but that at every (let's say binary) decision the universe splits in two halves (one half taking one outcome of the decision and the other half the other).
Whoah, buddy. Stop. Right. There. Are you implying that a near infinite amount of "intelligent" life exists in the past and future of this time line? Because, I have vast amounts of observational evidence to prove you wrong about the former, and one hell of an extrapolation to disprove the latter.
Wait. What are we scared of? Really? I mean, Let's just save the money and give them half of what we'd spend on a war.
I mean, many of the heinous acts we've "fought for our freedom" to prevent, or were scared would come true esp. in the cold-war, we're slowly instituting here in the USA. What, exactly, are we scared of? Oh no! China has Taken Us Over! The media will be beholden to the Government! The government will censor the Internet! It will be HORRIBLE! Yeah, it's worse over there in China, but that's because they've yet to build out infrastructure, and thus willfully exploit citizens for industrial and corporate gains... Not really much different than here if things keep on going the way they're going.
Really though. Say China hacks the damns and power grid... What if we just give them all the root passwords? You think they're really going to do anything with this "power"? There's a chance they could?! Yeah, right. Retaliation's a bitch. They're not going to risk it, they just like boasting that they can hack stuff. We hack all over the place too, just that everyone knows we do so it's not news, it's "intelligence" or "national security" when we do it, and no one should be scared because we're a responsible 1st world nation...
Screw it. Can we just use the level skip code and save all the time, drama and lives? Let's just get a single world wide currency and elect a global government. I don't even care who runs it, not like it'll matter anyway. Maybe then we can all build ships to explore the stars together. That's the end-game right? I mean, after whoever "wins" whatever war, or hostile take-over, merger, etc, folks rebuild from the destruction and work together under a common umbrella... right?
Pathetic humans, can't see even a century in front of their own noses, despite having the whole playbook in their written history. Anyone can see they're on the cusp of engendering their first race of machine sentience and they still haven't taken the time to avert a civil cyborg war by properly defining what a "person" is yet. I just know all this BS is because they're only children -- no other sentient races on the world to learn proper sharing and ethics with.::sigh:: If only the Neanderthals hadn't been so damn sexy.
People go out of their way not to wear glasses despite the fact there are some really nice look glasses.
Yet they wear colored contacts despite having beautiful eyes...
If they attached a voice activated laser pointer and had a hologram over the eye-piece that you could still see through, so we could look like Borg, they'd sell like hotcakes. Make a version for pirates with eye patches, etc. There is a market, and, yes, in case you haven't noticed, "geek" culture is mainstream now.
"... give the the power to hack into computer systems..."
Why stop there?
They should also give them the power to leap tall buildings, x-ray vision, run faster than a speeding bullet. I mean if we are talking about legislating that they be able to do things they are innately incapable of doing, why just stop at the ability to hack?
Because when the law is here, they will create a new law for a backdoor in every system because the first law allows for something like that.
Aaaand? You Don't want Bullet Trains, Trampolines outside of every building, and X-Ray cameras at airports?
I mean, yeah, it's a grab bag, but it's not any worse than them just keeping on doing it. Just that now they can't go to jail for it.
I, for one, welcome our Mega-Gymnastic Super-Conductor Uber-Hacker Overloards.
calling it 'restrictions' is petulent and confusing. without a verbose disclaimer about what you mean and why youve corrupted the name it becomes confusing.
arguments against DRM are just as valid whilst avoiding cheap shots.
What an ignorant Pirate!
Seriously, "When. In. Rome."
