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That being said there does not always have to be a massive conspiracy in place for technology to slip through the cracks. Jacque Fresco on making 3D without galsses: "And what I did, is that I had many different applications… I got 3D imaging different ways and the simplest way was projecting the right and left eye image from behind a screen… Now then if you moved on to the side you lost your image and so Jack wanted technical to go the rest of the way. So he got them to come out and look at it. They said 'How do you do that? It’s very interesting.' I said, 'We’re not at liberty to discuss disclose that unless your back the next stage.' So they said, 'Well how do you maintain visual isolation?' I said 'I still can’t discuss that with you.' So they look at it, it was super clear; no lines. They said 'well that’s the best I’ve seen up to now but it fades some 30 degrees.' I said, 'Yes it does.' 'And at a distance it fades too, as yah move back.' So they said, 'Well, can you do anything about that?' 'Yes, that’s why you’re here… to take it to the next stage.' So they said 'Look Jacque, you get rid of the fad and you get rid of the distance problem, then call us.' So, that died like the Trend Home died."

There are a lot of people commenting how hard drive data transfer speed needs to increase for this to make any sense. While that is a legitimate thing to be concerned with, it is not relevant when talking about mechanical hard drives. Let me explain If you look at the picture in the article you will see the inside of a hard drive. In that picture you have an articulating arm (the silver thing) and 5 platters (the round things stacked on top of each other). The platters are what hold the data. Hard drives spin at a consistent speed (yes, technically some of them don't, for the sake of this though just assume they do). Common hard drives will spin at 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM. It is important to note that hard drives have spun at these speeds for decades. Now, this is where the transfer speeds come into play. If you increase the density of a platter and keep the spindle speed the same, you increase the transfer rate. This happens because every time the platter rotates once more data has passed underneath the end of that articulating arm. This increases the speed at which data is transfered.

I have absolutely no problem paying for Xbox LIVE Gold to play games online with my friends. The service is good enough and consistent enough to justify the price tag of those features. That being said, Microsoft is making a very bad decision requiring a gold level membership to use these services. I can go out and buy any other TV streaming device (gaming console or not) and do not have to pay an additional membership fee to use these services. For example, my dad who is not a gamer but is a subscriber to Hulu, Netflex and uses my Amazon prime would never pay for a gold membership to use these services. Instead he went out and bought a Roku box on eBay for roughly $60 and gets the same use out of it.

Why's it silly to say you hate them? I had a PS1 and PS2, and then an original Xbox, and now I have a 360. I prefer the 360 controller hands down over any of the other controllers (with the exception of the Gamecube controller), it just fits my hands better, I find it more comfortable. I also prefer the asymmetrical sticks, I don't like having both of my thumbs at the same angle, it feels strange.

Add an extra level of accounts. Here is my idea: Gold-Does not change at all. The price will stay the same and you will still have party chat, entertainment apps, and online gaming. Silver-These accounts are no longer the basic free ones of today. You will have the ability to access entertainment apps, and possibly party chat. The price would also be about $30, possibly $20 for a year. Bronze-These are the new free, basic accounts. They have the same abilities as the silver accounts did before. You can message friends and private chat.

Because you're being retarded and are using old information to justify it. They had the feature before, it didn't work and they acknowledged that by turning it off, then re-enabled the feature this year when they were sure it did work.

I don't know if it's just a common misconception or just a joke, but we actually have average teeth, whereas America is fixated with having perfect teeth. A couple of my molars don't fit together properly, I could fix with braces I imagine, but they're hardly noticeable imperfections and it doesn't cause any discomfort. I guarantee you now that a lot of other countries have much, much worse teeth.

I think Netflix and such should be accessible in Silver. I think XBL Gold is overpriced, and that there should be more benefits for subscribers. That said, I think pitting 360/XBL against PC/Steam or PS3/PS+ is simplifying a complicated difference between the platforms. For example, personally, I like the 360 UI (especially the quick launch menu), and the controller remains comfortable over long play periods. The Playstation UI annoys me, and the controller cramps my hand in about an hour and a half. There are many titles I enjoy that appeared on XBLA months earlier than Steam and PSN, like Castle Crashers and Castlevania:HOD. Many of the PC titles I really want require a system outside my budget, and have screwy rootkit DRM I could only see running on a dedicated game machine, for security purposes. That said, when Steam Linux lands this fall, PC gaming will be less under the thumb of Microsoft's half-assed OS. I will have Steam+Linux on a flash drive, or maybe on a SSD in a SATA enclosure, and my 360 will certainly get less use. On a side note, I can see a future for the the Wii U as a Netflix box, if the price is right. I know quite a few families that prefer Netflix on Wii because of the Wiimote, despite the lack of HD output.

Actually, I wouldn't even say it's because they're allegedly "pro-Apple", there are plenty of negative Apple articles. They're not hard to find. I wouldn't even quite agree with the rest of what he's saying, to be honest. Yes, a big problem are the flamebait articles but they come in every shape and form, not necessarily often about Apple - it ranges all around. The quality of the writing is certainly sub-par in many respects but I do feel the comments are noticeably better than Engadget. Engadget is a troll haven. At least Gizmodo seems to have less of that. I wrote a related comment here: But basically, they'll write articles with an extreme tone and headlines that mislead to grab you and the actual content bitches and moans about how something is terrible only to end with some kind of slight backpedaling that "maybe" it's ok but it's still bad! It's a typical opinion piece there. There's nothing wrong with an opinion piece about an opinion. What's wrong is if they start getting inflammatory about it and awfully immature in the style of writing, skewing facts or making bold claims that were never said and jumping to conclusions with premature judgment. I'd almost go as far as made-up. Take the Japanese nuclear reactor sensationalism, for example. Commenters were calling out the author (I believe it was tied-for-douchebag-#1 Sam Biddle) about misleading facts that he wrote and making it sound much worse than it really was. Basically scaremongering. They've written about how terrible Facebook is - "10 Reasons to Quit Facebook". Then suddenly it's "Get over yourself, join Facebook!" or something along those lines. They'll write about completely irrelevant articles that have nothing to do with gadgets even though their tagline is "Gizmodo: The Gadget Guide" and not all of them are of particular interest. They'll cross-post articles in their sidebar from their sister sites that are totally not related at all to tech. Before this, they even just put the content on Gizmodo, like Christine O'Donnell's alleged one-night stand or Usher's pegging fetish. And speaking of the sidebar, they wrote an article bitching about ads being in your Twitter stream or something, meanwhile there are ads in their own sidebar - a stream/listing of their articles. And speaking of ads - the gigantic graphic of a Blackberry ad is sometimes even larger than the article itself, or butts into the article column so much the text is just a skinny rail with a bigass ad next to it, or the ad itself lays over your content not allowing you to see it at all for x seconds - or all at once. And personally, I hate that the logo annoyingly covers up a bit of the top story graphic, especially when watching videos that post in that area. It's only a handful of pixels but it's always there so it's noticeable. Not to mention they ban and move comments and moderate like crazy if you even just disagree with them in a way that isn't kissing their asses. And with the star commenting system, your comment is never seen unless someone 'approves' you with a star and you can basically only get one if you suck up. And obviously lose it if you don't. The exceptions are few and far between. They'll openly make fun of other sites and their design or for their lack of security, meanwhile they have a completely reviled site design and they themselves got hacked with usernames/passwords exposed at a massive scale. They started calling Mountain Lion's security feature total crap when it was a developer preview where anything could change. Hell, the last Windows 8 consumer preview beta just got a UI facelift late in the game. It happens. Even today, there's an article saying "Rumor: Apple is Giving the Mac Pro One Last Chance" - one last chance? According to who did they think that Apple was giving the Mac Pro a final chance to exist, basically stating that this is going to be the very last Mac Pro ever? Editorializing the headline like that is extremely misleading. More like the rumor started and ended with Gizmodo. I could go on, seriously. Oh, and they're assholes and thieves too. Shutting off peoples' demos and presentations using a TV remote, in which these people put time and energy and lots of investment into from their companies to be at the trade show and market themselves, totally ruining them. And the iPhone 4 debacle was just stupid. They knowingly bought stolen goods, it's fact. It's funny, Gawker once published an article mocking tech sites for their rabid interest in the iPhone 4S and how they all got it wrong, calling it the iPhone 5 or getting the features all wrong. Meanwhile, Gizmodo is guilty of the same exact BS and Jesus Diaz (main douchebag #1) was actually trying to defend himself. I think he later deleted his comment to save himself embarrassment. Basically it's not too different than Fox News in the sense of being sensational and disregarding/twisting facts. This Xbox article is an example of that with its headline. Then there's the one by Diaz heavily implying that Jony Ive thought Apple's software design sucks. I get he was trying to express his own opinion but he actually made it sound like Jony Ive really meant that and based the entire article off that big leap of a stupid stupid assumption. But I don't put anything past these people - they know what they're doing. Even if Jony didn't say it, just sound extremist and put words in his mouth, it'll draw people in. Forgot to add that Denton, the owner of Gawker, thinks the problem lies with commenters... again, don't be surprised if your commenters are shitty if your content is shitty and your style of dealing with it is shitty. Their latest PR coup is switching from user accounts to logging in with your Facebook or Google accounts. They rail against these companies for security and privacy concerns and then they go with them for their security and privacy needs. Great! And it's not like they'll be getting any more user data from peoples' Facebook and Google accounts....... right? There are tons of comments on the article announcing this change in which commenters are not happy and upset enough to leave and never come back.

