From your story, it sounds like the couple in question "hooked up" because the other one was attractive, but soon found they had absolutely nothing in common with each other, and each was using their phones to avoid what would otherwise be a forced social situation.
Phones and other pocket devices might give people an easy means out of a social situation, but they do not inherently make people less social. When with friends or other people you actually want to talk to, devices either fall completely by the wayside, or become a central conversation piece for the group ("Hey everyone, check out this cool thing on my phone!").
A propellent-free drive is a major milestone for sustainable space travel.
In a zero-g vacuum, the only (tested) means of self-locomotion is to expel some manner of matter in the opposite direction than you want to travel. The problem is, matter is hard to come by in space. Energy, however, is fairly easy to obtain if you're anywhere near a star. However, as far as I know, there are no means of converting stored energy into thrust, without also expelling matter. So while energy can be restored in situ, and can be used to augment the thrust gained by matter expulsion, at the end of the day, something is coming out of your thruster. Which means that, eventually, you will run out of that something.
I'm skeptical, but if this thruster pans out, it would be a major breakthrough in sustainable space travel.
Personally, though, I'd put my money on solar sails.
Torture? Not too concerning. Lying about it? Very concerning.
To be honest, the treatment of enemy combatants doesn't concern me too much, either. I don't condone it, but not based on moral or ethical reasons. In my opinion, there are two main reasons not to torture captives.
Reason 1: The Geneva Conventions. Torture and other mistreatment of prisoners of war are expressly forbidden by international treaty. The Geneva Conventions outline acceptable acts during war, which we abide by in the hope that others will as well. Basically, if we wouldn't want our prisoners treated in that manner, we shouldn't treat their prisoners in such a manner. One could make the argument that, since the enemy in this particular conflict doesn't abide by the Geneva Conventions, neither should we, but I disagree with that view. They are just as important to follow in that situation (international goodwill, make supporting the enemy harder to morally justify, etc.). (One of the arguments made about this whole fiasco was that since the prisoners were "terrorists" they were not "enemy combatants" and thus not protected under the Geneva Convention, but that's just bullshit semantics.)
Reason 2: Torture. Doesn't. Frakking. Work. Time and time and time again, it's been shown that torture is not a reliable means of extracting information. The waterboarding done at Gitmo is no exception. No actionable intelligence (that could not have been, or in some cases had already been, otherwise obtained) resulted from the torture of those prisoners. (And, again, cut the bullshit "enhanced interrogation" semantics, it was torture.) Torture is useless for two big reasons. You're either dealing with someone who has been trained to resist interrogation, in which case torture won't get any better information, or they haven't been trained to resist interrogation, in which case there are plenty of other interrogation methods available with which to get the information.
My main concerns on the whole issue were the incessant lies, cover-ups, and fabrications made by both the current administration and the previous one. That people haven't gone to jail for lying to Congress and the American Citizenry is morally offensive, in my opinion.
It's a matter of public perception. While someone who is well versed in judicial ethics might be able to say that there's probably not a conflict of interest (which is not a particularly strong statement in itself), a layman's view would see the act in question as dubiously ethical.
Your focus is on the wrong word. Don't read it as "there definitely appears to be a conflict of interest", read it as "there definitely appears to be a conflict of interest". It is easy to prove that there appears to be a conflict of interest:
When I first heard about this story, I assumed there was a conflict of interest.
After reading about it in more depth, it appears that the stock is merely an investment vehicle, and there may not be a conflict of interest.
QED, there appears to be a conflict of interest until one looks closer.
An action which would cause a non-trivial portion of the public to question the ethical standing of one who is a secret arbiter of ethical judgement is something which should be avoided. I.e., those that preside over secret courts need to be entirely above reproach, not merely technically avoiding a conflict of interest.
Hi Jen, thanks for sharing your story. Sometimes I fear that Techdirt and similar sites are just screaming into the void (or at best preaching to the choir). It's encouraging to know that people are being informed by the stories here, and that progress is being made, even if only slowly.
"definitely appears to be a conflict of interest" != "there is a conflict of interest".
The statement "And, indeed, there definitely appears to be a conflict of interest here." was in reference to "I think prudence would suggest that a FISA judge would not acquire investments in these telecommunication stocks," which was quoted logically following the statement "And even if there isn't anything fishy here, just the appearance of a potential bias seems problematic."
