... and since discovering it, I have felt no need to use MS Word for anything anymore. Particularly good about LibreOffice Write? The PDF export function works flawlessly, exports quickly, and also gives control over how the PDF document appears in Acrobat Reader (Zoom level, page order, thumbnails, et cetera). To me, Word has had its day. LibreOffice Write works well, is free, requires no internet-licensing shenanigans and does everything one could expect from a good word processor, including auto spell-checking and thesaurus functionality. My 2 Cents. =)
... then why don't the big broadcaster get together and buy Aereo before it can - supposedly! - "do more damage". --- This whole thing reeks of the stink TPTB raised each time an Internet file-sharing tech came along. Instead of investing/going along with the "new wave in media consumption", TPTB always demonize whatever the latest content-delivery mechanism does. ---- So My Dear Big-Broadcasters: Put your money where your mouth is, and buy Aereo "for the good of the industry". --- I sometimes wish that the Big Media PTB would hire a CEO/CTO who is in his 20s - 30s only. I bet that CEO/CTO would go along with new trends in media distribution and consumption, instead of trying to shut them/shoot them down before they even get a chance to mature. My 2 Cents... As always, feel free to disagree. =)
A statistical analysis of your online writing-style identifies you. CCTV cameras identify you from your gait (the "way you walk"). And now your smartphone sensors give away what smartphone you are using (... useful to "backdoor" the device, I presume?). My question to these scientist: Why do you create this tech? Do you not care about the privacy of the common man, or indeed the technological future your children will be forced to live in? My 2 Cents on this, and similar efforts to "ID people"....
... selling people "internet-connected smart-gadgets for the home" will be a heck of a tough sell, especially in an "educated" market like Europe. Many people are dismayed to learn that their smartphones, laptops, tablet computers and other devices can be turned into "spying tools" by TPTB pretty much on-demand, with no legal oversight. I don't think that knowing this, anyone is eager to put even more privacy-destroying electronic gadgets in their home. Even an internet connected "smart TV" that can gauge your mood through its built in front camera scanning your face will be a tough sell. It takes one news report of "Smart TVs getting remotely hacked", and people will default back to having a "dumb TV". The Internet-Of-Things will never take off with educated consumers. The "trust" that requires has been destroyed by revelations of NSA/GCHQ snooping on everybody. Its over for the Internet-Of-Things before it has really started. A few dumb consumers may still buy these "internet connected smart devices". But educated/awak/aware consumers? Not a chance in hell... My 2 Cents.
You set out to snoop on the minutiae of the lives of tens of millions of innocent people. Then your data center melts down... Perhaps God/Angels had something to do with this? =)
...really smart people creating things - "war machines" to be blunt - that will wind up killing someone on some battlefield somewhere (probably the Middle East and North Africa). If BD were creating robotic devices for peaceful purposes - a "dog" for the blind, a robot that can do some old lady's shopping for her - then I would be applauding the effort/brilliance on display here. But building clever war machines? Sorry, but this isn't something intelligent, conscientious people would even dream of working on. So its "boo combat robots" for Boston Dynamics from me, rather than "yay cool robots"... My 2 Cents. Feel free to disagree...
... which means that they can provide the "straight dope" on piracy, without trying to please rightwing conservatives who constantly scream that "piracy is theft". This report tells us what many of us already knew/suspected. Still, kudos to the LSE for making the effort! +1
It seems that _positive_ internet laws only get passed when it is almost "too late". This one falls into that category, methinks. I've never understood why people engage in "revenge porn" in the first place. But I guess this gives victims of this practice - mostly women I am guessing - some way to fight their ex-boyfriends or ex-lovers. Sounds like a good & needed law overall. I support it...
Borderlands 2 is an FPS game with heavy RPG elements, and you can play co-op with 4 players, and it is heaps of fun. --- Sure, it isn't an "MMO" at this point. But the idea that RPG and FPS have never been "blended" is false. Borderlands 2 does it, and does it in a package that is great fun (good for 150 hours or so of gameplay if you want to reach Level 70). Maybe Borderlands 3 can have a MMO aspect as well? Who knows? ----- There is also the Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Beta going on. That supports up to 2,000 players per server and is "FPS-like". http://www.jc-mp.com/ What it lacks in RPG elements, it makes up for in terms of a huge map littered with vehicles you can drive, fly or float. My 2 Cents...