Your problem is, pardon my French, that you're an idiot. You're trying to rationalize your hatred for Apple by being wrong. Now, I'm no Apple fanboy, in fact I'm all PC/Android at the moment (although this and iOS 6 are indeed tempting me) but it really isn't as overpriced as it seems. From a utilitarian standpoint, yes, you could get the same performance for A LOT cheaper (which me and obviously you would prefer) but looking at the whole package (awesome screen, portability, build quality, etc) it isn't a bad deal.

5 pounds. A paltry 7 hours of battery life which probably amounts to 5 in real usage terms. 16GB of unnecessary dirt cheap RAM which I can only presume is for the numeric super-computing on laptop crowd (or more likely the typical computing-illiterate user that thinks that performance scales linearly with the amount of RAM). A fairly standard midrange GPU. A common i7 CPU. Anything comparable by Lenovo will be at least 500 dollars cheaper. The only thing this laptop has going for it is the hires display that will be common in a few months anyways. Every component except possibly the screen can be purchased by any OEM. Macs have a serious markup and they make ridiculous profits on every device sold. Everytime I see someone with a Mac I can be assured that I am seeing yet another foolish consumer.

I'm not sure how many people have come to the same conclusion I have, but I'm fairly certain this higher resolution will mean something VERY different to OSX users vs. people who put a different OS on the laptop - let me explain: I think with OSX, the panel will behave as a 4x dpi panel with the same 'working resolution' as the standard 1440x900 panel - in other words, you won't be able to 'fit more on your screen' - everything on your screen will simply have higher fidelity. If however you used windows 7 or ubuntu, you'd ACTUALLY have 4x the screen real-estate as text and icons and such would actually be 4x smaller. Now - I don't know about the rest of you, but the REASON I cherish higher resolution screens is because my eyes are good and I WANT more data on a single display at once - not simply higher-resolution images and crisper text (although that's nice too). Someone correct me if you think I made an error in my reasoning - this is based off the advertising on the apple.com page for the new macbook where they state they've worked with application vendors to "take advantage of the new display". I'm trying to call a spade a spade and make sure no one falls into wanting something that gives them something completely different from what they expect.

Hey cumon now, no need for the French, I actually used to own a macbook (the first white ones that came out) and I loved it...but then I just got tired of Apple's "elitist" products, I mean yea, they have the best looking and some of the most durable products on the market, but its not worth it for me. And let me clarify this once again, I dont hate Apple products, I just hate iPeople who jumped on the bandwagon of loving Apple without considering anything besides the looks of the goddamn things

You don't seem to understand the concept of encryption, that's ok. An encrypted wifi network simply has all communication encrypted with 128 or 256bit algorithm, which is pretty much uncrackable unless you have the password or find the password. This encryption starts on the connected user's device and ends at THE ROUTER. Skype, Gmail, HTTPS, SSL, SFTP, VPNs, etc. Are different kinds of encryption. For example HTTPS uses certificates to authenticate a source you're about to communicate to. It then will encrypt all the communication to and from between your browser and their server. If anything on the page is sent unencrypted (ads) your browser will warn you. If the certificate is invalid, your browser will also warn you. VPN uses user authentication (username and password) to encrypt data to another server. If you're sniffing(wire-tapping) an unsecured(unencrypted) wifi network, you can see everything that is unencrypted sent by and received by anyone. However, if you're using secure applications ( vpn, etc.) to communicate data with others/other server, a sniffer is useless. They'll see the encrypted data.

Of course there's no requirement for intent to defraud in that section. That section sets out the penalties you can face once you're convicted of the offense that requires you do to it "knowingly and with the intent to defraud".

You pay for internet, just to be bombarded with ads. You bought a computer and there's ads on most of the things you do with it. I'm not seeing how that's any different. And yes, you pay for a tablet and they have ads on them. A tablet that they sell at a loss. Amazon's business model for kindles is that they are a media consumption device tied to their media sales. They could just as easily have made them as expensive as they need to be to make a profit right off, but they'd rather get them in as many peoples hands as possible. In order to hit the price point they think will do that, they needed ads, which help them sell you the other products (which are profitable).

Usually one approximately 4 min break in a half hour show, 3 on an hour long one. The first one happens about 10 mins in, back for about 15 mins past the hour. Subsequent breaks happen at 30mins-35 mins, the last at about 45 mins past the hour so that the show finishes at 55 mins.

Why is this on the front page? There's no question that the GOP got up to some sketchy (intimidation, voting machine hijinks) and downright criminal (voter purges, etc.) activities this election, but what is this source? "The Green Party" is asking? Who? Ralph Nader? All they cite are some other, generally un-credible liberal sites. If you take this article as gospel, you're no better than the republicans regurgitating hillbuzz.org and fox news as truth.

If you step back, why do we have these laws? Well, the dealers would argue, 'Well, we made a big investment, so we deserve to be protected,' " Anwyl says. "But travel agents made a big investment, and they didn't get any protection." What a teaser of a line. I was genuinely hoping they would elaborate on why exactly is such a thing illegal. Of course, I have my own theories, but it is always preferably to hear from a professional or, even better, an OEM. I hope Tesla fights and wins this because I genuinely want to see a Toyota/Honda owned and operated dealership one day. EDIT: After a bit of digging, I found an [excellent article on MotherJones](

That pretty much reminds me of anthropology and cultural assumptions. My teacher, first day of an anthro class walked into the room, completely silent not looking at anyone. The class quieted down of course. He headed straight for the blackboard, looking disheveled in appearance and starting writing curse words, backwards sentences, a pentagram, and some other stuff. He then walked out of the classroom the same way he came in, silent. He left for at least one to two minutes, while all of us were giving each other "wtf" looks. After these one or two minutes, he comes in like a "normal" teacher would, looking at the class and acknowledging our existence. He went up to the podium and explained what just happened. He talked about the assumed etiquette and general workings of classrooms (and other various things) in our culture, our assumptions of how things are "supposed to be". The looks that was given by us (he was banking on our exact reaction) indicated the breaking of these cultural assumptions, that something happened outside our expectations. There are things you assume would correlate, just like the house example, that may not be what you think it is (that one japanese house with false doors, hallways, etc). A single thumbs up for us may be an insult, such as the pilot giving a thumbs up in I think Brazil (correct me if I am wrong) led to some hubris in the news for a bit. Basically it was the same as that writer about assumptions, and what I think is the door/house analogy would be similar to culture, you only see the one side (you are in it), but you can know what is around the house if you get a different perspective (other culture/viewpoints). You may not see/feel something is "off" unless you look at it differently (like funeral rites, but that is for another story). Needless to say I friggin loved that class and he was my favorite teacher.

You are so incredibly short sighted, its because of people like you that stifle innovation and keep our technology falling behind other countries. Its not about what can do with it now its what you can do later. If we develop faster internet someone out there will design something that can be used with the faster internet. It does not exist yet because the foundation isn't there.

I have a problem with google because they actually limit my ability to find information. Google is not a simply a service provider. They are a behavioral marketing company. Because google thinks it "knows" me, the search results it generates will always be different to someone else who searches for the same thing. It's called the "google bubble" and it is almost impossible to break out of. For example, If I google Fox News and click the link, Google thinks I am interested in Fox. The news results that then pop up in searches for current topics will likely direct me to Fox and other conservative news sources and blogs. But if I search for MSNBC then I will likely be directed to liberal news sources. Then, all the ads I am served up by google on various websites will also reflect this. This is further complicated by which YouTube videos I watch, which Apps I download for my Android device, what I view on the web with chrome and which add-ons I get for chrome, eventually my film/music/tv purchases and potentially every piece of digital data sent/received over google fiber will be monitored under the pretense of providing a 'better service'. Most people think that this is still all ok, and that's their choice to make. But the real kicker is that google doesn't provide me with information it thinks I need or websites that will inform me, it provides content based on who is willing to pay them the most to get my attention with no regard for what that content actually is. Is Fox presenting misinformation? How about a blogger writing from his bedroom? Google doesn't care. This means that whomever has the biggest wallet ultimately controls (or can severely influence) how I experience the internet and by extension, my perception of the wider world. While most redditors are fairly free-thinking they might not consider this an issue because they are exposed to new information and content through reddit. But most internet users get ALL of their information through google, and google only serves up information that it thinks they are interested in or agrees with their political/social/economic opinions. The real problem with this is that people don't know their search results and ads have been skewed in such a way. While we can and should enjoy Google's services, we must remember that google is a company; their only objective is to make as much money as possible. While they may be against internet censorship, their services also skew information in a particular way. Censorship removes choice, but if information is presented to me based on an what an algorithm 'thinks' I want to see then my choice is also restricted. Both of these things are bad.

802.11 is an industry standardized protocol for wi-fi that runs at 2.4ghz (more recently at 5ghz but many devices have yet to be replaced) which is a very crowded frequency as you have to deal with microwave, bluetooth, cordless phone, and every other wi-fi interference, and you can't just change wi-fi channels as there are only 4 that don't interfere with each other with the fourth (channel 14) being illegal to use in the U.S., leaving only 3 frequencies with people distributed between it. Simply changing the frequency is an absolute pain to do, not to mention may be extremely illegal/slightly illegal depending on who owns the new frequency you are broadcasting at (the former being government and latter being private). EM frequencies have become INSANELY crowed over the last few decades, and it's becoming a problem equivalent to the recent overcrowding of IPV4, except you can't just make up a new set of frequencies for everyone to use. What you can do however, is increase the accuracy of the receiver so you can broadcast at a lower set/band of frequencies and more efficiently utilize the same frequencies, though this requires the consumer them self to obtain a new receiver to be able to receive the new, narrower signal. It does happen, but only over the long-term and is unreasonable to ask consumers to do so.