In other words, Mike was saying that there definitely exists the appearance of a conflict of interest. Even if there is no actual conflict of interest, the semblance of one alone is a problem.
Not to derail your story idea, but having 100% of your brain cells "on" at the same time would be a bit like having a seizure. Every possible output signal would be active at the same time, most likely causing wild convulsions and then shortly thereafter, death.
Not that reality ever stopped a story that "feels" right from catching on.
Technically, that's what the Mythbusters' episode referenced in that article was testing. They found that on average, ~35% of your brain is in use at any particular point in time. Unfortunately, they tested the myth as you stated it, not as how it is commonly interpreted.
Seriously, 65% of people believe that? I had hoped it was just prevalent in media because of the easy story opportunities it offers, but that actual people realized what a load of crock it is. Maybe there was ambiguity or selection bias in the survey... I can dream, right?
Simplest way is often just leak a "pirate" version yourself that has been specifically altered with "features" like the one in the story. More complex methods may involve analyzing the program signature and checking for modifications (which will usually go unnoticed by the crackers, at least for a while, if it doesn't immediately boot you out of the game), or scanning for external memory edits (if someone is poking around in the active memory, they're either pirating or cheating).
Netflix would need to pay for a connection to upload anything to customers in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but I can't see any way Netflix could deliver anything to anyone if it wasn't paying someone to let it do that already.
They pay someone, to be sure, but that someone isn't Verizon (who provide consumer internet connections). They pay for their data centers' dedicated fiber lines (probably to Level 3 or other backbone internet providers). Verizon/Comcast are also shaking down Netflix for peering arrangements.
In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the users of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free, "bill-and-keep," or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the other in association with the exchange of traffic; instead, each derives and retains revenue from its own customers.
Basically two companies (Content Provider and ISP) need to fulfill the same business need (get data from content provider to the end user). The "customer" pays both businesses for the service provided, the Content Provider for the content, and the ISP for delivering it. Thus, in order to increase customer satisfaction and decrease costs all around, the two companies would setup a direct connection between the Content Provider's data center, and the ISP's backbone, minimizing the number of hops to the end user by cutting out middleman networks. This not only provides faster and more stable connections to the end user, it decreases general network congestion, as the content no longer needs to travel through other networks. For the ISP, it means lower costs, less congested networks, and higher customer satisfaction.
At least, that's how it worked historically. With what is equivalent to monopoly status, broadband ISPs don't need to worry about things like costs, service levels, or customer satisfaction. Netflix and other content providers, however, don't have the same luxury, which means either capitulating to the demands of the big cable/telcos, or watch their user base suffer and ultimately dwindle. It's like playing a game of chicken, but the other guy is driving a tank.
Is it just me, or is the entire idea of combating IP theft by withholding knowledge of security vulnerabilities laughably counterproductive?
If NSA or other government agencies are aware of a vulnerability, so are numerous hackers, particularly those working for foreign governments. Those hackers can then use those vulnerabilities to break into secure systems to acquire high value IP. These agencies could prevent many instances of IP theft (theft meaning the initial illegal acquisition of privileged or non-public IP) by simply revealing knowledge of these vulnerabilities, allowing companies to patch their systems. Not to mention this would help protect against numerous other potentially costly attacks against US companies and infrastructure.
But like the program in Cuba, which was widely ridiculed when it became public this month, the services in Pakistan and Afghanistan shut down after they ran out of money because the administration could not make them self-sustaining.
Unlike Twitter, which is, uhh... Wait, how does twitter make money again?
In all seriousness, though, IIRC the majority of Twitter's income is from selling API access to people doing broad scale social analytics. Even so, Twitter barely keeps above water. It's a business strategy that is nigh impossible to replicate until you hit critical mass, and even then it's a tightrope walk.
It's no surprise that these programs failed to become self-sustaining.
And it wasn't because they didn't care about it, since they fired him once they knew...
Technically, all we know is that they fired him once the paper found out about it. It's possible the university already knew / didn't care, but did care about the negative publicity from the story and fired him because of that. (Baseless speculation of course, Occam's razor applies here.)
