sandworm

That's up for debate. Some rights groups (the mpaa etc) see a vpn as "bypassing technical protections". Once upon a time some claimed it a CFAA violation in that you were accessing a computer system under false pretences, ie you were fibbing about your location. BS imho and CFAA law has moved on from such interpretations, but some still call for netflix to block VPNs.

Either way you are creating an unlicensed copy, or at least a performance, of the work. It would be the local license holders right to go after you, or Netflix, for violating "their" copyrights.

When I looked I couldn't find it on Amazon. It might be a licensing issue as I'm in Canada. (A VERY common issue north of the boarder.)

Using a VPN to bypass such a restriction is just as much a copyright violation as downloading from thepiratebay.

My family uses netflix. I don't. Every time I want to watch something I cannot find it. 10,000 titles is nothing in a world where The Simpsons has several hundred. Netflix needs more and deeper content.

I won't admit to ever downloading something without full written permission of the copyright holder, carved in stone and witnessed by three saints, but last night I did watch "Black Books" after not finding it on Netflix or any other service.

(If you are a fan of 'Father Ted' or 'The IT Crowd', Black Books was done by the same people and contains many of the same jokes.)

I know where it's going. My neighbourhood in Vancouver BC is covered in "for sale" signs. There are minivans full of Chinese investors paroling the sidestreets looking for houses.

The downside is that, by my count, more than half of the houses are vacant or under construction. I smell bubble.

Anyone else spot that the kid likes fire?

Every male I know went through a 'firebug' phase as a kid. A young boy playing with fire is imho as natural as a dog wanting to chase squirrels. There was a time when those of us who understood fire survived while other froze. Those who could start and maintain a fire in adverse conditions were once respected individuals, even professionals. Today they are misbehaving young boys, a small percentage of which are even declared dangerous.

Not allowing young boys to play with fire is akin to not allowing them to exercise. A boy waking up early to tend the communal fire is expressing an evolved behaviour that probably predates language itself.

Forget the semantics. Pluto should still be called a planet because it was called so historically. Let it stand as an illustration of the discovery process.

You don't see lawyers getting mad every time someone uses the term "relevant" incorrectly. They aren't phoning the dictionary people to say that the lawyer definition should trump common understanding and meaning.

The giant squid was once the biggest squid. Then came what we now know as the colossal squid. Technically, the word "giant" should only be applied to the biggest. But nobody seriously wanted to rename the giant squid. So they came up with a "colossal" exception to the rule. Sentimental attachment has value.

"Killer Whales" may not be whales (they are big dolphins) but nobody is our there correcting every mention of the term or going on John Stewart to lecture us on why we aren't using a scientific term in exactly the same manner as scientists do in papers. Whale biologists, despite following the most elevated of all scientific disciplines, still have that sense of humility so lacking amongst astronomers.

People have commented on the pumps v. station issue, but what about time?

The most accurate measure of the infrastructure might not be how many plugs are around, but how many cars can be charged per day. Or perhaps how many vehicle-kilometers are available to electric cars. With pay-at-the-pump any gas pump can fill a car in say two minutes. An electric charger, even the fast ones, will take 10-100 times as long to "fill" a tank.

So take the number of charging plugs and dived that by a factor of 10x->100x. Then come back when the number of available "fills" per day becomes comparable.

Then adjust for the reduced range and come back when the total number of available vehicle-kilometers breaks even. I'm afraid that day is still a long way off atm.

A hosting service pretends to be a dropbox-style service for backing up and sharing important files. A cyberlocker abandons the pretense, all but calling for people to share files they don't own in exchange for money.

For me, the line is when you start paying website that host links to files on your service (referrals) or when you reward known pirates even after, literally, hundreds of valid takedown notices against their files.

Rapidshare died because the market moved on. "File hosting services" like rapidshare have been replaced by cutthroat "cyberlockers" like Keep2share and rapidgator.

The most successful cyberlockers do what Rapidshare decided not to: pay uploaders, even those who share illegally. And also pay linking sites through referral schemes far more resilient legally. They aren't trying to appease anyone not either a customer or a very active uploader. Working with copyright owners beyond base legal requirements (DMCA et al) isn't the business plan anymore. Getting into bed with copyright owners was megaupload's and rapidshare's first mistake. The new plan is to make as much money is possible then abandon the ship the moment the MPAA looks their way.

Filesharers are ok with this. They purchase monthly subscriptions in full knowledge that the service might disappear any day. They aren't looking for a long term relationship anymore. The blind panic resulting from the megaupload raid ended that expectation.

I'm also part of the problem. I teach one course a year. So it's far from a fulltime thing. The pay is about 100$ per hour OF LECTURE. Considering the prep time needed, and the mandatory unpaid interaction with students after hours, it probably works out to 10-15$/hour. I'm part of the problem because I don't much care about the money. I teach because it impresses my clients, which brings me more realworld consulting work.