Yeah true schools and business would be the ones benefiting and in some cases or atleast where I live most of the schools have direct fiber to them. The biggest hurdle with deploying this gig fiber network is the training. Fiber splicing is not something the average joe off the street can do. So on top of factoring in the years it takes to train the guys that are going to be splicing this network you also have to invest in the equipment because transport fiber has to be spliced at laboratory conditions which means towing around these little air conditioned sterile trailers to every splice or split.

technically your "speed" is slower if by latency ... everyone is so concerned about bitrate. if only everyone knew that if you push for better latency then having a good bitrate is no more than an ancillary benefit and a shadow of an afterthought of the problem we have now.

60 gigaBIT right? When I read your comment I first thought you mean actual gigabytes. But yeah we're basically getting bent over a table and told how to live our lives by the cable companies here. And the government, and other things too but I'd rather avoid a debate, plus now I'm ranting.

When Lion first hit, I used the upgrade option to upgrade from SL on my MBP 2009. It was horrendously slow, very similar to all the times I have tried an upgrade from one version of Windows to another. Wiping it clean and doing a clean Lion fixed the slowness.

for the record I am against always on DRM but I think you are taking the consequences too far. There will always be someone who finds a workaround to the DRM. This applies to you being a child of the arcade generation. There really are almost no arcades left, but I have still played arcade games, why? because tech savy people have created emulators for em to play them on my computer or my phone. 25 years from now if there was a game good enough today, I promise you there will be someone who has found a way around the always on DRM so future generations can play it. Anyway if you want to skip all that this is the part reddit will hate, most people don't give a fuck about old NES or SNES games, yeah mario was cool and all but there are newer versions that I personally enjoy more than beating a dead horse and posting "look what I found in my basement" when the future generations are gaming, they will be wearing vr headsets like the [oculus]( and when you get some shit like that I doubt you will want to go back to looking at a screen since it is much less interactive. If all else fails people don't like always on DRM, that is fact, the world saw the reaction to the last sim city game I think it is a good idea to have microsoft release a console have an always on requirement. Then when it fails it won't happen again.

False. Emulators will never be a threat to the console industry because of two factors. 1: The time it takes to develop the code that emulates console hardware. The people who developed the PS2 emulator have only recently nailed down the code that lets it run commercial games with little to no problems. The PS2 came out 13 years ago and Sony is already setting the stage for the release of the PS4. It will be 10-20 years before we see a halfway decent PS3 emulator. 2: The amount of computing power it takes to run software that emulates console hardware is magnitudes greater than the original hardware is capable of. To play Wind Waker on the Gamecube emulator requires a PhenomII/i5/i7 CPU. The i3 can pull it off if you heavily overclock it. Anything less will result in the game playing at very slow speeds. Right now there is no PC CPU that has the power to emulate the current generation of consoles even if the code for it existed. Again it will be 10-20 years before such CPU's will be developed. These two factors will forever put the emulation community so far behind the current console generation that they will never catch up and will only ever offer products that Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo have abandoned.

Whatever the outcome, I have my heart set on Wii U and PS4. I had 2 xbox 360s and 1 xbox. I loved Halos 1 through 3 and the main reason I bought a 360 was for halo 3. Many brilliant games came after and I bought a racing wheel for Forza. Good times and I still have a blast with it. But most games I buy now aren't xbox exclusive and I play online now thanks to PSN and "Nintendo Wi-fi Connection" on the Wii.

stores love when you buy gift cards. The way it's done is that the money is taken and put into a special account until the card is used by the customer. of course the account gains interest. and depending on the store, it can be quite a hefty interest rate (just imagine the interest rate walmart gets.. yikes!)

The microeconomic phenomenon you're describing is called [price discrimination]( and it's not in the least bit specific to AT&T. I think Pyrofallout's point is that price discrimination is neither wholly good nor wholly bad because it aligns your incentive to spend less money with the business's incentive to continue receiving your money.

It seems relevant to note that this effort by Google is very likely to be in response to increased heat that it's getting from various Organisations and political groups around the EU. A little insight here: Basically, people are going the usual 'If it's on the web that means it's Google's responsibility' route and saying: 'Well yeah, we know Google already block CP sites from their results, but there are porn sites that link to CP! This *must be Google's fault. Why isn't Google taking care of that! We need to make it hard for people to get on porn, and to track those who do get on it, so we need to make Google start age-restricting porn links and making people register to access them!' By doing this, Google has a solid, perhaps effective tool to which it can point and say: 'hey! get off our back! we've invented a way to eradicate child porn ! leave that other porn alone!'

this will start with CP of course. As we all now know- this will inevitably lead to agencies being able to censor images of protests, police brutality, even allowing the 'alphabet gangs' being able to eradicate all traces of evidence that contradicts the official story. Imagine what the world would be without coverage of the protests in Turkey and Brazil- all because the technology has been subverted. The /r/findbostonbombers thread would have been reduced to a page full of redacted photos. Naturally, anyone trying to get around these filters will be accused of a crime.

I've reported a site that randomly pops up with childporn for ages. I think i've reported it five-six times? It's an aggregator so it pulls pics from various sites. I got so fucking pissed when the pop up window happens and I see that that I stopped searching for my fave porn >8(.

You assume too much. I did a bit of research and it turns out that there are a few magazines that output the material. When they get busted the parents dont press charges because they are legit businesses. The parents are payed and often put the money in savings, the children are treated well and so on. Also they are soft porn, just pictures and videos with the kids talking and so on. No intercourse. I wouldnt be mad if someone jerked to it, they arnt supporting anything that does real harm. These big magazines get busted all the time and then the market is forced into homemade The other half is where shit gets bad. When the pictures/videos are home made you often see intercourse, and frowns. I believe that the majority of pedophiles are harmless that and I would support legalization of CP. It seems like its criminal status prevents any legitimate business from thriving and forces it all into the dark underground. It also seems to be based on subjective feelings rather then objective approaches. Also I would like to comment that this program is fucking worthless. Most CP is transferred from peer to peer, or on TOR. Also many Pedos are fucking dipfucks and use chat rooms to try and get webcam footage. Whats ironic is they think they are the most powerful people in the chat room.

My store is severely understaffed right now. In our department (Connected solutions, which is laptops, tablets, and the sort) we are supposed to have 12 part time and 3 fulltime, plus our supervisor. We currently have 8 part time and 1 fulltime. Will they give me fulltime as the top salesperson? Nope, the GM doesn't like me enough. Will they hire more people? Eventually, but only with sales experience to make sure they can sell the services so the managers get their sweet, sweet bonus. Also, super lazy management

As a former employee, they go over all of this like CRAZY. Data privacy is Geek Squads #1 priority. I'll preface that I could care less whether Best Buy loses money getting sued. BUT, everyone has an anti-corporation mentality, so 95% of the time that people take Best Buy to small claims, they win since everyone assumes that they MUST have been screwed over because it was a corporation. Some examples include: Guy left his laptop to get fixed, takes a few days and he never comes to pick it up. In our system, we had over 20 logged calls to both his numbers, and 2 letters that he had to sign for saying we were going to recycling his computer if he didnt pick it up. He even signed paperwork saying he would pick it up within 30 days of us calling him, and store policy is keeping it for 120. We recycled it after 8 months, and he came in 3 months later looking to pick it up. Apparently the settlement was twice the ORIGINAL value of a 4 year old laptop. Guy brings in a TV that Best Buy had never sold and it has a hole in the screen. He said he purchased an extended warranty (doesn't cover damage like that anyways) but no one could find a receipt of it, obviously. Same thing, settled for an amount WAY higher than its worth. Also, the services may seem expensive to someone who knows what they're doing, but to older people that have no other method of learning or getting things fixed, it was a useful service that many people told me that they were grateful we even OFFERED them.

I have a background doing door to door sales which is why I was hired. I did most of the computer and tablet learning on my own, and I have the ability to easily be the top salesperson, but I stopped trying hard. I do just enough to keep my job. Until I get commission, I refuse to pressure any customers into services. I will always mention them, but not force them. I always tell my supervisor that until our slogan changes from "No Commission, No Pressure." I will not pressure customers until I get commission. I refuse to learn DSLR cameras there and will flat out tell customers I don't know dick about them because Best Buy was suppose to send me and my department manager to Vancouver (We are a Canadian Best Buy) for SLR training. We let them know we are both Under 21 (Turned 21 in a week) and corporate said there was no worries. SO what they did was use the ONE god damn American rental car company that makes you be at least 21 to rent a car. We didn't end up going because we weren't allowed to use our own, and we couldn't get the car since we were 20. Since then I refused to learn anything on my own time. If they want me to learn the product, they can fly ME to Toronto for a free trip to learn it instead of all the Managers that rarely sell.

You can't so easily directly attribute the stock price decline to the fire: Also, saying that it lost $2.4 billion in market cap makes it sound so dramatic to the layman, but remember that the market cap of tesla stock is about $21 billion, and they have lost close to this much cap (and gained this much) in a short period many times: Ford used tires that would blow once in a while in the early 1900s. Tires improved, Ford survived.