Arbitration is fine, but it should be agreed to AFTER there is an actual dispute. At the very least there should be a business relationship more involved than visiting a website or printing a coupon.
Dispute resolution clauses are common in business contracts. They allow for both parties to amicably resolve disputes, without going to court (which usually precludes those parties ever doing business with each other again, due to costs and the adversarial nature of lawsuits). When agreed to by informed (equal-ish) parties, they help keep people from acting crazy.
Arbitration clauses are standard in the contracts we give our clients (I'm an officer in an IT Consulting firm that I founded with two other partners.) We've only ever had one dispute, but as our clients are generally bigger than us, fair arbitration prevents them from drowning us in legal fees. In that particular instance, just reminding the client of our dispute resolution agreement got them acting sane.
Of course, in our case, we're talking about $10,000-$100,000 contracts negotiated and signed by informed parties who have access to legal counsel. So, while I think that dispute resolution agreements have an important role in business agreements, having hidden arbitration policies that are implicitly "agreed" to by consumers who have absolutely zero negotiating power, like General Mills is doing, is utterly deplorable.
Beyond the obvious horrible problems for consumers, their under-handed business practices undermine public opinion of corporations. As a business owner who believes that businesses can and should be actors for the public good (and acts accordingly), I am personally offended when companies act like this. Unfortunately, people are dicks, so this sort of behavior is all too common. It's indefensible.
I was going to mention that too. It's a small mistake, but it drastically changes the meaning of the sentence.
As written it says that imperfect DRM solutions are causing people to become paying customers.
Of course, maybe that was intentional. I don't think I've ever looked at a DRM-free game and thought "I would buy this, but it's missing that sense of accomplishment from successfully navigating a maze of DRM restrictions.", but maybe others do. :-p
I am not getting it: what is wrong with spy agency expoliting flaws per se?
Not much, actually, prima facie.
Except for the fact that the NSA is not supposed to be a spy agency.
The NSA is supposed to play a defensive role, not an offensive one. The true harm is not, as you say, the act of exploiting the Heartbleed flaw per se, but rather it would be the inaction of not informing the general public of this widespread vulnerability.
Indeed, if the NSA knew about Heartbleed for even a few days before the general public, then by not informing those United States Citizens (who they are ostensibly protecting) affected by this vulnerability, they not only have failed in their mission of defense, but have implicitly harmed the vital infrastructure of this Nation.
On the post: Technology Doesn't Make Us Less Social; It Just Changes The Way We Socialize
Re: Re:
Phones and other pocket devices might give people an easy means out of a social situation, but they do not inherently make people less social. When with friends or other people you actually want to talk to, devices either fall completely by the wayside, or become a central conversation piece for the group ("Hey everyone, check out this cool thing on my phone!").
On the post: DailyDirt: I'm Givin' Her All She's Got, Captain...
Re: Re: Propellent-less drive?
On the post: DailyDirt: I'm Givin' Her All She's Got, Captain...
Re: Re: Propellent-less drive?
On the post: DailyDirt: I'm Givin' Her All She's Got, Captain...
Propellent-less drive?
In a zero-g vacuum, the only (tested) means of self-locomotion is to expel some manner of matter in the opposite direction than you want to travel. The problem is, matter is hard to come by in space. Energy, however, is fairly easy to obtain if you're anywhere near a star. However, as far as I know, there are no means of converting stored energy into thrust, without also expelling matter. So while energy can be restored in situ, and can be used to augment the thrust gained by matter expulsion, at the end of the day, something is coming out of your thruster. Which means that, eventually, you will run out of that something.
I'm skeptical, but if this thruster pans out, it would be a major breakthrough in sustainable space travel.
Personally, though, I'd put my money on solar sails.
On the post: Obama Admits 'We Tortured Some Folks' But Doesn't Seem Too Concerned
Torture? Not too concerning. Lying about it? Very concerning.
