So as I understand it, what's desired is a solution that will just plain work out of the box as soon as you plug it in, and will require no work/help from the users at the other end to keep it working. Teleconference (video and audio) calls need to be auto-answered at the remote end, provided it's the right party calling them; effectively, the remote endpoint needs to have neither control over the system nor responsibility to keep it running. I presume to some degree this is to be able to check up on them and make sure everything is okay, as much as it is for more social uses of telepresence?

So, do this:

1. Send them one of the new "smart TVs" that comes with a webcam built in.

2. Get a job at the NSA.

3. Profit!

You don't understand Singapore. I know it sounds quite bizarre to a Westerner, but the citizens of Singapore *want* this. This is what they actually value; the common perspective differs, in that they feel that the needs of the society of the whole are greater than those of the individual. This level of control isn't something that they're obeying...it's something that they're desiring, facilitating, embracing. And while I'm with you in my preference of a more Western form of social balance, it's also hard to argue that Singapore is actually a bad place to live or be.

That's true of pretty much every solution to any problem though...isn't it?

The real question is this...what could possibly go right, by doing nothing?

Yes, but after becoming an Oracle shop, you don't have any pennies left to spend. And $23K per processor isn't really pennies to anyone. If you're spending the big bucks already, you have tons of processors. If you aren't, then it's massive.

But the real problem here is that it's done by default, regardless of if it's needed at all. So a client ends up spending that money, very likely on something they don't need and don't see any benefit from. Let's assume they have only two machines running Oracle, in high availability mode each running dual processors. At $23K per processor, that's just shy of $100,000 (and if tax is included, it will be over that). What can a company do with $100,000? Quite a lot. Especially if they're small enough that all they need is one database instance. On the other hand...if you take that $100,000 out of their budget, that would result in them having to cut costs elsewhere...perhaps by firing the guy who didn't catch that line item on the bill of materials from Oracle in the first place?

Not really; the problem is that every carrier has phones with Android images that are customized for them...so OS lifecycle responsibility lies ultimately with the carrier. Fragmentation is the main root cause here, along with the fact that the carriers frankly don't give a shit about pushing updates. They'd much rather that everyone buy new phones anyways...not for the profit of the phones per se, but because the less they have to straddle cellular standards (EDGE/3G/4G/LTE) the less money they have to spend operating parallel sets of equipment to service each of them. And customer tech support is easier (i.e., cheaper) with less legacy phones in the wild as well.

There's another problem with his theory as well; as we all know, Android phones don't get many OS updates, if any at all. Every study that checks (using real methods) the Android versions currently in use based on hardware, vendor, or general population finds that unless you bought your phone very recently, there's almost no chance you're running the latest version of Android. So how is it that Google is managing to slow down old phones with code in the new versions of Android in the first place?

The Mediaite page is still not quite kosher. At the end of the first paragraph:

"There's significant evidence to suggest that they're also inundated with Thetans."

So....yeah.

Actually, the NSA attempted this, and didn't have consistent success. At least, not according to what Snowden revealed.

Actually, you're right...up to the point where the police might get involved. Also, the power that flight attendants and gate agents have (which is backed by the FAA, whereby refusal to comply with their orders is a felony...I kid you not) also crosses the line between private entity/government. Since Kimberly *cough* fucking cunt *cough* had that power backing her up, I would say this does indeed become a First Amendment situation.

Here's one of the problems with MANPADS (MAN-Portable Air Defense Systems). When you're holding one, your eyes are pretty much all you have to go on for determining friend from foe, and you are your own command chain. So if 90% of the people carrying those missiles around are calm of mind and sharp of eye, you still get 10% of them who may well shoot at anything with wings.

No, it doesn't. In this case, what he'd be getting paid for has nothing to do with his crimes whatsoever. This isn't about him having sold the rights to his life story, it's about a video game using his likeness and name in a fictitional manner without paying for the right to leverage his public image. Also, it can also be posited (debate whether it's valid or not) that some may believe that some components of the video game have a basis in real life, and thus it would be a form of libel as well. Though, speaking for myself, I'm not sure what about the game was so bad that it'd be worse than what the truth was.

I don't think you read what I said correctly. They didn't just devalue the notes; they devalued the currency . In other words, they increased the cost of everything/decreased the value of all money by 100-fold. And my response was to someone saying that there's no way that The Powers That Be can do anything to eradicate cash, essentially.

I see a lot of people arguing that "it wouldn't be a good idea to do that." Yeah, no shit :) My point is that it's possible, regardless of how dumb it would be to do.

Actually, yeah they can. North Korea did just this...to all the money in everyone's wallet...when they decided that the black market had gotten too powerful. They demoted the value of the won (their currency) by two orders of magnitude...and gave everyone only a week to change their currency in for the new notes, after which time the old notes would not be worth the paper they were printed on.

Now here's the part where you say "But that's North Korea!" right on the heels of everyone claiming that the reason to go cashless is because we're not really living in a free society...

So, what this pan does is actually very simple; the fins on the sides provide more surface area to catch the heat that slides up the side by convection forces when the pan sits on a gas burner. The "gas burner" part is incredibly important, as if you have an electric burner there will be negligible benefit, and maybe even a negative result. That extra surface area can bleed heat as well as it collects it. And since the pans are cast aluminum, if you have an induction cooktop they won't work at all.

So, let's say you have a gas burner, and one of these pans. Here's what I see as a potential issue. The walls of this pan will get hotter than they do when you use another more traditional type of pan. And that's not necessarily a problem, as long as you keep stirring. But that extra heat will tend to cause liquid at the edge/top of the contents of the pan (the meniscus) to heat far more aggressively. Which means that you will likely get a degree of crusting, scorching, etc...depending on what's in the pan, of course. Water? No problem, it's water. But if you're cooking a sauce, or making something like boxed risotto (not the real hardcore risotto, which requires constant stirring and so would not scorch) or some other grain, you may have some issues. They have a stockpot, which at first would seem like the ideal situation...except that if you're doing most things you would do with a classical stockpot (like making a large batch of stock or soup or stew) you may have MAJOR issues with that scorching.

I have to say...I have a gas cooktop, I cook a lot, I cook elaborately, we have a gas dryer, we have gas-fired heat in the winter. It's a decent-sized single family home. And my gas bill doesn't get high at all...average is a bit less than $50/month. I find it hard to imagine that these pots would make much of a difference in my gas consumption at all. Maybe if my cooktop were really wimpy, the speed of cooking would be nice...but isn't the better option just to get a better cooktop in that case? These pans don't help if you're using a skillet, or the oven (which would also probably be weak if the top burners of the stove are weak), and they cost quite a lot. It'd be cheaper to just upgrade the cooktop than replace all of your pans with this, and the results will be more controllable. I'd love a big pot to boil water for pasta that worked like this...but for every other application it seems to me that upgrading the range would be a better way to go.

But hey, that's just my two cents.

Actually, it's vastly more common to use a helicopter, though that is going to change soon...but in favor of much bigger drones than are used by realtors. My significant other is a producer of documentary content (which uses tons of aerial shots) and they follow a much more stringent process than any realtor does. There's insurance, for one thing, for every aerial shooting session. Insurance for liability, insurance for the aircraft, insurance for the camera (aircraft and camera almost never go together...which is one level of complexity and uncertainty that would go bye-bye with a drone...but at the cost of a certain degree of flexibility as well; you can't specify that a drone will carry a Red, for example) insurance for the pilot, insurance for the cameraman. There are permits that are filed as well, and these vary enormously by jurisdiction. But it's a huge task just to put the shoot together; they don't just drive up with some kind of aircraft and start flying around.