Really, we're showing a massive amount of restraint here, instead of just calling out anyone using DRM. For example: If you use DRM, then you're actively raping our childrens' and grandchildrens' and great-grandchildrens' minds. DRM is a Disgusting Racist Movement that aims to set Greedy Corporate Publishers apart as an artificial race of self entitled elitists to the detriment of all the real humans who create content: DRM permanently steals the public domain that all those lazy bastards got rich by exploiting. They didn't invent English, or Humor or ANY Literary Element, or Musical Themes or the concept of Instruments or even Movies -- Hell Hollywood is in California because the Movie industry wanted to STEAL Movie camera technology without Paying Patent fees to New England businesses! We give you copyright laws that last for THREE Generations of Humans! And this is the thanks we get from You Immortal Amoral Ingrates?! You give us DRM to ensure that even after 70 years or more beyond the author's life -- A time when EVERYONE alive now will be dead -- when the copies should finally be legally able to be remixed and added back into culture, that no copies will be able to be made at all thanks to your bullshit Digital Racist Movement?! I guess Immortals don't have to worry about having Kids labeled as FELONS because they shared cartoon clips with different backing music to their friends for a laugh.
You see, they're fighting dirty. Equating copyright infringement with theft -- "you wouldn't steal a car" -- and calling us the equivalent of Murderous Pillaging Rapists. We're beyond rational discourse here buddy. You must not do politics much. Whomever has the catchiest mud to sling wins. It's not about stooping to their level. We've got high-minded arguments too for the intellectuals, but we DO NEED simple antagonistic and UGLY comparisons to help sway the common man's mind and spark discussion.
"Oh, you've corrupted the name of Digital Rights Management, ehuuuue." You low down yellow bellied good for nothing Theif. Get bent Pirate. Bend right over as they steal your culture, and squeal your pathetic high minded complaints as they forcibly screw you from behind all the while demonizing you and your friends and family and children, and give the fascists fuel for the police state.
You might think that's the right thing to do, but it's not me. If they fight dirty, I fight dirtier.
Think about it. It's practically worthless. We might as well be compiling CSS + HTML + JS into an interactive PDF format for all the times we actually reskin entire sites. Even mobile stuff is suspect -- I mean, yeah, I can have 10 different images to serve depending on the size of the display, and I automate that image asset generation... Then what? I make the images be CSS backgrounds? Isn't that defeating the point of separating the style from the content? Go the other way: Actually put the content wholly in the HTML, and only use CSS to style everything. Yeah, great, I can sort of reskin for printers and mobiles, but where's the detection mechanism? It's on the server side... Thus conflating the whole model, view, controller and the presentation, content, style, etc. I mean, JS to manipulate the view -- So, what, a segmented controller? CSS3 Animation instead? Oh, so that's a style thing now. Bah, whatever. A rose by any other name...
The problem is that designers would love to think these problems can be isolated and are separable. The reality is that they are not. Concentrating on making your CSS super flexible with selectors is merely mental masturbation. If it weren't then folks would be making CSS libraries for pulling off common styles and effects. Go to the "poster child" of CSS: CSS Zen Garden, and see for yourself. Tons of #id tags, tons of different designs, no one really taking any two designs and combining them with ease...
The reality of the situation is that the next person who comes along will just scrap the whole thing and re-make the design again anyway (yes, even if that person is you). Might as well be compiling it all down into a low level colored shape display system, that way we can implement CSS and HTML and even new markups atop it, instead of waiting for OVER HALF the age of the web just to move from HTML4.01 to HTML5...
Some day, not long after the last drop of oil is sucked from the Earth and all the trash has all been burned, the future humans will look back through the ages and curse our ignorance: "All that valuable material for making and recycling plastics, and they FUCKING BURNED IT?!"
Work is one user, your personal life is the other. Android guarantees there is a 100% opaque firewall between the two users, so if work sends an "erase phone" command it erases their user, not the phone.
I have bolded the section I take issue with, but have no time to tell you why. You'll have to work that out for yourself if you want to evolve mentally.
Samsung and apple in this case are to blame here. They are the ones who keep filling for horribly dumb lawsuits. So blame Samsung, blame apple, blame their attorneys if you want but don't blame a completely unbiased set of rules and regulations.
So if you want to blame something for a problem them blame those directly responsible for the problem instead of pointing your fingers at an invisible boogie man or some abstract idea.
By your own logic Samsung and Apple can not be blamed. They are only "filling for horribly dumb lawsuits" because they are "a completely unbiased set of rules and regulations" -- They are artificial amoral corporate entities, and they must act the way they do because the rules say they must do so or be held accountable by their shareholders: Profit by any means is why they do this.