Reason 1: The Geneva Conventions. Torture and other mistreatment of prisoners of war are expressly forbidden by international treaty. The Geneva Conventions outline acceptable acts during war, which we abide by in the hope that others will as well. Basically, if we wouldn't want our prisoners treated in that manner, we shouldn't treat their prisoners in such a manner. One could make the argument that, since the enemy in this particular conflict doesn't abide by the Geneva Conventions, neither should we, but I disagree with that view. They are just as important to follow in that situation (international goodwill, make supporting the enemy harder to morally justify, etc.). (One of the arguments made about this whole fiasco was that since the prisoners were "terrorists" they were not "enemy combatants" and thus not protected under the Geneva Convention, but that's just bullshit semantics.)
Reason 2: Torture. Doesn't. Frakking. Work. Time and time and time again, it's been shown that torture is not a reliable means of extracting information. The waterboarding done at Gitmo is no exception. No actionable intelligence (that could not have been, or in some cases had already been, otherwise obtained) resulted from the torture of those prisoners. (And, again, cut the bullshit "enhanced interrogation" semantics, it was torture.) Torture is useless for two big reasons. You're either dealing with someone who has been trained to resist interrogation, in which case torture won't get any better information, or they haven't been trained to resist interrogation, in which case there are plenty of other interrogation methods available with which to get the information.
My main concerns on the whole issue were the incessant lies, cover-ups, and fabrications made by both the current administration and the previous one. That people haven't gone to jail for lying to Congress and the American Citizenry is morally offensive, in my opinion.
On the post: Language School's Blogger Fired For Writing A Post On Homophones; Director Fears Association With 'Gay Sex'
Re: Re: What.
On the post: FISA Court Judges Keep Buying Verizon Stock; Wonder What They Know...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Your focus is on the wrong word. Don't read it as "there definitely appears to be a conflict of interest", read it as "there definitely appears to be a conflict of interest". It is easy to prove that there appears to be a conflict of interest:
An action which would cause a non-trivial portion of the public to question the ethical standing of one who is a secret arbiter of ethical judgement is something which should be avoided. I.e., those that preside over secret courts need to be entirely above reproach, not merely technically avoiding a conflict of interest.
On the post: If You Want To Know How Supporting Techdirt Can Help Shift The Debate In Washington DC, Read This
Thanks for sharing.
On the post: FISA Court Judges Keep Buying Verizon Stock; Wonder What They Know...
Re: Re: Re:
The statement "And, indeed, there definitely appears to be a conflict of interest here." was in reference to "I think prudence would suggest that a FISA judge would not acquire investments in these telecommunication stocks," which was quoted logically following the statement "And even if there isn't anything fishy here, just the appearance of a potential bias seems problematic."
In other words, Mike was saying that there definitely exists the appearance of a conflict of interest. Even if there is no actual conflict of interest, the semblance of one alone is a problem.
On the post: DailyDirt: Boosting Brainpower
Re: Re:
Not that reality ever stopped a story that "feels" right from catching on.
On the post: DailyDirt: Boosting Brainpower
Re:
Seriously, 65% of people believe that? I had hoped it was just prevalent in media because of the easy story opportunities it offers, but that actual people realized what a load of crock it is. Maybe there was ambiguity or selection bias in the survey... I can dream, right?
On the post: Skullgirls Creator Combats Piracy With Humor And By Being Awesome
Re: Re:
On the post: Yes, Verizon Is At Fault In Netflix Dispute; It's Not Delivering What It Sold Customers
Re: Re: Re: Paid twice already
...what?
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/28/netflix-inks-peering-deal-with-verizon/
On the post: Yes, Verizon Is At Fault In Netflix Dispute; It's Not Delivering What It Sold Customers
Re: Paid twice already
They pay someone, to be sure, but that someone isn't Verizon (who provide consumer internet connections). They pay for their data centers' dedicated fiber lines (probably to Level 3 or other backbone internet providers). Verizon/Comcast are also shaking down Netflix for peering arrangements.
From wikipedia:
Basically two companies (Content Provider and ISP) need to fulfill the same business need (get data from content provider to the end user). The "customer" pays both businesses for the service provided, the Content Provider for the content, and the ISP for delivering it. Thus, in order to increase customer satisfaction and decrease costs all around, the two companies would setup a direct connection between the Content Provider's data center, and the ISP's backbone, minimizing the number of hops to the end user by cutting out middleman networks. This not only provides faster and more stable connections to the end user, it decreases general network congestion, as the content no longer needs to travel through other networks. For the ISP, it means lower costs, less congested networks, and higher customer satisfaction.
