot for SAO is an illusory hook for the show to be about what it doesn't end up being instead, and nothing to do with what would actually potentially happen if a bunch of people got stuck in a game like that. And from what I hear after the first season, you're right, it doesn't even try after too long to trick anybody anymore--it becomes being content with being a subpar generic playful take at a serious premise.

Why would you say that? He's promising to end mass surveillance on american citizens. The specific tactics employed by the NSA to that effect are not a matter of congressional purview, they fall squarely in the realm of executive policy. He can absolutely end mass surveillance programs, in just the same way that the Justice Department ended the Fast and Furious program when it proved idiotic. He's not promising to dissolve the NSA, alter it's funding, or make (explicit or implicit) statutory changes, which would fall under the scope of congressional authority.

I've read it]( I think it's pretty good. 600+ pages but easy to read and well organized.

While I appreciate citing news articles for other not terrible Rand Paul positions, my point still remains valid. For every one of his decent ideas, he has several terrible ones, especially in economics. First, his campaign rhetoric about "defeat the Washington machine", and "take back our country". The first is laughingly childish, especially when spoken in front of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. The second is a frighteningly naked dog whistle appealing to deliberately riled up conservatives who have been frightened for years about Those People. "Auditing the Feds", as he and his father have called for years, effectively works out to politicizing economic decisions people who aren't Rand Paul make. It also ignores the fact that the Federal Reserve is already weekly audited, with public availability of the data. Audit the Feds is about power, not economic sense. The fact that he's predicted Weimar Republic style hyperinflation for years, and has advocated to tying currency to gold is just crazy. The size of our currency base should not be decided by geological deposits, and increasing the currency base is much more expensive when it requires mining not printing infrastructure. Finally, his ideas on balanced budget, slashing spending, and zeroing capital gains taxes pretty much amount to giving more to the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

Holy shit where is the Auto

Yea, but for some of us, we don't care if the Pizza is like 5% better in taste etc. for the same price. Because with the app, I don't have any irregularities and there's pretty much no way they or I can fuck up the order or price. It removes human error on the business side entirely. And that alone is worth it in my opinion. I want a Pizza, and I don't care if the local Italian place has an amazing Pizza because if the Dominoes next to it delivers, I'll take that because this way I am not spending time walking to the place, buying the pizza, bringing it home then eating it. If the place delivers, I'll consider it any buy it once to see the taste, if its only slightly better, honestly, I am going to get Dominoes cos I don't have to phone someone up, hope they get my order right and the payment details right. In the UK, we have a service called JustEat for local takeaways etc, if you wanna buy local and shit.

There is some serious truth in that, especially in fields like Information Technology where we just accept that if our business wants to call us at 3am to fix some broken server, that it's part of our job manifesto to do that. My dad always had a notion that you don't bring work home with you and it's one of the reasons he doesn't want to be a manager is because work would always call him and he didn't get to spend time with us.

I don't think that the current generation of moralfags or the older generation of lolfags would have stooped so low as to hire an assassin to kill an elected representative, and then have said hitman leave behind a bragging piece of evidence that could be used to legitimize attacks on the anti-SOPA campaigners by pro-SOPA campaigners and could be backtraced, potentially doxxing Anons. Based on recent Anon operations, I'd say that moralfag Anons would dox Smith, then trawl the database for anything that would get him to quickly step down or remove support from this bill, like sexual misconduct or large payments from people who would profit from this bill. They'd also research the history of the bill and document the shadier aspects of its drafting. Cue data dump in torrents with a press release, push notification to anti-SOPA campaigners, quick blogging and re-blogging, with mainstream coverage within a couple of days. Lolfags would hack Smith's websites, crash his mailserver, jam his telephone lines, fill his fax tray and inundate his mailroom. He'd probably also get a half-dozen pizzas and some flowers.

Welcome to the Reddit-Lemming effect. A comment that gets a negative score early in its life is exponentially more likely to be further downvoted into oblivion than an equivalent comment that hovers in low positive territory. The effect is particularly noticeable on unremarkable comments. The thought pattern ends up being roughly "hm. a comment. let's read it. eh, whatever. let's see what everybody else did. yeah, let's do that too. seems safe."

I have gotten two emails from Comcast. They were both a few months back so my memory may not be 100% accurate, but to summarize, they said that they noticed I was sharing files over the internet that were copyright protected, and that if I continued to 'share' files like these, they would terminate my account. Since I received those emails, I have not seeded anything (terrible I know), but I have not received another email since. I have not changed the amount of files that I download whatsoever, I just do not seed anything anymore, which is frustrating considering my ratio for certain websites was very high before, and I am now unable to use them.

I have gotten two emails from Comcast. They were both a few months back so my memory may not be 100% accurate, but to summarize, they said that they noticed I was sharing files over the internet that were copyright protected, and that if I continued to 'share' files like these, they would terminate my account. Since I received those emails, I have not seeded anything (terrible I know), but I have not received another email since. I have not changed the amount of files that I download whatsoever, I just do not seed anything anymore, which is frustrating considering my ratio for certain websites was very high before, and I am now unable to use them.

What constitutes a legally binding contract? To have a contract consideration must be given from one party to the other in exchange for a act or promise. Thus, based on your logic, a contract with a hitman to kill your sister's ex-boyfriend is a legally binding contract. However, as Magnificent pointed out, laws supersede contracts.

You're basically arguing about politics. Politics is spinning propaganda better than your foes. SOPA got defeated because it was lauded as "the end of the internet" and people didn't want that. It wasn't the end, it would have just been a huge problem that would have been circumvented by technology's ability to adapt. We live in a world where politics rules, not facts. Reddit might disagree, I might love to disagree myself even, but facts aren't what gets people to do things. No one starts a war by saying, "We're doing this for money and power. We don't like those bastards over there so we're gonna kill them." they state some bullshit about patriotism and threats somewhere else.

Meaning it's perfect fodder for Reddit! It doesn't seem like this gives the government any sort of spying abilities it doesn't already have. It just provides the ability for the government to share this information with certain private entities (read: cleared government contractors). But of course, Reddit will do what it is wont to do, which is "

Disagree with this. My Prime is my new primary machine. What kind of work are you trying to do with your's? If you're a dev, I recommend TerminalIDE and AIDE. Just ssh into your server for build/deploy, keeping your source version controlled with git (even better if you set up a git hook, or use GitHub's hook and just have the push into origin's production branch [master or whatever] start a build, TDD run, and then deploy automatically for you, with a nice email notification on success/failure). On top of that, I can develop for hours away from any power source, since code editing is one of the lightest things you can do on the think and getting 14 hours of battery, well beyond a work day, so when I just need to work alone, I can go to a nice park and work outside instead of in a fluorescent-lit cubicle. With my PhD hat on, reading and annotating research papers is very nice without the paper waste. Pop the tablet off the keyboard base (no point to the Prime if you didn't buy the keyboard, in my opinion) and hold it in portrait like a clipboard, scroll the pages up and down with my finger, tap-and-hold-and-drag to highlight key text, tap-and-hold-and-release to get a menu to leave notes to review later (or leave notes for someone else to look at if personally reviewing their paper for them). Email and calendar notifications just work unlike a Windows or Linux desktop, and task switching in Android 4.0 isn't really painful (two taps on the screen, the task-switching icon, and then the preview of the application I want to open, faster than Win 7's task switching since I move my hand less distance [I'm left-handed, though, so that may be partly why]). And gaming is actually nicer, for me, than on my old laptop. I have to either reboot into Windows and sign into Steam and then launch my app and hope that since I haven't booted in a while Windows doesn't try to run any background tasks while playing, or settle with the Linux-compatible games which are years older. Of course, I don't have as much time to play games, anymore, so I stick with games that are faster to start/stop, so I was using a DS before that most of the time instead of any regular PC games. Similarly Netflix is now actually useable for me rather than needing the Windows reboot of shame.

thepiratebay users don't sell (for the most part) the files for profit (and for the most part, probably weren't going to watch/listen to the things they downloaded if they had to pay), funnyjunk is using The Oatmeal's webcomics for profit.