Am I the only one who thinks that these idiots are creating 3D printed guns solely to provoke TPTB into regulating 3D printers? ---- I.e. future 3D printer models you purchase will send any 3D object you print to a remote server, where trained specialists check whether you are - possibly - printing "gun parts" without legal authorization. ------ I think that the crappy 3D guns these people are trying to create give all of 3D printing a bad name. And I'm pretty sure that the big corporations can't wait for 3D printers to be crippled with draconian regulations. Thus one can forget about a future where one doesn't buy a product the conventional way, but rather uses one's home 3D printer to print it out. I hope the 3D guns people stop before they ruin the 3D printed future for the rest of humanity. My 2 Cents...
It is suspected that the bodies of 2 more people who are still "missing" may be found somewhere inside the ship when it is refloated. RIP to those who died in this disaster. Nobody goes on a modern cruiseship these days expecting to be "shipwrecked" or "Titanic'd" within the first hours of the cruise..
The world's climate is such a huge, complex and fluid system that the best supercomputer in existence will only be able to model its future behavior "very approximately". It should thus not come as a big shock when what the computer models predicted in 2007 doesn't happen exactly in 2013, or indeed further down the timeline. It is only when more complex & accurate simulations can be run on supercomputers that we can have any reasonable expectancy of modeling the future behavior of the earth's climate with any accuracy.----- And suppose for a moment that we happen to realize further down the line that "Climate Change" worries were a bit overblown? Well, no harm done! Without the Climate Change alarmism of the last 2 decades, nobody would have put much money into developing renewables like wind and solar or tidal energy. We also might not have Toyota Priuses or Tesla electric cars on the market today. Not to mention computers and other household devices that save a lot of energy compared to past cousins. ------ So whether Global Warming is real or not, fear of it has influenced everything from automobile to refrigerator designs to become more "earth friendly". That's a good thing in my book....
Seriously - Every couple of weeks there is news that some 12 - 18 year old spark somewhere in the world has come up with something ingenious. Anything from devices that create/save electricity, to some bio-trick that means that treated food doesn't spoil or decompose easily. And then comes - drumroll - NOTHING AT ALL. We never hear a word about these young geniuses again. We never see ingenious products/inventions created by them on the market. In all likelihood these "young geniuses" get recruited by some multinationals, and disappear into the belly of said multinationals, into some company lab, never to be heard from again. And its been this way for a while. The only "magic innovation" from a young genius that HAS made it into the market recently is Euclideon's Geoverse software. And with that one, everybody said/swore it was "vapourware", despite realtime videos showing the Euclideon 3D tech working as it should. ------ Wake me 5 years from now when these "young geniuses" have contributed something tangible to the real world; Something you can buy/lease/use in some way. My 2 Cents....
I can see how this functionality can work well with school-agers/teenagers. But with adults/married couples? Maybe if you know other couples who like to game or something. ----- This is better than nothing, I suppose. But it still doesn't let me do what I most want to do: To SELL games over Steam that I don't use/play anymore. ---- In the final analysis, I think that this is mostly about Steam trying to desperately pretend that it isn't draconian DRM; That Steam somehow has "a heart", even though it is all about DOLLARS in actuality. ------- Wake me when I can buy/sell games 2nd hand over Steam. THAT would actually make me happy.. =)
or "Privacy" anymore. Perhaps there hasn't been for the last decade or so. We just didn't know at the time. ---- Enjoy your 21st Century. As long as people fail to defend their basic rights, there will not be such a thing as "security" or "privacy" again. My 2 Cents...
