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Finally someone addressed it. A blank piece of paper is worth maybe 1 cent. But a piece of paper with the Coca Cola recipe on it? Obviously a lot more. An eBook isn't 99c because the information in it took someone a lot of effort to write, and is worth a lot more in terms of entertainment/learning. I buy business books on Kindle all the time. And for $10 (the usual price) I can learn new strategies that can increase my yearly profits by 50%. It's such an unfair trade off (for the author) that I feel like I'm cheating. We truly are living in the golden age of education. Never before in history has so much information been made available for so little (and often free).

That's exactly what they want you to do. They are doing everything to fight change. They dont want the new system to be the norm so they are systematically trying to kill it so customers will go back to buying physical books. The execs dont really know how to proceed and sucessfully implement an ebook system. SO they want to go back to doing things the usual way. Business as usual.

Okay, let me correct you first. The exploit was a javaSCRIPT exploit. Despite the name, the two are almost completely different. It also happened about 2 months ago (FBI is on record saying they started the exploit in late July) The exploit probably had nothing to do with this case, as it didn't affect the Tor Network, it affected hidden sites accessible via the Tor Network. A way that might help is to think of the Tor Network as a mini-Internet. What the FBI did was seize a hosting service and insert malicious code into the "onion sites" (hidden sites reachable from Tor) it hosted. A similar analogy would be if a hacker were to say, compromise reddit. The Internet as a whole, and other sites on it (such as youtube) would still be unaffected. The exploit in question revealed a user's IP address (Tor hides this, very well) so if DPR were caught by the exploit, they'd still have to 1) find his IP address amongst all the others they got. 2) Track it somehow to silk road (he apparently made some posts on StackOverflow that could've led them to him, so this is possible, but it's more likely someone brought his StackOverflow question to the FBI's attention or the person who blackmailed him ratted him out.)

This story just keeps getting better. When I first saw it I dejectedly thought, "No..." for a myriad of reasons Then I saw that they found him, not through Bitcoins or even the Tor Browser, but the regular internet... My fears that the Tor Browser, for which a tracing algorithm has NEVER been devised, had been cracked were alleviated. As were my fears that this would scare off future New Silk Road founders. I now have confidence there will be a new one, if for no other reason than the fact that 80% of Bitcoins had traveled through that site at one time or another and that their value is thus tied directly to that site's existence... However, my biggest fear was that when this new site formed I would never find out about. Then, came this tidbit: the Silk Road was founded in 2011. I found out about it in 2011. so it took me less than a year to hear of it's glorious arrival. On top of all that, now, the whole world is going to know about it, and whereas in the past the idea of buying drugs online was so ludicrous that it didn't even warrant a google search, IN THE FUTURE, people will think, "Buying drugs on the internet used to be real...maybe it still is!" and so now more people will be trafficking the next Silk Road's website. AND, there are other Tor sites out there that sell drugs, none nearly as prolific as Silk Road, but you had best believe that they are beefing up security...this man's mistake's will be learned from.

Well, he did give 80k to an undercover cop to kill a suspected thief. So he's screwed. Edit: The indictment is much more interesting than that. What happened was an undercover cop started talking about selling large quantities of drugs using silk road. He complained about not finding buyers that were willing to purchase large amounts. So DPR had a silk road employee shop the offer around to different merchants. The employee found a buyer, and DPR suggested that the drugs be shipped by mail. The cop didn't want that, so he complained about the risk of the drugs being intercepted. DPR then convinces the employee to accept the shipment of drugs. So federal agents show up and deliver to the employee 1 kilo of cocaine. The employee gets arrested. This employee had a decent amount of access, so DPR gets worried about him talking. DPR then sends a message to the undercover cop that the employee was arrested and might have stolen from users. DPR then offers to pay the undercover cop 80k to torture the guy into returning the stolen bitcoins and to kill him so that he can't talk. The cop agrees to this and fakes the photographs of the torture and murder. DPR is satisfied with the result and pays for the hit.

If you look at my post history, you'll discover that is something I don't usually do. There's this thing. It's called humor. It was meant to be a light hearted statement. I'll even link to the [wikipedia page]( for you, because you clearly don't know it when you see it.

Actually this whole interaction has been discussed at great length on bitcointalk.org. If you research the discussion in question, you will find that person A told DPR to talk to person B, and DPR asked person B to kill person A. It is highly unlikely that person B actually killed person A or that DPR didn't realize that they were probably both the same person. Person A obtained data that DPR didn't want released, and DPR was essentially just negotiating with a hit as a scare tactic.

coinbase lets you easily buy and sell straight from a bank account (meaning deposits are made in USD straight to your bank account) coinbase and bitpay offer solutions to allow anyone to put a "pay in bitcoin" button on their website and you will receive USD in your bank account within the day for less fees then paypal, visa, and other fiat processing centers localbitcoins lets people find buyers and sellers in a craigslist like fashion, meaning no need to deal with banks or anything other then another person bitstamp, btc-e, and other exchanges are more accessible to everyone in comparison to most FOREX trading exchanges for fiat currencies.

I'd think someone with 12 BTC would be pretty connected to the seedy underbelly of the internet. This is a pretty wide myth that the bitcoin community (and those that use it) hate. To make a crummy example; imagine if you bought gold and when you tried to tell your friends about it, many of them looked down upon you and criticized you for using stolen treasures from thieving pirates. > defend BTC at every possible juncture Your right; I need to not be so sensitive. But think of it from my perspective from the previous statement; you are posting publicly to a forum that is read by a large amount of people. In my situation I find your statement inaccurate and would not want this myth to be reinforced by people who are not familiar. Thus I shouldn't have made it personal, but I was more adding the devil's advocate of facts to this trivial occurrence because it's wearisome hearing this claim.

The thing that hardly anyone ever discusses, and which is a key failing of bitcoin, is the scalability issue. Everyone with a bitcoin wallet is required to store the full history of every bitcoin transaction ever conducted, all in his personal wallet file. This is fine in the early years, but the more people you have conducting transactions, the worse the issue gets. First your wallet is growing by a megabyte a day. Then ten megabytes. Then a hundred megabytes. Then a gigabyte. What happens when your wallet has to grow 10 gigabytes a day to store all the transactions that happened that day? What about 100 gigabytes a day? This is easily conceivable, if widespread adoption becomes a reality. You're going to run into storage limitations, and transmission limitations; the internet would grind to a screeching halt if everyone started using bitcoin, and people would have to buy additional mass storage on a regular basis. The only way to overcome these limitations is to have some third party manage your bitcoin transactions, and that defeats the entire point of the currency - you no longer have guaranteed, secure, anonymous control over your currency. You'll have outsourced that all to a third party that you have to trust.

Being unable to get something that exists stifles the creative mind. This applies to literally everything. If you gave everyone on Earth a piece of Uranium tomorrow and instructions on how to prevent harm with it to oneself and others, you can be damn sure SOMEONE is going to figure out something very cool/interesting/major breakthrough in a very short period of time. The argument, of course, is that doing something like this will cause more harm than good, but I believe that if someone wants to harm someone else, it's as simple as picking up a rock or a stick and bashing their head in. A gun, or piece of uranium, may make it easier to do than a rock or a knife from the average kitchen but the outcome is the same.

Former ATM service tech, most ATMs run on an x86 atx type setup. It's a normal PC. The cash dispenser is USB, the card reader is USB, the key pad is USB. It's in a secure cabinet. Having been in several banks while they were being robbed and countless more ATM break ins, thieves will always find a way. Someone had intimate insiders knowledge to pull this off and test their code. My guess is a current or former tech is behind it. My company used a unique paint color for the shell of the ATM. The spray cans of it used for minor cosmetic repairs had to be signed out and logged to the techs for this reason. It's a lot harder to hide the patch without the right paint. Plus you'ed have to know where the ports are such that cutting a hole should work.

WTF. I purchased the first 3 series on my AppleTV and have been awaiting the next installment. Cost me over AU$100. Looks like I am torrenting the next installment because besides have no interest in pay TV, my regional cable provider (Transact/iiNet) only has limited channels. I did have Foxtel on the Xbox at one stage but I had to put in a false address (one of our business branches) in order to subscribe due to the non-compete (anti-competitive) market agreements in place for Pay TV. This kind of behaviour should be prosecuted by the [ACCC.](

Cable companies that effectively subsidize HBO would stop doing so if you could buy HBO without going through them first. And buy subsidize, I mean that cable companies often sign up subscribers for HBO at discounts while still paying HBO their full fee because a) they hope you won't notice the bill going up when the discount ends and b) they hope you get hooked on HBO enough to keep paying for it. Thats why HBO staggers its shows throughout the year so disincentives you from disconnecting at any one point in time.