The virtual memory model also provides technical benefits to application designers, as it offloads memory management responsibility to the OS, allows a virtual contiguous memory address space (even if physical RAM is fragmented - another place where compressing instead of paging will help), and likely will help battery life as the less RAM you have to keep active, the less power you use. Also, keep in mind that free memory isn't as simple as how much total RAM is free - it's almost a guarantee that your total free memory isn't all in one continuous block, due to processes starting an stoping, reserving and releasing memory all the time. It would be much slower and consume much more power to attempt to constantly defragment RAM on the fly - so instead the OS (and this goes for Linux and Windows as well) is smartly designed to pick its battles and only shuffle things around when the need arises. So, if you need 1GB of RAM for something, and the largest free space currently is only 700MB, you may be able to compress and/or move some inactive segments to make way for the new allocation; and if/when the time comes to write those segments to disk, they're compressed so it takes less time to do so.

Very few people really need it now and it would be a lot of work to recreate it. You'd need to build another cross-endian ppc-x86 DBT, write all of the code to make the the current kernel look like an older PPC one and you'd also need to extract all the old frameworks and system services and ship those with it. And that's just off the top of my head.

I just installed Mavericks on my MacBook Pro and upon my first non-installation reboot, got stuck on Apple's pinwheel and couldn't go any further. Flashing the PRAM did not have any effect, but I was able to get back into my environment by holding Command+R on startup and verifying, then repairing disk permissions. FYI.

Totally not the same. The Win7 start menu was productive because of hotlists. You can click start, hover over Word, and pick whichever of your 10 most recent/pinned documents to work on. To get access to hotlists in Win8/8.1, you pin your app on the task bar, then same effect. There are no quick lists in the modern ui.

How much will this weight? It sounds like it needs a power source which means this will not be a viable idea until someone invents better batteries, as the batteries we have now are not good enough for this sort of thing. And once someone invents super batteries, it will be a game changer for weapons as well. So there might be all kinds of pulse/plasma/laser rifles, which might mean this thing is obsolete before it hits prototype stage.

The DMCA does not govern private systems, as far as I know. That would be absurd. It is well within the rights of any service provider to implement their own copyright claim system independent of the DMCA and official DMCA notices. There are certain requirements . I will reiterate - YouTube's ContentID system is not DMCA . It does appear YouTube has implemented a better appeals process. Now your video is unblocked on appeal, reblocked on denial, and you can reappeal to have it unblocked, where the next step is an actual DMCA notice. Notice that the DMCA takedown procedure only applies if/when an actual DMCA notice is issued. One possible reason for not appealing ContentID takedowns that I've heard in the past is that it requires a lot of personal information to be provided, which will then be passed on to the claimant. This might make a lot of people uncomfortable. (Possible reason: the service provider needs to provide some personal information if requested during the DMCA takedown procedure, so this might be their way of making sure they have that information before it reaches that point.) As for the times you mentioned - YouTube has up to a month for the claimant to make a decision. As far as the DMCA goes, the service provider only has to block on claim and unblock on appeal (actually, 14 days after, and only if no suit by that time - as you said). After that point, they don't have to do anything - it is up to the claimant to file a civil suit.

When you send a DMCA complaint, it's worded as follows on a simple level: I swear that I am the authorized owner of Batman Begins. Also, I think this infringes on Batman Begins. If you lie about the first part, it's perjury, if you lie about the second part, it's not. So: I am the owner of Jdownloader, you can't host it here = perjury I am the owner of Batman Begins, jdownloader infringes on Batman Begins is not perjury.

I actually bought an unlocked used phone on Amazon for $65. I'm on a third-party virtual carrier called straighttalk with unlimited everything for $45 per month. If you were to go to Verizon and buy it fresh, it would be $450, and to get a similar plan would be at least $90, regardless of contract.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING: they aren't essential for survival. HOWEVER, having the internet available at my fingertips, available to see mail, texts, able to search for and look up whatever I need, is pretty darn helpful. Without them, I wouldn't know half the stuff I know today. Neither would you. Thanks to my mobile devices, I'm able to look up whatever information I want, when I want. If there's a situation where I need a step by step guide, and don't have a computer with me, I can quickly search and find one online, and go from there. If there's a definition I don't know, it's even easier. I'll just use the dictionary app, which doesn't require Internet connection, and look it up. If I'm lost, then there are plenty of maps available. Some of these maps can even function as a GPS. A phone can even function as a calculator. The one that comes with most smartphones should be enough for most situations, but if not, I can download a better one from the App Store. I'm also able to be updated on the go by people far, far away. Even if I'm not available and miss a phone call, if the person E-Mails or texts me, I can see whatever it is I needed to see as soon as I pick my phone up. While it is true that one can argue that they could have all those things with them anyway, such as when they're in a car, they couldn't possibly carry it all with them as they're walking down the street. So no, cell phones aren't technically necessary for survival. Mankind has made it 1973+ years without them. However, since their invention, the rate of new advances and discoveries in technology has been increasing at an exponential rate. people can be updated with what they need, when they need, at the press of a few easily-accessible buttons.

I have suddenlink too and I get a notice if I torrent any show that's not at least 7 years old. Also, Fuck suddenlink. I have the highest speed internet they offer and even with that they only give you a 350 gig data cap with a $10 dollar charge for every 50 gigs thereafter. It feels like fucking AOL pay for minutes bullshit. On top of that, my roommate can't sleep without tv and she refuses to watch one of my hundreds of dvds, so our bill last month was fucking $170 dollars. I feel like saying "if I just sign up for cable will you fucking quit with the data caps?" Because I know that's their shitty way of combating the rise of streaming, no matter what they say. It's like, come on. Your selling AIR for Christ sake. Give me a break with you're bullshit excuses for data caps.

Prove it. As long as the software is closed source, we cannot say with certainty what it is doing while scanning those files. is it sending a CRC of every file on my PC to EAs servers for further processing? I don't know, and neither do you.

Oh so now I am too blame for this because I don't want to miss out on a great game when EA happens to publish one? Yes. Not every game they put out is great (Battlefield anyone) and you don't need to play every one of their games. If it's the story you want then just watch the cutscenes on Youtube...if it's the gameplay find another game that fit your needs from the same genre. > No there really isn't. I am well versed on what is out there and I have likely played it or know about it. I prefer open world games and FPS titles and I assure you there are plenty of instances where I can't find something new to play. The whole point of gaming is that you get to pick what the fuck you want to play, so don't give me this nonsense that I should just boycott great games and play others. The point of playing a game is to have fun. You have the luxury of picking which game you want to play (where years ago there were only so many games). There are plenty of games out now and coming out by the end of 2014. I'm sure you aren't looking hard enough. > I said I was mad about Origin tracking me? There is legitimate proof they are even tracking people? Have you even read the comments in this thread? Many are pointing out that the evidence for this is minimal at best, and that Steam does this kind of shit as well. You going to boycott Steam as well? Look at the top comment. I didn't say you were mad. I gave an option for both sides (IF you were mad and IF you weren't). I also mentioned Steam doing this in a previous comment in this [same string of threads]( I personally don't care what each client does. I use my desktop 100% for gaming. (I also mentioned this in this comment thread). I'm just pointing out that if you (just to clear things up, I'm using you as in the person reading this and not you /u/toThe9thPower specifically) don't want to be tracked but a company and continue using that companies products that track you, then the problem stems with you (again the reader, not /u/toThe9thPower).

Not every game they put out is great (Battlefield anyone) I don't play or support Battlefield. Where did I say EVERY game they put out is great? I same some are. I judge them on a case by case basis.   > If it's the story you want then just watch the cutscenes on Youtube...if it's the gameplay find another game that fit your needs from the same genre. You are out of your fucking mind. I don't want to watch cutscenes of some other person playing the damn game, one of the biggest reasons why people play video games if they get to be apart of the story. So this suggestion is utter nonsense. Youtubes quality is also terrible, they compress every video and cap the frame rate at 30fps. They are just now making moves to up it to 60fps, but even that is unacceptable because I can play the REAL game in 120fps or more. As for genre? There isn't just some infinite amount of games, I have very specific interests. So I don't have an endless supply of options. There are games that appeal to me, and I will play them if they are good.   > The point of playing a game is to have fun. Exactly. There are EA published games that are very fun. Titanfall was some of the most fun I have ever had in a first person shooter.   > There are plenty of games out now and coming out by the end of 2014. I'm sure you aren't looking hard enough. And bullshit. I subscribe to multiple gaming related subreddits, browse kickstarter, Steam greenlight, and many other sources. I know about almost every game coming out, even the obscure shit most have never heard of. So this idea that I am not looking hard enough is bullshit. Don't assume things about people over the internet, you win arguments with what you know, not with shit you have to make up.   First off you don't even know if Origin is tracking people to begin with. Secondly, you are being fucking ridiculous trying to suggest that I have to do things the way you do, and avoid playing EA games entirely if/when there is one I want to play. This is not the type of shit a normal adult would say. I am not doing something wrong by playing EA games when they release one that is good. To even suggest this is loony toons level crazy shit.   > I'm just pointing out that if you (just to clear things up, I'm using you as in the person reading this and not you With other comments you have made being directed at me personally. I am not buying this. You can try to recover all you want but you said some really dumb things.   >

What that would mean is you could effectively threaten anyone with anything as long as you use rap lyrics (or something similar). Rappers already do this. Do police arrest and indict rappers who brag about their guns, drugs, prostitution, etc in their songs? No (at least not solely based on their lyrics). > You could essentially say you want to rape and kill someone and say it to them over social media It's a bit different if you specifically mention a single person and worse if you send it to them. That would probably help their case by proving intent and planning.

