Did HBO really shoot themselves in the foot by taking the cableless HBO subscription and screwing the pooch by limiting it to Apple TV for now?

No, because AppleTV is just for the big screen. It's also available on iOS, which if Netflix numbers are anything to go by, smartphones and tablets are the preferred viewing platform for the service.

Other countries do have regulations. They just have sensible regulations, based on the size, weight, and capabilities of the drone. In the US the regulations are based primarily on whether it is "commercial" or "non-commercial". So the FAA is not concerned about safety, or privacy. They are primarily concerned about drones competing with piloted aircraft. This is an example of regulatory capture. The FAA is running a protection racket for pilots.

Other countries generally have more restricted aviation industries than North America. In North America there's a lot of aviation activity out there - not just commercial and military, but general aviation which includes Joe out tor his $100 hamburger to Mr. Big CEO going from the west coast to the east for a meeting.

Other countries generally are more restrictive (Europe burdens GA with heavy taxes, China is slowly opening up despite their military's object (the Chinese military owns all Chinese airspace)), etc. So they don't have as many problems with trying to fit general aviation alongside drones.

Plus, the toy drones probably don't go high enough to be a problem, and well, if you're trying to use a DJI Phantom to take photos, I'm sure the local police and others have plenty to get you on. Plus, other countries generally are more regulated so you're not making huge quadcopters without the government already knowing.

In fact, model aircraft is an exemption the FAA grants provided you follow certain rules. You're not immune from the FARs just because you're flying under model aircraft 'rules". It's an advisory circular - something that just clarifies what the FAA will generally allow, but not a rule. Idiots flying drones in ways that endanger the public (including dive bombs, erratic flying through tunnels, etc) have been fined by FAA actions despite appeals to the NTSB. The ruling stands that even if it was under "model aircraft" rules, it was still an aircraft subject to the FAA.

We visited the Sistene Chapel and the tour stops right outside the room and the guide is very clear "Be quiet and absolutely no flash photography" and then you walk in and its absolutely packed with people being loud and taking flash pictures.

Last Spring when I went, it was a dull roar - the guards were all over people who were taking photographs. Perhaps they're more attentive now given the relative fragility of it. In fact, they didn't allow photos at all - the guards were the loudest ones there and they were mostly shouting "No photo".

same with the statue of David. they should just make fake art for some of these museums that can be damaged by photos and save the real thing

The guards were all over people at the Academy museum - they saw a camera and they practically pounced on the guy. not to mention they basically made you keep all your real cameras away, those who had cellphones up in the "taking a photo" stance were generally reminded to not take photos.

Though there are plenty of replica Davids around (the Ufitzi gallery has one) for your snapping pleasure. The Academy gallery was basically constructed to hold David.

I don't get why we even need to find black boxes and such. How much bandwidth would it really take to just stream that data in realtime over satellite, and how much would that cost compared to the tons of fuel in the tanks?

Well, for satellites, not a lot - even though modern flight data recorders can record over a thousand parameters at a time (satellite bandwidth is huge), even full high-res cockpit voice is but a drop.

The problem is more political than anything - why do you think we have 30 minute CVRs, despite the technology existing to record days worth of multichannel, high resolution digital audio? Just as a point of comparison, 30 minutes of CD quality audio is around 325MB or so. We can stuff 128GB+ in an SD card, and you could in theory have terabytes of that in the tiny space allocated for the memory (the rest is all survivability stuff, which can record an inordinate amount fo audio.

Then there's the whole storage/transmission thing - which country gets the right to store it? You want the US to do it? China? Find one that everyone trusts with that information - Switzerland probably comes close.

Hell, why not ask why don't we have externally-accessible data recorders? They exist today, are mature technology, auto-eject (and float!) on landing in water (with GPS beacons), can be propelled away from an accident on land (it's simple springs) to help get it away from fires and other stuff. Instead of the recorder sinking to the bottom of the ocean or inside the fuselage, an externally accessible one seems to be able to solve the problem using what we have today.

Perhaps if they pushed the boundaries in other ways, other than graphics? Like Story? Idea? Gameplay?
Sorry but I'm sick of these endless FPS! And the graphics alone aren't going to hold a jaded player.