I read a while back that the reason HBO keeps its material to itself is that if they can maintain a firm grip on subscriptions, they can continue throwing lots of money at expensive, expansive projects like Game of Thrones.

The money HBO would gain from a standalone streaming model would be less than what they would lose from no longer being able to gouge the cable companies under the current model. The cable companies pay a significant amount to carry a service that is premium and exclusive because it keeps a certain demographic of high spending and traditionally loyal customers paying for cable. If premium content providers such as HBO lose the ability to throw the word 'exclusive' around during negotiations then cable companies would pay less money which would mean either you pay more or their overhead would decrease, resulting in lower quality shows.

My parents just got DSL in the last year or so, as it just became AVAILABLE where they live...I'd say I get around 3Mbps down, obviously shit up. Glad I'm not living there anymore...before DSL was WISP (think giant wifi antenna on top of house) and before that, Satellite (think $80/mo for 1.5Mbps and 1000+ ms ping). And of course dialsuck before that.

First of all, thank you for the considerate reply. However, I don't mind being downvoted as I fully expect pirates to criticize anyone that challenge their beliefs. When I get downvoted, no one usually attempts to attack the logic of my post...instead they anonymously click once to bury an unpopular opinion. It is a myth that piracy will help content in the long run. Right now, potential losses are masked by the effects of social networking... meaning that it is true that shows like Breaking Bad and GOT have gained viewership by tremendous online word of mouth. However, as bandwidth gets faster and more high quality pirate services pop up, it is only inevitable that the older, more affluent demographic that can't be bothered to pirate will be replaced by generations raised on torrents and streams. Will the younger generations suddenly decide to pay after years of paying nothing? Doubtful, as long as the quality remains high and the commercials are excised. Sure Breaking Bad had higher ratings than it normally would due to becoming a viral sensation... but imagine how much bigger its ratings would have been if people were unable to cut the cord and click a free link instead. You accurately point out that ratings were higher, and yes you can attribute some of this to people that might have caught up on the show through piracy and then switched to legitimate viewing methods... however, I would argue that had piracy been regulated that the numbers would have been even greater. It's like saying a billionaire should be glad that he/she made two billion instead of one, when in actuality they should have made four or even ten. Crystal clear high def streams with low buffering times already exist...as fiber optic becomes the industry standard...and you can stream sports, bluray, UHD files in perfect quality... no one will pay for cable anymore...and without any money from the cable companies... who's gonna pony up to make the actual shows? Netflix? maybe... but even they will be in trouble with their creative accounting methods and the fact that one can still find House of Cards or Orange Is the New Black on pirate sites as well.

The resolution isn't good enough yet. Even the consumer version, which will be 1080p or 1440p, will still pale in comparision to a fairly cheap monitor with regards to reading text. However, I absolutely believe that once we reach 4k displays it will pass the threshold of "good enough" and we'll start seeing a slow migration away from normal monitors. This won't happen for about 2-3 years.

I respectfully disagree. There is no way a competitive market can simply support their research in the current state of the drug industry, especially if you're making drugs against specific disease. I don't think you realize how expensive drugs cost to develop. Consider that drugs cost insane amounts of $$ to develop (mainly b/c FDA regulations are way too high; ex. we just priced a Phase III trial to cost around 500M). Astra-Zeneca spent 11.8B per newly approved drug in 2012, GSK 8.1B, Sanofi 7.9B, Pfizer 7.7B. These numbers include failures, but as you can see, none of this is cheap at all. The first company to develop a drug spends over 1B in spending. Unlike companies like Apple which have tons of consumers that want to purchase the iPhone, a drug against a specific type of cancer is only used when the patient has that specific type of cancer; the estimated number of patients is significantly less than those consumers who purchase an iPhone. So if a drug costed 7B and there are only 500,000 patients a year, then you need to charge at least 14k to recoup those costs (realistically, pricing is determined in a different manner in the US but I just wanted to simplify the numbers here). So I've so far argued that drugs cost very much to develop and there aren't many patients. You may be questioning why do drug companies at this point since it is so financially risky (and that is true. Many biotech startups in the 80s went under or were sold b/c of the high RnD costs). Now let's assume that there's no patent protection. Any lab with organic chemistry background can synthesize most drugs (ie the generics industry). That generic company, Ranbaxy, that is selling generic Lipitor in India? They can easily mass spec and other analyses to find out what other compounds are and sell it, without having themselves spent the billion dollars. And if they could enter the market in a competitive manner, not only can they price it lower to try and steal market share, they also screw over Pfizer big time, because they were the ones who spent $7B. Without patent protection, Pfizer loses the incentive to develop and bring Lipitor to the market, because they would be be screwed.

Realistically, they are mad about the NSA but didn't really give a lot of thought to how hard it would be to build up the data services industry most of their economy relies on in one way or another, and do it from scratch overnight. To overnight require any business using a foreign storage or hosting solution to find a domestic one or build their own would have been comical. Even in the US, where most of the hosting is done it would be disruptive.

Lived in Jersey City for two years so I can commute to Manhattan. Comcast was the only service provider allowed in the area. "Why?" "Because that's how it works." "...ok." I spent more time on hold, talking with their shitty staff and waiting for their "tech-experts" than I did actually watching cable. If Comcast was a person, I would have punched their neck till they sounded like a cartoon duck then put them in a locked room with an awesome laptop and an extremely spotty internet connection.

I have Comcast and I would abandon them in a heartbeat of there were other options around. Sadly it's either stick with Comcast or get out. I've never personally had a bad experience with them, but I know several people who have. Here's a little story: So a friend of mine, let's call him Chris, move into an apartment about 6 months ago, and goes to transfer his service from the precious residence to the current one. Well, comcast tells him that they can't do that. Seems to the precious tenant moved out and never canceled their service or transferred it. Chris asks if either he himself or comcast can contact the precious user, they flat out tell him no, and that would be against their policy. They also tell him they cannot disconnect service without it either being unpaid or without explicit instruction from the account holder. So Chris says fuck it, hooks up his cable and Internet to the precious tenants service, and oddly enough it recognizes his comcast cable box and modem as his, even though the service at that apartment is under a previous tenants account. Calls comcast again, they confirm that even though the service is being paid by some one else for that location, his gear recognizes who he is and is still delivering the previous basic packages that he (Chris) had subscribed too. So Chris keeps paying what he had been an is accessing his service even though the residence he is under isn't under his account at all, and the previous tenant is still blissfully paying for service though no one is using at all, and Comcast REFUSES to contact the previous tenant. Then the plot thickens. After about 4 months of this weird ass set up, suddenly Chris' service cuts out. Not unusual at all for Comcast service to cut out for a day or so for no reason, so Chris doesn't think anything of it. 3 days later he realizes there is some sort of issue, so he calls Comcast trying to figure it. He spends about 2 hours on the phone being treated like a hot potato. He gets passed from billing to technical support, back to billing, then to the manager of billing, each time spending about 30 minutes on hold. He then finally is told that his account has been closed, and NO ONE FUCKING KNOWS WHY. He inquires about their policy on needs EXPLICIT permission to close an account. The manager tells him no such policy exists, he'll have to call the 1800 number and open a new account and that there is nothing they can do, and he'll have to pay all the standard connection fees, Etc. To top things off, the manager give Chris the number to his "personal line" in case he needs help with anything in the future. Chris calls back the next day, and the number literally routes him to the standard automated system when you call the comcast 1800 number. They are the only game in town, they know that, and they demand that every worship the great and mighty Comcast.