The Apple iWatch will have a 3D avatar of Steve Jobs on its screen at all times. This will make the iWatch "Insanely Smart". Each time you want iWatch to do something, all you have to do is say something to the Steve Jobs avatar on the screen. Things like "400 Million Chinese can't speak Mandarin. Can you fix this somehow, iWristWatchSteve?" The iWatch being designed from the outset to be "insanely smart", China's language problem will get fixed in 100 ms. =)
They want AI killing machines ( aka "Autonomous Battlefield Robots") that can model human thought on some level, so as to be better equipped to deal with human or human-controlled targets. --- This is very "Terminator 2" you say? Well, maybe IT IS very Terminator 2 in real life? ----- But seriously, what possible good can come from a war-oriented defense projects agency trying to model the human intellect/neocortex? Are they going to create kiddie toys that speak & interact with a 3 year old child with this? Or will this new tech be put to more nefarious uses ---- solving the problem of how to break a big ass street protest up most efficiently, for example? Or searching through millions of database records of activists, and finding those who are likely to become - and this is very W. Gibson I admit - "SuperNodes" who can influence the behavior of thousands of other people? Imagine technology human-smart enough to identify the next Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela or Ghandi when they are still in high-school? It would be quite easy then to stop these people from becoming "SuperNodes", no? ---- That's your conspiracy for today. Check back tomorrow for more. =)
The country as a whole would have been far worse off with the Muslim Brotherhood in charge - for, say, a whole decade. If Egypt is to stay secular, and remain/become a modern country, it is imperative that the country doesn't fall into the hands of the theo-conservatives. So while the deathtoll is tragic, the country would - in the long run - be infinitely, infinitely worse off if governed by the Muslim Brotherhood... I hope that things settle down in Egypt, and that the country's shortlived democracy experiment resumes, and works out better this time. My 2 cents.
Come on, America. You let the whole world use the internet for over a decade, with everyone thinking/believing that their data is reasonably private. Now it turns out that - oops - you built giant digital systems capable of eavesdropping on, essentially, everybody; the whole fricking world. That is/was a SERIOUS mistake. Mistakes of this magnitude can only be fixed by someone credible taking responsibility for what has been done wrong, and seeing to it that the "mistake" in question - the digital snooping system that tracks everybody - being shut down, or at least constrained & regulated better. ---- What does America do instead? It goes after the "Whistleblower" who did something heroic by warning billions of innocent people: "Be careful what you do in the digital world. Your internet/phone data is not private any longer." ------ Own up to your mistakes, America. Then start the process of undoing said mistakes. ---- The cost of not doing this? America will go down in the history books as a superpower-bully, that is morally & ethically not much better than the USSR was in its heydays. ---- Own up to the mistakes. Then fix them.
Slashdot Mirror
... and since discovering it, I have felt no need to use MS Word for anything anymore. Particularly good about LibreOffice Write? The PDF export function works flawlessly, exports quickly, and also gives control over how the PDF document appears in Acrobat Reader (Zoom level, page order, thumbnails, et cetera). To me, Word has had its day. LibreOffice Write works well, is free, requires no internet-licensing shenanigans and does everything one could expect from a good word processor, including auto spell-checking and thesaurus functionality. My 2 Cents. =)
... then why don't the big broadcaster get together and buy Aereo before it can - supposedly! - "do more damage". --- This whole thing reeks of the stink TPTB raised each time an Internet file-sharing tech came along. Instead of investing/going along with the "new wave in media consumption", TPTB always demonize whatever the latest content-delivery mechanism does. ---- So My Dear Big-Broadcasters: Put your money where your mouth is, and buy Aereo "for the good of the industry". --- I sometimes wish that the Big Media PTB would hire a CEO/CTO who is in his 20s - 30s only. I bet that CEO/CTO would go along with new trends in media distribution and consumption, instead of trying to shut them/shoot them down before they even get a chance to mature. My 2 Cents... As always, feel free to disagree. =)
A statistical analysis of your online writing-style identifies you. CCTV cameras identify you from your gait (the "way you walk"). And now your smartphone sensors give away what smartphone you are using (... useful to "backdoor" the device, I presume?). My question to these scientist: Why do you create this tech? Do you not care about the privacy of the common man, or indeed the technological future your children will be forced to live in? My 2 Cents on this, and similar efforts to "ID people"....
... selling people "internet-connected smart-gadgets for the home" will be a heck of a tough sell, especially in an "educated" market like Europe. Many people are dismayed to learn that their smartphones, laptops, tablet computers and other devices can be turned into "spying tools" by TPTB pretty much on-demand, with no legal oversight. I don't think that knowing this, anyone is eager to put even more privacy-destroying electronic gadgets in their home. Even an internet connected "smart TV" that can gauge your mood through its built in front camera scanning your face will be a tough sell. It takes one news report of "Smart TVs getting remotely hacked", and people will default back to having a "dumb TV". The Internet-Of-Things will never take off with educated consumers. The "trust" that requires has been destroyed by revelations of NSA/GCHQ snooping on everybody. Its over for the Internet-Of-Things before it has really started. A few dumb consumers may still buy these "internet connected smart devices". But educated/awak/aware consumers? Not a chance in hell... My 2 Cents.