Let's do the math for the last lecture I taught. 30 students pay about 900 each to take my class. That's 27K. But I also know half of the school's budget comes from the province (ie government support). So let's double that to say 50K, of which I take home 4 ... 8% to the instructor and the rest to the admins.

I think the real issue is the larger move towards academic admin as a separate profession from teaching. None of my four bosses have ever taught a class. Law schools are probably the last vestige of the old system whereby most admins are senior profs, not professional administrators.

More info here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2kghua/falcon9r_boos...

It looks like they indeed perform a u-turn, with the proviso that some of the return is accomplished by pushing higher, increasing orbital period, and waiting for the earth to rotate underneath.

Near the launch site? That seems a little ambitious, and expensive. Are they planning on doing a u-turn in high atmo? The energy required would be massive. Or are they planning on doing an orbit of some sort?

Doesn't the falcon heavy animation show the stages all landing at a different facility?

Given that most every launch will point in a different direction from the launch site (different inclinations), boats would seem the best option. They could then haul the stage back to base by sea.

That's why I am so interested. I could see how getting blind drunk once a week might actually reduce total mortality. Perhaps those who get blind drunk only occasionally under planned conditions have fewer accidents than those who drink regularly and therefore spend more time under the influence.

I agree that a measurement protocol would be difficult. But the OP was based on self-reporting. They could ask "Have you, in the last week, ever been above the legal driving limit?" or "What is the most you consumed in a single sitting this week?"

I'm old enough to believe that meeting on an online forum doesn't qualify 'met'. "I met the President on twitter" doesn't count.

I'd be interested in reading a study of drinking patterns beyond simple measurement of total consumption.

Every study I read measures volume over a time such number of units per week. But there is a difference between downing a bottle of wine in one hour every saturday night as opposed to a single glass every night. Perhaps a study based on peak blood alcohol level during the week rather than total consumption?

The OP study seems to have dealt with older people. Retirees, without jobs, might have many 'average' days resulting in a steady daily drinking pattern. Most of the younger drinkers I know go for extended periods without drinking (weekdays) only to get hammered come the weekend. Is this worse? Maybe multi-day dry periods give your system a rest and that is better than a daily pattern? I don't know.

It's all moot to me. I don't drink, which for a non-muslim non-mormon canadian means people often think I'm a recovering alcoholic. I'm not. I just don't like drinking. It;s not fun.

Docx doesn't play nice. At a time when they could have contributed to open standards such as odt, and as projects like Openoffice were getting a handle on the doc format, Microsoft rolled out DocX to stir the pot.

DocX has some silly compression built in. Microsoft pitched this to some large customers on the basis of all the disk space it would save. How large are text documents? Are they really in need of compression? Only he most massive of corporations see any appreciable reduction in storage needs over the old doc format.

Windows is a proprietary ecosystem where choices are made for the benefit of microsoft's shareholders and nobody else. It is full of compromise. From DRM to hamstrung "student" versions, Windows is not your friend. Microsoft's business practices, specifically the way they market windows on oem machines, are also downright deceptive. I never use windows at home but, because I buy laptops, I actually own many windows licenses. Those "sales" are part of Microsoft's bottom line and are pitched to shareholders as if I am actually using microsoft products.

I have never met anyone who truly likes windows. They tolerate it. They are used to it. But they never say "Yes, I am happy with this new version. The upgrade sure made my life easier!" I'd rather have my wisdom teeth re-installed and re-pulled than be part of another office transitioning from one version of windows to another.

I gave up on windows when, after buying a little netbook, I decided to give it a chance. I plugged in an MS-brand optical mouse and was told that windows needed to connect to the internet to download the driver to run the mouse. That was windows's last breath on any of my personal machines.

And death to docx.

It's a flaw. A bad one. But things like this get patched every day. Only an idiot would believe there aren't plenty of other undiscovered security flaws in windows, or any other OS. What matters is whether this flaw was ever exploited, whether it was ever spotted in the wild, before it was patched.

I am more than happy to criticize microsoft. I truly hate windows and everything it represents. But the system seems to have worked here. The bug was reported and patched before it became a widespread issue. I'll save my venom for those all-to-common days where Microsoft fails to address a problem in a timely manner. (or also Apple, plenty of venom for them too.)

The exemption already exists.

(1) The DMCA, and for that matter copyright law generally, creates private rights of action in the copyright owner. Even if something is infringing on their rights they need not act. The decision is up to them.

(2) Copyrights do not pass automatically. Nobody can pick up the torch by asserting the rights of an inactive copyright owner.

(3) True abandonware involves either a disappeared copyright owner or one that no longer cares about an old title.

So ... do what you want with abandonware. If the copyright owner reappears and asserts his/her rights, then it wasn't really abandonware in the first place. That's the risk you run.