I'm in Austin. We're going to get Fiber and that makes me incredibly excited, but also a little scared. I don't want 3 companies competing when 2 are TWC and AT&T. I want 10 where half of them are small operators who are fighting to get ahead. I want real strong competition. (If you recognize most of this message, it's because I've said it before.) The trouble is, it's too damn expensive and risky to dig up the roads for that last mile of fiber. I want real competition for Fiber service in Austin. I mean, it's awesome that Google is willing to climb over the barriers, but I'd rather knock down the damn barriers. Google Fiber provides a nice illustration. They picked cities that made it cheap to run fibers. They hang fiber on poles in KC, which is cheaper than digging up the streets. In Austin, the city council promised expedited permits. Well, that didn't really happen. Google Fiber is behind schedule here because those permits are taking forever to come through. Obviously, you don't want 10 different ISPs having to tear up the streets to lay their fibers. But you also want to avoid one set of hardware that everyone uses, because that means no one can compete by using better hardware. If the city council proposed municipal fiber, I'd be spending my days off in the council chambers begging them not to. Because I don't want to be stuck with a city-owned network which is bound to become second-class sooner or later. The city is never going to be competing for my business. But there's an alternative that lets 10 different ISPs all run fiber cheap, and that's to bury conduits . Empty plastic pipes, owned by the city, running to the curb in every neighborhood. Then you get to rent space to the ISPs. This is a win-win-win: The city recoups their initial investment in infrastructure and more through competitive bidding on leasing out those pipes. The ISP gets a shorter, cheaper rollout. They won't need the financial assets of Comcast or Google to roll out a new system. The customers get tons of different choices and innovation as ISPs rush to the latest cutting-edge technology to provide a better service. And no one dreams of caps, throttling or fast/slow lane crap that ISPs are pulling today. It's too late for us in Austin. We'll have 3 providers and that's "GREAT!", but maybe some other city can make this happen. You're going to need to get involved in your local community. Talk to your city council, mayor, anyone that will listen. Tell them to literally get the ground work in place for the fiber ISPs to come to town. There are laws in some states that forbid municipalities from providing free or discounted services to new ISPs, and forbid them from providing their own Internet services. (I don't know if Texas got them or not.) Some cities even have signed non-compete agreements with an ISP so they can't legally be an ISP. But they say nothing about renting out public plumbing open to all.

In my experience in a low-income area grocery store, I will say I was yelled at 95% of the time by females. Males who were angry would either just throw shit on the ground and leave or go threaten my manager and then pick a fight with security. The women always tried to make me personally feel like shit.

Someone actually did exactly this in line in front of me at Best Buy a week ago. My girlfriend and I got increasingly impatient at his stupid-yet-dogged persistence. We also got increasingly vocal about it. Finally, the guy hears us, and all pissed off/embarrassed turns to me and says "are you talking to me???" "Yeah" I said, "you're making this persons life miserable. They're not going to take it back. Give it up". The cashier was very nice to me (obviously, I said what she couldn't) and I got to return my item even though I was a couple days past the 15 days.

I torrent everything I want to watch, because internet service in my area comes and goes all day, one of the many reasons I hate my ISP. In fact, I'm writing this from my phone because it's down right now, and I have no idea how long it'll be till it's back. Might be a couple minutes, but sometimes it takes several hours or even a full day.

I'm pretty sure I am the only one who won't be switching anytime soon by my own volition. My cable company (I'm with Cox) actually delivers pretty decent service, is much better than the competition, and I have never had problems with throttling/buffering on services such as Netflix or YouTube (They even peer with Netflix, I get excellent performance there!) I totally understand why others are dissatisfied with the major cable companies right now though. If I was in a different market, I'm not totally sure I would say the same thing.

I don't think it's legal to do what you're already doing. Edit: [Well nevermind]( it looks like it is illegal but the CEO publicly stated he doesn't mind you sharing passwords to watch GoT. But if you go on his word then I guess you could also go off Time Warners CEO: >“Basically, we’ve been dealing with this issue for years with HBO, literally 20, 30 years, where people have always been running wires down on the back of apartment buildings and sharing with their neighbors,” he said. “Our experience is, it all leads to more penetration, more paying subs, more health for HBO, less reliance on having to do paid advertising… If you go around the world, I think you’re right, Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world. Well, you know, that’s better than an Emmy.”

You're talking about a difference concept here -- encapsulation. At a sheer raw level, 8 megabits = 1 megabyte. The user-accessible capacity depends on encapsulation and other variables, but the equivalence between two different standard units of measurement does not.

On one side you have people. On the other side you have people. People seem to have forgotten about this. In a more detailed rundown, one side, the #GamerGate side, is comprised mostly of people who see alarming trends of collusion, corruption, and nepotism among gaming press, and publishers, especially in the indie games scene. There's also a strong feeling that there's been infiltration by people wanting to push their own radical agendas in these fields. On the other side, you have people who are concerned about the level of inclusivity in games. Not only for players, but also for designers. They feel that women in particular have born the brunt of the negative aspects of the general gaming community. See how at odds these groups aren't? So, where's the problem? Well, it comes down to the inciting incident. Zoe Quinn is a game developer. She's known for a couple of things, in particular, Depression Quest, which gained widespread praise among the gaming press, and several awards, but more mixed reviews among the populace. She's also known for being one of two females involved in a game jam that crashed and burned in a spectacular fashion recently, when the publicist running the jam allegedly tried to stir up drama based on her, and the other female's gender. About two months ago, Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, drops the inciting incident, the so called "Five Guys" scandal, that would become #GamerGate. He revealed that, during the course of their relationship, she had conducted illicit affairs with five separate men, and would use emotionally manipulative and abusive techniques to maintain her relationship with Eron. Eron also dropped names. The five men she was having affairs with were all relatively middling-to-high profile names in either the games industry, or press. Many of them had subsequently given Depression Quest high praise on or around the times when the alleged affairs were occurring. In the immediate fallout, Zoe Quinn claimed to have been doxxed, though some question the validity of this claim, citing inconsistencies such as her address being listed as Massachusetts, but her cell phone having a Hawaii area code. Zoe also claimed to have received rape and death threats. With the Anita Sarkeesian debacle still fresh in memory, many jumped to Zoe's defense, shouting down those who discussed the issue, namely the perception that she had used sex to garner positive coverage for her game, with accusations of misogyny. Zoe very publicly also named Wizardchan as a primary source of harassment, something that was widely reported on in the gaming press, despite a lack of evidence. This caused great distress to many of Wizardchan's userbase, which is primarily young men suffering from depression and severe social anxiety. Additionally, during the fallout, a member of the group, The Fine Young Capitalists, a group working towards greater inclusivity in video games, claimed that Zoe had doxxed them, attacked, and destroyed their own female centric gaming production, and subsequently used the press coverage to collect donations her own game jam. They also that the gaming press had refused to cover their side of story at all. Then, sites, including reddit's major gaming subreddits, and most major gaming press sites, and eventually even 4chan, started banning users and deleting discussions related to Zoe Quinn. Furthermore, multiple articles addressing Zoe Quinn's alleged improprieties were removed hours after posting. Then, within 48 hours, over a dozen websites released opinion articles claiming "Gamers" were dead. All hit on very similar talking points, claiming that "Gamers" were backwards, misogynistic, and hateful, and the sooner that gaming left them behind, the better. Software engineer Benjamin Quintero wrote a counterpoint article on Gamesutra, questioning the wisdom of writing articles alienating one's core readership. Within hours his status was downgraded by Gamesutra, allegedly for not recently being involved in the creation of a notable game. His expert status was reinstated a few days later. Roughly two weeks later, right leaning journalist Milo Yiannopoulos released an article detailing the "GameJournosPros" mailing list. A google group consisting of high-profile gaming journalists across the industry, who had allegedly been colluding on how to handle the "Zoe Quinn Scandal." Which was basically playing up the misogynistic aspects, while downplaying, and censoring debate and discussions about journalistic ethics in the game industry. And that's not touching the Silverstring media mess. The doxxing and harassment of people critical of Zoe Quinn, and Games Journalism as a hole (notably, JonTron and Boogie2988), the further mess with The Fine Young Capitalists, and so on. So, for a wrap up/

I did my Master's on the impact of copyright on the church last year. Turns out, you're actually correct in your sarcastic statement. Increases in American copyright criminalization have led directly to restrictions and missed opportunities in many creative endeavors. It is especially true in areas like hip-hop where sampling was once a staple and is no longer prevalent because of copyright issues. The generation of new expression, whether that's pharmaceutical or mechanical or technological/mathematical invention, entertainment in music and prose, or religious translation, is being severely restricted by "measures to protect IP." Torrents are literally the lynchpin of creative capital flow because they are the means by which creative people access the cultural content they add to. There's this social myth we have that a new song (or book or technology) is "new," cut from whole cloth. Most of "new" work is, in fact, old work. A new song depends on cultural assumptions about music, harmonies and techniques derived from the work of other artists, and subject matter mined from the culture around them. The "new"-ness is almost entirely in the arrangement of old content, which creates new meaning. There is "new" substance, and it is immensely valuable culturally, but it is an insignificant portion of any single work and dependent on old work to make sense to its audience.

Whilst I can see this working well with the US government, you know it wouldn't fly with the EU which unfortunately for me as a guy from the UK, would probably mean a Antivirus Choice update that ultimately gets ignored but still costs Microsoft billions.