There is no need to be snarky. I never claimed to be in the know, hence: > Perhaps I'm ignorant I was simply trying to drag out specifics such as yours so that others could possibly address them. I don't currently have sources for any of what was said, and never claimed I did but is how I understood the world to operate. I'm sorry if my search for understanding offends you.

I'll re-phrase. I'm paying for "up-to 80mbps*" Yes I only get 67mbps but the nearest competitor offers "up 24mbps*" for the same price and when I was with them I actually got 6mbps. There's also the fact that I regularly download above 300GB in a month, and I am yet to experience any traffic throttling. A couple of months back I transferred the entire contents of a full 1.5TB drive over this connection and I got the full speed for the entire duration. BT have made no complaints so far.

The biggest factor in this decision isn't any of those costs, not even the $500M cost to Google. The biggest factor is that the ISPs might eventually defeat net neutrality or otherwise destroy the open web for their own profit. Google Fiber isn't necessarily intended to be profitable, it's intended to keep the entire Internet open enough that they can continue their business. If the ISPs get a big policy win, they aren't going to ally with Google, because it's against everything about Google to play nice with purely capitalist corporations. Those ISPs will partner with Microsoft or whatever other tech companies will play ball.

This move has nothing to do with Oracle trying to kill MySQL. Oracle actually treats MySQL as a very special and nearly autonomous organization within the company. Oracle has done a great job in resourcing MySQL, and some truly awesome stuff is being done there. No, the problem is that some groups within Oracle (and it really is a massive entity with many layers) don't fully grasp open source concepts. I know it doesn't look like it from outside, but product security is VERY important at Oracle. The problem here (and presumably within the Java organization) lies with Oracle security rules 1 & 2: 1) You don't talk about Oracle security, and 2) You DO NOT talk about Oracle security. Oracle product security has decided that in some cases certain unit tests may reveal too much about a given security vulnerability. Specifically, how to exploit said holes. They have also decided to reclassify certain cases from crashing bugs to security bugs, which as I just said fall into a category of bug for which unit tests can't be shared. I can't comment of the merits of these decisions, but MySQL engineering has been discussing this issue and they are aware of the impact and perception. However, nobody can comment because of rules 1 & 2, cited above. This is not an attempt to stifle forks or negatively impact developers at all. As much as everybody loves to hate Larry Ellison, this did not come from his desk. I would be surprised if he was even aware of the issue until he was briefed on the bad press after the fact. This came from one of the many security departments within Oracle, in an attempt to bring an open-source product inline with corporate policies designed around closed-source development. I'm sure the MySQL engineers would rather have avoided this mess and the extra work involved in maintaining an external test case repository. Disclaimer: I make these statements as an observer outside of the organizations involved. I am an Oracle employee, but this cannot and should not be taken as an official statement of any sort. I've simply been personally interested in this whole debacle from the time I first saw the blog post from MariaDB about this. By the way, doesn't anybody ever stop to consider the sources of these claims and the interests those parties have in in kicking up FUD? Or is it just so fashionable to hate Oracle that any type of rational look is impossible?

the title is fine, substantiated by its frontpageness. Following the link gives the reader all the info they need. The air of mystery around the current title got my brain working as to 'how' and I was far more interested in reading and watching the demo vid.

I refuse to believe that this thing can be hit in the side by a car going going around a corner at a normal speed and not fall over. The car can exert way more force than the gyroscope can. I don't know if anybody else noticed in the video when he did the demonstration in his garage, the vehicle had sand under the wheels to lower the friction between the rubber wheels and the floor. Also he only pulled it a few feet, from the bottom of the motorcycle, not by middle where it would be hit by a car.

It really depends on the algorithm used to hash the passwords. Different algorithms take different amounts of computation time. Hashes like MD5 and SHA1 were designed to verify data correctness. So they were made as fast as possible to verify a lot of data. This makes them unfit for password hashing, as we can see with this cluster being able to calculate 180 billion and 63 billion hashes per second for MD5 and SHA1, respectively. Honestly, MD5 is so thoroughly fast and insecure that 8 characters hasn't been viable for a long while. And likely a good majority of websites still use MD5 to hash their passwords.. Hash algorithms specifically designed to secure passwords are generally very, very slow. bcrypt and sha512crypt, mentioned further down the page, are such algorithms. This cluster can calculate only 71,000 and 364,000 per second of them, respectively. That's laughably little comparing to the billions of passwords a second mentioned above.

what's the

nothing about that means they're going to start decrypting aes-256 bit messages any time soon. even the fucking article uses "quantum." D-Wave is kinda-sorta based on quantum principles. It's an interesting development in computing but it means fuck all for tor security. Quantum computers arent some magical "instantly decrypt anything" machine. Even if they were, D-Wave is only maybe a quantum computer. There is absolutely zero evidence that it is capable of doing anything special w/r/t decryption. if we're going to quote stupid articles: > (Whether the D-Wave system uses a quantum process for its computation has been a matter of hot dispute in academia. However, recent research by a USC team working with Lockheed Martin LMT -0.05%‘s D-Wave system appears to show that there are, indeed, quantum effects happening with the system. Whether those quantum effects produce a “speedup” – that is, computation faster than classical methods – is still an open question.) > At a time when quantum effects start to pose limits to further miniaturisation of devices and the exponential performance increase due to Moore's law, quantum technology is maturing to the point where quantum devices, such as quantum communication systems, quantum random number generators and quantum simulators, may be built with powers exceeding the performance of classical computers HOLY FUCK d-wave might be as fast a conventional super computer!! ALL OUR PASSWORDS ARE CRACKED

Im a journalism student and I think this is fantastic. In england (where i study, and yeah I'm British) Journalists have been sent to jail for failing to reveal sources (if we did like hell would anyone trust us, before anyone frowns upon the ignoring of the courts: it'd destroy our career). But if we don't even know our sources (providing there is sufficient amount to validate the information) then there is no grounds for being sent to jail for failing to reveal sources. Issues about how trust worthy the information is aside this is a great idea. Sorry I do anticipate many

The only known quantum algorithm that can effectively attack AES can, at best, reduce the keyspace's exponent by 1/2. That means cracking AES-256 with a quantum computer will be like cracking AES-128 with a non-quantum one. This is the algorithm: To the best of my knowledge, it is highly infeasible to crack even AES-128 with modern technology. So, even if a powerful quantum computer is built within the next 10 years, there would still need to be microarchitecture that completely blows away what we currently have, in order to crack AES-256. However, the quantum algorithm would be able to reduce AES-128 to a 64-bit key length, which certainly would be easy enough to bruteforce if you had enough resources.

One Today charity Android app by Google = More G+ users Social pressure to donate You could probably get more people to donate to stuff like cancer research if you could display a person's Google One Today ( profile points with Google Glass (if they choose to present them). >"Your One Today profile also includes information based on your usage of One Today, such as which projects you've donated to." Reputation and points systems can affect motivation, and may be the only source of motivation for some people to do something charitable. Combine competition with cooperation People by nature can be mostly status-conscious, self-interested, and competitive. Either you have a system that allows people to satisfy their ego by spending money on the purchasing of charity points, or you let people continue to flaunt their wealth through expensive cloths, cars, jewelry, etc.. Vanity isn’t going away.