Also, copyright isn't what stops people from maintaining old games. It might be the easiest means of enforcement (ie takedown notices) but it isn't the meat. Nobody cares if you make copies of the original Civilization. The copyrighted game is valueless. But they do really really care about you using the "Civilization" trademark. That tidbit of intellectual property has nothing to do with the DMCA.

It was a mistake to release this today.

Everyone knows that legally questionable moves should always be made on a friday. That allows everyone in government to cool down for a couple days. By the time the weekend is over all the news outlets have moved on to whatever war just started up. You don't want some hothead prosecutor tweeting out a threat, forcing himself to follow through later in the week. Nobody picks a fight when 15 minutes away from a weekend.

Watch the NSA/CIA/MIB admissions. They always stage their spying/torturing me culpas on friday afternoons.

There are lots of things to fail. On most military aircraft it is rare to fly with every tiny system running at 100%. Five or things can break during a flight without any real risk.

Not the engines, but something like a datalink antenna or camera system. If you include little things like tray-tables and seats getting stuck up/down, even the 747 probably has a failure rate measured in hours.

Higher than the B-2? (3million+ per aircraft/month according to some). Maybe the C-5 has highest not-classified operating costs.

For perspective, the Canadian Sea King helos are rumored to take 50+ man-hours for every hour in the air, comparable to the C-5 but on a much much smaller airframe.

They did keep it around for the two things only it and shuttle could do: bring things back from orbit and execute single orbit missions (ie the cross-range ability to return to base after a single orbit.)

But does the A380 carry it's own tow bar? Or have a massive cargo nose? Or have a floor that can handle heavy cargo pallets? Can it kneel? How many spare parts fly with the plane?

Total apples and oranges. The AN-225 is built like a tank whereas the A380 and 747 are more like coke cans. Not joking. I bet they have mass/volume ratios comparable to aluminum cans.

For sure, but an order-of-magnitude disparity in lifespan remains huge.

And the Buran was no "attempt". It was a working shuttle that flew to space and was in many ways superior to shuttle. It just didn't make economic sense, nor did shuttle imho.

The Tu-144 "Concordski", THAT was a true attempted copy woefully lacking in many many areas.

"3740 flying hours" ... Since built in 1988!

"The lifespan of the airplane is 8000 flying hours, 2000 takeoff-landings or 25 calendar years."

A 1980s 747 could expect 100,000 hours or more. I'd be interested in learning what exactly is so different about this plane to create such a vast disparity in reliability. Was it built, like with the Tu-144, using massive single billets?

Who really wrote this? Some sort of Nasa lobbyist? I'm a fan of manned spaceflight and think it has some scientific validity, but who else could write such an article without any mention of alternative approaches, the political history of the ISS or the very valid criticisms of the program?

Also... "...17,500 miles an hour, 10 times faster than the average bullet leaves a gun."

Who is that sentence meant for? Certainly not the scientific community. Certainly not an international audience. It is meant for those who control Nasa's purse strings.

In my work (legal) i often find myself overdressed and overstressed about decorum and timetables. But corporate decorum, working 9-5 m-f, has a place.

I remember one incident where a thursday meeting at a startup was canceled because a department head wanted to turn an already long weekend into a 4day holiday. I put my foot down. Fridays are not weekends. If they are, then thursdays become fridays and you'll start skipping them too. That meeting consisted of me in a suit, in an empty office, talking to two people via skype. I call that a victory because the meeting at least happened. (The truth is that all the low level employees on the first floor were there and working. They cannot afford to skip out on work.)

Casual is all well and good until it creates unpredictability and disorder. Contrary to popular myth, things actually get done in meetings. Not every decision can be made while scaling the in-office climbing wall. Some decisions require people sitting down at a table to hammer through a series of points.

Does that thing that happened last night on the server qualify as a breech? I don't care that tomorrow is a friday. Neither will your backers, nor the FBI, when they haul you in to explain why you couldn't be bothered to take a decision until after your ski weekend.

That is IF we assume Anthem's statement are "the truth". I don't make that assumption. In fact in these situations I assume every statement from such a corporation may or may not be true. Without backup from external sources, the corporate twitter account is no more trustworthy than any other self-serving media release.

The fact that they filled the website with mental heath data does not detract from the theory that they had knowledge of the breech months ago. It only adds to the theory that they were trying to keep things quiet for as long as legally possible.

They have evidence of an attack going back to Dec 10, a Wednesday.

"Anthemfacts.com" was registered on Dec 13th which was, assuming US rather than GMT, the following friday.

The proximity and order of those dates cannot be coincidence. It would seem someone at Anthem was confident enough to start prepping the PR campaign almost TWO MONTHS before the public, or the Conn AG, was notified. And during tax season!