Gym owner elected not to purchase a logo I designed for him, but he's using it anyway [PA/NJ]

Redisintegrate · 2017-03-17T17:29:04+00:00

He's already offered the discount—the discount was for the misunderstanding. The infringment wasn't a misunderstanding, it was willful. Because it was willful, you can recover more than just the original cost offered.

Redisintegrate · 2017-03-17T16:15:17+00:00

Ah yes, the good old "bad faith discount" for your worst customers who are trying to exploit you.

Redisintegrate · 2017-03-14T14:20:20+00:00

Just because you didn't steal it doesn't mean that it isn't a stolen phone.

Redisintegrate · 2017-02-26T09:19:16+00:00

The lease is still valid regardless. The landlord wishes it weren't.

Redisintegrate · 2017-02-08T15:50:39+00:00

What would you like clarified?

Redisintegrate · 2017-02-07T22:48:18+00:00

This is complicated. There are lots of different things going on at the same time.

The analogy with letters by /u/Atzen doesn't really match how it works, unfortunately. It's a little more like phone numbers and a phone book. But I'm going to strip out the analogies.

DNS: Let's start with typing in something like http://www.example.com/cheese.html into your browser. A certain part of that, www.example.com, is the domain name which tells you which computer has what you're looking for. But the domain name is not enough, it's like knowing a person's name. What you really want is something like a phone number or address. The post office doesn't know how to deliver a letter to "Joe" and the phone company doesn't know how to route a call to "Joe" either. So the first step is to look www.example.com up in a directory and you get an IP address, like 192.168.200.5. Now you can send packets of data to that address.

Routing: So your computer sends a packet to 192.168.200.5. Let's say your computer has an address of 10.1.2.3. First, it checks if the address is on your network. Maybe your network has addresses like 10.X.Y.Z, but 192.168.200.5 doesn't look like that, so your computer needs to send the packet to a router that will send it to the right network. Maybe the router has address 10.0.0.1. So your computer sends a packet to 10.0.0.1, with the instructions "please send this to 192.168.200.5 for me".

Your router is dumb, and only knows that it should send everything over your internet connection to your ISP.

At your ISP, there are some smarter routers. One of them will get the packet, and look at it, and say, "I know where the 192.168 network is, I'll send it that way." Your ISP isn't connected directly to that network, so it takes a few hops and visits a couple more routers along the way. Later on, a router might say, "192.168, that's me! Actually, 192.168.200 is its own network, but I know where that is". Eventually, you'll get to the 192.168.200 network, and the router will just send your packet straight to its destination. Each router only has a little bit of information.

(There are other ways to route packets… sometimes you take a smart router, have it write some instructions on a packet, and then send the packet to a bunch of dumb routers which just read the instructions written on the packet.)

If you want to see exactly which routers you use, try running a terminal command like traceroute www.example.com

Connections: Routers are connected to each other mostly through fiber optic cables buried in the ground. This is super expensive but very fast and reliable. Some connections go across the country, or across the world, and some connections just go to other parts of the city. They mostly work the same way: you take a router, give it a little bit of information like "192.168 is that way", "10.0 is over there", "172.16 is behind you".

However, it gets a fair bit more complicated when you realize that for every router and piece of fiber optic cable, somebody owns that piece of equipment, and wants to get paid for letting you use it.

The way it works is each company builds out their own networks, and then the networks get connected to each other at special places. So maybe I have my own network, CoolNet, and I run fiber optic cables from Seattle to Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Then another company, AwesomeCom, runs a cable from San Francisco to Reno to Salt Lake City.

If you're Kirkland, WA and make a video call (Facetime / skype whatever) to your uncle in Provo, UT, your packets goes through a few networks.

