Microsoft has never respected numbers much.
Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, Windows 95, NT 4, Windows 98, Win2000, Windows ME, WinXP, Windows 7, Windows 8.... you see? all over the place.
What they DO tend to respect is focus groups, and they maybe determined that 10 is sexier than 9, perhaps to imply more distance from (pfft) 8
(or steal from spotlight from OS X)?
Simply because a data-recorder didn't show the Start menu was used very often (in win 8 testing, I presume) does not mean that people don't rely upon it when the need arises.
Or maybe dropping it was just a bone-headed effort to force users to use the Metro start page.
I'm still using an old Core2Duo (2.53 running at 3.8). It *only* has 4GB, but I put in and SSD and an ATI 6770 a couple years ago. Does everything I need, the only things it has problems running are recent games, not a reason to upgrade in my case. Many components got upgraded from machines found in the trash.
I applaud you, sir. An evening of tech dumpster-diving with a friend of mine some time back was a real eye-opening experience, particularly where we found some office or government building chucking mass quantities of "older" equipment. Tons of working, capable silicon, heading for landfills, when a lot of it maybe a year ago would have been tempting on newegg. There was a time when the latest OS or application release would make your hardware seem terrible, prompting you to pine for an upgrade, but not any longer, with the narrow exception of cutting-edge games, or professional apps for which you should get your employer to pay for anyway.
What you miss out on with older hardware is size and power-consumption. If performance is not your goal, then with modern gear you have the opportunity to build a silent, fanless system and/or an entire PC that fits in a 5" square box. It surprises me that this remains a niche market for do-it-your-selfers or small shops online. It would be worth it to me to pay a few bucks for a noiseless rig that fits on my desk. But as long as my older rigs are running fine, no worries.
Ars Technica has more on the story, and links to actual news sites covering the mess. And as many insightful Slashdot commentators have surmised, there's more to the story than a lousy cam-rip of a lousy movie.
Copyright silliness may have led to him being caught, but Danks got his 33 months all by himself.
Danks was arrested only six days after he'd uploaded the video, and two days later he wrote on Facebook, "Seven billion people and I was the first. F*** you Universal Pictures."
Danks had also sold DVD copies of the movie for £1.50 each. He said his total profit from the scheme was about £1,000.
To who? Who buys these things? Why would anyone spend money and time to suffer through a cam-rip?
how much of this was earned after he was arrested?
The prosecuting and defending attorneys both seemed to agree that Danks' motive for the piracy of Fast and Furious 6 was “Street Cred.” His defense attorney told the court, "He has no substantial assets of any sort, and his financial gain has been extremely limited, but he was obviously aware that it was a popular film that would be of interest."
The judge was particularly harsh on Danks because of his cavalier attitude."This was bold, arrogant, and cocksure offending,” he said to Danks, as Sky News reports.
I believe you, but do you have a cite? Does some literary authority make these numbers gospel?
Google, unlike Apple, doesn't actually force you to go through its "stupid "store"". And Microsoft doesn't force you either, at least on its non-RT, non-phone versions of its Windows OS.
Well, if you're going to bring up non-phone versions, then Apple doesn't force (Mac) users to go through its store either.
Been watching old movies lately?
thermonuclear power plant turbine
thermonuclear? you mean like the H-bomb, but it's a power plant? with... a turbine? you worked on that?
then I will stay off your lawn, but maybe I could borrow your mower?
The Patent Office, in an effort to modernize and attract more talent (you know, accept less salary for your engineering/science degree by working for the government instead of the private sector) implemented a plan to permit people to work from home, and from there to work remotely from the city the Office itself is located at, any city you want (within the 48 contiguous states). This was a natural outgrowth of an earlier (and successful) effort to eliminate paper at the office and work entirely electronically.
The actual source material for the Post article appears to show growing pains that one can reasonably expect from permitting thousands of employees to do their work from home, hundreds or even thousands of miles from the Office (if they qualify). Whereas the Post article seems written intentionally to inflame the reader (for what... maybe to sell more advertising? build cred for the writer?), the source material shows no wide-spread fraud, just your typical employees finding that, with the freedom to work at home, it's real easy to put your work off until deadline and then cram, or not put in the hours you would if you had a supervisor looking into your cubicle each morning. Same shit the private sector has been dealing with for years.
From what I can tell from the source, the management of the PTO is on it, and has been on it at least since the report came out in 2012. The only difference is that, because this is government, it's public and everyone can arm-chair quarterback their asses (probably as they themselves goof off at their terminals at work or from inside their momma's basement), whereas if a private company were going through this, it would be an internal matter and none of your damned business.
The Patent Office performs a function that is crucial; not even the Koch brothers would deny that. Shitting on the whole lot of them because a couple of employees can't handle the freedom of telework is unfair and dishonest, particularly coming from people taking suspiciously long lunch hours to write comments on slashdot
As a reviewer for USPTO, I can tell you...