Ever hear of the Bill of Rights? Unreasonable search and seizure? Due process? Innocent until proven guilty? These are assets being seized on SUSPICION of being drug related, frequently without a warrant, and it's up to the person who's assets are seized to prove they weren't drug related, rather than being up to the police/DA to prove they were. Punishment before conviction. The police are not punished for any wrongful seizures, and they get to keep and use anything they're not forced to give back, so there's little incentive on their part to do anything but take whatever they want.

There is another factor not being considered. A suspect who visibly sees the officer wearing a camera is somewhat reassured that he isn't about to get fucked over. It serves as a de-escalation tool. Regardless of the actual good cop vs. bad cop numbers the perception is that there are bad cops who are not held accountable. A suspect that views any police officer as an armed potential criminal with a license to kill and a habit of civil rights violations is going to be reassured to a degree by the presence of a body camera. A suspect less afraid of getting railroaded is more likely to be compliant.

Do you have any idea how many jobs have constant video camera coverage? Do you think your local 7-11 Cashier shouldn't be recorded 40 hours a week because it's too much pressure for him to comply with company policy? Or is the argument that there is more need to record Jimmy selling cigarettes at Shell than for us to record public servants who carry a deadly weapon in their daily duties? There should be a policy on what is left to the officer's discretion in regards to enforcement. Having oversight of that is a good thing though. What if a cop shows an obvious bias along racial/religious/sexual lines with regards to enforcement? In many cases the officer may not even realize he's biased, in that case it can turn into a training tool.

let me phrase it in a more contrasting way. How much education does a police officer get in the texts of laws in order to make an immediate assessment of the proper response to every situations. Now think about how long a JUDGE, with years of legal practice, had to study the text of law and how long he takes, at rested head, to take a decision. Sure, being arrested doesn't mean being convicted on paper... but in reality the act of being wrongly arrested is a form of defamation for which it is almost impossible to sue the legal entity committing said defamation. On the other hand, any and all attacks on the integrity of police department is regularly portrayed as anarchism instead of the whistleblowing it is.

I agree wholeheartedly that it would sorta shine a spotlight on other issues, but that would force people to work to make changes. Extreme Example. Let's say the precinct has a policy regarding rules of engagement/escalation of force that puts officers in unnecessary danger. If it's easy to just ignore it, you aren't going to fight to get it changed. If the scenario is shifted so that your options are violate policy and risk reprimand, suspension, dismissal, etc. or follow policy knowing there are safer ways to handle the situation and put your life needlessly at risk. You are gonna fight tooth and nail, gathering friends, and enlisting support to try to get things changed. Excessive laws/overly restrictive policy that practically forces citizens or officers to be violators is an incredibly dangerous tool due to the ability to target anyone. The bringing issues to light applies to law as well. I strongly believe officers should be able to use their judgement in regards to ticket/charge/warn, but not in the case of a suspected felony offense. There are some nonviolent crimes classified as felonies that i strongly believe should be misdemeanors, but that doesn't change until some kids with bright futures and powerful parents get a felony possession conviction for a half smoked joint when in many cases he would have gotten a stern warning. Lastly, Department policy shouldn't be overly restrictive. Obvious things can be spelled out, I.E. Don't continue beating suspect once suspect is in custody and no longer a threat. There can still be a policy regarding Rules of Engagement, Escalation of Force, Don't have sex in the police car, don't leave your weapon unsecure, no negligent discharges, etc... without taking away an officer's ability to make judgement calls. If written correctly the officer should feel comfortable making choices in the heat of the moment without worrying, but should also know if he loses his shit and goes Dirty Harry there is no way to cover it up, there will be consequences.

There's nothing wrong with Java itself. The language is pretty good, although it has acquired a bit of cruft over the years. It's certainly better designed than something like JavaScript. Java 8 even gets you lambdas and LINQ/FP-style stream processing. The SE API is also decent and very stable. The JVM is pretty fast, once warmed up. There's a huge community, providing rock solid versions of pretty much any tool or library you could want. There are dozens of high-quality IDEs. The documentation is, generally, very good (though tutorials are arguably lacking). The reason people hate Java is because of the awful web applet functionality. It's crap, slow and full of security holes. The fact that Swing (the interface toolkit) is so ugly by default doesn't help either. Sun/Oracle should have killed it a long time ago, but I suspect they have quite a few crufty corporate customers forcing them to support it so that they don't have to move their internal apps to a less crap-tastic platform.

There are a couple of methods by which a patent can be... 'broken'. One is FRAND , which is mentioned by /u/ManWhoKilledHitler. That's where IP owners enter an agreement to share patents for technology standards. In fact, some of the lawsuits between Apple and Android phone manufacturers was over the FRAND-ness of some patents. Another is compulsory licensing under The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). It was part of the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) during the World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade round in Uruguay, 1994. It specifies a bunch of aspects of intellectual property rights, including remediation, disputes, etc. Part of that is a provision that allows for issuing of a compulsory license if the patent holder and the licensee cannot come to an agreement and the license is necessary to deal with national crises. The Doha Declaration in 2001 re-affirmed that this allows for countries to issue compulsory licenses to deal with public health crises, like the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This is how Brasil, Thailand, India and other countries have managed to ensure access to free or low cost HIV drugs. If you remember the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US, Congress was pursuing compulsory licensing of Cipro (ciprofloxacin), the antibiotic of choice for prophylaxis and treatment (arguably, many disagree). The threat of compulsory licensing 'encouraged' Bayer to provide the drug to the US government at half price. It's amazing how motivating compulsory licensing is to a government when its legislators are on the receiving end of anthrax spores, even when that government fights long and hard to prevent and restrict compulsory licensing of US-owned pharmaceuticals. Further, the US maintains a policy of allowing its agencies and contractors to infringe on patents for the purposes of national defense, simply paying for the legal costs of it out of the budget. So, patents aren't inviolate.

I beg to differ, Ubuntu has full official ARM support, as of 9.04: Any application that is open source for linux can simply be recompiled and packaged for ARM distribution. This fact together with ubuntu already having repo's full of packages ready to rock with a simple sudo apt-get install. Proprietary software (Skype, Opera so forth) would need the company to compile and release for ARM, Adobe has for example released Flash Player 9 for ARM/Linux.

Manufacturing" is not one single, consolidated process or department. A year ago, they were making sure everything was right on the prototype boards and tweaking the case design; now, the plastics company is using an electrical discharge machiner to cut a gigantic, expensive chunk of steel to precise specifications. Then they have to make sure that the boards and parts fit with no hitches; then they manufacture the rest of the boards and the cases, assemble them, test them, and ship.

Chances are it's just a standard delete though, wouldn't be surprised if it's not overwritten. (For those who don't know, (Wait, who am I kidding, this is reddit), when a file on a computer is deleted, it is simple marked to be overwritten, and the operating system 'forgets' that it's there. However, until new data is added to the drive, and that data happens to get overwritten, it's still VERY easily recoverable. Then again, being security software, it might actually do this itself, but judging by other parts of the article mentioning it's bad design, chances are it doesn't.)

I know that computer games are different than movies, but can any critic of pirating respond to this: By critic, I mean someone that thinks pirates are the biggest force behind killing the movie/game/music/etc business. I can completely understand arguments that pirating is morally wrong. My question is regarding what the actual "damages" amount might be from pirating. Edit: This link makes the point slightly better (with slightly better data):

Gotta love the confusing world of computer parts. Every few years when I need a new video card, I have to spend countless hours researching why a three digit number is better than the old four digit number, etc. Their solution was to reset the counter and reuse numbers with the odd letter thrown in here and there.

My argument has always been that HDMI is a standard , odds are it is up-to-spec, and therefore just as good as the crazy expensive alternative. I was curious about this exact thing a while ago. I purchased a 10' cable off eBay for around $4, another 10' from London Drugs for about $10, and [this pricey bastard]( for $100. This was of course no lab-stringent test, but testing each cable on my Blu-ray player, computer monitor, and Xbox, I could not discern and difference between the $4 Chinese-made cable, and the $100 gold-plated wonder-cable. Needless to say I kept the first two and returned the latter.

you are joking, right? do you have any idea how incredible the technology is? and how much time you save if you plan to tag people? and how it is in no way an invasion of privacy? and how they're trying to help you automate what until recently was a very manual process, but instead of "gee thanks, that was cool" they're getting luddite hurr-durr shit like this. "you didn't ask me"? wtf, when did facebook have to ask for your permission to be awesome? and when did we become so averse to progress? go back to myspace if you're so against pure-win features like this. sorry for the anger, but it just pisses me off how anything facebook does nowadays is considered evil. this shouldn't have been renamed "thanks facebook, for this frikkin awesome feature that saves me an assload of time every time i upload photos".

