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Comment Once it's out in the wild, it's game over! (Score 1) 59

When you read that Stuxnet was an NSA/Israel creation and every month you get drip fed news about NSA's true illegal/terrorist side (like finding ways to hack popular email servers or backend links of cloud storage) and just now, cracking VPN services, you have to ask yourself this: "Who has opened Pandora's box? Who deserves to suffer from it [first]?"

Comment Consumer Rights? (Score 1) 230

What can you do against vendors who do that? At the very best it's a hassle to fix the problem caused resulting in wasted man-hours (bearing in mind that most of us are not tech-savvy). At the very worst, this can result in permanent damage for example iOS 8 bricking your iPhone. What do you do then? What are your consumer rights when a botch (insufficiently tested) OS update results in a damaged device? Who is to blame here?

Submission + - Wikipedia sits on $60 million while begging for money to keep the site ad-free 2

Andreas Kolbe writes: The latest financial statements for the Wikimedia Foundation, the charity behind Wikipedia, show it has assets of $60 million, including $27 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $23 million in investments. Yet its aggressive banner ads suggest disaster may be imminent if people don't donate and imply that Wikipedia may be forced to run commercial advertising to survive. Jimmy Wales counters complaints by saying the Foundation are merely prudent in ensuring they always have a reserve equal to one year's spending, but the fact is that Wikimedia spending has increased by 1,000 percent in the course of a few years. And by a process of circular logic, as spending increases, so the reserve has to increase, meaning that donors are asked to donate millions more each year. Unlike the suggestion made by the fundraising banners, most of these budget increases have nothing to do with keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free, and nothing to do with generating and curating Wikipedia content, a task that is handled entirely by the unpaid volunteer base. The skyrocketing budget increases are instead the result of a massive expansion of paid software engineering staff at the Foundation – whose work in recent years has been heavily criticised by the unpaid volunteer base. The aggressive fundraising banners too are controversial within the Wikimedia community itself.

Comment Re:I've questioned that myself (Score 1) 283

I agree, it's a long game. If Wall Street investors told Amazon "grow as big as you can be, reach for the skies," then clearly they are in it for the longterm. Someone on this thread also mentioned that Amazon is re-investing its profit in growth, which is why its graph of sales maybe growing exponentially up but profit line is zero or flat. This is why I'm claiming that it's not a normal company. How can it afford to do what it's doing? And for that long (since 1997?)? Even if you find investors in Europe to do the same, you will have 2 problems: scepticism and not-so-deep pockets. The culture of risk taking is far greater in the US. I'm not sure why trade ministers over Europe are not talking more about the disaster (e.g. death of local book stores) that's being created by hurricane Amazon.

Comment Re:I've questioned that myself (Score 1) 283

From the documentary I mentioned, a lady said she buys books at £8 while Amazon sells the same at £5.50 (with free shipping!). Afterwards the Amazon rep agreed that sometimes they sell books at a loss. France saw this danger and their Minister of commerce talked about tackling this threat on the documentary (i believe Free Shipping was mentioned too). Let me reiterate my question, how can one compete against a "company" like Amazon (IPO 1997)? Every country it goes to, it kills off local rivals because they don't have the same generous investors and banking credit-lines as Amazon. This is just not normal.

Comment I've questioned that myself (Score 3, Interesting) 283

To me Amazon is not a normal company at all because the philosophy of its investors is "Do whatever you have to do, don't worry about profits/losses, we'll be right behind you." How can one compete against a company like that? It's as if a bank (hell, maybe Treasury!) opened an infinite credit line just for Amazon! No wonder our high-street shops (and online shops) are falling like flies!

From a BBC documentary on Amazon (Business Boomers) someone said "Amazon was designed to be a shark right from the start." It's true in a way. Since spending money is no issue, it can do whatever it wants with its prices while growing its business areas. However its brick & mortar (or online) rivals cannot. They don't have an infinite credit line with their banks or investors, and depend on their profit margins. I'm wondering why European governments have not cracked down on this unfair "business" that is Amazon?

Comment Definition of a troll? (Score 1) 489

Basically anyone who disagrees with the government, their friendship with banksters and bloodshed they caused after invading a country based on lies (George Bush & Tony Blair). Even criticising a fast food outlet with "Your food sucks!" or a religion. Free-speech advocates and freedom fighters will now be victims of this anti-troll law. I sure hope people falsely accused will sue the government for all inconvenience caused.

Comment Re:Is university a waste of time and money? (Score 1) 187

See what am talking about! Lots of IFs, DOs and DONTs. What's the point of spending $35K/year + living fees for 4 years just to find out that you're basically fucked if you want to program anything. Should have gone for culinary or wood/metal carving. Once they graduate they can start converting their ideas into the physical world, no messing about or perusing USPTO.

Comment Is university a waste of time and money? (Score 2) 187

Why spend 3 to 4 years studying computer science just to realise at the end, that everything patentable in software has been patented (from the truly stupid, trivial to non-trivial ideas) and big firms holding the patents have been and are doing so for decades and decades!! For innovation's sake and to tell university student that they have a future in this sector, isn't it time to shorten the life of software patents or ban them all together?

Comment Hackers of the world unite? (Score 2) 57

If filthy Monsanto can sue State of Vermont over "GMO" food labelling, on grounds that this violates Monsanto's freedom of speech (yes, am still working that one out), then it's in Twitter's god damn right to sue the US government over its constant abuse of people's private life! It's like asking someone to stop raping you but that someone enacted laws to legalise rape. This is what's going on in the US today!

Comment Question (Score 1) 230

Sometimes when I log into Yahoo mail (https log-in page), the secure icon in Firefox changes from padlock to exclamation mark. Same problem on Twitter, the https turns into an exclamation mark. This is a permanent problem on Google Image search. The worst thing about this problem is in Yahoo. When I press tab and am about to fill in my password, the caret jumps from password field to username field, which means part of my username now has appended to it part of my password. I only notice that after hitting Enter and the screen returns an invalid login error. My suspicion is that my ISP has somehow managed to inject a tiny Java script into my https log-in page. In Facebook, sometimes my first login attempt doesn't even register, so I have to hit Enter again. Is that me being too paranoid?

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