I honestly don't know where to look for a source. This is knowledge from personal experience working in SEO (Search engine optimization). The only reason I know this is from having to bring people back up from the bottom after google released Panda. They all made the same mistake and the only way google would of been able to collect this much information is by releasing these tools, Else it would of taken decades to put all this information into databases. It's not really a black & white case either. The people whom are a bit more sly in how they rank themselves don't get taken down by these tools. It's moreso for the type of people who go out and buy 500 links from some Indian website for 99 cents, which use to work until google released these tools and collected all the information they needed to blacklist these types of links. Now-a-days page rank is really important, Along with content (Not duplicate content, Original content). Basically the more you spam google with something the lower it kicks you down. The more original content you write the higher you'll rank. It's a constant cat & mouse game though. And if you spam something to much you won't even be able to find yourself at all. Quick example. If you're writing a blog and you link to some website 15 times in that blog you're going to hurt yourself. If you write 15 different blogs (all with original content) and link to that same website once or twice max you'll boost yourself up.

First your Apple cons: > Hardware is bloody expensive. Yet it's okay when Google does it. > Aggressive about compatibility This is a pro, not a con. Don't be tied down by legacy crap. Now to your Facebook cons: > Constant changes But it's okay when Google does it. > Sketchy with privacy and personal information But it's okay when Google does it. Don't even try disputing this. > FUCKING FB FACES. When FB messenger upgraded recently, they added an incredibly intrusive notification option that OVERLAYS CHAT OVER OTHER APPLICATIONS. As if FB Messenger is so fucking important that it needs to interrupt ANY OTHER APP on my phone. It's easy to turn off, but holy shit I almost crushed my phone against a desk when I first got an FB Faces notification So turn it off and quit bitching. You even pointed out Android's customizability as a strength, so don't give this crap.

Perhaps it had fallen from telephone poles and was lying across the road. Therefore it's a hazard, and the road needs to be cleared. Electrician comes by and cuts the fallen line safely and moves it to the side of the road. That's one of many possible ways in which it could be severed by someone who did not know it was the emergency communications line, assuming that the emergency communications line looks like any other telephone line.

I don't think the Drone operators were in violation of the FAA regs. From the UAV companies website it seems like they would just need to drop the altitude of their planes down from 600' to 400' and they could fly them all they wanted as long as the planes stayed w/i line-of-sight. I wonder if FEMA even has jurisdiction in this case?

A lot. Here is a list of just the Federal ones: It's kind of complicated to explain, but basically a lot of Federal agencies have their own LE branch tasked with dealing with LE activities within their designated area of authority. Some are literally just a police force tasked with facilities owned/operated by these agencies (think Park Rangers). Some are actually agencies within agencies (FBI Police, for example). You also have local agencies (Sheriffs, Police Departments, Constables, etc...) based on the area they operate in. The town I live in Georgia has a Sheriffs Dept (county), and a Police Department (city). We also have Park Rangers that deal with all the parks (we are on a large lake), and Army Corps of Engineers guys (they own the lake). We also have a USCG Auxiliary that operates on the lake.

The US government wanted a nuclear war tolerant communication system That's a chunk of popular, but ultimately incorrect history. The initial work came from a guy at DARPA who got sick and tired of having N network lines for the N terminals in his office. He told his subordinates - DARPA - that there had to be a better way, gave them a budget, and they found one. Well, OK, they hired BBN to do a bunch of the work. Once a more uniform network was in place, it was obvious for universities and research centers to use it. > Browsers, the world wide web, etc had almost nothing to do with government intervention, and were mostly done by schools and private individuals...and eventually companies like Netscape. You mean like the government-funded research Tim Berners-Lee was doing at CERN where he created HTTP and Mosaic? So he could further information-sharing between government-funded research projects? Yeah, clearly no government involvement there . Nope. None at all. > Once PC's are on the scene, any number of industries would have built the first network had the government not done DARPANET. Such as who? Do you have any evidence for this, or just speculation? Please note that it becoming valuable later does not guarantee that any private entity of the time would have done it. > Banks would make a logical early adopter, as well as national/global news organizations. Early adopters, sure. However, who do you think was going to build this network for many millions of dollars? Do you think possible vague and unsubstantiated future demand that we only know of in hindsight was going to will it into existence somehow? > I hardly call that inventing the internet... When you are responsible for laying every single bit of the groundwork, I call it inventing the internet.

At the end of the day it all comes down to price, I believe. I recently bought a video game, and old game (Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri) that I easily could have pirated. In fact, I have pirated this game a few times over the past decade, when the desire has struck me to play. Keep in mind, this is a game that I purchased when it came out, I game that I still own a hard copy of. The thing is, the disk I own, the legal one, is at my parents' house. I pirated the game because I didn't want to pay for something I already owned that was ancient anyway. However, most recently I decided to buy it. Why? Because it was so damn cheap! Pirated games never work 100% well, even if they aren't buggy they may lag a bit. Even if they are indeed 100% fine, compared to a legal copy, you never really know ahead of time, and for a lot of older games there may only be one pirate-able version out there. I bought this game, that I had pirated so many times before, because it was cheap, easy, and convienient. Maybe I am naive, but I think this is what every industry needs to do in order to survive. People are naturally lazy, and as Capitalists (well, most of us) we really love to spend money. I mean, seriously, spending money is a status symbol, and much of the reason people work so hard is to spend their hard-earned cash. The idea that people "don't want to pay for stuff" is laughable. The way I see it: People don't want to feel like they're being ripped off. What do the music industry, the movie industry, and now the miniature industry all have in common? Horribly over-priced products. Hell, even the "second-hand" (read: old) video-game industry charges through the nose for ancient products. Or at least they did. I lived in the time before internet piracy. It was terrible to be a consumer. $20 CDs in the '90s were routine in my area. DVD's were so expensive I don't think I ever bought while I was growing up (these are of new movies, even then older movies were cheaper obviously, but still not cheap...). I think I, along with many in my generation, feel like we have been taken advantage of by these industries. I hate the way they extorted me all those years, and I hate the way they are trying to bully their way back into those horrid practices through legislation and litigation. Sorry, that was a bit of a rant.

There is a machine at my optometrists office that can get my prescription in 15 seconds. I have to then pay him 100 bucks to sign a slip telling me the machine was right. I would love to cut him out of the picture. Frankly - good. Its called post-scarcity, and you should research it. Technology will ALWAYS replace humanity. A workforce that never tires, never needs to go home, or eat dinner. It wont need sick time, or child-leave. It won't join the army, or decided to change careers. It will never strike. Its perfect for any job you design it for. It creates more than you can, and better than you can, in a fraction of the time you can. That is tomorrow. Since the first caveman chipped the first speartip and ended to need to sharpen the wood every time, we have removed barriers. Look what automation has created: Surplus food, at least in supply. Distrobution asside, we can eliminate world hunger today - Its getting it around thats expensive, and we need more technology for that. It's given us affordable medicine. Medical supplies work best when used once. To make the sheer quantity of tools used, we need machines. We would be autoclaving, and using glass re-fill bottles today if it weren't for plastic molding. Extremely affordable entertainment. Automatically duplicated audio recordings shipped out from a single hard drive on a box in a room of thousands maintained by a minimal staff. Music, movies, games, and video would not be what it is today without automation. Every affordable appliance and tool, likely most tools you have ever used. There are very few kitchen appliances, outdoor machines, and even hand tools that are made by hand anymore. Factories with welding robots, automatic metal stamping, and robo-painters save millions a year on labor costs, making top quality products available to you in supply. Many people think back to "the golden years" when everyone worked a job and no one was wanting. What they don't realize is how thinks like the vacuum were a luxury. Having such simple things we take for granted like a TV, a radio, or a microwave oven were so expensive repairing individual parts by hand was cheaper then using fast replacements, or even replacing the entire machine. You can break a microwave and get a new one by next week today. less than 60 years ago you would need to call someone to your house and hope you had savings to pay the guy. But that's something overlooked. No one cares to notice how much of their daily life would literally not be possible without machines they villify. Hell, if it weren't for supercomputers putting mathmeticians out of a job on an epic, and in-concievable scale medicine and science would be stuck in the 20s. I could ramble forever, but

