Do you/really/ think devs in the industry would implement DRM if we didn't have to? It's a pain in the neck to code and it keeps some of our customer base from using it at all! Half of us are Linux users at home and are just as pissed as you are when things won't work with it.
Then leave. Find a job elsewhere. Or even better: spend some of your free time writing and publishing (anonymously, of course - use tor) DRM-defeating software based on what you implemented at work - you already have the tech details since you implemented the DRM stuff (or just publish the tech details anonymously and let others implement the stuff). They can't continue playing this kind of games if no developer are helping them.
And I don't think doing so would stop the release or funding of entertainment stuff, either (be it games, movies or music); people have been making music & art for thousand of years without that kind of shit, and people are genuinely ready to pay for content if it's quality, easily available, and reasonably priced; even if it's available elsewhere for free. They are also ready to pay to finance that kind of development even when a release is not certain (look at the many successful crowdfunded projects). It would certainly decrease the amount of shitty games/movies created, though.
The very fact that we have the technological capability to massively distribute culture at a very low cost and we don't because of greed/artificially enforced scarcity is truly depressing.
Indeed - very few (sane) people dispute the fact that consciousness can be generated with non-biological hardware (using silicon). We know that consciousness is the result of matter and energy - a more interesting question IMO, is: matter down to what level ? does the brain only use "classical" physics principles to generate consciousness, or does it somehow exploit quantum principles (we certainly know that natural selection has made use of those in some cases - see photosynthesis).
Maybe the brain requires quantum mechanics for randomness (where does a new, original idea come from ? it may simply be extremely complex recombination of previously seen concepts and ideal; but then again, it may include a true source of randomness), in which case the only thing required to create consciousness on a silicon medium would be a "true" source of randomness. Such a source of randomness in the brain could also come, for example, from the interaction between cosmic rays and particles in the brain - an interaction we actively correct for in RAM using error checks.
Then again, maybe the brain requires quantum mechanics for something far more fundamental needed for consciousness - in which case the only efficient way to create an artificial consciousness may be to use a quantum computer, and using a "classical" computer may not be possible.
In any case, given the current rate of progress, I'd be very wary of making any assumption about the progress of tech and research, in that domain or any other - time will tell:-) I certainly hope to see the first artificial consciousness in my lifetime, though.
Same here - used to get them very rarely but lately I seem to get about 10 a week. Weird indeed.
And before the conspiracy theory kicks in: I've been up modding anti-beta posts like crazy, don't use beta, and I still just got five more of them.
Wish I had mod points for you.
There is no crime, no matter how grave, that justifies capital punishment. Beyond the obvious (yes, obvious - a society killing criminals has no right to call itself civilized) moral reasons, there is the fact that it has been proven time and time again that capital punishment does nothing to deter crime. At all. Beyond this, there is also the fact that the person you're killing might very well be innocent - no court is perfect.
Most of the comments on this story are really depressing - it reminds me of a quote (from, I think, Henry James):
"America Is the Only Country That Went from Barbarism to Decadence Without Civilization In Between"
On a related subject, I'm personally against the very idea of prison - here too, it has been proven time and time again to actually increase criminality instead of reducing it. However, I don't think there is a better system right now, although I believe being forced to home residence with an electronic ankle collar is a step in the right direction - it should IMO be the only option for non-violent crimes, never prison. For violent crimes prison is probably the best thing we have right now, but in that case it should be an open prison, similar to (I think) some in Scandinavia - a prison that is more like an isolated town where you are free to move about and work and have relative comfort. Something truly better than the shitholes we have right now, a "prison" that would actually improve the chances of the inmates being rehabilitated instead of being pushed even more towards crime.
Eventually, I'm hoping technological advances will provide better alternatives (something akin to Iain M Banks' slapdrones, for examples).
I think not - I may be wrong, but the last time I tried to use a proprietary ATI driver under Xorg it tended to have a lot of bugs - like for example, my resolution had to be a multiple of 16 or 32 (can't remember which) in order to enable anti-aliasing.
It's that kind of shit that made me look for a nvidia card on all my new laptops and desktops in the future - nvidia might not opensource their drivers, but at least they work under xorg, and they also offer proper CUDA support for the same (used it for mining LTC at the time).