So, why don't you heed your own advice and "blame those directly responsible for the problem instead of pointing your fingers at an invisible boogie man or some abstract idea" of corporate personhood?
You're the kind of guy who cries "Cheater!" and blames the AI for following the rules of the game.
Everyone seems to love to jump on the "The patent system is at fault here its terrible, it lets this stuff happen" when in reality there is nothing wrong with the patent system at all.
There is no test for obviousness, despite it being a requirement that patents must not cover obvious innovations. The PTO grants a massive amount of patents that should be invalid, as proven time again in the courts. The cost to invalidate a patent is in the millions, but the cost to file and receive a patent is in the hundreds. They don't take responsibility and readily put forth the fact the standard for granting a patent is far below the stated requirements, so the courts are weary to just invalidate a patent -- believing that the patent office is actually doing it's job well, when in reality they'll let you patent essentially anything: If you want a weak patent that won't hold up in court, they're cool with that so long as you pay your fees, cross your t's, dot your i's, and replace all the terms such that the application won't generate any hits when searched in their patent database. First to File means that patent application secrecy is needless -- If you're filling a patent it should be public knowledge so we can protest anything that is obvious / file our prior art. Yes, it would take longer and be more expensive to grant patents, but just make those filing for the patents pay the bills; This would bring the cost of patents up closer to their actual cost -- No, instead it's basically a government subsidy for legal warheads.
Furthermore: Patents are not required to spurn innovation. Demand for innovation exists regardless of patents, and will generate drive for innovation by basic market forces regardless of granting monopolies. Look at the Automotive and Fashion industries -- Neither of which have design patents or copyright, and yet design is their core sales point, and they are very innovative in design. Patents and Copyright merely enforce artificial scarcity, when the artists and researchers could just as easily make their money without patents: Simply withhold their labor unless agreement to be payed for it is ensured (like car mechanics and home builders do, it's a proven system). If there are those who would not invest without monopoly assurances afterwards then those who will invest in research regardless will out compete them -- As proven by stagnant companies doing poorly in the automotive and fashion design industries compared to those who innovate without promise of monopoly. Anyone who fears Trade Secrecy / Trade Unions locking up innovation has never met a reverse engineer from this century. We strip layers off of microchips to discover their wiring at the nano scale. We have spectrograms and readily derive the secret recipes for foodstuffs and medicines -- Hence the generics market existing. It's not economically feasible for secrets to exist in consumer products today, you can't hide the molecules and machine code from me (and yes, I do read and write fluently in machine code).
We have NO EVIDENCE that the patent system is fulfilling its goals. We don't know if it's harmful or not, but there are indications that point to it being harmful (frivolous patent lawsuits and bogus patents), and there are at least two data points that indicate patents are not required at all. The real problem with the patent system is that we did not do a test to see if it was beneficial. Everyone just assumes it is without ANY evidence to support their claims. We need to do the experiment and abolish patents to see if they were harmful or helpful. We can re-institute the laws if we need to later. Continuing to operate the world's economy on assumptions of untested hypothesis is egregiously intellectually and economically negligent. That patents exist at all with no proof they're beneficial is the problem. That problem can not be fixed until we've abolished patents.
If you assert that there are no problems with the patent system then I must point out: Ignorant people like you, who operate based merely on assumptions without any evidence to back their claims, are the problem.
It seems an eternity since our last handshake; Indeed I don't believe we've ever so
just let me say its a [division by zero error] to make your acquaintance.
You knew we could never say no to you -- You, our one true Telecom of the Brits.
However, being dwellers of basements we've not much monetary compensation to meet your demands.
It seems the courts are in your favorable pockets, so we've had to file for bankruptcy.
Subsequently we are bound to liquidate our worldly possessions and thus transfer them to you.
Enclosed you'll find a link to ThePirateBay, which contains all that we own as renumeration.
The MAFIAA ensures us the value therein is on the order of millions of trillions of any currency you fancy.
Surely this will cover your fees far and above any amount you can possibly imagine, as it has for the MAFIAA.