SOPA is, perhaps, one of the most important issues in technology right now in the USA (and by the extension of this turd--the world). Think of it this way: its technology and politics, not a sub-forum of its own. The winds will pass when it is defeated (hopefully) or when it goes into effect and the shitstorm begins.

I tried this at home and it took only 5 hours to crack my router. I use an ASUS router. So this does not only work on linksys but anything that uses WPS pins. There were also another 3 available routers around my place I could have attacked.

Okay. Now I'm convinced. I wasn't sure when FunnyJunk's lawyer threatened IndieGogo, but now I'm sure. This is a publicity stunt. I mean, when they banned ThePirateBay.se from the UK, visitation skyrocketed like never before. This constant media attention would be earning FunnyJunk thousands per day in ad revenue. The worst part about their business model (for us who want justice, at least) is that unlike a retail model where a bad reputation means fewer products sold, their website gains notoriety and more visitation, increasing their sales (of ads). If FunnyJunk were selling their images, the market would allow consumers to put them out of business or at least hurt them, but as we (the visitors) are the product, they are simply selling us to their advertisers. They're making a tidy profit from this all. It may not have started as a publicity stunt... but sueing charities and charity fund raisers? It's the perfect storm for FunnyJunk.

the most professional, politically correct

Holy crap! From Carreon's filing: "38. Plaintiff is a contributor to the Bear Love campaign, and made his contribution with the intent to benefit the purposes of the NWF and the ACS. Plaintiff is acting on his own behalf and to protect the rights of all other contributors to the Bear Love campaign to have their reasonable expectation that 100% of the money they contributed would go to a charitable purpose. Plaintiff opposes the payment of any funds collected from the Bear Love campaign to Indiegogo, on the grounds that the contract between Indiegogo and Inman is an illegal contract that violates the Act, and its enforcement may be enjoined. Plaintiff opposes the payment of any funds to Inman because he is not a registered commercial fundraiser, because he failed to enter into a written contract with the Charitable Organization defendants, because the Bear Love campaign utilized false and deceptive statements and insinuations of bestiality on the part of Plaintiff and his client’s “mother,” all of which tends to bring the Charitable Defendants and the institution of public giving into disrepute."

UPDATE (why can't I modify my original post, gnarr?) I couldn't stop thinking about the box so I went back to recover it for further inspection. The fact that it was not secured in any way and also really light makes the suggestion of weather experiment (sounds so area 51) most plausible. When I came near I saw that it was still there, but had been moved a little and also the antenna was missing. I covered the camera dome as soon as I got near and brought it to my basement, where my cellphone has no connection. There were sounds of some loose parts inside the box and, apart from the handwritten number 18 on the top, no markings of any kind, let alone a return adress. The blue opener was sealed with a plastic strap which I had to cut. The inside was empty, just two small stones that produced the rambling. The camera dome was fixed with the screws which came loose quite easy. On the back of the dome was a battery case and wires which led into the dome. The dome could be twisted to open. The wires led to the tiny red light, the "camera" was just a plastic lense with nothing behind it at all. So the whole thing was a lightweight and cost efficient dummy of a surveillance camera and I might just have been trolled real good. Or are there other explanations? Also, I still wonder how the little stones got indside the sealed box.

Finland's school system of equality actually implicitly leads to more competition at the workplace level. If all children have an equal chance and level of education, the privileged will have a much smaller edge after graduation. This is never going to fly in America. The privileged love their position too much to actually change it and they are the one ultimately calling the tune on the jukebox of American politics. I mean, you can't be rich if no one is poor; exactly the same way you can't feel superior because your children are in a prestigious school when all schools are equal. A bit off topic musing: what I find strange though, is the large number of Americans that, while being dirt poor, support the privileged position of the wealthy elite with more fervor than the actual wealthy elite. I guess they believe that they or their children are next in line for the privilege train, but fail to see that you can't get on without the education and what not. Anyway,

I'd think that what is taught counts more than who teaches it. In a system where it is a matter of opinion whether classes like biology and prehistory are even real and not just theories on par with what the Bible says, I don't think whether the school is private or public really counts. Not to say that I don't approve with an all-public educational system, I just think it is the answer to the wrong question.

As a Finn who graduated upper secondary school (roughly equivalent to US high school, with ~45% of a given age class attending), I would like to offer some points of interest. First, an important factor of the Finnish oft-recited PISA success is the fact that our language is very nearly phonetic. That means that it is extremely easy for Finnish children to learn to read their native language, as there are few exceptions to the basic rule: one letter for each sound. See it points out that the 5,5% Swedish-speaking minority in Finland scored lower in the tests, despite the fact that on average they are on a higher socio-economic level. Reading the article, one gets the picture that all schools in Finland are equal and there is no competition. This is quite far from the truth: the TV channel MTV3 maintains a highly-controversial ranking of upper-secondary schools based on their students' average success in the matriculation examination ( What is often pointed out is that these scores reflect merely the student material of each school: those schools with a higher limit of entrance GPA do better in this comparison. Which brings me to the system for applying to upper secondary school. In the rural areas a student usually has only one choice for a school, as the others are simply too far away. On the other hand; most Finnish people live in big population centers such as the Helsinki area, Tampere and Turku. In the big cities there are several nearby schools to choose from, which creates a self-sustained loop. The admission is almost always based on the student's GPA when he finishes compulsory education. If a school is perceived to be "high quality", it gets a large number of applicants, which sets the GPA bar high. If a school is considered to be "low quality", noone with a high GPA applies. What creates these perceptions is the average success of previous students Last, about the private schools: the National Board of Education is the body regulating the compulsory and the optional upper secondary education. These regulations include the ban on tuition fees, resulting in a small amount of private schools. Some private schools are perceived to be "high quality" and some "low quality", just as is the case with public schools. Tuition fees in Finland exist mainly in community colleges with their own, custom curricula.

No, you're missing the point. The point is to trick certain people into thinking it is different (the people who would get upset about gay marriage) despite there being no differences. After civil unions are legal and the world doesn't end, those same people will eventually realize there is no difference and wonder why it was a big deal to begin with.

Actually research shows that it's much more healthier to eat more frequently. It's how athletes usually eat during on or off-season. So rather than 3 square meals in a day, you could split the same amount of food/calories over 4-6 smaller meals. This does amount to eating about every 3-4 hours. This is not only better for your digestive system, it will make you healthier as food is burned through at a steady rate, which increases metabolism and digestive functions. Essentially you avoid over filling yourself at those meal times, which isn't effective way to eat to get the most out of food ingested. Frequent smaller meals are better used as fuel, and helps burn food efficiently and reduces how much fat the body stores away.

My 2006 Honda Civic diesel costs just under £65 to completely fill. On that one tank of diesel it will do 500+ miles with careful driving, and though ok, this isn't an ultra-economical car. Vehicles such as the VW Polo bluemotion will push up past 75+ mpg, as well as being many orders of magnitude safer to use than a g-wiz. This is before you consider the environmental costs of producing and discarding those batteries every few years.

calories and hitting your goals for macro nutrients is what it's really about. so essentially if you want to lose weight, you go 200-300 calories below your maintenance. Gain weight go above. more meals a day just means you don't feel hungry, or have to eat a horse 3 times a day to hit your goals.

I too have had a good relationship with Dell. I have bought two XPS laptops in the past 4 years for my job. The first: lid latch broke (common Dell issue, fix it already). This was after 10 months and it was under warranty. I yanked the data off the HD and sent it back. A week later, my new XPS 17 arrived. It's silly that a poorly designed metal pin and some plastic costing $.13 effectively tanked a $1,300 machine. The second: Battery died after 11 months, again under warranty. The indian tech made me flash the bios (lol?) before reaching the consensus that sure enough, electricity. Within 2 days I had a replacement battery. They requested I send the old battery back, but didn't follow up on it. Not bad.

As someone who owns a Dell Venue, I can say that the phone as far as visuals is a great looking phone. Operation wise, it likes to lock up, regardless of the resetting of the OS.

if you own a business and have to fill hundreds of workstations, their pricing point and reliability are hard to beat.