Then again, I had a surprise with my latest laptop - it uses Optimus: a "new technology" that includes an on-motherboard intel chipset for common graphics as well as a real nvidia GPU for gaming, the later being used only for graphics-intensive stuff. Sounds like a good idea (especially for battery consumption), but almost no official support for Linux systems. Thanks christ for Bumblebee (http://bumblebee-project.org/) - an attempt at Linux support for Optimus. It requires you to run games and the likes through a wrapper that runs a separate framebuffer using the GPU while running an intel-based Xorg. It works pretty well, but still, it's more a hack than a real support for Optimus.
Why should we be forced to ?
Don't get me wrong, I usually sleep or read entertainment stuff (recently for me: either Pratchett or Iain M Banks - I heartily recommend his excellent Culture cycle, BTW) on airplanes, but what this is about is giving people choice in the matter. If you want to relax and "enjoy the peace and quiet", fine ! if you want to connect to the global planetary network, be it for work reasons or entertainment too, you should be given the choice.
I get what you're saying - but you can't say to people they *have* to relax just because they're traveling. I've co-founded and currently lead a small computer sciences startup and given the choice, I'd much prefer to read or sleep when I'm in an airplane. However, there were several times when I *had* to work (in my current job as well as the previous, more traditional / employed one) during travel to make sure I was ready upon arriving, just because I didn't have time before that to do it
Basically, what I'm saying here is: the more choice people have, the better. They might use the network to read their favorite news site (slashdot or some twitter feeds or other), or they might use the network to work, or they might simply relax using an old-fashioned book. The point is, if you add Internet connectivity to your flight, you are simply giving them more choice in the matter, which is good in my book.
See, there's your problem right there. Just because they have lots of money, doesn't mean it's okay for you to defraud them
When the difference is so unbelievably huge, for me it does mean it's okay. If and when large corporations are taxed the same way I am, and tax loopholes are made unlawful, and in general if and when the insane income disparity is fixed (I'm not holding my breath), then I might reconsider that position.
Also, it's not like I actually abused their mistake - I might've ordered 10 covers on that third order so that I could resell the readers on ebay. I did not. As I said, I feel no guilt over this. I get your point of view, though, but I consider that in a sane society no person should ever hold hundreds of times the wealth of the poorest one in the same society. That I find very wrong.
Happened more than once, and I do signal the error and give the money back;-)
Mostly because in that case it's the clerk that it will impact, not the shop (although I do the same for the small shop owner next to my flat).
I think most people do, too - either for the same reason or because there's an actual human being in front of you (which makes it very different psychologically than ordering from an automated system).
Well, you're a better guy than me then, I guess:-)
That being said, the online store in question is very large (first or second largest in France I think), has a reputation for screwing customers when it comes to warranty/customer service, and has repeatedly been highlighted in the media for cutting their workforce while having record profits.
Given all that, I care little for their ~540 euros loss. Had it been a smaller store, I would certainly have pointed the mistake (but even then, I might not have sent the product back, unless it was a very small shop).
No idea either - however, something close happened to me a few years ago.
I ordered an e-ink ebook reader (for 200+ euros) as well as a cover (~20 euros) for the same. A few days later, package arrives: there were two ebook readers in it, no cover at all. I said to myself "lucky ! they made a mistake", did not tell the online store they did (it was a large, national one - I have no guilt over this), and proceeded to order two covers on the same store for the two readers I now possessed.
A few days later, package arrives, contains two other ebook readers. At that point I thought "what the hell", and ordered four covers, one for each of the readers, half expecting four new readers to arrive. This time however, they had fixed the mistake, and I received the product I ordered - the four covers. At that point, me and my flatmates (there were four of us) each had a reader and a cover to go with it anyway.
Frankly, I expected them to at least contact us or use legal action, but the only thing that happened is that we received a phone call with a weird guy asking us "did you order something online recently ?". We simply asked who he was and he answered "I can't tell you that", at which point we simply hung up. Never heard from them again.
This suggests to me that since they made the mistake, they weren't allowed to try and get the products back - I could be wrong though, and I was overseas from said online store at the time, so they may simply have considered that legal action in another country would simply cost them too much.
You make it an app because it makes no sense to integrate such a feature directly in the OS/ROM - it would take longer, and that way you can update it and have additional features (morse code flashing, for example).