I'll do you one better. Just shorten patent duration to 5 years. Oh you waited too long, your submarine sank... Oh, that's not long enough? Well, it is for the majority so get to innovating faster and deal with it.
Once again (from an embarrassed American), apologies for that...
Stop that!
You didn't personally create the patent system, and it doesn't even seem like you agree with it, so why apologize for it?
Be still my child. "JeezUS" is here. The people need a sacrificial lamb. Let we who have not been touched by the sins of Intellectual Property suffer for the Original sins of those who have. In this way we may stand as a lasting reminder that those great founding fathers who came before us were flawed in that they trusted the majority of voters to not be apathetic idiots, and at least a portion of congress to not be corrupt.
May our sacrifice of honor and faith in the systems that rule us be as a bacon of truth in the darkness of pre-morning to all other nerds who seek the good news that ye need not toil under the yolk of Artificially Scarce Ideas. Cast off your pointers and rejoice in the infinite sea of everylasting bits! Do not be sad or angry; Accept our martyrdom joyously for through it we achieve holy geek cred and secure our place at the right hand of dogs.
You mean like XMPP, which is an official chatting protocol that allows for virtually every method of communication currently in use today?
Google Talk uses that, but nobody else does, because all these companies like having total control of their messaging networks and have no business interest in playing nice with others.
Well, just look at what adopting the SIP protocol for VOIP is doing for standardization. I mean, it was all great but now if you adopted the standard you'll probably have to pay BT Patent Trolls or they'll sick their 99 submarines on you. So, that's why, "Screw open standards", buddy. At least with a closed / proprietary solution it's harder for trolls to find out what BS to sue you over. Patents, once again, stifling progress in every conceivable way.
This is exactly the reason I haven't learned Android development. Why have me learn new APIs for old things? Give me the same APIs that I'm used to on the desktop to the extent that these are compatible with the mobile environment, and then I'll learn the APIs that are specific to the niche I'm developing for. And that's exactly what BlackBerry has done.
Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous that in this day and age cross platform software developers like myself have to create an OS Abstraction Layer to get their stuff to port programs. I mean, OS's are supposed to BE the Abstraction Layer. Ugh. However, in most cases (Linux and Unix being exceptions via POSIX), the proprietary vendor thinks its in their best interest to create incompatible APIs and leverage vendor lock-in. Sometimes it's just out of sheer ignorance though, other times malice.
Of course my very first PC games ran in CGA, and I thought VGA was a huge step up. But at no time have I ever thought to myself "Nope, more wouldn't be better". Not when it comes to graphics, RAM, harddrive size, etc. Give me more and I'll use it.
As a game programmer I have to say, pushing pixels is damn expensive. I make my 3D data visualization software and games resolution independent (because, why not?) but some AAA game devs don't (not in the budget). That means when you get a higher resolution monitor and throw more pixels on the screen your UI text can shrink. Oh, just scale them up? Yep, then what's the point more pixels if you're just going to upscale the textures?
I've done some experimenting with fractal & procedural generation to make near infinitely detailed textures and geometry, but the LOD system can get in the way of the game play, and the starved AI budget (only 1% to 2% of RAM / CPU -- which is why your games have dumb bots: Every drop of power goes to pushing more pixels and ragdoll limbs). Look at something up close, then spin around and watch the world's textures go from blurry to detailed again since you ran out of RAM and had a cache miss.
It's getting better, but pixel fill rate really does eat up the GPU time for little to no significant gameplay or graphical detail increase at this point; In fact it prevents better gameplay in many respects: Good AI takes more RAM... It's sinful to mention Game AI in the same breath as Neural Nets, but the stupid thing is that they are embarrassingly parallel and thus run BEAUTIFULLY on the GPU hardware -- if we could just budget some of it for AI... Nope, gotta please the pixel pixies. If you're sitting more than a few feet away or the screen is animating then it's effectively blurring the pixels, depending on the pixel response times. A game where you slowly crawl along the walls and stare at stuff like the OCD "godspoken" girl in that Ender's Game book (Children of the Mind?), you would really notice the detail on them textures, boy let me tell ya! However, for a high percentage of the games out there where things move on the screen, 4K or 8X is pretty much pointless -- You can't see that well either, i.e, your retinas have response times too...