Post scarcity is what I was describing. And if your job goes? If you're left with no marketable skills? A huge swath of all jobs are at risk, even many highly technical jobs. Everywhere I look, I see jobs that are going to be automated. Many of them highly skilled. Belief that the next wave of automation will be like those that preceded it is a religion to some. I see you're a member of the faith. There are compelling arguments that this will not at all be the case. This time, things could be very different. Rewarding jobs, artistic jobs, analytical jobs that require years of training and education, all pushed aside. Not over time, not slowly. All at once. A tidal wave of humanity with no marketable skills. Many of which trained a lifetime for those professions. To blindly believe that leaving billions of humans without purpose will make a better world is naivete. One doesn't have to be a Luddite to realize that not all technology brings improvement. One compelling theory is that the end of scarcity could lock-in wealth to the current holders and their progeny. This might not happen in all nations, but those with poor or declining levels of income equality could see things get far worse before the get better. If they get better. Not that there's any stopping it. This train is rolling through society no matter the roadblocks attempted from doctors, lawyers, engineers and all the rest set to lose out. It's no longer a question if this will happen, but what the world will look like after the next wave of automation sweeps through.

Burger looks burnt. Also dumb con is dumb and using semi Luddite arguments to argue against minimum wage increases. Automation does not end all jobs, it changes their nature. This robot will need a person to ensure that someone can get a refund for their burnt burger, it will need someone to keep the ingredients filled, to swap orders over if (and when) the machine fails. There are also new jobs manufacturing the burger flipping machine and fixing the burger flipping machines.

I don't think that it has to be the case that people that flip burgers at McDonalds can only do that. As automation increases, costs of life decrease. Suddenly things that could make you some money, but not enough to live, make your more than enough. People will also want to modify their stuff in ways that simply doesn't make sense to automate: tailors, electricians, plumbers, designers, etc. etc. All those extra resources will probably be spent on art and such as well, and better mediums will be created. Education will also improve, now with a need for better education people will pay teachers more, which will in turn allow many people that wouldn't have considered teaching to become teachers.

The fact that you are alive and well-off enough to be biting (or at least talking shit to) the hand that feeds you is proof enough that you have benefited from the government more than any of your taxes can ever pay for. I grew up in a "failed state" ruled by a military dictatorship and its not very difficult to see from my view why government is essential in your life. Just imagine growing up in [one of these places]( where you are born and then cursed to a life of wondering if you'll survive tomorrow. Tell me honestly if you think you'd be having the same ideas about government and taxation. Libertarians and other anti-government advocates tend to believe in this "Government didn't make me. I MADE ME!" kind of myth. This myth simply cannot be true if you were born, raised, socialized and culturalized in a civilized society. You have benefited from the government whether you like it or not, so much so that no one even knows if you'd be alive to be typing these things today if it were not for them. This "necessary evil" of taxation that you abhor is the price we all pay regardless of whether or not we agree with its distribution. This is because diverse people (who have different needs by the way) are aiming to live together and not kill each other. People like you are quick to point out what sort of "bullshit" things your taxes are going towards. However, you are quick to forget that someone else has paid for your roads, schools, hospitals, utilities, safety. Just because some people can say they grew up with private school, private doctors, private etc.. does not mean they managed to avoid utilizing government benefits (thus excusing them from taxation). Virtually every aspect of your life has been supported, in some way, by the state. Even if you were to decide to "go feral" and live in some uninhabited area as a hermit, you are still indebted to the system that has kept you alive and your head full of ideas all these years.

Think of the following case, the case the DMCA is made for. You have a youtube channel and publish funny videos on it, they kinda are random things and such. You make money of this channel and even though you have a job, the channel is still a big source of your income. Then one day your video hits the front page of reddit and becomes The Next Big Meme^TM suddenly you get a huge influx of views and ad revenue, which is great. You realize that with this income you could reinvest it and try to go big with the funny video and content thing, your channel has been successful (even without the huge meme) and you've done some great stuff, but need some basic cash to be able to start doing things a bit more professionally, at the very least to take the risk of making it your full time job. Then your video starts getting copied. Since it's the "big new meme" everyone wants to put it on their channel. This isn't, btw, people making variations on the video, or doing their own interpretation, or using segments of the video as part of bigger videos or big guys showing your video and throwing you a shout out. This is people just putting your video outright, or adding 5 seconds where a guy appears saying "yeah so this video is, um, awesome" and then putting a bunch of dub-step at the end with requests to "suscribe", or taking away the video and replacing it by a blue screen with the lyrics (which make no sense without the context), all to get some money. They also repost this videos in hopes of stealing your ad views, hell maybe not even for the money, just for their ego to get a video that finally has over 500 views. Say that we only care about the guys taking $200 USD in views. Since people could see it from anywhere, they would have seen it from your site had the link not be spread. It still "makes sense" to sue since it costs $100, but there are 1500 of these copies throughout the whole internet, that is at least $300,000 in views, but you need to invest $150,000 USD from the start! Not only that you are loosing half your money in stopping people from attacking you! You know who doesn't care about this costs? Big companies. Do you really think $100,000 for a 1000 notices monthly is really that expensive? They spend way more on putting a song on the radio for a week! 110 million a year sounds like a lot to you and me, but to this companies it's just another expense, a couple layoffs and they're back on track. And that is the problem, it's a lot of money for me and you, not for companies, and the DMCA and copyright should protect us, not fuck us even more. Lets make it more interesting, say that a company wants to fuck you up. Say that you brought this video that talks against them. The first thing they do is start creating copies of your famous videos to take away ad revenue, then they issue DMCA takedowns on your original ones. Sure say you sue and get back at them, but by that point they won: they censored you and fucked you up. You had to use up your money in DMCA takedowns against them to stop the bleeding, and then you had to waste even more money in court. By the time you recover all you lost and then get some, the company won, and they can chalk off their losses as "expenses" and the cost of media control.