At least, that's how it worked historically. With what is equivalent to monopoly status, broadband ISPs don't need to worry about things like costs, service levels, or customer satisfaction. Netflix and other content providers, however, don't have the same luxury, which means either capitulating to the demands of the big cable/telcos, or watch their user base suffer and ultimately dwindle. It's like playing a game of chicken, but the other guy is driving a tank.
On the post: White House Says It Can Withhold Vulnerabilities If It Will Help Them Catch 'Intellectual Property Thieves'
Counterproductive?
If NSA or other government agencies are aware of a vulnerability, so are numerous hackers, particularly those working for foreign governments. Those hackers can then use those vulnerabilities to break into secure systems to acquire high value IP. These agencies could prevent many instances of IP theft (theft meaning the initial illegal acquisition of privileged or non-public IP) by simply revealing knowledge of these vulnerabilities, allowing companies to patch their systems. Not to mention this would help protect against numerous other potentially costly attacks against US companies and infrastructure.
On the post: US Admits It Secretly Built Similar Twitter-Like Services For Lots Of Countries
Unlike Twitter
Unlike Twitter, which is, uhh... Wait, how does twitter make money again?
In all seriousness, though, IIRC the majority of Twitter's income is from selling API access to people doing broad scale social analytics. Even so, Twitter barely keeps above water. It's a business strategy that is nigh impossible to replicate until you hit critical mass, and even then it's a tightrope walk.
It's no surprise that these programs failed to become self-sustaining.
On the post: University Hires Sports Info Director, Fires Him Two Hours Later After Local Paper Googles His Name
Re:
Technically, all we know is that they fired him once the paper found out about it. It's possible the university already knew / didn't care, but did care about the negative publicity from the story and fired him because of that. (Baseless speculation of course, Occam's razor applies here.)
On the post: General Mills Says If You 'Like' Cheerios On Facebook, You Can No Longer Sue
Re:
Dispute resolution clauses are common in business contracts. They allow for both parties to amicably resolve disputes, without going to court (which usually precludes those parties ever doing business with each other again, due to costs and the adversarial nature of lawsuits). When agreed to by informed (equal-ish) parties, they help keep people from acting crazy.
Arbitration clauses are standard in the contracts we give our clients (I'm an officer in an IT Consulting firm that I founded with two other partners.) We've only ever had one dispute, but as our clients are generally bigger than us, fair arbitration prevents them from drowning us in legal fees. In that particular instance, just reminding the client of our dispute resolution agreement got them acting sane.
Of course, in our case, we're talking about $10,000-$100,000 contracts negotiated and signed by informed parties who have access to legal counsel. So, while I think that dispute resolution agreements have an important role in business agreements, having hidden arbitration policies that are implicitly "agreed" to by consumers who have absolutely zero negotiating power, like General Mills is doing, is utterly deplorable.
Beyond the obvious horrible problems for consumers, their under-handed business practices undermine public opinion of corporations. As a business owner who believes that businesses can and should be actors for the public good (and acts accordingly), I am personally offended when companies act like this. Unfortunately, people are dicks, so this sort of behavior is all too common. It's indefensible.
On the post: Square Enix: DRM Is Here To Stay
Re: typo
As written it says that imperfect DRM solutions are causing people to become paying customers.
Of course, maybe that was intentional. I don't think I've ever looked at a DRM-free game and thought "I would buy this, but it's missing that sense of accomplishment from successfully navigating a maze of DRM restrictions.", but maybe others do. :-p
On the post: Even If NSA Didn't Use Heartbleed In The Past, It Still Could Be Making Use Of It
Re:
Not much, actually, prima facie.
Except for the fact that the NSA is not supposed to be a spy agency.
The NSA is supposed to play a defensive role, not an offensive one. The true harm is not, as you say, the act of exploiting the Heartbleed flaw per se, but rather it would be the inaction of not informing the general public of this widespread vulnerability.
Indeed, if the NSA knew about Heartbleed for even a few days before the general public, then by not informing those United States Citizens (who they are ostensibly protecting) affected by this vulnerability, they not only have failed in their mission of defense, but have implicitly harmed the vital infrastructure of this Nation.
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