That's a good analogy. I think a better one is electricity. Your power company doesn't decide what you can plug into the wall or control the brightness of your lights based on the brand of the light bulb. The power company doesn't dim your lights of one brand of light bulbs until the light bulb manufacturer pays a fee. "But those pesky light bulb companies are the ones using all the electricity" is the same argument as "Netflix is using all the data". Power companies could never use that argument, why are we letting the ISPs use it? If you want electricity you plug whatever the hell you want into the wall and it works just the same as anything else.

Full disclosure: I'm a developer at GoDaddy and joined 6 months ago when it was clear they've changed course. Did you read Blake's posting? Check out this useful (and under-publicized) bit of data crunching: > Of the 1.1 million comments you’ve received, just over 800,000 have been made available to the public for review and analysis. GoDaddy has looked at the raw data, leveraging the same Hadoop infrastructure and deep learning algorithms we use to customize products for our customers. What we’ve found, though not surprising, is that small businesses from around the country have responded with a unanimous voice. Their sentiment cannot be parsed by red state or blue state, by urban or rural, nor by technical or non-technical. The percent of Small Businesses who commented in favor of the current proposal, to borrow a phrase, is: zero point zero.

Do the large parties even have opinions of heir own or do they just shout what they belive most people think in order to get most votes and then do fuck all? People should really stp voting with "the lesser evil" and start voting with who has their interest at heart. And if no one does should get involved and band together with likeminded individuals or nothing will be solved (

So, while this seems great, [this]( cursory analysis/write-up on the Tor Project website gives me pause... According to this, Tribler isn't nearly as secure or anonymous as it claims. ([[tor-dev] N reasons why the spooks love Tribler]( Perhaps someone with more cryptography chops than I could take a glance and verify what this analysis implies.

It all comes down to how much access to critical systems the AI has access to or is responsible for. It would be easy enough to pull the plug on a simple none thinking system. However, if the AI is built with protection or survival instincts or it stumbled across learning those traits, it would want to self preserve. It likely would recognize it could protect itself by copying itself everywhere. Pulling one system would no longer end a rogue AI. It would be like having a roach infestation as big as the Internet. It could be argued even if not attached to key systems it could learn to get into key systems. The same way people do. It's true AI would not have evil emotions and be devious for the sake of being devious. However, it may very likely tinker and experiment randomly so it learns. The idea of that alone is sketchy. On the job replacement argument front... AI replacing humans for daily duties sounds great until it creeps into your sector of work. Even robotic engineers and AI programmers themselves could ultimately be replaced once the AI is good enough. If it will save huge money for a company, a company will invest in that technology. Programmers and engineers will do what they are told even if they know better. Likely assuming their job is safe, until their own creation replaces them. Even companies against the idea of a fully automated AI workforce will cave in to compete. Free intelligent and skilled workers is hard to beat.

I completely agree. Although copyright laws protect the artist and encourage innovation, or at least that's the original intention, in the wake of the information era it's becoming increasingly clear that information cannot be owned. Copyright laws have become so inflated that instead of protecting the innovator and encouraging small business, the next generation is entering into an era where every idea is owned by someone, which stifles innovation by limiting competition, and ensures that the wealthy few who have succeeded remain wealthy and keep accumulating wealth. If copy right law was seven years across the board, for example, J.K.Rowling would still be a billionaire, but her works, Harry Potter, would now be in the public domain, and every person who grew up with it and was influenced by it would be able to reference it in their works, draw from it and build on it. But if you can't make money off your idea in seven years, someone else should have a chance. And big businesses should fail if they can't keep up with consumer demand, or if someone comes along with something just as good but for half the price. As far as copyright is concerned, I think it's gone too far, and needs to be abolished. Music should be the advertising for the artist. There's no reason why any one should sit on their ass and rake in the dough. Artists can still make an above average living though concerts and by being involved in the community. And as already large companies grow into mega corporations, they can't possibly keep up with consumer demand, and their products go up in price without going up in quality. Competition is the necessary pressure that puts control into the hands of the consumer, and pressure on the industry to maintain quality while keeping prices low, which makes for an efficient economy. But instead wealth is pooling in the protected 1% while the rest of the world gets poorer, when in reality average spending power should increase as our population and therefore competition increases.

This actually has potential beyond powering devices. If a big enough device were inserted into an overweight person, their metabolic rate could increase as the device will take away glucose from the blood. Responding to the lack of glucose, the body would begin to access the fat reserves.

Robots already replaced a lot of jobs -- there are many, many robots, each performing a task which otherwise would have required a human. Yet unemployment isn't all that high: low-educated people simply find other stuff to do. Be it providing service, servicing, helpdesk, or doing stuff robots can't (nursing, etc). There's enough to do. In the US, they even let them do bullshit jobs to keep them busy (waving signs next to roads, packing groceries, etc). There will always be enough jobs like that. > Personally, I think this is a good thing. If people don't spend so much their time working for money, they can spend it inventing new things, making art, music or open source software, enjoying the company of their friends and family, playing sports, getting together to do elaborate engineering projects on a whim, reading, untangling the innermost secrets of the universe, arguing about politics or doing any of the other millions of things people would rather be doing. If that would be the case, it'd already have happened. We only need to work a fraction of the time to obtain the same level of comfort of centuries ago. Yet we keep on working more and more (compared to what machines do for us), two parents instead of one, simply because we a) want to buy as much stuff as possible and b) most people are working their ass off, creating a society that expects them to: policies favour two-working families, pricing of certain goods like houses, expectations about having a car or being able to do other investments, etc. edit:

I'm afraid your appeal to the unknown doesn't sway me. People in Babbage's time might have said: "What if this entirely new "difference engine" of Babbage's ultimately leads to a revolution in AI?" A perfectly legit question, at the time. But today we know the answer: it didn't! So history has at least one example of an unknown new technology that, while undoubtedly incredibly powerful, did not give us what we needed to make strong AI. It's possible biocomputing might lead to strong AI... or it might not. We don't know yet, and won't know for sure for a very long time. But given that we have at least one historical counterexample where fantastic new technology didn't crack the strong AI problem, I'm not gonna hold my breath...

You have the ability to win the argument with the effort of doing a copy and paste, but you wont (ha!). You are transparently stupid Right. You'll admit to it if I provide the link. I don't believe you. You have given every indication that you're simply lying. >I will finish this thread here having been victorious. Really? If you call that being victorious, I hate to see what you call losing. >But I want to advise you in the future: don't make claims you can't defend. I did defend them. The fact that you refuse to go read it is your own problem. Amusingly, you STILL refuse to defend your own points that I've been asking you to. Answer my questions: So: If you live in a country that has supposedly given up the concept of property, then why can't you go into a grocery store and take what you want without paying or risk of arrest? CITE where the rest of the world has given up on the concept of property as you claim it has.

I had a hard time finding solid information on the J-20/J-XX as well, although Jane's aircraft and defense publications had some good material. I also have an uncle who used to be in the Air Force, and he had the chance to be trained in the F-22 before he was discharged. According to Jane's the J-20 is much larger and heavier than the F-22. The craft is powered by the Russian made 117-S engine, which is static in the chassis. The jet that flew several weeks ago had external hardpoints which are notorious for showing up on sensors. The jet also did not use thrust vectoring, which is fast becoming a world wide standard for air-superiority fighters. Back in 2002 Jane's published an article about Chinese aircraft development and their desire to obtain thrust-vectoring tech. I'm thinking there isn't any data out there on max turning, airspeed, flight ceilings and duration, surface control, etc because the tests simply haven't been conducted yet. The first and only known flight only lasted 20 minutes. What we saw seems to be quite basic prototype. The PLA has stated that they expect the J-20 to be in service 6-8 years from now complete with Chinese-made thrust vectoring tech. Russian military officials have said point-blank that they are behind the US in stealth fighter tech, and China is well behind them. US and Russian military aircraft officials have both stated that the J-22 looks to be longer, heavier and less maneuverable than the PAK FA and F22. However, the J-20 probably has a larger fuel and weapons capacity. It is also speculated that the J-20 has a lower production cost than the PAK FA and F-22. There is speculation that the J-20 prototype is more of a fighter-bomber than an air-superiority rig. That means it would have to use AESA radar, which is easily detectable. The F-35 is currently capable of jamming the F-22's systems, leading many to the conclusion that the Chinese are hoping to obtain brand new tech seeing as the best technology in use can already be defeated. While many sources say that the J-20 does exhibit stealth features on par with those of the PAK-FA, the external hardpoints, vents, canards, radar and tracking tech on the craft render it all for naught.