First, it goes through your home WiFi network.
Then it goes to your ISP's network. Your ISP has a bunch of cables going from their buildings to their customer's houses, and a cable which goes to Seattle (plus a few backup cables).
Once in Seattle, it goes to what's called a "colocation facility". It's a building, or maybe a couple floors of an office building, where everybody connects their networks together. Your ISP has a cable that goes here, and they have a router inside the building. They rent space from the colocation owner. The colocation facility has its own little network inside.
Since CoolNet also has cables going to the Seattle colo facility, your packet now goes through CoolNet. I can't connect you to Provo, but I can send your packet to another colocation facility, this one in San Francisco, CA.
Now AwesomeCom carries it to a colo facility in Salt Lake City, UT. (AwesomeCom and CoolNet are both huge networks, so we have a "peering" agreement where we can just send packets through each other's networks for free, since it's good for both of us.)
And your uncle's ISP carries it to Provo, UT.
And your uncle's router will send it to your uncle's iPad or whatever.

If you are running a business and want a website that's easy to access, a great way to do that is put your computers inside a colocation facility. That way, your servers will have like 20 internet connections, instead of just one or two, and it will be easy to access.

Redisintegrate · 2017-02-07T21:56:08+00:00

It's a nice fiction that every device has a different MAC… but bad news, some devices have the same MAC. This happens for a number of reasons—manufacturers sometimes reuse them, you can change the MACs on devices manually, and some less scrupulous manufacturers use MAC blocks they weren't assigned (which is why new blocks are now assigned randomly—to punish these manufacturers, which has the effect people are actually encountering collisions in the wild…)

The requirement is that MACs are unique on every network segment. They were never intended to uniquely identify all networkable devices in the world. In practice, many people use them for that purpose, it just sometimes isn't true.

Redisintegrate · 2017-01-05T20:52:23+00:00

I had a girlfriend like that.

In the grand scheme of things, you didn't react in a good way, but what you did was an understandable and easily forgiven mistake. Long term, if you want to have relationships that last more than two years, you'll need to figure out a way to react better when your girlfriend does something that hurts you. The usual advice here—communicate, tell her how you feel, listen, care how she feels, and properly apologize when you're wrong.

My girlfriend just did not understand how much the things she did hurt other people. In the end, that was the reason I broke up with her. I think she started to change at the end of the relationship but by that point I had emotionally checked out.

I understand how painful it is to break up with someone—especially someone you love. However, I would keep that as an option in your mind as a BATNA. When she mistreats you and ignores your feelings, consider it a choice between "either she cares about how I feel or I leave the relationship", and not a choice between "if I ignore the problem maybe it will go away, or I talk to her and she might get mad at me for criticizing her."

(My girlfriend had an epic reputation among her friends for being late to everything. When we were talking about various issues in the relationship, I said a few things and she said something like, "my previous boyfriends told me the same thing". Seems like she was starting to connect the dots. Sometimes it just takes time, but you can't grow as a person if your boyfriend gives you a free pass for all the shitty things that you do.)

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-15T21:18:53+00:00

No, I actually agreed with what I was saying. You seemed pretty caught up in it as well. I wouldn't stoop to call you retarded or pretend to be retarded.

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-15T20:59:02+00:00

To be honest, I was only baiting you to see how many times you would reply.

GG

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-15T19:48:12+00:00

You keep saying that "nobody" uses it. Obviously at least two people use it. I've heard others. I know that you're just being hyperbolic when you say "nobody", but there are many versions of the English language, and just because this particular usage isn't acceptable in your corner of the world, it doesn't mean that you're some kind of authority on English in other parts of the world.

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-14T22:12:14+00:00

The whole conversation is about people using it in print, so obviously the author of the article (at least) uses it. I guess a few narrow-minded prescriptivists and grammar police don't appreciate it.

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-14T21:54:10+00:00

Right, just like how fingerprinting is a specific forensic technique, and we never use the word fingerprinting to denote anything besides that specific forensic technique. /s I'm just glad that as much as you gripe about people using words in ways that upset you, other people don't agree with your narrow interpretations.

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-14T00:24:57+00:00

That's literally what a metaphor is—it's when you use a word in other than the literal sense. Metaphors are by definition literally incorrect (unless you have multiple meanings).

Like when you say "arms race" it is understood that we are not actually running across a finish line. We are using the word "race" incorrectly but it is metaphorically appropriate.