How come 3rd party OSX software never comes with this bundled bullshit like this? Because, other then the mobile apps, nobody is making any money from writing code for Apple. They do not have a large enough laptop/desktop client base to make it worth while. Those who do are the die hard core of Apple fanatics and they do a good job of it from what I understand. > Windows 8 jumps past Apple's OS X with 7.4% market share. It hasn't been nearly as successful as Microsoft hoped and promised a year ago, but the Windows 8 platform continues to inch forward in market share, most recently surpassing the overall installed base for Apple's Mac OS X. (Google: "osx market share" to find) For the

I received the below from my state senator this afternoon. I changed my name for obvious reasons. Dear "benderb-rodriguez" : Thank you for writing to express your concerns regarding the proposed merger between Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable. I appreciate hearing from you, and I welcome the opportunity to respond. On February 13, 2014, Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable operator, announced that Time Warner Cable will merge with Comcast. Like you, I am concerned about the effects of allowing a smaller number of companies to control a larger share of the media market. Further consolidation will put more power into the hands of media conglomerates, which could then neglect local programming, eliminate competition, and reduce the diversity of programming in the broadcast industry. As you may know, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission share concurrent jurisdiction of many areas of antitrust enforcement, including merger enforcement. It is their duty to carefully review, among other things, the potential implication of mergers on consumers and businesses. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must also determine if the Comcast-Time Warner merger benefits the public as it decides whether to approve the transfer of broadcast licenses in the deal. You may be interested to know that on April 9th , 2014, the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which I am a member, held a hearing called "Examining the Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger and the Impact on Consumers." For your convenience, I have included a link to the webcast here or at . I appreciate you raising concerns about the impact of such a merger, and I will keep your thoughts in mind as I continue to follow the situation. Please know that I will do what I can to ensure a competitive, pro-consumer marketplace. Again, thank you for writing. If you have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841. Best regards. Sincerely yours, Dianne Feinstein United States Senator Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the nation are available at my website, feinstein.senate.gov. And please visit my YouTube, Facebook and Twitter for more ways to communicate with me.

I'm not saying I like the plan - I don't. Full net neutrality. Nothing in between. But I do see a slightly different set of logic behind the situation. Okay, say that they're not allowed to discriminate between small business and content delivery services and larger companies. This is the crux of most anti-government issues - not that we shouldn't regulate the larger companies and those doing wrong, but that we are unfairly hurting small and emerging businesses and thus stifling innovation. In other words, because regulation is thought or portrayed as being incapable of selecting and punishing those who do things in a way that gets them regulated and ends up hurting everyone. So, with that major argument in mind, we see this new plan. Basically, the regulation of bandwidth by a private company is okay as long as it doesn't hurt small scale operations. I don't agree with this, but it's the point of view being espoused . You see exactly what they're saying in this new proposal, so how can they possibly do this? How can they, without affecting small businesses and individuals, make people pay for content delivery? Well, it's simple - there's a threshold content delivery setting. Let's say your server and IP address serves no more than 1TB of data outgoing in a month. This is pretty small in the scale of a month (even though it's rather large to some people). You do not get throttled in any meaningful way. Now, let's say you're Google, and you serve up millions of TB an hour (in 2012 there were infographics released that said we were transmitting 640TB of data, globally, per minute ). You get noted, and throttled. You're using up a lot of bandwidth, so we're going to let the people using less have a little more room. Instead of asking everyone to pay for access to a faster lane, you're in a fast lane by default, and kicked out if you're transferring too much. Thus Google, AWS and any number of other large providers will be forced to pay fees otherwise be throttled into unusable speeds. But the small content provider would be allowed through at the same speed Google would be after they pay. But this is flawed thinking. The reasons for this being flawed is numerous. But I'll outline a few of they key reasons: There's no need. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. Network infrastructure is built in order to meet a certain amount of demand at peak hours. The subscription fees we already pay are set up to account for this. Charging someone for transferring 1000TB of data is inane because it is irrelevant to the bandwidth. If proper throttling is in place, network speeds will be available to everyone. This means that if Google is uploading TBs of data to customers across the globe, each connection is being monitored. It doesn't matter if that person is connecting to Google, Reddit, a AWS hosted site, a GoDaddy site or any number of other sites. The bandwidth being used is the bandwidth being used. Just because a single serving entity has millions of connections to millions of people does not mean that they are bogging down the network. This is just inane. If the network is being slowed down by these connections either A) there needs to be better throttling so that everyone on the network is served with consistent speeds and/or B) the ISPs need to stop rolling around in our subscription fees and, you know, actually upgrade their networks to meet the demands of the users. And yes, this could be done with relative ease, but not without cost. The cost incurred would put a dent in profits, and so bean counters won't let it happen - but it should. Total data transferred doesn't mean squat. We have millions of people on the web. If millions of people connect to a single site, they are each using their own allocated bandwidth to access it. So it doesn't matter if 1TB or 1000TB get transferred. Like I mentioned above, there is no reason to differentiate. The serving entity already has to account for the massive access and have servers to deal with that. And if each connection is properly throttled, the data transferred by each client's connection will not affect the others. So if each person receives 1MB of data, and you're serving a million customers, yes - you are getting 1 million MBs of data (1TB) transferred. But if each of those individuals were accessing a million different sites, serving up a million different MBs of data, you'd still have total network transmission of 1TB, 1TB would be used, and there would be no single entity responsible. So you would not have anyone to charge. If Google did not have millions of people coming there (or Netflix did not have millions of subscribers) there would not be significant transfer from them. And it would fall under the small business section. Large companies will distribute their content via other methods. What makes Google data different from any other? Nothing. That's what. While right now CDNs and data centers allow for closer-to-you access, they could be further separated out. If content was transferred from even more numerous locations, there would be little way to know what is going on. Since you can host many IPs under the same TLD, switching you from server to server in order to prevent any one IP from transmitting too much data isn't difficult. And if there is involved, there is little that the ISPs would be able to do to differentiate the various servers. They'd either have to throttle everyone and force payment (which would be against the rules in this new agreement, so they say) or they would play a game of cat and mouse with the providers. Even P2P distribution methods would solve a lot because encrypted data can safely be transmitted in multiple streams from multiple sources. If there is similar data and it is decrypted into expected information, there is little that can be done to say "well it went this route so it must be Company XYZ". Let's face reality - it is the cable companies not being able to give up their idea of cable subscriptions as a bundle that is the problem. There is no other reason for it. The cable companies refuse to update their networks, and complain that Netflix and Google are screwing them by serving so much data that it burdens their system. Which is an outright lie because if it is, they need to upgrade their network to meet the desire of their clients, or throttle their customers to appropriate speeds so that all of their customers can have their fair share. I fully support tiered speed charges. You should be able to pay for more access, but you shouldn't have to pay to serve content when there is already someone paying to download it. Now... if we all got internet for free, that would be a different story. But we don't. It's one of our largest bills. But back to the cable companies, they refuse to break this bundle ideology and are quickly going the way of Blockbuster. By prioritizing their own data and not having it count against bandwidth (Comcast, I'm looking at you), you force the user to restrict their usage unless they're buying stuff from Comcast, at which point that's okay. Instead of saying "if you want to stream netflix at 1080p using 6GB of data per hour, you'll pay for the 1.7 MBps connection (13.6 Mbps)" they're saying "stop using so much data". If I want to stream a lesser quality, and thus require less bandwidth, I should be able to make that choice as a customer. But if I want to pay for 30Mbps and be able to stream multiple 1080p streams from Netflix, that should be my prerogative. I'm paying for it. But they're not. Instead they are complaining because Netflix and Google are providing alternatives to their service. And they're using the network that the ISP built to do it. So naturally, they're going to be upset. But rather than compete in an equal arena and adjust to customer demands and desires, they're trying to regulate themselves to victory. If cable companies would stop trying to stop the inevitable, they'd be able to adjust their business model, and while they would see a dip in profits temporarily, they would exist much longer than they will with the current mindset. Because as more and more people shift over to Netflix, they'll lose more and more customers. If they don't stop the bleeding they'll lose that limb, and the only way to stop the bleeding is to either sever the limb (kill cable) or address the issue, which is people wanting on demand content. But it breaks their typical method of making money - through ads. Because they've been making money from us subscribing, and then money from the people who are buying ads on their network, they've been double dipping. This leads to immense profits. And it is due to die as people switch over to ad free solutions such as netflix.

Seems the reason is that Google recognizes that people are going to get Google Fiber to watch Netflix and other high bandwidth streaming services. So instead of alienating these services, they try to be as friendly as they can with them so they will invest more in making their services faster and better for Google Fiber users.

