Re: Law of Unintended Consequences
Using GoT as an example is a bad choice - much of it was filmed in the EU.
909 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jun 2007
"Here we were, idly postulating about how evil our governments could become, when it was actually private companies that were working on perfecting the most invasive day-to-day violation of our privacy."
Yes, but Google wants to throw ads at you - your government wants to throw people in jail.
"Get a Police whistle and blow it very loudly into the mouth piece."
Back in college in the '70s I took care of one of them by blowing a firecracker next to the mouthpiece. They had been calling everyone in my dorm, and stopped after they got to me. (The phone numbers for the dorm rooms were in sequence - add 1 to get the next room. The next numbers were not called).
"Hang on - if the code dates back to the 1980s then the CPUs it's running on now are about a million times faster than the original ones. If it was fast enough 30 years ago, why is it too slow now?"
They try to analyze more complex problems. And it can take several weeks to run.
" I think there is still a J class around somewhere"
There are a number of J class yachts around, and they get together and race. They have actually built new ones, but were restricted to using designs from long ago - one was a copy of Ranger, originally launched in 1937. The new version is for sale - $7.9M.
http://www.northropandjohnson.com/yachts-for-sale/3891-ranger/
"But what really surprised me is the claim only 60% of graveyard orbit burns are successful."
Probably due to keeping them up there until they stop working. And if they stop working, how can you tell it to deorbit?
"Unfortunately - and as hard to believe as this is - there really isn't that much choice of Broadband providers, at least not where I live.
I live in Manhattan, and my only realistic choice is Spectrum - née Time Warner Cable."
I live just outside of Washington DC - 18 miles to the White House. I have a choice of two broadband providers - Verizon and Comcast.
I don't have to use Google, or Facebook, or Netflix. But I have little choice of broadband providers.
I live 18 miles from the White House. I'm luckier than many americans in that I have the choice of two broadband providers. Sadly, it's Verizon and Comcast.
If I don't like Google, I have the choice of quite a number of search engines, including DuckDuckGo. Using things like Adblock, Noscript, and Ghostery, I can reduce the amount of "data leakage" to 3rd parties. But short of getting a VPN, my ISP has access to all of my internet activities.
How long before someone using a VPN will be considered a possible terrorist?
So, if you have your phone modified by Microsoft, if the phone vendor comes out with Android security fixes or updates then are you out of luck? Will Microsoft come out with updates and fixes?
If Microsoft would come out with updates and security fixes for the phones they modify, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.
They will be making Star Wars movies a century and more from now. Eventually they will make a couple of real stinker (low boxoffice - that's the only quality that matters) movies, and then they will stop for 10-15 years before they do a reboot. Rinse, Repeat.
Eventually all of these big money franchises will be remade.
A PDP11 with the old Q Bus? We had those. One time we bought some hardware for one of them, and the vendor had their people install it. Those idiots didn't understand the idea that you cannot leave any gaps in the Q Bus slots (all slots from the first to last device had to be filled), so they couldn't get it to work. Even with me explaining it repeatedly.
"As I read somewhere, Ignorant, uneducated, poor white Southerners have been voting Republican for generations, and they are still Ignorant, uneducated and poor."
As I read somewhere, Ignorant, uneducated, poor minority urbanites have been voting Democrat for generations, and they are still Ignorant, uneducated and poor.
"I have heard the Americans are looking at the UK's new carriers and comparing them to their own in terms of purchase price, operating cost, and capability, and concluding that the UK is getting a lot more value for money."
Nope. The Navy went through this sort of ANAL-ysis back during the Carter administration, with the CVV program. While the carrier is cheaper, your other costs aren't reduced, but the capabilities are far reduced. Can all your planes take off with a full load? Can you carry as many planes? Can you fly the same planes? But you have just as many escort ships and subs in the carrier squadron. So you save 10-20%, and have 50% capability.
"Self-service checkouts are slower than human checkout. I really don't see how it could be any other way. "
Where I shop, there are usually 3 people in line at the cashier, versus an open self checkout lane. I can scan almost as fast as a cashier (and faster than a few), and I can bag faster than most. I'm done and heading for the car while I would have still been in line for the cashier.
How many people need to run "legacy" apps? Most people use a browser, office, skype..... and not much more.
CAD? Better off with a dedicated machine - a tablet/phone won't have the graphics and cpu horsepower and storage for anything other than minor stuff.
There will be a market. But I'll guess that it isn't that large of a percent of the total market. So this will be a nice feature but no game changer.
Streaming services (like Netflix) add and drop content all of the time to keep from having to raise prices. Nothing new here.
I've got Playstation Vue, and watch it on my TVs hooked up to Amazon Fire TV devices. It allows up to 5 TVs to be used, plus tablets and phones. Along with access to ESPN, Fox Sports, NBCSN, and Playstation Vue apps on phones, tablets, and Fire TV. And unlike cable TV, I can drop it easily.
"Why the Democratic Party had only one candidate (but an outsider with no chances like Sanders)?"
There were two other candidates - Martin O'Mally, and Jim Webb. They were totally ignored by the media for the Hill vs Bern show.
Shiva Ayyadurai wrote a program that he named "EMAIL". He invented that program. But email had existed long before that.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120222/11132917842/how-guy-who-didnt-invent-email-got-memorialized-press-smithsonian-as-inventor-email.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160511/10135934407/guy-who-didnt-invent-email-sues-gawker-pointing-out-he-didnt-invent-email.shtml
Cable TV companies like Comcast rip off consumers to the tune of $21B a year in cable box rental fees, and the the FCC tries to come up with an alternate plan. Cable TV companies object to the loss of an easy gravy train and propose a different way that they will control and be able to still rip off the consumer.