Why? There's a rather large group of players who care nought for crap like that. They just want to get the game, and go frag their friends 27 hours a day. There's a large contingent of players who will do just that, which is why games like that sell billions of dollars on the first day.

And to be honest, it's also one of the few games that justifies having a day-1 PC release. Besides being able to inflate the day-1 sales, it's one of the few games where PC players will literally buy it day 1 rather than wait for any sales, pirate the game, or whatever. That's just the way the market is.

Now, you want games with store and depth? They do make those - the video games industry is big enough that there are plenty of other games that concentrate on that stuff.

Hell, wasn't one of the "concerns" of the whole #gamergate thing the fact that a "game" like Depression Quest was going to wipe out all these Call of Duty/Battlefield/etc style games? Which is plainly ridiculous since the latter pull in way more money, so it doesn't matter how many perfect scores Depression Quest gets, it still won't make billions and billions of dollars. And secondly, history has shown that despite "good" works being produced (be it books, movies, music), there's plenty of "pulp" that's produced to satisfy the masses. I mean, we still have summer blockbusters despite the appeal of the arthouse flick.

$80K/yr? With presumably the elite skills and technological flexibility you need along with incredibly bad hours?

With that level (none) of job security?

Boy, am I glad I never got suckered into the game industry. Scary!

(Unless that's what they're paying right out of school.)

Supply >>> Demand.

That's generally considered good pay, too, because they know if you quit, there are 10 people waiting by the door for your spot.

Video games are a terrible business - you're spending years on a product that has no future - once the game is released, other than small amounts of DLC, it's done. Abandon it and begin afresh on a new codebase (even if it's for a sequel). There's no maintenance, future versions or anything for all but a handful of games.

And then there's the generation growing up with video games. I mean, the urge to get into the video games industry is fairly strong, given the appeal of modern video games and "how cool it is to have a job involving video games". I mean, think what a job description for a QA tester would sound like - "you play video games all day!" Hot damn, your parents have always said to hit the books instead of playing Call of Warfare for 8 hours a day to be able to get a job, and they make jobs where you do nothing but play video games?

Similar thinking goes towards "eSports" as well.

The video game industry is very seductive, the heads of video game companies know it, and they know they have a vast pool of those they can abuse because, well, "videogames!".

Try to drum up excitement on say, writing tax software, or writing an accounting program. Yeah.

You assume that those procedures are always going to work after....... a fire! Its not inconceivable that a fire on an airliner could damage vital components possibly related to the environmental, radio and even control systems. Don't get me wrong its an unlikely situation where the radio AND avionics/air handling/navigation systems and their backups (if any) are effected simultaneously but when you have 36.5 million commercial air flights per year its bound to happen eventually.

So a fire serious enough to incapacitate the cabin and crew, but not serious enough to damage any other avionics or other flight systems enough that it could continue to fly on until it ran out of fuel?

Every fire that's serious enough to cause problems... generally ends the flight quickly. Here you're assuming it's bad enough that the passengers and crew are incapacitated quickly, but it left all the avionics and control systems intact for hours. Especially when you consider the fragility of the satellite communications system - the transmitter and receivers are in the avionics bay (underneath the cockpit), while the satellite antennas are above. A fire serious enough would've burned through those antenna cables pretty readily.

It's why the fire theory, or catastrophic failure theory has been resoundly rejected - planes just do not last that long when on fire - eventually fire will consume something vital. How long you have until then is unknown, but it's definitely not hours and hours. Maybe if it was a tiny fire, but then that wouldn't incapacitate the crew. A fire big enough to do so that they couldn't don their quick-don masks or one that took out both oxygen systems would be serious enough to basically destroy the plane in well under an hour.

It's why in-flight fires basically demand getting it on the ground ASAP and not nearest airport facility - you don't know how long you have.

Even integrated video can handle Sketchup reasonably well, which is about as much CAD work as the average person will ever do.

As for video encoding, most people are fine with letting it run overnight so the speed delta doesn't matter.

That really helps when the deadline is 5:00 p.m.

The most amazing thing about the desktop/laptop wars is it always comes down to two things

1. We have to go to the "most people" scenario to invalidate the high end desktop performance. Sorry, some of us need more than what any laptop can deliver

2. There is no power/performance solution for laptops that couldn't be implemented better in a desktop, so it's a never ending chase.

It's a real estate and energy density issue. I love my laptops, but really need my desktops.

The "Most people" benchmark refers to the common class of users who use computers as tools and who really don't care either way.

You will always have desktops. Hell, Steve Jobs even said PCs will always be around. He compared them to trucks - useful tools that people do need, but not everyone needs a truck all the time - plenty of scenarios where a car is a far better option.

Video encoding for a 5PM deadline? If you're in a job that has that, then you'd invest in a video render farm to do just that. For the rest of us, including the days of YouTube videos uploaded every minute, whether your cat video shows up at 5PM or 5AM makes very little difference.

Oh yes, there are plenty of tasks that a desktop does better than a laptop. Especially in the high end. But you know what? Those people who need high-end performance are in the more niche category. Those who do those things know who they are, and pick the appropriate computer for their needs. The vast majority of users find a laptop is more than capable for banging out reports, term paper, facebook, youtube, watching TV, torrenting, and dozens of other things.

No, the desktop is NOT disappearing. It's been over 10 years since laptops outsold desktops, and desktops are still around. The low-ends don't move much (because shinier laptops can be had with similar or better specs), but the high end still sells. And there's enough "professions" that professionally bitch about it that even someone like Apple keeps a high end machine in production. Despite it being among the worst sellers in the entire product line.

Sorry, the desktop, like the PC will always be around. Rumors about its death have been exaggerated for years and it's still around. Like Jobs said - they're trucks, and they can fulfil any purpose, maybe not as well, but they can work. That fact alone keeps them alive because there will always be a use case that someone needs that won't be fulfilled.

Because it's supposed to be a matter of civil and not criminal law.

Did you already forget this? And did you also forget that copyright was NEVER about downloading, but always PUBLISHING?

Phone numbers are passed around like pocket change. Who has control today is not who has control tommorow.

But beyond that, if I buy a MagickJack today and send out 1,000,000 spams and 100,000 robo dials tomorow, how can the "owner" of that number be held responsible? Of course common sense says they cam't.

Phone numbers move far less than you think - when you port your phone number, it takes several hours for the change to happen. In the meantime, a call can ring one phone, the other phone, both, or none as the switching tables are updated. But in the meantime, the phone number is still owned by someone at that time. All you need to do is log when and who.

As for your magicjack? Well, at some point they have to interconnect to the phone system. If you can't trace beyond the phone system, then the interconnection is liable, to whom they'd probably be more than happy to send the bill to MagicJack to pay.

Basically, to make a phone call, you have the originating number. The thing is, your phone company providing you service actually knows the originating phone number that's not spoofed or anything - the originating phone number is sent as data to the called party's phone company. And logged. So your phone company knows who made the call and who's responsible.

If it goes through a third party call forwarding service, well, guess who holds liability now?

POTS is not like the Internet. POTS actually has verifiable sources - you cannot spoof the call as everyone exchanges connection information. Sure VoIP may make the real caller hard to find, but at some point the call had to enter the POTS network, and the gateway provider can be held responsible. And I'm sure for billing purposes they know who used that outgoing line - maybe not the subscriber, but the company that they contract POTS interconnection for.

Perhaps an auto-attendant might be an interesting way to solve the problem using grey listing - the autoattendant looks for familiar numbers, and if it's on the list, passes it through. If not, it answers the phone and walks through a script, asking the caller for their name, company and other details. It then asks the caller to hold, and rings the inside line, who passes the information onwards and you can decide if you want to take the call, black l ist, tar pit, or reject. Rejected calls get a simple "the party does not wish to speak with you, do you want to l eave a message?" while tarpitted calls get the "please wait" response every 30 seconds.

If people are that close to the edge then leaving for work an hour earlier / losing an hour's sleep is only a proximate cause to their death.

The root cause is that they were leading a fucked-up life and were susceptible to a final straw. Now, whether any given individual's life is fucked up due to their own choices or not probably runs the gamut from 0 to 1 on probability distribution.

Perhaps the few percent who get a heart attack the week of the hour change might be on the edge. But there are other effects.

Like how accident rates go up 5% the following week (somehow no one's clamoring for the DST-insurance company conspiracy yet). Which given everyone's always more tired, means an increased risk of getting involved in an accident which can kill you. Perhaps the sleepy texter whose already having a hard enough time seeing the screen blows through the red and right into you. Oddly enough, while they got hit from the front, you got hit from the side, meaning she's more likely to survive, and you, either serious injury or death. All because their eyes couldn't focus on the words on the screen.