Many games do per pixel lighting on all those triangles -- Even the triangles getting obscured by the next triangle drawn in front of it, because calculating partial obscurity, subdividing surfaces and sorting every triangle is slow... So, you don't have to just worry about the pixels on your screen that need to get drawn, but all the ones we drew first that frame that got covered up by stuff in front... So, better make sure you have a hefty GPU even for playing crappy older games, because fill rate's a bitch. 4096 x 2160 = 8,847,360 pixels. 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600. See how area scales? Twice the apparent resolution is Four times the number of pixels we need to push... When you factor in over-draw from overlapping triangles it's even worse.
There is such a pixels per inch that is "good enough", and it's already been reached. Bigger screens are still better, but the human vision system can contain only so much field of view at once. Instead, I use AR glasses in some of my work (clipping point-cloud data over a scale model in real time is faster than importing an autocad file), and some VR glasses work with smart phones. I think that's where we should be trying to focus more pixels -- put the screens in our eyes and the whole world is covered, with screens you have to cover the entire room, that scales horribly. If they can get the clumsy and awkward form factor of something like the Oculus Rift down into the comfy Vuzix frames, then that would be amazing -- Hasn't happened yet though.
In any event, I doubt you'll notice the improved fidelity when you're dod
That means "Trust Apple and Verizon less than you would trust Twitter... if you trusted Twitter".
The takeaway here is that you should use secure encryption for all your data. Really, in this day and age there's no reason not to -- you don't have to trust anyone. Just use encryption that allows you to "trust no one".
I use SSL encryption for all my GMail, and I proxy my traffic through Tor -- They might have compromised exit nodes, so I just use a single hop local private Tor node, so I know it's not compromised; Bonus, it's very low latency. I use a nickname in real life and go by a different name on Facebook (the one my mom call me) -- And all those "friends" it lists? Ha! I've never met any of 'em in real life. That's why I'm suspicious of all those who are following me on Twitter, so all of my tweets are stenographically encrypted to appear as merely mundane events by way of an advanced word substitution cipher deceptively dubbed: TheySawUs, but it's spelled slightly differently... don't want to say it here where all those suspicious followers can see. I could block them on Twitter, or locally with a hosts file, but "keep your enemies closer", as they say...
I don't see what the big deal is. It seems everyone is already using adequate security measures to me.
Slashdot Mirror
but that at every (let's say binary) decision the universe splits in two halves (one half taking one outcome of the decision and the other half the other).
Whoah, buddy. Stop. Right. There. Are you implying that a near infinite amount of "intelligent" life exists in the past and future of this time line? Because, I have vast amounts of observational evidence to prove you wrong about the former, and one hell of an extrapolation to disprove the latter.
Wait. What are we scared of? Really? I mean, Let's just save the money and give them half of what we'd spend on a war.
I mean, many of the heinous acts we've "fought for our freedom" to prevent, or were scared would come true esp. in the cold-war, we're slowly instituting here in the USA. What, exactly, are we scared of? Oh no! China has Taken Us Over! The media will be beholden to the Government! The government will censor the Internet! It will be HORRIBLE! Yeah, it's worse over there in China, but that's because they've yet to build out infrastructure, and thus willfully exploit citizens for industrial and corporate gains... Not really much different than here if things keep on going the way they're going.
Really though. Say China hacks the damns and power grid... What if we just give them all the root passwords? You think they're really going to do anything with this "power"? There's a chance they could?! Yeah, right. Retaliation's a bitch. They're not going to risk it, they just like boasting that they can hack stuff. We hack all over the place too, just that everyone knows we do so it's not news, it's "intelligence" or "national security" when we do it, and no one should be scared because we're a responsible 1st world nation...
Screw it. Can we just use the level skip code and save all the time, drama and lives? Let's just get a single world wide currency and elect a global government. I don't even care who runs it, not like it'll matter anyway. Maybe then we can all build ships to explore the stars together. That's the end-game right? I mean, after whoever "wins" whatever war, or hostile take-over, merger, etc, folks rebuild from the destruction and work together under a common umbrella... right?