What baffles me is why people would install an app named "Brightest Flashlight Free" (name sounds like a moron-magnet), which probably require network access and include ads, when there are tens of ads-less Open-Source alternatives in the Google market as well as outside it.
There are several tumblers existing for exactly this purpose. See for example: http://bitcoinfog.com/
I do not know whether or not they did indeed attract the attention of law enforcement, but since they are running as a tor hidden service and such a tumbler is pretty easy to code/deploy (meaning any such service taken down would be pretty assuredly replaced by 10 others the next day), it is unlikely LE could do anything about it.
Google enabling SSL may be privacy-relevant when using an open wireless network or to prevent wiretaps from other countries but it does not protect you from the NSA listening in on your traffic, since they force Google to provide all the private keys.
Aging is an essential process in the cycle of life.
So are diseases and genetic defects, for example - thining out the herd through evolution, making sure the survivors have the most updated genes to fight the current diseases, themselves constantly evolving. Would you suggest that we stop treating them ? thinking like that, we should also stop extracting problematic wisdom tooth for people, because that also is part of the "cycle of life".
We have consciousness. This allows us to go beyond our mere nature and try to decrease suffering, for everyone of us. Aging implies suffering. And beyond this, aging should IMHO become a *choice*, not something that is imposed upon us.
In my mind, the very expression "cycle of life" evokes something almost sacred/religious (or at the very least romantical) in nature. There is no sacred "cycle of life". We are the product of randomness, and our consciousness a response born from the process of evolution to a universe where anything can happend, at any time: self-awareness, the ultimate (for now at least) way of surviving in such an universe, by allowing our species to react at time scale inferior to a generation - by being aware, we can analyze our universe, understand it, and overcome potential species-wide issues at the scale of a lifetime, instead of relying on genetic evolution over larger timespans. If one day we finally get our collective asses to space and start colonizing other planets, then even a nuclear winter following a meteor event (such as the one that wiped out 75% of earth's species at one point) becomes survivable for us. Such a thing would be highly unlikely without self-awareness.
And precisely because we are self aware, we should in my opinion consider aging as a remnant of our animal origin: something to be fixed. Eventually, even our very bodies ought to be replaceable. I know *I* certainly long to see in wider wavelengths, to feel and experience more and thus to become more aware. It is the essence of transhumanism, and in my view what we should aim for.
As for the ressources issue, we have an entire solar system full of ressources, and an exponential tech development curve to match it. Even on earth, tech such as transmutation will eventually make ressources wars pointless, and scarcity itself could become a thing of the past. I'm not saying we'll see it for sure during our lifetime, but I definitely wouldn't bet it won't happend. I was born during the eighties, and the tech progress I've witnessed during my (admitedly short) lifespan is simply staggering - a lot of the SF stuff I read as a child is already a common part of life. We live in a time of miracles, and I think it's only the tip of the iceberg and we'll see incredible, profoundly changing progresses during the upcoming century.
This is beautiful:-)
With a quite different atmosphere (yet still relevant IMHO), a quote I really like from Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon (a really good series of books):
The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference – the only difference in their eyes – between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.
I'm not sure about Firefox or Chrome, but maybe flash runs within the brower's security context, so the browser would need permission to access the camera if flash was going to?
HTML5. Flash is bundled separatly, but modern mobile browser have started to implement the getUserMedia stuff for webcam/micro access (without using flash).
Planescape torment is an amazing example of character development and profound plot. So are both baldur's gates, as well as Arcanum, for example.
The "storytelling capabilities of the two" have already met, lots of time. It's just that the games that are "profound" and have complex and far-reaching plots are a small minority of the games being released (I guess because that's not what most people want).
Seems to me that France should really be embracing open source with open arms -- I bet the only thing holding them back is that so much open source material has already been created by dirty English speakers;)
The entire French police force is slowly but surely switching to Linux and more generally Open Source software, as are all public schools (although Microsoft did and still does try its usually dirty tricks to prevent that). The entire national assembly (main house of parliament) entirely runs on Linux, from Desktop machines for the députés to servers hosting the live feed/on demand videos. Open Source projects (originating from companies as well as universities and such) regularly obtain grants/funds from official bodies (and in fact, creating an Open Source project is a very favorable point to obtain a lot of those innovation funds). Strong recommendations have been emitted to use only open and standard file formats in all administration, and several projects for laws have been proposed to enforce this, as well as the use of Open Source software in all public administration (not sure any of those were actually passed, though). Skype is also officially forbidden in high-level universities and official research organizations, essentially because it is closed source and thus theoretically prone to potential spying/security issues.