True, social democrats are like Warren or Sanders and kind of (in my mind) something I decide by looking at what they seem to want to do. The social part means they are for things which are beneficial to a larger portion of the populace (over simplified). I dunno we should be free and our prosperity shouldn't be hoarded. If people need help, help them. If all they want is to be on the bottom rung forever, fuck it, let them. I of course imagine the bottom rung being somewhat dignified, shelter food medicine. I am not saying all democrats are good but I am saying that I feel they are better for the average citizen (and non citizen). I completely agree, I don't even think third parties should run as third parties. They needa piggy back on an established party. Sanders running for president as a democrat is my dream. Between Hilary Clinton and Ted Cruz we all know who will be better. Between Obama and Romney I also know who is and would be better. The key thing is like everyone says; remove money from politics.

I completely agree. Regulations can be great, their main intent/purpose to protect the consumer/people from financial (sometimes physical and mental -ie pollution, harassment) harm. But we live in a world that people want power and money. Even if lobbying and bribery were cracked down and made harder, you still would have back room deals and collaboration going on. Corruption will always exist so why not make it harder for people to gaining a lot of power? Big corporations will always try to get what they want which is why it is important we remove their ability to gain government power. Yea free market might not be much better but at least there will be a chance for that corporation to fail. Even if consumers decide to change who they go with, the corporation will just get taxpayer money to bail them out. This happened with the car industry and the banking industry. They should have just failed. The market shifted towards different companies so instead of consumers putting their money to the companies they chose, the government indirectly made them support the company they didn't choose. The government just gave permission to big corporations to do what ever they want because they know the government will catch them. There needs to be consequences for bad and/or unethical decisions. I'm not saying remove all regulation either as some are very necessary. Free market system can work especially with how easy information can spread but it can still be slow. Consumers/people/citizens should be protected physically, mentally and financially by the gov't (with personal responsibility ie its your fault if you decide to make a bad buying choice). Corporations shouldn't have any protection from consumers or other businesses, they need to evolve and adapt to what the market is shifting towards. No more regulations that puts up market barriers or ridiculous laws that prevent new business to enter the market. Regulations and laws have shifted from being great for consumers/citizens to protecting corporations' interests and profits (and at the cost of the taxpayers). We keep trying to add more laws and regulations to keep them in check for the last several decades and it keeps getting worse and worse for the people. I find redditors are split on this issue but both sides want the same thing: protection for the people. How long do we have to keep doing the same thing over and over again to realize it isn't working?

It started by a few people who broke off from Engadget because it became too biased and sensationalized. It started wonderful, having a great interface to quickly gain oversight in all new articles of the day and a great ranking system for top articles, and they had a generally good rating system for product reviews. However, over the many months, one would progressively see the quality of any article reducing to a great extend, introducing heavy bias, lack of honest criticism, and generally just amateurish journalism. Not to mention the review system that also became as biased as possible, where one would find very controversial scores when one would compare it with other tech review sites. The general functionality of the site became worse in the sense that oversight was being replaced with slow, hard-to-navigate scrolling blocks and an increasingly messy make-shift html shitfuck for lack of better words. Functionality went backwards big time. The forums.. well, they were an Apple vs Android fanboy war from the beginning. Nothing changed about that actually, except that since about half their lifetime they occasionally feature forum discussions on their front page.

About 2 years ago when i was progressing through the night segment of my flight training, one night we were on our way back to base tracking over a town when suddenly the cockpit was illuminated by a powerful green laser. We were 1500ft above the ground and it lit up our dashboard like a motherfucker. My instructor who was gadget crazy whipped out his iPhone, got onto google earth and started narrowing down the street of where this laser was being shone from. The whole time i was doing super slow circles around the town while this fucktard on the ground continued to shine his laser at us. What a lot of people don't realise is that at 1500ft, you can see the stretch marks on a whore's vagina. Within 30 seconds my instructor had pinpointed the street and property of the perp and dialled up the cops to come have a looksie. Unfortunately they stopped shining it and must have hightailed it away once they realised that the reason we were circling was so that we could get a lock on their location. Luckily for them they were on the fringe of a park and not doing it in their backyard otherwise they would have had a nice chat with the boys in blue.

I tried to find if there have been any accidents caused by lasers with aircraft and found none. It seems like an extremely low probability of causing an accident. I suspect that a 2 year sentence is too high compared to say drink driving where you just get a fine and lose your license, and yet the risk of killing someone is probably a factor of 1,000,000 (just a guesstimate) higher than shining a laser at a plane. EDIT: I started looking at the actual statistics (US) to get a feel for the relative risk of DUI and laser attacks. LASERS > Since the FBI began keeping track in 2005, there have been more than 17,000 laser strikes—one-fifth (3,960) in 2013 alone. Lets say 2000 laser attacks per year roughly. >Low potential for eye injuries to pilots - Permanent retinal damage from lasers aimed at aircraft is not a major concern of laser and aviation experts. While a laser-caused eye injury is theoretically possible, experts consider this highly unlikely thanks to various factors including relatively low laser powers and the relative motions of the handheld laser, aircraft, pilot’s head and pilot’s eyes. Helicopter pilots flying “low and slow” would be at greatest risk from any possible eye injury. >Distraction/flashblinding of pilots - This is a significant concern for aviation. FAA incident reports have risen from 384 in 2006 to roughly 3,500 in 2011 and 2012. So what is flash blinding? > Flash blindness is visual impairment during and following exposure to a light flash of extremely high intensity.[1] It may last for a few seconds to a few minutes. For example, in everyday life, the subject of a flash photograph can be temporarily flash blinded. The bright light overwhelms the eye and only gradually fades. A bright spot or spots may be seen for many minutes. If the same death rate per attack applied as DUI (as calculated below) this would be 5 deaths per year from lasers giving a total of 45 deaths since 2005. 2000 0.0025 9 = 45 As far as I can tell there have been no fatalities and it seems to be mostly a distraction/flashblinding problem. ALCOHOL About 10,000 deaths per year 1.5 million arrests for DUI per year. 4 million DUI per year. 10,000/4,000,000 = 0.25% chance of fatality if you are DUI. Penalty: In all states, first-offense DUI or DWI is classified as a misdemeanor, and punishable by up to six months in jail. So how likely is jail time? In many people’s experience, in Massachusetts, and apparently in a lot of other states, expect a fine; expect a possible loss of license; expect some jail time. In most states a defendant can do other activities other than facing time in an actual cell. Some of these are: expect having to do some community work; expect having to attend “training” or school; expect having to write something or speak to a group of teenager on drinking and driving. But, actual jail time when no one was hurt, no damage was done, and no belligerence occurred, is very unlikely. And California: $390 fine plus over $1,000 in ordinary penalty assessments, plus additional DUI-only assessments for a total of approxi­mately $1,800. 48-hour jail sentence or a 90-day license restriction allowing you to drive to and from your work—and for work—if required, and to and from an alcohol treatment program. If the 90-day restriction is imposed, it begins after your DMV four-month suspension or 30-day suspension followed by a five-month restriction. Attendance and completion of a $500, three-month alcohol-treatment program (nine months if your blood alcohol level was 0.20% or higher. Completing the program is a requirement for ever being able to drive again following a “per-se” DMV license suspension and for minimizing that suspension to 30 days (plus five or eight months of restricted driving) instead of the six- or ten-month flat suspension that would otherwise be imposed. Loss of your driver’s license for at least 30 days, followed by either a five-month restriction to drive to, from, and for work and to and from an alcohol treatment program, or an additional two-month restriction that allows you to drive only to and from the program.