You set out to snoop on the minutiae of the lives of tens of millions of innocent people. Then your data center melts down... Perhaps God/Angels had something to do with this? =)
...really smart people creating things - "war machines" to be blunt - that will wind up killing someone on some battlefield somewhere (probably the Middle East and North Africa). If BD were creating robotic devices for peaceful purposes - a "dog" for the blind, a robot that can do some old lady's shopping for her - then I would be applauding the effort/brilliance on display here. But building clever war machines? Sorry, but this isn't something intelligent, conscientious people would even dream of working on. So its "boo combat robots" for Boston Dynamics from me, rather than "yay cool robots"... My 2 Cents. Feel free to disagree...
... which means that they can provide the "straight dope" on piracy, without trying to please rightwing conservatives who constantly scream that "piracy is theft". This report tells us what many of us already knew/suspected. Still, kudos to the LSE for making the effort! +1
It seems that _positive_ internet laws only get passed when it is almost "too late". This one falls into that category, methinks. I've never understood why people engage in "revenge porn" in the first place. But I guess this gives victims of this practice - mostly women I am guessing - some way to fight their ex-boyfriends or ex-lovers. Sounds like a good & needed law overall. I support it...
Borderlands 2 is an FPS game with heavy RPG elements, and you can play co-op with 4 players, and it is heaps of fun. --- Sure, it isn't an "MMO" at this point. But the idea that RPG and FPS have never been "blended" is false. Borderlands 2 does it, and does it in a package that is great fun (good for 150 hours or so of gameplay if you want to reach Level 70). Maybe Borderlands 3 can have a MMO aspect as well? Who knows? ----- There is also the Just Cause 2 Multiplayer Beta going on. That supports up to 2,000 players per server and is "FPS-like". http://www.jc-mp.com/ What it lacks in RPG elements, it makes up for in terms of a huge map littered with vehicles you can drive, fly or float. My 2 Cents...
Am I the only one who thinks that these idiots are creating 3D printed guns solely to provoke TPTB into regulating 3D printers? ---- I.e. future 3D printer models you purchase will send any 3D object you print to a remote server, where trained specialists check whether you are - possibly - printing "gun parts" without legal authorization. ------ I think that the crappy 3D guns these people are trying to create give all of 3D printing a bad name. And I'm pretty sure that the big corporations can't wait for 3D printers to be crippled with draconian regulations. Thus one can forget about a future where one doesn't buy a product the conventional way, but rather uses one's home 3D printer to print it out. I hope the 3D guns people stop before they ruin the 3D printed future for the rest of humanity. My 2 Cents...
Ha ha ha ha... Made me laugh...
It is suspected that the bodies of 2 more people who are still "missing" may be found somewhere inside the ship when it is refloated. RIP to those who died in this disaster. Nobody goes on a modern cruiseship these days expecting to be "shipwrecked" or "Titanic'd" within the first hours of the cruise..
Here's one more that is also iOS compatible: http://www.theguardian.com/global/2013/sep/16/concordia-salvage-operation-giglio-parbuckling-live-updates
Crazy, crazy amount to spend, right? I wonder if this is an example of "Italian Efficiency"... =) =) =)
Another Livestream is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24104741
The world's climate is such a huge, complex and fluid system that the best supercomputer in existence will only be able to model its future behavior "very approximately". It should thus not come as a big shock when what the computer models predicted in 2007 doesn't happen exactly in 2013, or indeed further down the timeline. It is only when more complex & accurate simulations can be run on supercomputers that we can have any reasonable expectancy of modeling the future behavior of the earth's climate with any accuracy.----- And suppose for a moment that we happen to realize further down the line that "Climate Change" worries were a bit overblown? Well, no harm done! Without the Climate Change alarmism of the last 2 decades, nobody would have put much money into developing renewables like wind and solar or tidal energy. We also might not have Toyota Priuses or Tesla electric cars on the market today. Not to mention computers and other household devices that save a lot of energy compared to past cousins. ------ So whether Global Warming is real or not, fear of it has influenced everything from automobile to refrigerator designs to become more "earth friendly". That's a good thing in my book....