Just in case anyone is confused from the fact that this was modded "interesting" (as opposed to"funny" or "troll"), it is most assuredly bullshit. The AC is not "a reviewer for USPTO".
Key flaws: there is no such thing is a patent "reviewer" (they are called examiners, and a real patent examiner would never call him or herself otherwise).
AC also wrote about "approve approve approve reject approve". Patent examiners do not "approve" anything... they "allow" applications or pass applications to "allowance". Again, an actual examiner, after all the training they go through, would not make this mistake.
One more, "A major compounding factor is the fact that if you reject an application, it's likely to come back and be noticed, but if you approve an application, no one notices." Bullshit, the opposite is true. An application has to go through multiple reviews before it goes to patent, whereas rejecting an application only needs approval from a supervisor (if the Examiner does not him or herself have signature authority).
Just out to set the record straight for the
Insightful response... would mod you up if I could.
agree that only time will tell if Bitcoin will pay off for all the energy and the dedicated silicon being put to it (hopefully not headed for the landfill). I maintain that the effort would be far better spent on medical research, but humans will be humans, betting on maybe getting rich is more fun than betting on maybe curing a disease you might get in ten years. but rich or not, being sick sucks.
This a thousand times over. Run this equipment with World Community Grid or Folding@Home, might lead to curing cancer or AIDS. Fuck, just donate it to some medical research effort and maybe in 20 years a cure will come out and save your ass.
I'm sure specialized circuits that do SHA256 and only SHA256 will be incredibly useful when donated to medical research. Yep.
Seriously. The days of using general purpose hardware in bitcoin mining operations are long gone.
You can also think about this differently. The energy isn't wasted to make money out of nothing. Energy and highly specialized and efficient hardware are used to secure a distributed ledger and payment system against attacks from powerful adversaries by increasing up the cost of attacks. The money miners make is payment for this service they provide.
Wouldn't it suck for all the bitcoiners if a talented mathematician found a way to trivially circumvent the bitcoin exchange system or if someone came up with a new cryptocurrency that people just liked better (I think both are just a matter of time), leaving Bitcoiners with worthless data stored on hard drives.
Former might happen or not. Mathematical breakthroughs that lead to catastrophic failure of the system seem unlikely however. The current design is pretty resilient. If SHA256 is broken, there'll be a big mess, but the community may decide to switch to a different algorithm, fixing it with a hard fork. Even breaking ECDSA has limited impact, unless you can break keys in under 10 minutes. Even then, your attack will be probabilistic at best.
As for new cryptocurrencies, there are loads of them and one or two actually have some worthwhile new features. Guess who'll know about them before you do? Bitcoiners. Guess what they'll do with their Bitcoin holdings when they find new ones that look interesting? Go to an exchange and buy some using Bitcoin.
Good thing you're not solving real problems. What. A. Fucking. Waste.
This a thousand times over. Run this equipment with World Community Grid or Folding@Home, might lead to curing cancer or AIDS. Fuck, just donate it to some medical research effort and maybe in 20 years a cure will come out and save your ass.
Bitcoin? Megawattage flushed down the entropy hole. Wouldn't it suck for all the bitcoiners if a talented mathematician found a way to trivially circumvent the bitcoin exchange system or if someone came up with a new cryptocurrency that people just liked better (I think both are just a matter of time), leaving Bitcoiners with worthless data stored on hard drives. Maybe all that fine computing equipment won't end up in the landfill, but that's a lot of heat and fossil fuel gone for nothing.
Aren't they obliged to cancel your account if you ask, though? I mean, say you say "i want to close my account", they asked if you're sure, aware of the great deals etc. Say no, again, politely, then firmly "close my account now". What would happen if they continued trying to get you to stay and you stay silent?
You make me smile, my friend. But your cable company is not like the police who have to stop questioning you when you invoke your rights to remain silent and ask for a lawyer. Unless an ambitious attorney-general is riding up their ass over some consumer-protection clause, your cable company can keep on shilling until they (not you) become convinced they are wasting their time.
Tell them you're moving out of town (to a location that's not served by the company). Tell them you're broke and destitute with no job, and your wife left you and took the TV. Tell them your cable box overheated and burned your house down. Tell them you're appeals have run out and you're going to prison.
Then they might give up.
Every cable company office I've ever been in - every single one - all the employees are behind bullet proof glass that would make a bank teller envious.
My experience also. Would mod up if I had mod points. Everywhere I've lived, returning a cable box was like visiting a prison. Desolate white-washed cinderblock waiting rooms with strange-smelling air in a run-down part of town. The security glass makes you think you're looking out from a decompression chamber. The steel drawer you put your equipment in can take your arm clean off.
What could have happened in these places to inspire this much security? I wanna know!
The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin
