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Comment Niche topics (Score 1) 285

There are a lot of magazines that cover niche topics, hobbies, etc. Specifically those that target a mostly older demographic are likely to still have good content in print. I used to be into woodworking and there were still quite a few magazines specific to that topic that were worth reading. Shopnotes, Wood, Fine Woodworking, etc. They're all expanding their online content, but I don't see them going online-only anytime soon.

Comment Two problems (Score 1) 914

1 - this would seem to fall under cruel and unusual punishment (they have laws against that, right?)
2 - if they want to extend someone's life as long as possible to inflict the maximum amount of suffering, why should taxpayers be compelled to pay to feed these criminals three meals a day AND pay for the drugs that are being proposed on top of that? Spending more money on criminals is not the answer.
3 - How about in cases of especially heinous crimes where there is no doubt of guilt, we just throw the criminals into a pit 300-style and let them slowly starve to death?

Comment How did this make the front page? (Score 1) 983

Either buy double the storage and periodically do a differential backup or use a cloud service. A Google search for 'unlimited cloud backup' yields tons of results.

If he has 20TB of music and movies, why even back it up at all? The majority of that content is available on BitTorrent. The idea of backup is that you only backup unique data that can't be replaced.

Comment Re:Not a good idea (Score 1) 246

I very much disagree with this. How about XML, JSON, HTML, JavaScript, SQL, CSS? Students that have never dabbled with web stuff before could spend two years learning them and becoming proficient, they're very much relevant now and if you don't think they'll be relevant in two years I think you're crazy.

Comment They're shooting themselves in the foot (Score 1) 769

Sure there are people that have no desire to be thrifty and will continue to buy k-cups from the supermarket until the end of time. I do not fit in that classification however. Once or twice a year I make a bulk purchase on Amazon and based on the pricing I am guessing the cups I buy are not "officially licensed". If I knew I couldn't get the cheap cups and had to buy the expensive k-cups all the time, there's zero chance I'd shell out for a keurig.

Comment Re:Umm safety? (Score 1) 305

You sir, beat me to it. Amazon Whispernet is what it's called, and it's exactly the right argument to make here. I was actually having a conversation with some coworkers the other day about something similar.

Amazon made a deal with one or more national cellular carriers to be able to deliver purchased books to user's Kindles. When Amazon pushes a book, I imagine they pay whatever carrier they used to deliver it a nickel or something. So figure an automotive update is what, maybe 2 GB? I can buy a 3 GB data plan from AT&T or Verizon for $30, so let's call the data rate $10/GB (and that's high because it's the consumer rate, auto manufacturers would quite positively get some sort of discount due to their buying power). So let's say it would cost the automaker $20 per car to push the update OTA. Now compare that with what they have to pay the dealership in labor to do the same update. Last time I checked dealer labor rates were something like $70/hr with an hour minimum. This saves them 71% on their costs to have the updates rolled out. So lets say Ford sells 50k F150s a year. If they have to push an update to all 50k of them, assuming the dealer update cost is $70 and the OTA cost is $20 then the dealer update cost is $3.5 million, OTA cost only $1 million. Savings of $2.5 million per update.

Comment Re:Umm safety? (Score 1) 305

How is pushing an update OTA any less safe than having that same update installed at a dealership? The end result is the same either way - if the update breaks the car then it's going to break the car regardless of the method used to install it. You seem to be implying that the process of using OTA updating makes the update itself less safe, but that's really not true if done properly. By 'properly', I mean using well established, common sense rules that have been around for ages. First, don't do anything with the update until it's done downloading. Second, when it's done downloading, verify the file you downloaded exactly matches the original source update file using a hashing algorithm. Just about every electronic device that receives automatic updates does this and those updates are no less safe because they were automatically downloaded over the Internet versus installed from a USB flash drive by a technician.

Comment Re:Don't use corporate Lync for anything other tha (Score 2) 207

It sounds like you have something to hide. I'm just the opposite of you. I don't have a personal home phone, cell phone, laptop, etc because my employer provides all of that stuff to me and they don't care if I use it for personal stuff as long as it doesn't interfere with business use. I don't see any sense in paying for something I already have access to for free.

Email is free, so I do have a personal e-mail addres but I use my work e-mail for tons of personal correspondence just because it's a lot more convenient and I don't really care if my employer reads the day to day e-mail conversations I have with my friends and family.

Comment Re:lots of products already do this (Score 1) 207

Me. It's a lot more convenient to reach over and pick up my desk phone than it is to fish around in my pocket for my cell phone, unlock it, etc. Plus there are a lot of folks that have poor coverage on their cell phone at work and using their desk phone prevents them from having to get up and go outside. Personally, I have a work IP phone at home and use it almost exclusively because my cell coverage is spotty.

If you work at a company that would care about who you're calling, then how happy can you really be with your job? I wouldn't use a work phone to make a personal call to China or somewhere else where the long distance rate might be expensive, but for everyday personal calls I don't see any problem doing it. How much can your employer really find out from knowing who you talk to? If they were recording the calls, then that would be another deal entirely. Fortunately I live in a state where that would be illegal to do without my knowledge.

Comment Wrong? (Score 1) 374

As usual, the title makes the story out to be something it's not. They're not trying to shut these places down, they're trying to bring them into compliance with laws and regulations.

While I'm not in favor of excessive regulation, that doesn't mean I can just go out and start a business that ignores the rules. It sounds like the rules were in place well before any of these places existed, they started doing business and ignored the rules, now they're being told they can't do that and someone is annoyed that they're getting called out.

In other news, I've never much cared for speed limits so I'm just going to start ignoring them because I can get home faster that way. When I get arrested I'll post a story to Slashdot about how the police are trying to destroy my life by putting me in jail.

Comment Blah (Score 1) 338

While I agree that fiber is probably the most future proof way to implement a new network, gigabit Internet access doesn't really get me super excited. The average household simply doesn't have a compelling use case for it. In my area I get 30Mbps down / 2Mbps upfor about $60/mo and it works fine. My wife and I each have a smartphone and tablet, we have a computer, two Netflix-connected TVs (we don't have cable TV) and a Chromecast. It all works "good enough". The only time I really find I want more bandwidth is the rare occassion I upload a video to Youtube.

So yes gigabit Internet is great, and I wouldn't turn it down, but the problem is getting enough people excited about it. I think if you took 100 people from all over the USA and gave each of them a choice between 1) upgrading their Internet go gigabit for the same monthly price 2) filling up their gas tank or 3) dinner and a movie you wouldn't get more than a third of the folks taking the Internet offer.

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