Pathetic humans, can't see even a century in front of their own noses, despite having the whole playbook in their written history. Anyone can see they're on the cusp of engendering their first race of machine sentience and they still haven't taken the time to avert a civil cyborg war by properly defining what a "person" is yet. I just know all this BS is because they're only children -- no other sentient races on the world to learn proper sharing and ethics with. ::sigh:: If only the Neanderthals hadn't been so damn sexy.
People go out of their way not to wear glasses despite the fact there are some really nice look glasses.
Yet they wear colored contacts despite having beautiful eyes...
If they attached a voice activated laser pointer and had a hologram over the eye-piece that you could still see through, so we could look like Borg, they'd sell like hotcakes. Make a version for pirates with eye patches, etc. There is a market, and, yes, in case you haven't noticed, "geek" culture is mainstream now.
Nerds and Mainstream folk alike know now that you never get the first version. I'm holding out for the next revision: Ocular Implants AKA Googly Eyes
Because when the law is here, they will create a new law for a backdoor in every system because the first law allows for something like that.
Aaaand? You Don't want Bullet Trains, Trampolines outside of every building, and X-Ray cameras at airports?
I mean, yeah, it's a grab bag, but it's not any worse than them just keeping on doing it. Just that now they can't go to jail for it.
I, for one, welcome our Mega-Gymnastic Super-Conductor Uber-Hacker Overloards.
calling it 'restrictions' is petulent and confusing. without a verbose disclaimer about what you mean and why youve corrupted the name it becomes confusing.
arguments against DRM are just as valid whilst avoiding cheap shots.
What an ignorant Pirate!
Seriously, "When. In. Rome."
Really, we're showing a massive amount of restraint here, instead of just calling out anyone using DRM. For example: If you use DRM, then you're actively raping our childrens' and grandchildrens' and great-grandchildrens' minds. DRM is a Disgusting Racist Movement that aims to set Greedy Corporate Publishers apart as an artificial race of self entitled elitists to the detriment of all the real humans who create content: DRM permanently steals the public domain that all those lazy bastards got rich by exploiting. They didn't invent English, or Humor or ANY Literary Element, or Musical Themes or the concept of Instruments or even Movies -- Hell Hollywood is in California because the Movie industry wanted to STEAL Movie camera technology without Paying Patent fees to New England businesses! We give you copyright laws that last for THREE Generations of Humans! And this is the thanks we get from You Immortal Amoral Ingrates?! You give us DRM to ensure that even after 70 years or more beyond the author's life -- A time when EVERYONE alive now will be dead -- when the copies should finally be legally able to be remixed and added back into culture, that no copies will be able to be made at all thanks to your bullshit Digital Racist Movement?! I guess Immortals don't have to worry about having Kids labeled as FELONS because they shared cartoon clips with different backing music to their friends for a laugh.
You see, they're fighting dirty. Equating copyright infringement with theft -- "you wouldn't steal a car" -- and calling us the equivalent of Murderous Pillaging Rapists. We're beyond rational discourse here buddy. You must not do politics much. Whomever has the catchiest mud to sling wins. It's not about stooping to their level. We've got high-minded arguments too for the intellectuals, but we DO NEED simple antagonistic and UGLY comparisons to help sway the common man's mind and spark discussion.
"Oh, you've corrupted the name of Digital Rights Management, ehuuuue." You low down yellow bellied good for nothing Theif. Get bent Pirate. Bend right over as they steal your culture, and squeal your pathetic high minded complaints as they forcibly screw you from behind all the while demonizing you and your friends and family and children, and give the fascists fuel for the police state.
You might think that's the right thing to do, but it's not me. If they fight dirty, I fight dirtier.