Seems to me that France is *already* embracing Open Source with open arms.
Actually, there was at least one occurence where someone hacked a service through the Minitel.
The guy that did it is named Laurent Chemla and was at the time charged with "stealing energy" because there wasn't even any law against hacking at the time:-)
He went on to create Gandi, and also wrote an essay called "Je suis un voleur" (I'm a thief), where he compares what he's doing (selling DNS) with simply stealing money as he is/was selling the simple procedure of adding a record into a database for ludicrous amounts of money. He also draws a pretty interesting parallel between the avent of the Internet and the fictional invention of a teleporter to describe how the emergence of a global network has/should impact society. A very interesting read: http://www.confessions-voleur.net/confessions/
Under Linux, I use a pickit 2, pk2cmd, and sdcc. Gets the job done - although I'm not sure it qualifies as "good", it is a complete command line toolchain and up to now it has supported all but the very latest PICs. Also, gpdasm can disassemble compiled code pretty well if necessary, and gpsim can be used as an okay simulator.
Do *not* use Microchip's pickit 3, as you'd be forced to use the horrible Microchip Linux IDE, MPLab X (a rebrand/modification of Netbeans, I believe) instead of say, emacs.
So I guess the good news is at least that we'll be able to tell when and where the drones are flying... if this is abused enough, once could also imagine taking them done with DIY drones.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you /really/ think devs in the industry would implement DRM if we didn't have to? It's a pain in the neck to code and it keeps some of our customer base from using it at all! Half of us are Linux users at home and are just as pissed as you are when things won't work with it.
Then leave. Find a job elsewhere. Or even better: spend some of your free time writing and publishing (anonymously, of course - use tor) DRM-defeating software based on what you implemented at work - you already have the tech details since you implemented the DRM stuff (or just publish the tech details anonymously and let others implement the stuff). They can't continue playing this kind of games if no developer are helping them.
And I don't think doing so would stop the release or funding of entertainment stuff, either (be it games, movies or music); people have been making music & art for thousand of years without that kind of shit, and people are genuinely ready to pay for content if it's quality, easily available, and reasonably priced; even if it's available elsewhere for free. They are also ready to pay to finance that kind of development even when a release is not certain (look at the many successful crowdfunded projects). It would certainly decrease the amount of shitty games/movies created, though.
The very fact that we have the technological capability to massively distribute culture at a very low cost and we don't because of greed/artificially enforced scarcity is truly depressing.
It's all just matter and energy.
Indeed - very few (sane) people dispute the fact that consciousness can be generated with non-biological hardware (using silicon). We know that consciousness is the result of matter and energy - a more interesting question IMO, is: matter down to what level ? does the brain only use "classical" physics principles to generate consciousness, or does it somehow exploit quantum principles (we certainly know that natural selection has made use of those in some cases - see photosynthesis).
:-) I certainly hope to see the first artificial consciousness in my lifetime, though.
Maybe the brain requires quantum mechanics for randomness (where does a new, original idea come from ? it may simply be extremely complex recombination of previously seen concepts and ideal; but then again, it may include a true source of randomness), in which case the only thing required to create consciousness on a silicon medium would be a "true" source of randomness. Such a source of randomness in the brain could also come, for example, from the interaction between cosmic rays and particles in the brain - an interaction we actively correct for in RAM using error checks.
Then again, maybe the brain requires quantum mechanics for something far more fundamental needed for consciousness - in which case the only efficient way to create an artificial consciousness may be to use a quantum computer, and using a "classical" computer may not be possible.
In any case, given the current rate of progress, I'd be very wary of making any assumption about the progress of tech and research, in that domain or any other - time will tell
Same here - used to get them very rarely but lately I seem to get about 10 a week. Weird indeed.
And before the conspiracy theory kicks in: I've been up modding anti-beta posts like crazy, don't use beta, and I still just got five more of them.