I think this guy deserves to do some time While the rest of your logic makes sense, I am curious why you think that is the most appropriate punishment. It will cost the taxpayers SO much money to lock him up. Even the process to convict him costs money. Paperwork. Everything. A fine is much more appropriate. Not to mention, people who are bored and shine lasers in the air probably don't read every news article and won't know that this was a 'warning'.

Please forgive me for any past rudeness, and allow me try to help without being condescending. Maybe this will help clear things up. Here is a transcript from a proceeding of one of Sergio's (14 year guy) appearance. It says what his charges are and why he got them. We know what Sergio (14 year guy) was charged with. Pointing the laser(5 years max), conspiracy(20), and attempt to interfere(20). He was facing a max of 45. The guy from OP (Scott) was not given a conspiracy charge and took a plea deal. He was charged with Pointing(5) and attempt to interfere(20). He took a plea deal that dropped the attempt charge. He faced a max of 5. That's using the information from and It seems clear that the prosecutor in Sergio's case knew they could slam dunk the case and get a conspiracy charge. If the guy wasn't such an unrelenting criminal scumbag it'd be easier to defend his character as a stupid guy who was bored and not trying to hurt anyone. Like OP's guy Scott. Scott probably got a plea deal because he didn't have a huge criminal past, history of run ins with police, or a gang affiliation. It would be relatively hard to prove that he wanted to try and down/interfere with a copter and not just highlight them out of stupid boredom. If you check the transcript I linked to the Sergio proceeding they go into a lot of detail about his criminal past. He really was a scumbag and it seems incredibly likely he got the laser or sought one out specifically to laser-blind a copter (specifically police). The guy had such a nasty history it's basically a slam dunk. Sergio (14years) got more years than Scott (~2). Scott had less charges and a plea deal that dropped his more serious charge. Sergio had more charges and no plea deal. Sergio got the book thrown at him because of his criminal past. His behavior lead the judge to believe he fully intended to fuck with a helicopter and wasn't just bored and dumb.

X-post from another article about these ass-clowns I made. Being on the receiving end of these lasers while flying, I can confirm it's irritating as fuck, not just while you're flying but also the headaches afterwards. Also, a lot of aviators wear night vision goggles now, so we can see exactly where the beam is coming from, and with the aid of a street directory can kindly direct the police where to go.

While 2 years may seem like a lot, this is EXTREMELY dangerous to pilots. It can easily lead to catastrophic consequences for the pilots and anyone they're unfortunate enough to crash into. Despite what I've heard some people say in the past, it isn't quite as simple as the pilots just maintaining the aircraft straight and level while they can't see. For anyone who's ever flown an aircraft when you can't see outside, you know that you can experience "the leans" very quickly. AKA- your body is screaming at you that your in a descending left hand turn when in fact your in a climbing right hand turn. If a pilot can't see outside, and can't see the gauges in the aircraft cause he just got blinded by a laser, and then proceeds to get the leans, shit is gonna go wrong extremely quickly. What makes it even worse is that this usually occurs at night (obviously) and helo pilots are often using night vision goggles to fly at night. If the laser hits the goggles, the pilot will be completely blinded immediately, and the goggles themselves can be ruined (depending on the strength of the laser) meaning that the pilot must now fly without the goggles once he recovers his vision. Which is another bad idea for helos. I'm a student military aviator training on helos and we have briefs several times a year on this matter and what to do about it. Fun fact: if you so this to a military helo, the pilots may very well circle until they find you, then hover over your house and tell air traffic controllers to call the cops to your house. It's been done before. It's extremely serious and can ruin pilots careers if their eye is damaged.

Do you think if you do the same crime multiple times you only get sentenced for it once? The dude lased two different aircraft multiple times. From the FBI article I gave you. "In imposing the sentence, Judge O’Neill considered not only the severity of the offenses but Rodriguez’s significant criminal history, numerous probation violations, and Bulldog gang affiliation. In addition, Dr. Leon McLin, a senior research optometrist for the Air Force Research Laboratory who testified at trial, indicated at sentencing that the laser pointer that Rodriguez used was an instrument capable of inflicting serious bodily injury and, indirectly, death due to a high potential for crash caused by visual interference." So yes, he had multiple offenses he was being charged for. Being charged with multiple offenses would mean if found guilty (he was) he would serve time for each. Also, this makes it clear his history as a criminal influenced the judge to give him a harsher sentence. Which is within federal sentencing guidelines. About being made an example of? AGAIN from the FBI article. "“We in federal law enforcement understand the dangers posed by laser strikes on aircraft,” *U.S. Attorney Wagner stated. “This is not a game. It is dangerous, and it is a felony. Those who aim lasers at aircraft should know that we will seek to convict them, and we will seek to send them to prison. The safety of aircraft and the people in them demands no less.** Sounds like that's setting an example. The whole "They need to know we will hunt them". I still can't believe you're getting indignant when you are so wrong about so many of the details. And you're still claiming he got more than the maximum sentence when you don't even know what he was charged with. You really need to read these things better man. You say you'd admit you're wrong but you can't even admit you don't know the details. It's a waste of my time to give you the facts when you refuse to believe them because they'd make you wrong. I really don't get why you would take the time to write all that without reading the articles thoroughly. It wasted my time spoon feeding you the information when you just ignore it. "He doesn't deserve 14 years but I don't actually know what he was charged with." Think about that for a good long while. You know what. Here's a final gift. Another article. Like the third one down on google. ://www.southerncaliforniadefenseblog.com/federal_crimes/ " Rodriguez was charged with aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft and attempting to interfere with the safe operation of an aircraft, both felony crimes. In March 2014, Rodriguez was found guilty of both charges and sentenced to 14 years in federal prison, among the longest sentences for such a crime.4 A federal conviction for aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft usually results in a maximum five-year sentence. However, the sentence was increased due to Rodriguez’s significant criminal record including numerous probation violations and gang affiliations. "

That is why they include the category of requiring a warrant (technically they mean a subpoena). There are other classes of people who could come to Facebook demanding data (besides the FBI): a federal court a state court a local police department an attorney the mother of a boy who is being upset at something someone posted me Facebook could decide to turn over anything to anyone who asks. But instead they will not turn over anything to anyone who asks. The only way they will hand over data is when they are forced by law. The legal tool that can do that is the subpoena. In many circumstances the law does allow you to tell the victim that their stuff has been the subject of a subpoena. But in certain situations you cannot. But you are allowed to say that you have received "some" subpoenas. In the case of a national security letter (an administrative subpoena) you cannot mention the subpoena for six months.

As a security professional, I can state quite unequivocally that the credit card hacks are 100% the fault of the corporations responsible for the data not doing proper due diligence in security. I regularly audit IT security of very large corporations and retailers. There's not enough money to patch old vulnerabilities much less new ones, and above that, many employees are susceptible to social engineering attacks, which puts company logins in the hands of malware operators (credit card thieves). That said, there is a threat that intentional backdoors will be exploited by criminals and foreign states, but I can also say that 99.995% of vulnerabilities discovered are the result of undertrained programmers making silly mistakes. Backdoors can look like innocent mistakes, but the vast majority are investigated and sourced to poor security practice.

Subscribers pay comcast for internet! Netflix pays for GB or maybe even TB of bandwidth. Now subscribers to comcast want netflix, so netflix makes people sign up for comcast's high speed plans, so comcast makes money. Comcast is charging netflix to bring it $$$.