OK, this is a vast oversimplification of the issues involved. See the book The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov. The benefits of the internet are usually obvious to those in the West, but there is an entire other side to the issue that deserves equal consideration. The internet has allowed repressive regimes unprecedented ease of tracking their citizens and numerous ways to keep them entertained and complacent in the face of oppression. Studies of East Germany have shown that the citizens that had the most access to Western media were actually the least politically active, because they were happily watching Western sit coms and entertainment instead of organizing politically. The same thing is happening currently in Russia, where the government has setup websites devoted to YouTube-like content to entertain the masses. In China, although we always hear about the government firewall, a more serious problem is the crowd-sourcing of oppression by people who support the CCP. China also has numerous other surveillance techniques that get less coverage -- Green Dam is perhaps the most popular example. Similarly, Hugo Chavez has embraced Twitter as a way to spread his popularity and has become a huge internet celebrity in Venezuela. Further complicating the issue, with the internet as a medium that controls so much sensitive information and controls communication among people, it is no longer governments we can hold accountable. Instead, it is big technology companies (Facebook, Google) who have bad track records in terms of privacy, and whose primary motive is profit, not human rights. And the nail in the coffin is that the Western media looooooves to cover how much Western technology is driving liberty and revolution, but these claims are usually overblown. This happened with the Soviet Union and fax machines / photocopiers, and Reagan's myth has kept these false claims alive. Consequently, people assume the internet will have the same effect. But just as in the fall of the Soviet Union, technology for communication is only a small part of the circumstances required for revolutions, and it isn't clear that its a necessary part. The Green Revolution in Iran, 2008 that supposedly happened on Twitter? The vast majority of tweets were from people outside of Iran, and studies show there were 70 active Twitter users -- 70! -- before the government began censorship of Twitter. And many people have been quick to credit Facebook for the Arab Spring, particularly starting in Egypt. Facebook played some role in organizing protests, but Al Jazeera deserves more credit for spreading news of the demonstrations in Tunisia, and the protests became bigger after the Egyptian government shut down the internet. One consequence of the media hype for technology is that too much credit is given to technologies that don't deserve it, and put activists in other countries at risk. Haystack is perhaps the best example. Haystack was a program that was supposed to give simple access to cryptography for activists so they could communicate securely. This technology was given massive media coverage and ran some tests in Iran. Then security researchers got their hands on it and showed pretty quickly that it was extremely insecure. Even on home soil we can see some of the problems. Rather than the internet illuminating Truth and eliminating conspiracy, we see that the Truther, Birther, and Death Panel conspiracies owe their lives to the internet. Simply having information available to humans does not mean that truth triumphs, and it is not necessarily a boon to democracy. There needs to be trusted names in information dissemination that will vet stories, otherwise everything is noise and people pick the parts they want to see. (I am not advocating censorship, just stating a fact of human nature.) Finally, we (the USA) have contradictory positions on the internet. We tell other countries to open their internet completely, and then we censor our own for a variety of (some good, some bad) reasons. This hypocrisy cannot stand. We need to identify what our policy re: the internet really is, and then support that.

Nothing "over the top" here. International postal regulations specify that the SENDER is the only one able to make a claim for a lost package. Even if the recipient paid for it, they still have to go through the sender to claim. Now since it's a postal service that messed-up, they will pay the sender back the insured value and the postage fees when they finally acknowledge they lost the package. So, if Amazon insured the package, it's covered. If Amazon skimps on the insurance (I don't know their MO) they'd only get the postage fee refunded but then again they might have already saved a bundle on skimping on insurance. Win-win. Now, if any other retailer doesn't follow up with the postal service, they are doing a very bad thing and the customer may initiate a charge-back (since the seller cannot prove the package was received when the post loses it). Same outcome, more hassle for both.

Am I the only one who thinks that this actually is NOT an example of great customer service? It's an example of a great customer service policy , but if you read the chat log you'll see that the customer service rep himself could have done a much better job. For one thing, the representative never answered the original question. The customer asked if there was a way to automatically re-order the same list of items without manually adding each one to a new order. The rep's answer was to refund his money for the first order and then tell the customer to manually re-order all of the items himself. A better response would have been to also offer to create the re-order for him, or at least to tell him definitively that sorry, there's no way to automatically re-order. For another, I'm not sure that the rep ever fully understood the situation. Amazon has a policy of always taking full responsibility when the delivery service loses a shipment. In this case the delivery service correctly delivered from Amazon to the requested address (customer's parents' house), then the parents re-packaged the order and re-sent it to their son in Tanzania. It was lost in the shipment from the parents' house to Tanzania. In reading the chat logs, it sounds like the rep doesn't grasp this. He makes a quick assumption that the order was lost while being sent from Amazon to the parents' house. He then follows Amazon's policy of taking full responsibility and issuing a refund. Lastly, and this is just nit-picking here... the strange grammar and constant use of "Brian" at the end of each sentence is a little off-putting. It doesn't give me (or the average customer) the sense of a professional and competent representative.

Something similar happened to me with a package from ThinkGeek. I placed an order and mistakenly entered the wrong house number. The number I entered actually did not exist. Imagine my surprise when I got an email from UPS telling me the package was delivered. I hunted all over my yard for that damn thing, asked the downstairs neighbors. I even left notes with the two neighbors who would be on either side of the house that didn't exist. Nothing. I called up UPS and asked them where they delivered the package, as the house number they were given didn't exist. They were of no help whatsoever, and told me to contact ThinkGeek. So I did, explaining the situation, thinking they could light a fire under UPS. Instead, they offered to send it again, no charge. I felt bad, as this was my fault for entering the wrong address and UPS' fault for delivering it to an address that doesn't exist. The rep assured me it was all right. About a week later, I got my new sonic screwdriver and other goodies. Meanwhile, I get a call from a neighbor. Seems she was out of town for a few weeks and did indeed receive my package by mistake. She returned it, and I called ThinkGeek back to update them and ask them where to send the duplicate package. I couldn't just keep the goods after they were so good to me. And because I'm not a dick. ThinkGeek has some of the best customer service ever, and I'm always chatting them up over Twitter.

had my phone stolen in Portugal and 1200 minutes of international calls to Romania were placed. Vodafone cared not about the police reports I had. I didn't report it within 12 hours, and so they said there was "nothing they could do". Vodafone UK paying Vodafone Portugal, and there was nothing they could do. Then came the torrent of stupidity and incompetence that pissed me off no end. Eventually, after god knows how many phone calls, they offered me "the standard goodwill discount of 25%, which applies to very large bills". They were unable to tell me why i hadn't been offered this discount the first time i asked them "if there was anything they could do". They also hung up on me a few times when i asked difficult questions, or to have it escalated to someone who wasn't incompetent (not how i worded it to them, mind). So now my bill is just £540, discounted down from the [original]( Hooray. So i agreed to pay this horrible 12 month payment plan. Then, almost everyday for the next month, i got a phone call from Vodafone, telling me that there had been suspicious activity on my account. This was annoying the first few times. It only got more annoying. Each time, i would tell them I have been told before, and that there were myriad "notes" on my account, and that it would be nice if they did their jobs, and read the notes before wasting my time. Each day the response would get a little ruder. A little less patient. Then, came the end of the month. Time for the first payment. They took the whole amount, and excluded the discount. So i made an indemnity claim with the bank, and had them give all my money back, and cancel the direct debit with Vodafone. And just for the hell of it, didn't tell Vodafone I'd done this. Then i got another phone call, a few days later, saying there had been a problem. So i explained the "problem" to them, and got quite angry. Eventually, after i made some poor woman read through all the notes, and sure enough, there was one about the payment plan in there. There was also one about the discount. It just said "25% goodwill discount" though. She eventually told me she couldn't do anything, and transferred me to the collections team. The collections team were just as incompetent as everyone else mind. They then told me that a. there was no such thing as a "good will discount" and b. that the maximum length payment plan was 6 months. Any longer, and they would have to bar my phone. He then said there was a different discount I could have, which was 25% on the tariff, 25% off £30. I asked him if he didn't think it was a little insulting to offer someone a £7.5 discount on a £720 bill. He realised he was being a moron, and I had him transfer me to his superior. The superior gave me the 25% discount on the full bill. And set up the payment plan. It was over. I wasn't happy, but i was a little less annoyed than i had been earlier. It is now over two full months after the phone theft actually happened. And i am yet to have payed any of the bill. First payment of the new plan is coming up. Guess what happens. They fuck it up again. I get a text, saying "thank you for your payment". All is good. All is not good. They bar my phone. I can't even phone 191 (the number to call customer support). And it is the weekend, so the other numbers didn't work. That was pretty annoying. I phoned them up, and once again, no one had read the notes on my account - my direct debit had stopped, and i was now paying the bills via credit card (this way it's easier to get the bank involved if they shaft you). They hadn't updated the system, and since the direct debit did not come through from the old account, they assumed i had stopped paying. After resolving that problem, the EXACT SAME THING happened the next month. And i'm coming up to the third payment at the end of this month i think. third or fourth. something like that. Oh yes, and at some point during this whole mess, they phoned me to let me know i had been upgraded to the next level of customer loyalty, and as such, there were a number of options open to me. A free ipad 2 (the man at the other end of the line didn't understand when i questioned how paying £30 a month and being locked in for 2 years counted as free...) 3 "golden sims". These are simcards i can give to friends, or use myself. £10 a month, with unlimited texts/data and 600 minutes. The next time i upgrade, everything is half price. Half price line rental, bills, and phone.

wtf are you smoking? i couldnt see a difference so i moved the picture into photoshop and overlayed the two layers on top of each other and theres NO difference other than the number 1 placement. i even set the top layer to "difference" and yeah, its all black except where the 1 is.

This is the right mentality. Anyone who would threaten to destroy the open and free internet - arguably the greatest achievement of mankind yet - deserves nothing less than complete annihilation their brands, reputation, and corporations. In a more just world, the people behind these companies responsible for things like SOPA would tarred and feathered and kicked out of town. These are not misguided people who simply need to be convinced of the errors of their ways; make no doubt that they are only fueled by greed, selfishness, and shortsightedness.