Wish I had mod points for you.
There is no crime, no matter how grave, that justifies capital punishment. Beyond the obvious (yes, obvious - a society killing criminals has no right to call itself civilized) moral reasons, there is the fact that it has been proven time and time again that capital punishment does nothing to deter crime. At all. Beyond this, there is also the fact that the person you're killing might very well be innocent - no court is perfect.
Most of the comments on this story are really depressing - it reminds me of a quote (from, I think, Henry James):
"America Is the Only Country That Went from Barbarism to Decadence Without Civilization In Between"
On a related subject, I'm personally against the very idea of prison - here too, it has been proven time and time again to actually increase criminality instead of reducing it. However, I don't think there is a better system right now, although I believe being forced to home residence with an electronic ankle collar is a step in the right direction - it should IMO be the only option for non-violent crimes, never prison. For violent crimes prison is probably the best thing we have right now, but in that case it should be an open prison, similar to (I think) some in Scandinavia - a prison that is more like an isolated town where you are free to move about and work and have relative comfort. Something truly better than the shitholes we have right now, a "prison" that would actually improve the chances of the inmates being rehabilitated instead of being pushed even more towards crime.
Eventually, I'm hoping technological advances will provide better alternatives (something akin to Iain M Banks' slapdrones, for examples).
I think not - I may be wrong, but the last time I tried to use a proprietary ATI driver under Xorg it tended to have a lot of bugs - like for example, my resolution had to be a multiple of 16 or 32 (can't remember which) in order to enable anti-aliasing.
It's that kind of shit that made me look for a nvidia card on all my new laptops and desktops in the future - nvidia might not opensource their drivers, but at least they work under xorg, and they also offer proper CUDA support for the same (used it for mining LTC at the time).
Then again, I had a surprise with my latest laptop - it uses Optimus: a "new technology" that includes an on-motherboard intel chipset for common graphics as well as a real nvidia GPU for gaming, the later being used only for graphics-intensive stuff. Sounds like a good idea (especially for battery consumption), but almost no official support for Linux systems. Thanks christ for Bumblebee (http://bumblebee-project.org/) - an attempt at Linux support for Optimus. It requires you to run games and the likes through a wrapper that runs a separate framebuffer using the GPU while running an intel-based Xorg. It works pretty well, but still, it's more a hack than a real support for Optimus.
Why should we be forced to ?
Don't get me wrong, I usually sleep or read entertainment stuff (recently for me: either Pratchett or Iain M Banks - I heartily recommend his excellent Culture cycle, BTW) on airplanes, but what this is about is giving people choice in the matter. If you want to relax and "enjoy the peace and quiet", fine ! if you want to connect to the global planetary network, be it for work reasons or entertainment too, you should be given the choice.
I get what you're saying - but you can't say to people they *have* to relax just because they're traveling. I've co-founded and currently lead a small computer sciences startup and given the choice, I'd much prefer to read or sleep when I'm in an airplane. However, there were several times when I *had* to work (in my current job as well as the previous, more traditional / employed one) during travel to make sure I was ready upon arriving, just because I didn't have time before that to do it
Basically, what I'm saying here is: the more choice people have, the better. They might use the network to read their favorite news site (slashdot or some twitter feeds or other), or they might use the network to work, or they might simply relax using an old-fashioned book. The point is, if you add Internet connectivity to your flight, you are simply giving them more choice in the matter, which is good in my book.
See, there's your problem right there. Just because they have lots of money, doesn't mean it's okay for you to defraud them
When the difference is so unbelievably huge, for me it does mean it's okay. If and when large corporations are taxed the same way I am, and tax loopholes are made unlawful, and in general if and when the insane income disparity is fixed (I'm not holding my breath), then I might reconsider that position.
Also, it's not like I actually abused their mistake - I might've ordered 10 covers on that third order so that I could resell the readers on ebay. I did not. As I said, I feel no guilt over this. I get your point of view, though, but I consider that in a sane society no person should ever hold hundreds of times the wealth of the poorest one in the same society. That I find very wrong.
Happened more than once, and I do signal the error and give the money back ;-)
Mostly because in that case it's the clerk that it will impact, not the shop (although I do the same for the small shop owner next to my flat).
