Slashdot Mirror
The Year's Dumbest Moments in Tech
harrymcc writes "Over at TIME.com, I rounded up the year's dumbest moments in technology. Yes, the launch of Healthcare.gov is included, as are Edward Snowden's revelations. But so are a bunch of people embarrassing themselves on Twitter, both BlackBerry and Lenovo hiring celebrities to (supposedly) design products, the release of glitchy products ranging from OS X 10.9 Mavericks to the new Yahoo Mail, and much more." I can't think of anything dumber than the NSA's claims that metadata isn't data.
Seems fine to me. You must have mistaken it for iOS 7.
Big nerd with big balls, Snowden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass
Apparently your hands are not placed down enough.
The REAL hands down winner:
http://beta.slashdot.org/
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The NSA is spying on us all... and their powerpoint slides are ugly! HAHAAAHAAH!!!1!one!!11
Look - I'm not going to try and make the argument that we should all stop what we're doing and go on humor strikes until they shut down the NSA. But seriously, if you're so desperate for column inches that you feel the need to spin the Snowden affair as "dumb", then you really need to ask yourself whether you're Part of the Problem.
Tip for next time: be funnier.
Actually quite often sitting around waiting to be arrested is exactly the point of civil disobedience. You can't really show the injustice of a bad law without demonstrating the consequences of the law. However this doesn't apply to Snowden. He wasn't trying to demonstrate that the laws surrounding classified data are wrong, he was trying to show that the activities the data documented were wrong so really there would be no point in letting himself get arrested. It wouldn't have furthered his cause in any way.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Now, there's no telling what he gave up to some real enemies of freedom.
From my point of view (not living in any of the three countries), there's no meaningful difference between China, Russia and the USA in terms of how much of an enemy of freedom they are. Oh, the US says they're all about freedom, but in practice they're about as bad as the others.
Ask Assange, the answer is YES. If you truly believe that simply having a press that is owned by the government BTW, will save your ass? I have a bridge you might be interested in. Again look at Assange where the story was instantly changed to "He's a rapist! Terrorist!"instead of all the evidence that the government supported scum, even bailing out a PMC that sold children as fucktoys to seal arms deals.
If either Snowden or Assange EVAR lave their little protected spaces they wil be given rendition rides so fast it'll make your had swim, and the entire time our whored out pres will cheer and say how wonderful big mommy is for doing it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm disappointed that /.'s beta didn't make the list.
"What he did was to intentionally NOT face the consequences."
The consequences decided by who? An out-of-control government where the court system has effectively ruled time-again that government has no limits?
Yes, he would be detained without trial and rights --- just like what Manning is enduring. Does Manning have any free speech rights? No.
Okay. Your argument just lost and lost hard.
Don't judge me, I'm just the messenger.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I don't think it's a bad plan at all - because developers know they can rely on the user to have a Kinect, even if it's unplugged. So they can assume stuff like voice recognition and even body motion because it's in the box.
If it's unplugged, well, the devs will simulate it some other way - even it requires going through a million menus to do what would've taken 2 seconds by voice.
Now, if Microsoft didn't put it in the box, you're looking at what's happening with Sony's Move - sure you save a tiny bit of money, but now you've just relegated it to niche status. Just a toy that some people may have, and this early in the game, pretty much just good for putting sex shows online on Twitch.
The end effect is "enhanced with Kinect" is probably standard with Xbone, while the PS4 gets some lame ass implementation of what Kinect does. After all, the PS4 camera lets you do face recognition login and a modicum of voice commands that were put in as an afterthought to compete.
Hell, Sony's wasted money on the PS4 controller by adding in the parts for the Move when most users won't have it - every controller has a (2D - only X-Y positioning) Move emitter, but not every PS4 has a camera. Sure RGB LEDs are cheap, but it's still an extra expense. Especially as it's 2D only - for 3D positioning you need a regular Move controller with the ball as the camera can't see depth with the controller's built-in Move. (And really, who puts in 720p cameras? Yes, the PS4 cameras are 720p stereo).
Sony probably removed the cameras at the last minute just to undercut Microsoft. Not necessarily a good or bad idea - the Xbox360 was around $400-500 at launch, the PS3 was way out there, and the Wii was $250. When the prices tightened down a couple of years alter, it was $200, $300 and $400 and the PS3 took off.
The price these days is not an issue - $200, $400, $500, it's not a huge range. Hell, a PS4 + Camera is only $40 cheaper.
No, Microsoft won't be taking it out of the box. Especially as the first round of new games since release would be out assuming Kinect.