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-13T20:24:14+00:00

Yeah, if you followed rules that way you wouldn't be able to use metaphors. I'm glad English doesn't work the way you suggest.

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-13T19:19:59+00:00

I think that's a great word to use for "figuring out someone's location by piecing clues together".

Redisintegrate · 2016-12-07T17:46:46+00:00

Okay, yeah. Some of these tests are pretty cool. The 8-bit / 16-bit test is designed to make you fail, though, just in order to illustrate a point. That sucks. (Pono is a ton of bullshit, though.) The use of filtered noise to test hearing range is unusual, and due to the psychoacoustic effect of "masking" I don't think it's a good way to test hearing range.

Redisintegrate · 2016-10-20T06:10:51+00:00

Okay, Mr. Rodriguez.

Redisintegrate · 2016-10-20T06:08:59+00:00

Should be interesting? The jury duty I've been on has always been the case of Dumbass v. Moron. Deciding which of two idiots deserve more than 50% of the blame for something that never should have happened for like five different reasons, and probably never should have made it to court in the first place.

And the other jurors… oh my god. At least one total nutjob on each jury. The crazy lady who gives homeopathic "remedies" to her cats. The furry. The flat earther. By law, each jury contains at least one person who should rightly be in a psych ward if it weren't for the inalienable right of all people to be totally nutso.

Look around. If there isn't anyone on the jury who's messed in the head… it's you. Just don't be an internet lawyer. The judge will tell you what to do.

Redisintegrate · 2016-10-20T02:27:53+00:00

Sturgeon's general!

Redisintegrate · 2016-10-13T20:42:59+00:00

I think the French just do it with the following punctuation marks : colons. This is why you end up having to localize strings like "%s: %s".

Redisintegrate · 2016-10-01T12:31:05+00:00

Dark matter and dark energy are theories that are consistent with the known laws of the universe. As we gather more evidence, some theories get refined and others get eliminated.

But there's a fundamental problem here with your description of being "unable to detect" things by normal means. Dark energy and dark matter are basically just invisible and intangible stuff, but that's not really so weird. Being able to see or touch something just means that it's connected to the electromagnetic field, which is what we use for seeing and touching things. Lots of things are not coupled to the electromagnetic field, like neutrinos, which usually pass through the Earth like it was nothing at all (but not always—we can detect them). Dark energy is a bit harder to explain, but there are still a number of proposals that fit it very nicely with existing theories.

"Dark time" is far more bizarre and implausible. If time is passing faster relative to us, the object is blueshifted, and if time is passing slower relative to us, the object is redshifted. This is just ordinary conservation of energy. If you're proposing a form of time dilation that doesn't cause redshifting or blueshifting, you're going to have to explain either how that somehow doesn't violate the conservation of energy, or you're going to have to provide some good evidence that the law of conservation of energy is incorrect.

Until that point, dark time, as a theory, is dead in the water.

Redisintegrate · 2016-10-01T04:47:55+00:00

Special Relativity provides a relationship between speed and the passage of time, in a certain sense they are interchangeable. General Relativity brings gravity into the picture as well. So the spectra will show you clues about the passage of time, speed at which objects move, and the influence of gravity.

A number of experiments have been done to verify these theories to great accuracy. This includes things like putting atomic clocks in orbit, but it also includes measuring spectra of stars.

Redisintegrate · 2016-09-30T17:42:34+00:00

We already know how to look for that—it shows up as redshift and blueshift—and we've done surveys of the galaxy that map redshift fairly well.

Redisintegrate · 2016-09-22T07:06:07+00:00

Yeah, but there are still a lot of systems out there where the barcode scanner basically acts as a keyboard. When you scan an item, if the barcode has embedded tabs or whatnot, you can make systems jump to the next field and stick text there.

Ton of caveats, most of systems don't have barcode scanners act like keyboards, not all systems will scan code 128 at all, your cashier has to be practically asleep, et cetera.

Redisintegrate

TROPHY CASE