This is quite correct. If when a company gives in to the boycotter's demands (which GD did by withdrawing support from SOPA) and the boycotters don't end the boycott, then there's no reason for companies to ever give into boycotter's demands. If we want the power of the boycott to be preserved we must use it as a tool of coercion, not punishment! All I hear in this thread is people wanting to punish GD with a boycott, but that's simply not the point of a boycott. The point of a boycott is to coerce a company into acting in a certain way in accordance with the desires of the boycotters, which GD has ostensibly done. There is definite merit in saying that GD must continue to withdraw its support from SOPA, but let the threat of a boycott be the driving force behind this, not a continuation of one. It's simply shortsighted to use a boycott in the way that is being advocated in this thread. If you "make an example out of GD", then you simply tell other companies that bowing down to the demands of a boycott will do nothing to stop a boycott, and as such will lead to their ignoring of any boycotter's demands levied against them.

Yes this is soooo horrible they listened to their customers and changed their stance, this is such a terrible loss and that they won't budge on this is terrible fuck you and you ash online attitude, godaddy did their part they reversed their stance, what more do you want the to do bleed to death and cease to exist. I am glad an I hope that people like this poster and the comments agreeing with it only the 1% of the Internet. I am going to write a thank you note to godaddy and continue to host my domains on their servers. I am also going to point out that people like this poster will never be happy, they are the equivalent to the tea party members who will never be happy with anything godaddy does.

It's kind of tricky, though isn't it? It LOOKS like it's what we wanted, but we all know that it is only a PR move. In reality, GoDaddy helped to WRITE aspects of SOPA, and they benefit greatly by using their immunity (which will be granted by SOPA) to destroy their competition. What's going to happen is, publicly GoDaddy will say "we were wrong, now we are not sure if we like SOPA" but they will keep giving money to and secretly supporting SOPA. All of this should be pretty obvious from how their original statement was "You internet geeks have no power, we want to take this opportunity to tell you that you are impotent and we LOVE SOPA". Then later in the day they see how bad that was for business so they publicly state the opposite. Corporate trickery and the ultimate power of the dollar is why most people don't actually believe GoDaddy AT ALL.

My computer was recently confiscated because I "might have ordered heroin from the Internet". While they were at it, I implicated my ISP and power provider in the deal and insisted they confiscate router, phone lines, power lines etc.

I actually did teach elementary school for 3 years. You're right I wouldn't have used this broadly, but would have been helpful to identify issues for the students that were struggling. If you doubt that there are teachers dedicated enough to do this on a regular basis look closer at the good teachers in the school. I left because I wasn't one of them. Take this out of the school context and put it in context of public jobs. Should we trust that the mayor isn't using the computer you bought him with your tax dollars to play farmville all day? Or does it make sense to lock down what he's able to do with the system you paid for and let him play all the Minecraft he wants on his personal computer? I agree it would be great if we could trust students to use the systems appropriately, but if you give an inch they'll take a mile. Remove the uproar over privacy and respect and replace it with the school IT departments concern that they are going to see 100 notebooks a week that run like crap because a student that didn't know better downloaded an AWESOME game from Yahoo that was loaded with spyware. Privacy is really a small part of the equation when the school decided to issue the systems. After I left teaching I sold computers to schools. This was a top priority in every sale I had. I didn't sell a system that wasn't immediately locked down.

The WinRT API only allows for Metro style apps. Windows is not allowing developers to use their desktop API to develop anything at all only WinRT and Metro. It's amazing how people just refuse to believe this even after Google and Mozilla speaking up about it. WindowsRT/WOA will be following the lead of iOS and be a very locked down system.

Their bubble is bursting, that is all. Within a year the social media companies will be valuated according to their respective value again, not according to what people are willing to pay for their shares.

I don't think you will, windows 8 x86 seems no different than windows 7 in regards to boot (granted I'm using BIOS and not UEFI). That being said, I've used Win 8 on a HP tablet and it works beautifully. I'm not sure why you'd hamper your experience on a tablet by going back to windows 7. Desktops and laptops are another question entirely. I'm running win 8 on my desktop. The

Gabe is just saying that because he is afraid for the competition that microsoft will bring with their own appstore. in reality, windows 8 actually brings lots of improvements over 7, but people like gabe, who works for a company that makes the majority of their money by selling games through an "appstore", say these kinds of things to scare us so that we don't go to the competitors store. developers are looking towards linux because there is not as much competition. (yes i know about the ubuntu app store.)

If ANYONE is found guilty of breaking the law thru FBI surveillance, if it's something the F.B.I. deems important enough to prosecute over, then I'm all for it. The reason I'd be all for it, is because I'm not stupid enough to believe that the F.B.I. would even waste their time over petty little bullshit like buying a little weed. If you're buying 20 pounds of weed, however, I'd consider that a criminal act, and I'd fucking shake the FBI agent's hand if they were able to convict some "innocent" American who had their phone traced.

Vote for a secondary party, not Republican or Democrat. Find one that you support most (one that strongly supports more freedoms and wants to stop the tyranny and all of the bullshit that is happening in the government) and vote for them, and that will REALLY show a large divide. If all of a sudden you have a whole load of people voting for some independent parties that all support our freedoms, then the government will see that the people want their freedoms back. And hell, we might just be able to elect one of those guys into office, and then the government will REALLY see what we mean, and what we are capable of. Don't conform to the thoughts that there is only 2 parties running for office, because there are hundreds, but only about 4-5% of votes on average go to any party other than Republican or Democrat. Why does this happen? Because fucking FOX News. (And other news networks) All they report on during elections is Republican and Democrat, and sometimes the Libertarian, Green, or Constitution parties. They don't want the masses to know about better "untainted" parties, because those "untainted" parties won't support the news networks like Republicans and Democrats do. Vote for the Citizens Party, or hell, the US Marijuana Party (weed fuck yeah). Don't just not vote, vote for the independent parties (Not Republican or Democrat) to show the government that we are still largely involved in politics, but we will NOT support your bullshit anymore. We will not conform to what you want us to think, but instead we will think for ourselves. If we do this, then ANYONE that can vote can make a difference, and do so without the possibility of breaking any "laws", fake or real. If the government tries to criminalize us for voting for someone that isn't the big bad guys, then EVERYONE will see their wrongs, and everyone would take a step back and say "I cannot support this", and those that don't know about their own lack of freedom will look into it and see how their freedom is being taken away, and then MORE people will "revolt" and vote differently, basically putting two middle fingers up in regards to "The Man".

I think that the US government isn't just doing this because they want to spy on everyday people's business, I think that they are trying to do the best in the interest of national security. It's admittedly scary to think that there are faceless agencies monitoring you in an Orwellian kind of way. The tone of that link is a bit over the top, a bit doomsdayish, but I don't think it's as much of a 'threat to us people' as the text in the link makes out. Admittedly it feels like a bit of an invasion of privacy but I don't think that they'd do anything malicious with that information.

Exactly. The people getting outraged at things like this are the same people voting for Obama, who renewed the most controversial portions of the Patriot Act. Yet when Bush signed the Patriot Act into law, those very same people cried "HitlerfascistNaziStazi1984BigBrotheriswatchingBraveNewWorld911wasaninsidejobwakeupsheeple." Many of said people are also atheists, who assert that Christians "pick and choose" which parts of the Bible to live by while ignoring others (i.e. homosexuality is an abomination, but eating shellfish is not), while choosing to totally ignore atrocious political decisions made by their favored party.

You have to remember that only a very, very, very small percentage of cell phone users know anything at all about the programming and operation of their cell phones. I'm a recruiter for telecom, have been in the industry since '99, and I'm amazed everyday at how little people know. It always got me when commercials advertised their new, "high-speed EVDO network" or something similar. People have no idea what that is! The reason they buy into is that they think since they don't understand it then it must be pretty bad-ass. When the iPhone 4 came out many people thought it was a 4G phone, even many of my clients building these systems. Since "4G" was the new, hot term and this was the "iPhone 4" they just assumed it was 4G.

Yes, the FBI are storing several exabytes of people's data per year. I'm sure that if they had the capacity to do that they wouldn't set up a data storage service and make more money with that than is in their entire budget. I'm also certain they'd also be able to keep this sort of thing a secret from everybody, especially those who would pay billions of dollars to patent it.

While that's a very... interesting comment, I don't think it was aimed in the direction you intended. The point that I made was that this was a royal screwup on Apple's part. There's no denying that. However, an ad like the #iLost one is very dicey ground to be playing in. And to make such a misleading, hell downright wrong ad is a crazily dumb move by their marketing team. There are literally hundreds of real examples they could have chosen from. Yet the one they did choose makes no case. Indeed, there's a real argument that Apple's implementation in this example is the better one! The #iLost ad should have been a no-brainer, yet somehow they managed to mis-represent the actual example they showed. This changes the story in a way, it permits a counter-argument where there should be no opportunity for one . Now the story on this ad will involve back-chatter like "actually Apple found the real address from the ad, but the Android didn't, only returning a bogus one". Because of the screwup on Google/Moto's part, this ad winds up misrepresenting the magnitude of the issue! Their bogus ad only serves to diminish the perception of the real problem, and that's just stupid.