The executive order is not a bad thing, it actually takes great steps in protecting the technological infrastructure, which we all take for granted, the Power system and wall street is all run on a network and as everyone knows networks are flawed. An attack on one would cripple the US , Imagine the entire nations power system goes down, in one day, millions of citizens in the dark, hospitals running on emergency power that will not last forever, Imagine the Stock Market crashing in a instant and never coming back online, It would make this recession look like a joke in an instant companies lose millions, the value of the Dollar drops to an all new low or becomes worthless. The Executive orders has a whole section outlining Privacy of the Citizens and making sure that information is kept secure and only allowed to those in dire need of it even going as far as to induct those that receive the info into the Government on a temporary bases making them more accountable for what happens to that info

I don't know, pretty much since I started voting I have noticed one thing...the government really doesn't give a shit about you, and what you don't want. The government might listen to the people, and put things away when the people are outraged about something....but eventually, the government will get it's way, whether you like it or not. They will push it, if the people don't like it, they will push it again and again. When the government is tired of fucking around, they finally go in for the kill by claiming bullshit like "job creation" or "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!!11111oneoneone", or ultimately, just rammed down your throat without giving a shit, a vote, or even a care in the world....

Never said it was, in fact I'm highlighting such a disparity. Because let's be honest: if you lack an understanding of cryptography and economics (as most people initially hearing about bitcoin do through no fault of their own but a lack of time investment), bitcoin absolutely does sound like a scam. As it should! The way to solve that is through patient explanation of what it is and why it has real value, not MY GOD YOUR DUMB JUST BUY BUY BUY LOOK AT ALL THE WEALTH I'VE GAINED ELEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR YOU'D BE MAD NOT TO . Honestly a lot of 'evangelists' mean well when discussing bitcoin to friends and family but their execution portrays them as deluded cultists.

Mods have absolutely NO ability to make sure anything hits the front page. None. Nada. Zip. Can they approve a post, yes. Can they guarantee upvotes, no. They have but one vote to give. If there were any real proof of collusion between ad agencies, etc and a mod, it would've been caught by Reddit admins by now. source: I mod several subreddits and know what mods can/can't do.

There's a big leap between being compliant with government meaning that they allowed the NSA access to data under PRISM. The government has to make a request for data in those secure portal situations, it's just easier for them to gain access to the data. There's a big leap in what actually happened here. I'm all for mistrust of the government, though. You all need to vote with your time and wallets. If you really care that much, don't use Facebook and Google. Ditch all of your windows machines and run Linux. Support some kind of free and open source browser or social media that isn't compliant with government, maybe Firefox. All of these articles are pointless if you don't make any changes to your life at all after hearing it. P.S. All of these news articles attempting to link Obama to all of it? You guys act like the President is the omniscient ruler who makes all of the decisions in this country. Target your local and state representatives for change. One election every four years for one dude isn't going to change anything.

no comments on this. i wonder why. i think a lot of redditors are scared because they know they would roll over much easier than you would. how many redditors don't pay their taxes or lie on thier taxes? they are afraid the nsa will collude with the irs and use tax evasion as a silencing measure. so they are just shutting up and walking away. or how many redditors smoke weed or hit the weekend meth glass. they don't want their text messages passed on to the dea as an anonymous tip, so they pull the wool over their eyes and stick their heads in the ground. it's not just reddit, it's all of america. this is how germany began. america doesn't give two shits, they're still on facebook checking their google mail. everyone is putting up a good fight for nothing, but until you see your neighbors protesting it's safe to assume status quo will continue.

uh you do realize you could just be connecting to a proxy server that the hotel and airports are using. don't get all conspiricy when it could be just an IT managers wetdream to use a specific product they like or get kickbacks for. in fact, i can point out at least 5 products that sit in front of SMTP and SMTPS that restrict what can be done in order to control the traffic that goes through their internet provider (eg NOSPAM). i also hate when i'm on a network that limits gre/udp packets to < 1000 bytes but that doesn't get me all in a tizzy that someone is monitoring me.. i just adjust and setup multiple endpoints that accept different udp packets. worst offender is boing, the inflight wifi service.

when you go to a large wifi hotspot.. and you try to send email.. there's a good chance you will be redirected or denied! can you believe that?? it's like big brother has all these points setup where they can monitor what you are doing to read your email. crazy huh? it happens at starbucks, at the airport, and in hotels.. so much so, that /u/handshape RAGES. oh yea and spammers are also known to use mail servers and mask their location by using public hotspots.. but they are MINOR ! NSA THINKS WE'RE TERRORISTS.

Because they would win the battle but not the war. Suppose they did do such. At every single turn there after the company would face extreme opposition and be challenged by each state in various ways legally that would dismantle the company overnight.

That's it. I've had enough. I'm not going to be afraid. I'm not going to censor myself. When sites like Groklaw voluntarily shut down, the bad guys win, and the bad guys are in Washington DC. And when we do it, the bad guys win again. They're this|close to having the thought control made popular in '50s sci-fi (and "1984" of course), and when they have that it's all over. Well, I'm not running, and I'm not hiding. I'm not killing this or my FB account. I'm not throwing my cellphone away and wearing a tinfoil hat. I'll keep using the standard protections like smart passwords and encryption like I've always done, but that's the point: I'll keep doing what I've always done . I will not allow my constitutional rights to be stripped away, needlessly. I'll say what I know to be constitutionally-protected speech and if they come get me all "extraordinary-rendering"-style then I become a political prisoner and continue my fight there. When something tangible goes away--like a loved one-- then people start getting mad. Then they figure out shit just got real. That's the domino effect we need to happen. Protest? Fucking please. Protests aren't to get the attention of the government, they're to get everyone else's attention and when mainstream media have been bought & paid for, that's not happening in any way conducive to the cause. Want to fight for your rights? Then take the fucking things back. Do what you've always done and don't let criminals take that ability from you. If you disappear then you become a martyr/hero for standing up for your rights; if you don't...well, guess you get to keep on living, don't you? Live your life in fear, or just live your life. Those are now the only two choices any of us has. Protests are comedy to the bad guys. "But-but-but-i-have-a-family"...fine. YOU explain to them what's happening, and why you're not doing anything about it. Or continue living in fear; after all, the government knows what's best for you anyway, amirite?

I'm from Lebanon and when we were making plans to come to the U.S we had to go into Syria to get our passports because things are that fucked up over there. Anyways while we were waiting a public park, I happen to start talking shit about my grandpa who's name is Assad for some odd reason. The president of Syria at the time was named Assad senior, now it's Junior. Anyways, my mom noticed a man, perk his ears up and put his newspaper down a bit. My mom saved me by correcting her little boys pronunciation and added a syllable, " you mean As3ad habibi", "uh what", "Jedo (grandpa) As3ad".

I didn't downvote you. I totally get what you're saying. Sensationalism is a problem for sure. I don't agree with you though. I understand that the NSA probably doesn't give a shit about me and there probably isn't a human monitoring every key I press. probably Even so, I have my whole life ahead of me. If /r/futurology has their way, that could be 300 years. And as far as I know all of my communications now will still be available to whatever the NSA becomes and to whomever they share with. As I evolve as a person I'll have different views and ideas. As the government evolves it too will have different views and ideas. At any point in time however, my entire communications record will be sitting in the NSA computers. And at any point, our ideas could clash. I have no way of knowing how seriously we will clash in the future. I hate terrorism as much as the next guy but right now it doesn't seem to be a serious problem for us in North America. How many people die of terrorism each year? Should we be monitoring for drunk-seeming texts coming from phones moving at high speeds? Surely this would save more lives. I personally feel like I'm already fucked if I want to become a politician because I'd be working against the current system and I've sent too many controversial text/photo messages through the current system.

First off: I dislike Paypal a lot based on shitty experiences with them (and I had shitty experiences with them without ever actually using them... go figure), and I work for a competitor, but, people are far too quick to attribute shit to malice which is really just a company trying to make sure they don't straight up lose a ton of cash. First: I'm going to wager that they're not going to "steal" any money. It would wind up back with the people who tried to donate. Because that's what they're afraid of: those people wanting their money back. I'm assuming that mailpile is legit. But we need to pretend for a moment that they weren't. What happens then? Some new guy gets $150,000 worth of payments because they put up a compelling website, basically. There isn't exactly an enormous barrier to entry, and there's little to really prove that they're capable of doing what they're claiming. So, they then cash out, skip town, and then a bunch of unhappy customers request refunds, or worse, file chargebacks. Chargeback for what, you say? Well, for one, it likely doesn't count as a donation, because they're not a non-profit, and they can't accept donations. At the very least, it's going to confuse the shit out of e.g. Visa. Regardless, it it represents a $150,000 risk for Paypal. And why wouldn't, e.g. Visa, accept the chargeback? The "purchase" isn't really a purchase - nothing was given to the customer in exchange for the money. They were funding the development, at best, and that was fraudulent, so they have a claim for a chargeback on the grounds that they paid for development that didn't happen. Even more clearly, in some cases, the "support" levels include physical items, that again, wouldn't be received, so one could claim it as an Item Not Received chargeback, which is far more straightforward. The kicker, and why they do this: Paypal, as the merchant, is the one who actually winds up taking the loss if this happens. They will ABSOLUTELY then try to recover it from the company, but if it's really someone trying to beat the system, they will have already withdrawn the money, skipped town, and closed the account. So Paypal now loses $150k because they let someone cash out without scrutiny. So, yes, Paypal is going to be wary when someone they've never heard of before suddenly gets $1xx,000 in "sales" for something they haven't even developed yet. They have to be, or you'd almost certainly start seeing IndieGoGo campaigns that are straight up ripoffs. If you make it sufficiently easy for someone to get free money from your company, someone will try, and then they will abuse the shit out of it. As far as "small time donations" - which do you think gets more scrutiny: a $1 music purchase, or a $1000 TV purchase? Same thing here. A $20 donation isn't a major risk, and they're not going to expend resources looking at it, because there's a negative ROI vs. time.