Not to mention, it was bright the week before during the commute, now it's dark again. Behaviors don't change all that much.- people will be less cautious because a week ago, they could do it just fine and see traffic.

And as someone who commutes in at 6AM just before the rush, having it bright outside is nice. IF I wanted the bright light to commute, that would put me smack in the middle of rush, and make my commute take twice as long.

Why won't you allow that? Criminals, including secret services, do it too, As long as you know what you're doing, it really shouldn't matter.
Of course, I wouldn't give them any special access to do it.

In contrast to cyber-arms control, which is in fact about NOT keeping vulnerabilities secret which will make everyone safer, gun control is a lost cause.

Because when it comes down to it, a gun consists of information, which is freely available; raw materials, which are freely available in the necessary quality; the abilities to really work the materials according to the information, which is available widely, from afghani weaponmakers to milling and printing machines; and finally the time to do it. Plus of course, the will to do it despite of government attempts to criminalize it.

With guns, the horse left the barn around 1350 A.D., and every attempt to close the door has been a failure.

Besides, the problem is not really the availability of the weapons, but the culture to use it. Guess why we've got nearly the same amount of guns as the USA, but our homicide-rate is ten times lower? Because it's really not the guns. It's the culture.

Of course you can excarbate the problem with making stupid laws that lead to the proliferation of criminal gangs by outlawing things like alcohol, drugs, prostitution and so on. Or by not having a social system that that takes care nobody falls between the gaps.

The only people that CAN be interested in offensive capabilties are small communities (activists, terrorists, freedom fighters, whistleblowers), because they themselves are not vulnerable.

Any nation state on the other hand MUST be concerned about closing each and any vulnerability, because it puts them at risk. If it doesn't put the secret agency at risk, it will at least put their allies at risk: All the other branches of government, and companies deemed highly important for the running of the country (power, water, telecommunications).

So it's UTTER STUPIDITY to have bodies within your government working on "offensive capabilities". They are in fact WORKING AGAINST YOU.

The difficulty is probably to get the governments to realize this; but then, the problem is basically solved.

Well, I think it was a combination of things, and Linux was certainly a part of the reason. But not the whole reason. There are several reasons why Sun finally died:

(1) Sun hardware just couldn't keep up with Intel. The many-threads model really only worked well for parallelization of database operations and not much else. Each individual cpu thread simply became too slow. And people stopped caring about database benchmarks because they were more a function of rapidly improving storage and networking technology than anything else. CPU performance stopped mattering so much and Sun's super-optimized core hardware advantage went right out the door along with it.

(2) Sun's utility software quickly fell behind linux and the BSDs. I began noticing this long before Sun actually sold out to Oracle. Sun's kernel stayed fairly relevant, Solaris wasn't bad... very solid in fact. But competing operating systems were also becoming more solid. But, OMG, the utililties were all 80s crap. Nobody growing up in today's world (or even the world of a decade ago) would be happy with a base Solaris install.

(3) Sun basically became like IBM... corporate only sales and screw making anything that could be bought by up-and-coming students. Solaris for x86 was never taken seriously by Sun, and thus never taken seriously by people outside of Sun. With students growing up on Linux (the younger age group) and the BSDs (my age group), Sun started losing market power as these generational shifts began moving into the workplace. Also, system needs by the web began changing. Sure there are still huge backend databases, but most of the services (and the related hardware) were becoming heavily distributed and Sun's hardware just didn't fit the model.

In fact, this is similar to the problems that SGI had. They were married to their hardware (don't get me started on Solaris for x86), the hardware became non-competitive and unpurchasable by smaller businesses or individuals, and the base software was locked into an 80's snapshot of hell. The system programmers lost sight of what people wanted and got tunnel vision, super-optimizing database paths and ignoring everything else. Problem is, people were more interested in the 'everything else' part.

It might be fine for the older IT types, but all the newcomers had grown up on Linux and the middle-agers had grown up on the BSDs. Their rotation into the workplace spelled Sun's death in very loud, clear terms that Sun pretty much ignored.

-Matt