Again, you don't understand how the Internet works. I know this, which is why my question is, how come reddit or my website shouldn't get a free peering agreement with comcast? Why shouldn't all websites, why are we just focused on netflix? >Comcast doesn't perform any additional service to the users, or for Netflix. They essentially say "it'd be a shame if something happened to this here connection", while holding wire cutters. It's extortion, and shouldn't be allowed. Netflix uses 50% of all internet traffic why would you peer with them. Peering agreements are suppose to be mutually beneficial. The only reason for peering agreements is taxes and billing. I work for a telecommunication company and we have peering agreements with sprint and at&t , we don't charge them, they don't charge us. If A is using B lanes , and B is using A lanes they could charge each other and pay the 35% corporate tax on profits or they could just provide their services to each other for free. netflix was saving millions of dollars while comcast was saving maybe $50k.

I find it hard to believe that Walmart single-handedly kept the recession from being worse. Now that I am on my computer, here is a [link]( to a lot of the common complaints about Walmart. Some important points: 1.) A disregard for historic sites 2.) "The results of the study found that the crime rate in US counties that have Wal-Mart stores declined at a much lower rate than the rest of the country since the 1990s." 3.) "Walmart has been accused of selling merchandise at such low costs that competitors have tried to sue it for predatory pricing (intentionally selling a product at low cost in order to drive competitors out of the market)." Walmart won some of these decisions, lost others (including one in the German Supreme Court), and others were settled out of court. 4.) There is a lot of concern about poor working conditions. "These issues involve low wages, poor working conditions, inadequate health care, as well as issues involving the company's strong anti-union policies." 70% of workers leave walmart within the first year, suggesting an unhappy workforce. 5.) "Walmart founder Sam Walton once said, "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment." 6.) "In 2008, Walmart agreed to pay at least $352 million to settle lawsuits claiming that it forced employees to work off the clock." "For example, a 2005 class action lawsuit in Missouri asserted approximately 160,000 to 200,000 people who were forced to work off-the-clock, were denied overtime pay, or were not allowed to take rest and lunch breaks." 7.) "A 2004 report by U.S. Representative George Miller alleged that in ten percent of Walmart's stores, nighttime employees were locked inside, holding them prisoner." 8.) "According to the Times, the audit, "pointed to extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations requiring time for breaks and meals," including 1,371 instances of minors working too late, during school hours, or for too many hours in a day." 9.) "Walmart blamed the contractors, but federal investigators point to wiretapped conversations showing that executives knew some workers did not have the correct documentation." 10.) "In November 2009, Joseph Casias, a cancer patient with a prescription for marijuana, was fired from Walmart in Battle Creek, Michigan, for using medical marijuana." 11.) "Critics blame workers' reluctance to join the labor union on Walmart anti-union tactics such as managerial surveillance and pre-emptive closures of stores or departments who choose to unionize." They will actually close stores to prevent the growth of a Walmart Union." 12.) "Critics say that this pressures vendors to shift manufacturing jobs to China and other nations, where the cost of labor is less expensive." " One group estimates that the growing U.S. trade deficit with China, heavily influenced by Walmart imports, is estimated to have moved over 1.5 million jobs that might otherwise be in America to China between 1989 and 2003." 13.) "In 2014, The Guardian newspaper reported that Walmart is a client of Charoen Pokphand Foods. Over a 6 month period The Guardian traced the supply chain from slave ships in Asian waters to leading producers and retailers." That's just a brief glace of some of the concerns. I'm sure I could find more if I gave it more time.

This is pretty much what I thought when I saw that eBay and Paypal are on the list. I mean, sure - people are upset that they take a(n increasingly larger) cut of your sale, and there are numerous bad PR stories on both the seller and buyer side, but what other avenue do people have to sell their crap besides pawn shops and yard sales? For the service they offer, they sure as hell aren't ruining any lives (unlike the banks and numerous other corporations).

While Facebook has a lot of questionable policies (in particular the one they mentioned about related posts) and there is certainly a discussion that needs to happen about that, this article is chock full of yellow journalism. All sorts of assumptions and uncited 'facts'. > They've introduced features that turn your phone's mic on -- based on their track-record changing privacy settings, audio surveillance is likely to start happening without your knowledge. On what authority does he get to assume that audio surveillance is likely to start happening? > They've used snitching campaigns to trick people's friends into revealing information about them that they chose to keep private. Using colorful wording to twist what they did into something worse. What they were doing is trying to cut back on abuse and trolls because they don't want anonymity on their site. Whether you agree with that or not, it's in their terms of service that you use your real name. And they weren't getting people to provide the personal info of others, they were getting people to indicate who was using a fraudulent name. > You're loading the gun, pointing it at your head, and handing it to every trigger-happy "enforcer" who's willing to buy your data. I mean do I even have to comment? This is colorful hyperbole, but it isn't journalism. > Even if you have nothing to hide, you have to worry about the opposite, what Facebook chooses to hide that you want to be shared. They filter you. More hyperbole. Yes they filter you, but he is making it sound like they do so with the result of making you look like a different person. > Private messages suck too. How many Facebook messages do you send with no reply? How many Facebook messages do you think you forget to get back to, or miss altogether? Is that how you want to treat your friends? How does this have anything to do with Facebook? The author is complaining that people are lazy about replying to text-based messages. > If you've ever used Facebook contact sync, or used Facebook on your mobile phone, Facebook took your complete contact list. Real names, phone numbers, addresses, emails, everything. They then use that to create "shadow profiles" of the people you know who aren't on Facebook. Non Facebook users often see this in action, in the form of emails to them from Facebook, containing their personal information. Facebook users can see this when they upload a picture of a non-Facebook user, and they're automatically tagged. My friend's not on Facebook, but since me and a few friends used Facebook on our phones, Facebook has his name and contact information, plus knows who his friends are because it sees him in their address book and calling records. A couple of pictures uploaded with his face, and presto - they can identify him in pictures -- adding location data from the pictures to his shadow profile. There is just absolutely no way this is true, people would figure it out quickly and there would be massive class action lawsuits if they were using the personal information of people who never agreed to the Facebook TOS. And the link he provides goes to a 404. I'm not going to go on but I could, I just can't read this kind of bullshit. If you want to contribute to the privacy discussion then contribute, but don't poison the well with hyperbole and assumptions and flat out lies.

I have been scrolling to find a

this cost is largely because of Telstra. Not exclusively Telstra, though the bandwidth cost to Tasmania on Telstra Wholsale halved when BassLink's dark fibre was being lit and halved again when it actually was lit a few months later. This saved a lot of costs that trickled back to us mainlanders. Same thing happened on the international front thanks to PPC-1 to Guam.

you know, i am a pretty good programmer. i use ruby, code compiling doesn't factor into my day. but you know what? i don't know exactly what to do immediately all the time. even when i do, i generally don't like to just barge into something without considering where i'm trying to get myself. so i go and do something else while i think on it a little. if it turns out that i use 25% of my time thinking about what i'm doing 75% of the time, honestly, that seems like a pretty good return to me. and if i spend that time browsing articles, and i do produce good and functional code at a reasonable rate, i don't understand how it could be considered that i am "goofing around online". i am thinking. leave me alone. to put it another way, no one says that a coffee machine spends 10% of its time spitting out coffee. they might, if they were forced to break it down, say that it spends (as an example) 40% of its time heating up the water, 50% brewing the coffee, and 10% spitting out coffee... but it is making coffee 100% of the time it is working. the fact that you can't see my thought processes as they are going on is not indicative of the fact that i am not doing anything. it just so happens that my job requires some amount of thought and, frankly, thought that a human brain is not so naturally suited to do. but we do it because we love the discovery and the results. but it takes time.