Seriously - Every couple of weeks there is news that some 12 - 18 year old spark somewhere in the world has come up with something ingenious. Anything from devices that create/save electricity, to some bio-trick that means that treated food doesn't spoil or decompose easily. And then comes - drumroll - NOTHING AT ALL. We never hear a word about these young geniuses again. We never see ingenious products/inventions created by them on the market. In all likelihood these "young geniuses" get recruited by some multinationals, and disappear into the belly of said multinationals, into some company lab, never to be heard from again. And its been this way for a while. The only "magic innovation" from a young genius that HAS made it into the market recently is Euclideon's Geoverse software. And with that one, everybody said/swore it was "vapourware", despite realtime videos showing the Euclideon 3D tech working as it should. ------ Wake me 5 years from now when these "young geniuses" have contributed something tangible to the real world; Something you can buy/lease/use in some way. My 2 Cents....
I can see how this functionality can work well with school-agers/teenagers. But with adults/married couples? Maybe if you know other couples who like to game or something. ----- This is better than nothing, I suppose. But it still doesn't let me do what I most want to do: To SELL games over Steam that I don't use/play anymore. ---- In the final analysis, I think that this is mostly about Steam trying to desperately pretend that it isn't draconian DRM; That Steam somehow has "a heart", even though it is all about DOLLARS in actuality. ------- Wake me when I can buy/sell games 2nd hand over Steam. THAT would actually make me happy.. =)
...Books disappear YOU when you stop paying.
or "Privacy" anymore. Perhaps there hasn't been for the last decade or so. We just didn't know at the time. ---- Enjoy your 21st Century. As long as people fail to defend their basic rights, there will not be such a thing as "security" or "privacy" again. My 2 Cents...
The Apple iWatch will have a 3D avatar of Steve Jobs on its screen at all times. This will make the iWatch "Insanely Smart". Each time you want iWatch to do something, all you have to do is say something to the Steve Jobs avatar on the screen. Things like "400 Million Chinese can't speak Mandarin. Can you fix this somehow, iWristWatchSteve?" The iWatch being designed from the outset to be "insanely smart", China's language problem will get fixed in 100 ms. =)
Kofi Annan's biography: http://www.amazon.com/Interventions-A-Life-War-Peace/dp/1594204209/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377448186&sr=8-1&keywords=interventions
They want AI killing machines ( aka "Autonomous Battlefield Robots") that can model human thought on some level, so as to be better equipped to deal with human or human-controlled targets. --- This is very "Terminator 2" you say? Well, maybe IT IS very Terminator 2 in real life? ----- But seriously, what possible good can come from a war-oriented defense projects agency trying to model the human intellect/neocortex? Are they going to create kiddie toys that speak & interact with a 3 year old child with this? Or will this new tech be put to more nefarious uses ---- solving the problem of how to break a big ass street protest up most efficiently, for example? Or searching through millions of database records of activists, and finding those who are likely to become - and this is very W. Gibson I admit - "SuperNodes" who can influence the behavior of thousands of other people? Imagine technology human-smart enough to identify the next Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela or Ghandi when they are still in high-school? It would be quite easy then to stop these people from becoming "SuperNodes", no? ---- That's your conspiracy for today. Check back tomorrow for more. =)
The country as a whole would have been far worse off with the Muslim Brotherhood in charge - for, say, a whole decade. If Egypt is to stay secular, and remain/become a modern country, it is imperative that the country doesn't fall into the hands of the theo-conservatives. So while the deathtoll is tragic, the country would - in the long run - be infinitely, infinitely worse off if governed by the Muslim Brotherhood... I hope that things settle down in Egypt, and that the country's shortlived democracy experiment resumes, and works out better this time. My 2 cents.
Come on, America. You let the whole world use the internet for over a decade, with everyone thinking/believing that their data is reasonably private. Now it turns out that - oops - you built giant digital systems capable of eavesdropping on, essentially, everybody; the whole fricking world. That is/was a SERIOUS mistake. Mistakes of this magnitude can only be fixed by someone credible taking responsibility for what has been done wrong, and seeing to it that the "mistake" in question - the digital snooping system that tracks everybody - being shut down, or at least constrained & regulated better. ---- What does America do instead? It goes after the "Whistleblower" who did something heroic by warning billions of innocent people: "Be careful what you do in the digital world. Your internet/phone data is not private any longer." ------ Own up to your mistakes, America. Then start the process of undoing said mistakes. ---- The cost of not doing this? America will go down in the history books as a superpower-bully, that is morally & ethically not much better than the USSR was in its heydays. ---- Own up to the mistakes. Then fix them.