Sigh, maybe 5 years ago I'd be all like 'OMG paypal are evil how COULD they!!!!!!!!!' At this point their evil and straight up illegal (or would be if they were regulated like every other banking company) business practices are well known and this kind of shit happens several times a day. If you insist on using paypal or being involved with them in any way you deserve everything that happens to you.

I've had that happen and just don't really worry about it anymore...it was a 10 minute call to visa to tell them I didn't make those purchases...and they were gone and I had a new card in 3 days. But to be fair I have a ridiculous set of insurance policies in case of emergency...I have an ID theft rider on my home owners policy that has me covered as well. So if the world ends it'll be a pain in the ass, but I'm still covered via a few layers of protection. The other side of that coin is I'm careful who I shop with as well. If it's a somewhat seedy site I do some research to make sure they're legit. PayPal imho is one of the shadiest sites out there. They can freeze funds at will with no means of remediation. I'd rather deal with an army of insurance agents and credit card reps than PayPal's inqusition of customer support.

PayPal needs to fucking burn in hellfire. Seriously. Fuck them in the ass with a rusty spiked dildo and no lube. Someone else needs to start a PayPal like company that isn't 100% evil. I refuse to do business with them ever again after being repeatedly screwed by them. I would love to have a service like theirs, however. So company #2 would instantly get my business.

Or don't release it on a product that can't handle it. They've done it three times now with the iphone 3G, 3GS, and now the 4. He's paid for a product that shouldn't just stop working because apple went "ahaha, you downloaded software on a phone three years old? You sucker, its time to upgrade" especially when they were selling those phones up until the other week...

0/10 dentists would recommend. Dentist here. The "brush for 2 minutes" line we all feed you at every checkup is about more than making sure you brush all your teeth. While 2 minutes ensures you're thoroughly cleaning all of the surfaces of all of your teeth, it also gives the fluoride in your toothpaste time to 'soak in'. One of the main jobs of toothpaste is to help remineralize your teeth with fluoride. Acid in our diet, and from the byproducts of the bacteria on our teeth wash away minerals in our teeth that fluoride, and our saliva helps replace. Interestingly, the loss of saliva flow in meth users, combined with their attraction to sweet/sugary drinks, is what causes the breakdown of their teeth. 6 seconds of fluoride exposure 2-3 times a day wouldn't do much at all, so you'd likely see your teeth developing white marks along the gum line at first. A few years later you'll start to see the white areas break down with them eventually looking like a meth addict. The printed mouth guard brush thing might keep the teeth clear of plaque, but it doesn't appear to have the bristles required to keep the gum line as clean as a traditional toothbrush would. Gently cleaning along the gum line is vital for good oral health. People who clean the teeth really well, but skip the gums are more likely to develop gum disease and in severe cases (or average smokers) will see their teeth becoming loose and falling out prematurely. 3D printing and dentistry have a bright future, this isn't it. Take the time to brush your teeth and gums.

Fuck that shit, get one of these Ultrasonic Toothbrush and it's real ultrasonic, not a spinning brush. /

Hijacking the top comment to repeat a post I made on a similar thread a while back. It got nothing but downvotes for going against the hivemind, but maybe it's worth restating: I'm pretty late to the party, but I strongly disagree with the reasoning behind a la carte pricing, and I believe it'll lead to worse quality in television in the years to come. There's no perfect solution to the problem that is cable television right now, but this is throwing water on a grease fire. I work for a major network (that's as specific as I'll be), so I have no reason to oppose this from my own career standpoint. We don't need to be bundled to stay in business. But I believe bundling is still the best route and to prove so, I have a question for everyone here: If this bill had introduced ten years ago, how many of you would've chosen AMC? Don't raise your hand, you fucking liar, no you wouldn't have. Ten years ago AMC was known solely for replaying old movies filled with commercials. No Mad Men, No Walking Dead, No Breaking Bad. It was a mediocre second-tier channel at best. "Ok sure, but I totally would've bought that channel when those shows came on!" That's the problem, those shows would never have made it on television in the first place. Had this bill been introduced ten years ago, there's a fair shot AMC would've gone out of business like many other channels. Television programming is built on a deficit-financing model, which means that the studio basically loses a lot of money to produce a show and will only make it back when that show goes into syndication (around Season 5). You can get a studio to invest in it, but it has to air on a network for those five seasons to get to syndication. And that network has to get advertisers to want to buy commercials on that show, which means it has to have a built-in audience and the money to build a marketing campaign. Oh, and that network has to EXIST. Let's not forget that part. AMC has certainly shifted the paradigm in basic cable programming. One could argue that FX did it first, but I doubt many of you would've chosen them before The Shield/Sons of Anarchy/The League/etc. aired. A&E is now getting into the game with "Bates Motel", but I don't see a bunch of subreddits dedicated to their "Biography" episodes. Who knows who the next major cable player will be? Bravo, Cinemax, Discovery, History, MTV, Starz, Sundance are all getting into the scripted world (some have been for a couple years now). Could one of them create the next "Breaking Bad"? Absolutely. But could they do it if no subscribes to their network first? Doubtful. Do I have a perfect solution for you? No. But then again, I don't have to stick a dick in my mouth just to know I don't want it in my ass, either.

What we need is true net neutrality and then everyone can just sell me their own content via a "channel" on my Roku box, Apple TV, PS5, or Xbox 1080. Whatever they want to charge. Will it cost more? Maybe, if you want a ton of stuff. But that's where this is headed. The alternative has been, for a while, to just buy a "season pass" of shows on Amazon or something similar for $30-ish per show. That is what I kinda envision with these "channels". You pay $50 per year for AMC, or you pay $100 a year for HBO, etc. Who knows what prices will really be and how this will really work. Net neutrality is a key part of this though. Bandwidth caps and "priority packets" could kill it.

If the cable companies were forced to stop bundling channels then the price of the channels you do want would be WAAAYYY higher. Networks give cable companies discounts on the highly watched channels as long as they bundle them together with other channels the networks own. They do this because networks can make more money from ads on many different channels than they can by only a few. If cable companies were forced to stop bundling the price of the channels that most people watch would skyrocket, much of the vast array of choice that is available now would cease to exist, and the total bill you would pay would probably be about the same as it was when they were bundled. If you want to lower the cost and increase choice, the focus should be on removing government contract monopolies on who owns the rights for cable service in a certain area (which was alluded to in this clip).

Technically content providers can already do that, but they lack the leverage to negotiate for it in most instances. Legislating against such contracts would itself be a huge First Amendment and 5th Amendment morass; we would essentially have to ban such clauses in contracts, which would reduce the property interest for content (it loses some of its alienability without due process) or find some way to mandate sharing of content, a type of compelled speech, which is a free speech violation. To analogize, imagine if you paid top dollar for an original Picasso, and then the government said you had to let the public view the painting once every day from 1-2pm. That would reduce the value of the painting to you and to the market in general. Or, the government might force you to make copies of the painting to share with everyone. Even if the government paid for the cost of copying, they would be forcing you to share art you don't necessarily want to share. The Picasso might be a hidden masterpiece or have a special connection to your life.