Here's the thing about Instagram and companies like it. Very few companies will do something without getting users approval. When you download an app it always has terms of service. In the terms of service the company will explain exactly what you allow the company to do. Furthermore, many of the companies require that you agree to the terms of service before you can use their product. The problem is that many people do not read the terms of service. This is not Instagram or anyone else's problem. If you want to use the program and agree to the terms of service without reading them that is your choice. But if you do this, you have no right to be up-in-arms about what the company is doing. You could say that most companies know that their terms of service will not be read. Some people might even say that companies bank on this, but their is nothing has been done wrong. If you want to read the terms of service then you can and you are not prevented from doing so. The long and the short of it is that, as the article points out, Instagram isn't going to do anything that user haven't already agreed to let them do before. If you really find the new terms of service to be completely repugnant then there is something you can do about it: Don't use Instagram.

By your logic, it should be impossible to establish any notion of "property" absent a state. In reality, there is a more primitive notion of physical "property". Namely, property is what I can defend with force from being seized, i.e. removed from my possession or usage, by others. This "force" is violence in some sense. Government defense of physical property is merely an extension of this more primitive notion (since state incentives against the seizure of physical property basically amount to either threatened or real violence). Government defense of intellectual property is an entirely new and alien notion that really can only exist in the presence of a state-enforced monopoly. The fact that physical "property" and intellectual "property" are both referred to by the same word is an accident of language, not a reflection of fundamental similarities between the two. If the state enforces, say, a monopoly on selling liquor, no one would say that liquor, or the idea of selling liquor, is somehow the exclusive "property" of the state. Change the item being sold to an idea and suddenly it is. How does that make any sense?

In a way they already are making serious in-roads. Massage and prostitution have traditionally had a tendency to overlap somewhat and robots are making serious progress in massage. I had tried other people's pricey massage chairs and really loved the tireless effort but I wasn't going to fork over a few grand for a chair. I looked all over to try and buy the parts separately to build my own and then one day I came across a shiatsu massage pillow on sale for twenty bucks that basically had the key part I was looking for which was the kneading action. Oh hell yeah. I love that thing. Right away I said if this thing breaks, I'm going to buy another one because this is a basic human need. You got to love the fact that it's ready when you are too. That's tricky to pull off with a real human being. Of course prostitution can be much more complicated because while it crosses over with massage, it also crosses over with escort services which is more of a social function. This is certainly not impossible, but definitely more subtle than a smooth offset knob attached to a high torque motor. I think you'll know when it's getting closer because you'll see it in porn first and to some extent we already do with the Fucking Machines type porn where people are interfaced with machines. Taking this to a humanoid level is probably a ways off since we haven't seen much porn of that nature so far. You have to keep in mind that this is a market where rip-off products have historically been very safe because people were so ashamed of their sexuality that it was easy to rip them off and not worry about them publicly making a lot of fuss. So false promises are everywhere and it's been that way all along. When the robot prostitutes are really quite ready you can believe we'll see some videos of their work circulating before the average person will be able to afford them. But the crossover point may occur quickly because once they become convincing enough to do engaging video production they will be popular quickly.

From [A History of MySpace]( > Though DeWolf and Anderson always had plans to expand their new social network site internationally, MySpace began locally in Southern California and catered to actors, musicians, and artists. In spirit, the site reflected its Southern California roots with its idiosyncratic performers, designers, and cultural hustlers. Its focus on self-expression tapped into what young people were passionate out: expressing themselves, interacting with friends, and consuming popular culture. When MySpace launched in 2003 (using Microsoft SQL server as a database and running on Windows), local bands and club owners (particularly Indie rock bands) created profiles and quickly became MySpace’s primary marketing tool. Eight months after its initial launch, MySpace experienced the “network effect,” an exponential growth of adding “friends” (Bosworth 2005). > Part of the appeal of MySpace was that it is an open site, meaning the it lets users control the page and post nearly whatever they want to post. Each profile was a blank canvas for its owner and, in that sense, the term “MySpace” gives a user “your space” to do whatever he or she wants with it. This freedom coupled with the mistakes of MySpace’s leading competitor, Friendster.com, led to MySpace’s meteoric rise to popularity. For example, the expulsion of bands from Friendster for failing to comply with profile regulations and the rumors that Friendster would adopt a fee-based system led to a rapid migration to MySpace. MySpace embraced both publishing and socializing tools when it mattered, when teens were looking for something even more social than blogs (Magid and Collier 2007).

In a few years, we'll all be wearing Glass, and as Android, it will be directly connected to G+. For this reason alone, FB already lost. That said, FB is doing everything at the moment to fuck up their last bit of reputation with professionals/businesses on the platform. I'm working for a creative agency with [pmd status]( – we've helped a lot of businesses to build up their facebook fan base, which cost them a lot of money. Since IPO, FB started cutting the reach of page posts to a mere 4%-15% - to reach all of your fans, you gotta pay. Understood, FB has to make some money, but they should be more open about it. "To make the world more open and connected" doesn't fit in nicely with [this]( Inside of FB, Marketeers have taken over some 2 years ago. While some forces in Mountain View are desperately trying to keep up FB's spirit as a friendly workplace for engineers, stakeholder induced sales pressure is spreading like cancer. Everyone I know at FB is rolling their eyes about it. I assume that a good portion of the staff of the founding years already left or will leave, and I stress speculation even more in assuming, that Mr. Zuckerberg is –or will soon start to- counting the days (years?) until he is allowed to leave.

I urge anyone with an opinion on this post to read 'Politics and the English Language' by George Orwell. It's a short essay that completely changed how I go about writing, and actually upped my performance in English class when I was young.

I want CHEAP eBooks!!!! I want CHEAP cars. Unfortunately a cheap car would either be impossible to make or absolute crap. A very very common misconception about ebooks is that because they are digital they are basically free to distribute and have zero costs so are all profit. So while a paper book may cost $10, if the ebook costs any more than pennies it's due to a greedy company. However, the reality is, that books are already damn cheap to manufacture (talking about printing/shipping/warehousing/etc, not the writing). Most books cost only between $0.75 and $3.00 (most are lower end, upper end is for the larger/fancier hard covers) or so to actually produce and put on the shelves. If you assume that distributing an ebook is 100% free, than the 'savings' off the normal book price should only be $0.75 to maybe a buck or two on average. The price of a book goes into a number of things. The stores profit, the marketing & sales people, the authors salary/earnings, editors, lawyers, etc, etc, etc. There are a TON of people who need to get paid in the process of writing a book. If book publishers could make more money by lowering the cost of the books and reaching more customers, they would have. However, that isn't the case. They could theoretically sell most books for 1/2 the price they do now and still generate revenue, but overall they would lose money. That is just the economics of it all. The reason amazon's ebooks were so cheap early on is that they were taking a loss on the sale of them so that they could get more people to buy kindles. Tactics like that are common in business.

Actually that's incorrect. In fact, that is what this court case was about. In brief, initially Amazon (and other e-book sellers such as Sony and Apple) would negotiate prices for copies of e-books. Similar to how a grocery store negotiates the price of its food from the manufacturers. Once Amazon (and others) bought these copies of the e-books, they could sell them at whatever price they wanted (similar to how a grocery store sets its own prices). You can also think of it the same way Green Man Gaming sets sale prices on games. They purchased Steam keys (negotiated a lower price for a large quantity) and then sell the games at a discount. Apple didn't like this business model, as they felt it unfairly advantaged Amazon. Apple talked with the publishers into a way of forcing Amazon and the industry to change. They would make it so publishers set the final price you see on Amazon, Apple, etc. be set by the publishers themselves and the seller would just get a portion of the sale. Apple showed the publishers how they would be able to sell the books for more, and got the publishers to group together to force Amazon to agree to this new system. Apple in return could knock Amazon down a peg, and perhaps get favorable pricing on their own site. All of this at the expense of consumers. The argument could be made that Amazon was under pricing their books to push sales of the Kindle, which was unfairly preventing competition, but that was not what this court case was about, that would have to be filed as a separate lawsuit. It is not a legal defense to claim someone else was doing something illegal, so I did something illegal.

That is not correct. In the agency pricing model the publishers of the book set the price and the seller of the book receives a certain percentage of the sale. The agency model was introduced into the ebook industry by Apple and a collaboration of major publishing houses. Before the agency model Amazon and other sellers purchased the licenses for the ebooks for a set price from the publisher and Amazon was then free to sell the books for whatever price they chose. In some cases Amazon sold these books as loss leaders. Your arguement that the "no favored nations clause" was the problem under Apple is correct but only because Apple directly colluded with the publishing houses to bring this about by introducing the agency model. Apple convinced the publishers to choose this model and then the publishers forced Amazon to also agree to the agency model. Once this happened the publishers were able to enforce their prices on the market and so everyone started paying more.

Betamax, I think you mean. Where'd you pull the porn-prohibited line from? > While VHS machines' lower retail price was a major factor, the principal battleground proved to be recording time. The original Sony Betamax video recorder for the NTSC television system could only record for 60 minutes, identical to the previous U-matic format, which had been sufficient for use in television studios. JVC's VHS could manage 120 minutes, followed by RCA's entrance into the market with a 240 minute recorder. These challenges sparked a mini-war to see who could achieve the longest recording time.

Something about her taking away the option for employees to work from home. Didn't seem all that bad until it was shown that some of those people who did work from home had no Yahoo! office anywhere near where they lived. Which means quite a bit of employees lost their jobs because they couldn't "go" to work anymore. If I remember this all happened very fast and no one could realistically relocate in such a small time frame.

It's a business and they can do what they want. If I don't like their business practices, then I won't use their service. Rather than being "furious," they should just stop using it. Dip-shits. Actually, maybe this title is just the douchenozzle.