I think most people do, too - either for the same reason or because there's an actual human being in front of you (which makes it very different psychologically than ordering from an automated system).
Well, you're a better guy than me then, I guess :-)
That being said, the online store in question is very large (first or second largest in France I think), has a reputation for screwing customers when it comes to warranty/customer service, and has repeatedly been highlighted in the media for cutting their workforce while having record profits.
Given all that, I care little for their ~540 euros loss. Had it been a smaller store, I would certainly have pointed the mistake (but even then, I might not have sent the product back, unless it was a very small shop).
Forgot to say that this was in the EU - we were in the UK at the time, ordering from a French online store.
No idea either - however, something close happened to me a few years ago.
I ordered an e-ink ebook reader (for 200+ euros) as well as a cover (~20 euros) for the same. A few days later, package arrives: there were two ebook readers in it, no cover at all. I said to myself "lucky ! they made a mistake", did not tell the online store they did (it was a large, national one - I have no guilt over this), and proceeded to order two covers on the same store for the two readers I now possessed.
A few days later, package arrives, contains two other ebook readers. At that point I thought "what the hell", and ordered four covers, one for each of the readers, half expecting four new readers to arrive. This time however, they had fixed the mistake, and I received the product I ordered - the four covers. At that point, me and my flatmates (there were four of us) each had a reader and a cover to go with it anyway.
Frankly, I expected them to at least contact us or use legal action, but the only thing that happened is that we received a phone call with a weird guy asking us "did you order something online recently ?". We simply asked who he was and he answered "I can't tell you that", at which point we simply hung up. Never heard from them again.
This suggests to me that since they made the mistake, they weren't allowed to try and get the products back - I could be wrong though, and I was overseas from said online store at the time, so they may simply have considered that legal action in another country would simply cost them too much.
The "built-in" torch function you're talking about in CM is an app. It's open source - see here: https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_packages_apps_Torch .
You make it an app because it makes no sense to integrate such a feature directly in the OS/ROM - it would take longer, and that way you can update it and have additional features (morse code flashing, for example).
What baffles me is why people would install an app named "Brightest Flashlight Free" (name sounds like a moron-magnet), which probably require network access and include ads, when there are tens of ads-less Open-Source alternatives in the Google market as well as outside it.
There are several tumblers existing for exactly this purpose. See for example: http://bitcoinfog.com/
I do not know whether or not they did indeed attract the attention of law enforcement, but since they are running as a tor hidden service and such a tumbler is pretty easy to code/deploy (meaning any such service taken down would be pretty assuredly replaced by 10 others the next day), it is unlikely LE could do anything about it.
Google enabling SSL may be privacy-relevant when using an open wireless network or to prevent wiretaps from other countries but it does not protect you from the NSA listening in on your traffic, since they force Google to provide all the private keys.
Replying to undo wrong moderation.
Aging is an essential process in the cycle of life.
So are diseases and genetic defects, for example - thining out the herd through evolution, making sure the survivors have the most updated genes to fight the current diseases, themselves constantly evolving. Would you suggest that we stop treating them ? thinking like that, we should also stop extracting problematic wisdom tooth for people, because that also is part of the "cycle of life".
We have consciousness. This allows us to go beyond our mere nature and try to decrease suffering, for everyone of us. Aging implies suffering. And beyond this, aging should IMHO become a *choice*, not something that is imposed upon us.
In my mind, the very expression "cycle of life" evokes something almost sacred/religious (or at the very least romantical) in nature. There is no sacred "cycle of life". We are the product of randomness, and our consciousness a response born from the process of evolution to a universe where anything can happend, at any time: self-awareness, the ultimate (for now at least) way of surviving in such an universe, by allowing our species to react at time scale inferior to a generation - by being aware, we can analyze our universe, understand it, and overcome potential species-wide issues at the scale of a lifetime, instead of relying on genetic evolution over larger timespans. If one day we finally get our collective asses to space and start colonizing other planets, then even a nuclear winter following a meteor event (such as the one that wiped out 75% of earth's species at one point) becomes survivable for us. Such a thing would be highly unlikely without self-awareness.
And precisely because we are self aware, we should in my opinion consider aging as a remnant of our animal origin: something to be fixed. Eventually, even our very bodies ought to be replaceable. I know *I* certainly long to see in wider wavelengths, to feel and experience more and thus to become more aware. It is the essence of transhumanism, and in my view what we should aim for.