If I applied your reasoning to video games, that'd be like saying "pay for bundled games from multiple publishers, and eventually you'll get quality games from them!" What makes a tv channel money? Ads. What makes ad money? Viewership. What makes viewership? Good shows. I understand that guaranteed ads and some amount of viewership give the stability that can give rise to good shows, but why can't there be good shows without that as well? More and more people watch tv shows online with ads, and that shift cannot be denied. I understand your reasoning, but gambling money on bundled cable to produce good tv is becoming less and less appealing. Tv shows need advertising with enough viewership, and as cable viewership wanes and internet tv show viewership increases (through iTunes, Hulu, and the like), the more of a shift towards internet tv service there will be. Tv is already competing with internet not just with show viewership, but with entertainment value. I myself only pay for internet because things such as video games and reddit eat up any time I would have used watching random shows (and loads of commercials) that honestly are not worth it, and I won't do it on the chance that a good tv show might rise every few years. The tv industry needs a Steam-like innovation. Make the product easily accessible and at the right price, and people will try just about anything (as long as it isn't half-baked and a poor product, which honestly shouldn't have money thrown at it anyway). Give the people one or two ad-supported episodes at the start, then charge for the rest or episode-by-episode (at a price people will pay).

This was put in place in Canada - problem: not ALL channels are a-la-carte, and only SOME channels are available on the "pick-and-choose" menu. Most of the good stations are still in package format. What the cable companies do is offer one or two channels from every genre (movie, entertainment, sports, news, etc.) for $5 a month, which meets the requirements of the a-la-carte style, but the channel you really want (like HBO) is still sold in and expensive $30/month tv package. So yeah, you get to choose, but you don't get to choose from a lot of options.

my family of 3 separate households have all quit paying for cable tv over 5 years ago. Life goes on just fine for all of us. Personally I appreciate the few shows I like that I do get to see over Canadian Netflix, and the only emotion I get when I remember the time we had cable is horrible regret at all the hours I've wasted watching shitty programming/channel surfing when I was too lazy to turn off the TV and do something fun. People often seriously underestimate just how much of their life is basically wasted when there is access to several hundred channels of mostly useless crap in the house.

It is certainly a combination of politics/business. Let me clarify: Not directly a result of corporate evilness. As long as there is a tax code in place, it is in the interest of all businesses to be intimately familiar with the code so as to maximize tax savings where possible. As I had stated, it is also necessary for the various companies to forgo pursuing profits to the extreme to maintain various other importancies of running a business. Community awareness, ethics etc. It is 100% possible for a company to be highly successful without bleeding every dollar from the end user possible and being intensely cheap with its spending. :Edit:

It's working as a COIN aircraft, which is an enormous under utilization of its capabilities. Basically, many other things could do the same job better, and for cheaper. The nugs love the sound of the gun, but to those of us in the special operations community it sounds an awful lot like civilian casualties and collateral damage. I'd rather have something that can drop small warhead precision ordinance like the Combat Wombats or MQ-9's if it's going to be over my head. Or the slower moving, more precise AH-6, AH-1, AH-64, or my personal favorite, the MH-60L DAP.

I've attended a lecture by one Matthias Troyer from ETH who did fairly conclusive testing of this system. Here is an earlier presentation instead). The D-Wave computer solves ONE and only ONE type of problem topology: the [Ising Spin Glass Problem]( Dr. Troyer analyzed the computer statistically against 3 topolgies: Simulated Quantum Annealing Simulated Classical Annealing One other that I can't remember (don't have notes with me). The D-Wave system correlated HIGHLY against the simulated quantum annealing and quite low with the other two topologies. In my opinion, this is sufficient evidence, for now, to establish its credibility as a legitimately new system, and to validate their claims about HOW it operates. What does NOT match up, however, are their claims about performance speedup. Dr. Troyer, using a server Intel CPU, (8 Core Xeon, with HT enabled) with optimized code, ran a speed test against various topologies of the Ising spin glass problem itself. He found that, with respect to wall-clock time, that not only does the D-Wave chip underperform in the small set size regime, but that, in the large set size regime, (something that you would use this 1000-qubit processor for), it scales almost identically to the Intel hardware, which is obviously, a small fraction of the cost of the D-Wave One/Two/whatever. In fact, there are certain problem topologies that it straight up can not solve within a reasonable time limit, (it is a heuristic solver, so that was almost expected), that the Intel CPU can, (though it takes substantially longer to do so than you would think).

P2P downloading, yes. Because while you download packets of data from a torrent, you will automatically seed/upload some of your already downloaded packets to other leechers(downloaders) who haven't received those packets of data in their download process yet. Plus anybody who downloads a torrent, can see other individuals via Ip who are also downloading or uploading. That's primarily how individuals get caught, the list of ips that download are public. There's actually a site which takes your Ip and provides you a history list of all the torrents you downloaded. Far from perfect, but if that was done on a small budget - Don't be surprised if you find out that there are private data mining firms or government agencies (looking at you Nsa) that are currently making a database of user download profiles. If you've been torrenting, they know. In FTP or HTTP downloading, which is commonly found in the warez scene - you download files that were uploaded on file sharing sites like mega upload, rapidshare, hot file, media fire etc. Basically in that sense, you're only downloading the file - you're not uploading. It's just you and the server, this way if you download you aren't distributing nor is your Ip public to everyone else who downloads. The only one who sees your Ip is the server. If the heat gets turned up, the filehost might close down or change servers to an offshore host where common DMCA copyright claims can be ignored.

Copyright laws are on your side for personal use. Say what you want about the government they are pretty realistic on knowing why is a losing battle. This being one of them. It's not like the us where you can go to jail. In saying that I think the companies have every right to try to sue the people actually leaking these movies. But going after joe who is watching this on his laptop In his college dorm won't help the film companies make money I have a VPN either way

The US Government has done a lot of bad things in the past and in the present, no denying that. To be honest though, there are fewer regulations on speech in the US then almost any other country. We've also never seriously thought of creating a national firewall... a goal shared not just by authoritarian regimes like China and Iran, but also by countries like the UK, Iceland, and Australia.

Intel tried a stunt like this like... ten years ago? They were talking about incorporating a feature into their processors that would detect and disable/delete unlicensed material from a computer installed with their chips. The shit storm that followed quickly caused them to change their tune. Also people worried AMD will follow suit are dumb. AMD may follow the trend of power, but this is only because they want to compete. I guarantee AMD has processors 10x more powerful than the most powerful available sitting on their workbenches right now just waiting to release them when the demand for it or competition for it becomes available. Plus you have an active hacking community that would no doubt take it upon themselves to release some form of code or patch that would disable something like this in a processor to keep it from being a nuisance to those of us who like to live a little on the outside of digital law.

One of the problems about assuming based on some mythical "common sense": very often, it's wrong. Do you have anything to backup the claim that the fingerprints needed are going to be that hard to lift; or, are you just making stuff up? The hack in the original article, the hack in the article I linked are both demonstrated functional hacks. For targeted attacks, the same folks captured and [published]( Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble's fingerprint. He wasn't exactly cooperative in giving it to them. And, speaking of getting information from "anyone actually involved in forensics", I'll point to a rather dated article: [here]( about biometrics in general. The

Quantum allows a new field of [quantum algorithms]( Most worryingly for security, [Shor's algorithm]( makes it possible to factor integers in polynomial time, and thus feasible to recover an RSA private key given the public key. Another big one is [Grover's Algorithm]( which can speed up attacks against symmetric ciphers like AES. However, none of these work by just "making computers faster". They don't speed up general brute force. In particular, a quantum computer cannot calculate SHA-256 any faster than a non-quantum computer. So a brute force attack against a cryptographic hash will be no faster in the post-quantum world. This is a very, very good thing. One of the best options for post-quantum cryptography (signing, not encryption) that we currently know about is [Merkle signatures]( which can be built from one-time hash functions and a hash tree.

It is still best used as a user id, not a password. You can, of course, use it however you want, I'm not telling you what to do, but it is more logical to use it as a username. A fingerprint is a quick way to uniquely identify yourself. Imagine your phone or tablet has multiple user login (not sure if this is thing yet, but it is coming). Press your finger on the screen and it remembers who you are and gives you access to your customizations. Your wife does the same, and she gets a different experience. The same goes for the remote control in your house. Whoever picks it up gets a customized UI that shows them the things they use most. It is a great way to customize various devices that we use everyday for individual preferences... However, it is very difficult to replace your fingerprints so that is one major restriction to using it as a password. Also, you can't give your fingerprint to someone who you want to access your device "Hey, I trust you, can you unlock my phone while I'm driving here and call the restaurant to tell them we will be late?" The heartbleed bug that has recently caused everyone to change their passwords everywhere. How do you change your fingerprint after a leak like that?

wow that was a great indepth article. the heart of it is: "You'd think having created such a big and powerful website in his teens, Poole would be very wealthy. He's not. It's weird."