As for the ressources issue, we have an entire solar system full of ressources, and an exponential tech development curve to match it. Even on earth, tech such as transmutation will eventually make ressources wars pointless, and scarcity itself could become a thing of the past. I'm not saying we'll see it for sure during our lifetime, but I definitely wouldn't bet it won't happend. I was born during the eighties, and the tech progress I've witnessed during my (admitedly short) lifespan is simply staggering - a lot of the SF stuff I read as a child is already a common part of life. We live in a time of miracles, and I think it's only the tip of the iceberg and we'll see incredible, profoundly changing progresses during the upcoming century.
This is beautiful :-)
With a quite different atmosphere (yet still relevant IMHO), a quote I really like from Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon (a really good series of books):
The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference – the only difference in their eyes – between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.
I'm not sure about Firefox or Chrome, but maybe flash runs within the brower's security context, so the browser would need permission to access the camera if flash was going to?
HTML5. Flash is bundled separatly, but modern mobile browser have started to implement the getUserMedia stuff for webcam/micro access (without using flash).
If you are an European citizen, then please sign this.
This is a citizen's initiative to explore basic income guarantee - if it gets 1M+ signatures before January 2014, budget will be allocated to this.
Planescape torment is an amazing example of character development and profound plot. So are both baldur's gates, as well as Arcanum, for example.
The "storytelling capabilities of the two" have already met, lots of time. It's just that the games that are "profound" and have complex and far-reaching plots are a small minority of the games being released (I guess because that's not what most people want).
Seems to me that France should really be embracing open source with open arms -- I bet the only thing holding them back is that so much open source material has already been created by dirty English speakers ;)
The entire French police force is slowly but surely switching to Linux and more generally Open Source software, as are all public schools (although Microsoft did and still does try its usually dirty tricks to prevent that). The entire national assembly (main house of parliament) entirely runs on Linux, from Desktop machines for the députés to servers hosting the live feed/on demand videos. Open Source projects (originating from companies as well as universities and such) regularly obtain grants/funds from official bodies (and in fact, creating an Open Source project is a very favorable point to obtain a lot of those innovation funds). Strong recommendations have been emitted to use only open and standard file formats in all administration, and several projects for laws have been proposed to enforce this, as well as the use of Open Source software in all public administration (not sure any of those were actually passed, though). Skype is also officially forbidden in high-level universities and official research organizations, essentially because it is closed source and thus theoretically prone to potential spying/security issues.
Seems to me that France is *already* embracing Open Source with open arms.
Actually, there was at least one occurence where someone hacked a service through the Minitel. :-)
The guy that did it is named Laurent Chemla and was at the time charged with "stealing energy" because there wasn't even any law against hacking at the time
He went on to create Gandi, and also wrote an essay called "Je suis un voleur" (I'm a thief), where he compares what he's doing (selling DNS) with simply stealing money as he is/was selling the simple procedure of adding a record into a database for ludicrous amounts of money. He also draws a pretty interesting parallel between the avent of the Internet and the fictional invention of a teleporter to describe how the emergence of a global network has/should impact society. A very interesting read: http://www.confessions-voleur.net/confessions/
Under Linux, I use a pickit 2, pk2cmd, and sdcc. Gets the job done - although I'm not sure it qualifies as "good", it is a complete command line toolchain and up to now it has supported all but the very latest PICs. Also, gpdasm can disassemble compiled code pretty well if necessary, and gpsim can be used as an okay simulator. Do *not* use Microchip's pickit 3, as you'd be forced to use the horrible Microchip Linux IDE, MPLab X (a rebrand/modification of Netbeans, I believe) instead of say, emacs.
once could also imagine taking them done with DIY drones.
Meant to write "one could also imagine taking them down", of course...
The "radio location system" they mention is probably ADS-B, which emits the position, speed, heading, etc... of planes every second.
Interestingly enough, you can listen in on those with a 20$ tv tuner (software defined radio):
http://www.irrational.net/2012/08/06/tracking-planes-for-20-or-less/
So I guess the good news is at least that we'll be able to tell when and where the drones are flying... if this is abused enough, once could also imagine taking them done with DIY drones.