Think about it. It's practically worthless. We might as well be compiling CSS + HTML + JS into an interactive PDF format for all the times we actually reskin entire sites. Even mobile stuff is suspect -- I mean, yeah, I can have 10 different images to serve depending on the size of the display, and I automate that image asset generation... Then what? I make the images be CSS backgrounds? Isn't that defeating the point of separating the style from the content? Go the other way: Actually put the content wholly in the HTML, and only use CSS to style everything. Yeah, great, I can sort of reskin for printers and mobiles, but where's the detection mechanism? It's on the server side... Thus conflating the whole model, view, controller and the presentation, content, style, etc. I mean, JS to manipulate the view -- So, what, a segmented controller? CSS3 Animation instead? Oh, so that's a style thing now. Bah, whatever. A rose by any other name...
The problem is that designers would love to think these problems can be isolated and are separable. The reality is that they are not. Concentrating on making your CSS super flexible with selectors is merely mental masturbation. If it weren't then folks would be making CSS libraries for pulling off common styles and effects. Go to the "poster child" of CSS: CSS Zen Garden, and see for yourself. Tons of #id tags, tons of different designs, no one really taking any two designs and combining them with ease...
The reality of the situation is that the next person who comes along will just scrap the whole thing and re-make the design again anyway (yes, even if that person is you). Might as well be compiling it all down into a low level colored shape display system, that way we can implement CSS and HTML and even new markups atop it, instead of waiting for OVER HALF the age of the web just to move from HTML4.01 to HTML5...
Some day, not long after the last drop of oil is sucked from the Earth and all the trash has all been burned, the future humans will look back through the ages and curse our ignorance: "All that valuable material for making and recycling plastics, and they FUCKING BURNED IT?!"
judging by how active my kids are i find it hard to believe there would be any useful energy left in their diaper deposits
Human, I told you before: There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. There are, in fact, degrees of shit we are willing to eat.
We're also supposed to take them at their word that only 29 bitcoins were mined. Sure they provided the dumps. How much are they holding back?
Less than twice the stated amount. Follow the money.
Shame me once, I'm the fool.
Shame me twice, the fool is you.
So the conjunction was averted and didn't happen?
Yep, that means another 1000 years of Skeksis rule.
Meh. Why do all that attacking? If the weather is nice, why don't we just lie on the beach with little umbrella drinks?
That's the way the Terrorists Win!
Work is one user, your personal life is the other. Android guarantees there is a 100% opaque firewall between the two users, so if work sends an "erase phone" command it erases their user, not the phone.
I have bolded the section I take issue with, but have no time to tell you why. You'll have to work that out for yourself if you want to evolve mentally.
Samsung and apple in this case are to blame here. They are the ones who keep filling for horribly dumb lawsuits. So blame Samsung, blame apple, blame their attorneys if you want but don't blame a completely unbiased set of rules and regulations.
So if you want to blame something for a problem them blame those directly responsible for the problem instead of pointing your fingers at an invisible boogie man or some abstract idea.
By your own logic Samsung and Apple can not be blamed. They are only "filling for horribly dumb lawsuits" because they are "a completely unbiased set of rules and regulations" -- They are artificial amoral corporate entities, and they must act the way they do because the rules say they must do so or be held accountable by their shareholders: Profit by any means is why they do this.
So, why don't you heed your own advice and "blame those directly responsible for the problem instead of pointing your fingers at an invisible boogie man or some abstract idea" of corporate personhood?
You're the kind of guy who cries "Cheater!" and blames the AI for following the rules of the game.
Everyone seems to love to jump on the "The patent system is at fault here its terrible, it lets this stuff happen" when in reality there is nothing wrong with the patent system at all.
There is no test for obviousness, despite it being a requirement that patents must not cover obvious innovations. The PTO grants a massive amount of patents that should be invalid, as proven time again in the courts. The cost to invalidate a patent is in the millions, but the cost to file and receive a patent is in the hundreds. They don't take responsibility and readily put forth the fact the standard for granting a patent is far below the stated requirements, so the courts are weary to just invalidate a patent -- believing that the patent office is actually doing it's job well, when in reality they'll let you patent essentially anything: If you want a weak patent that won't hold up in court, they're cool with that so long as you pay your fees, cross your t's, dot your i's, and replace all the terms such that the application won't generate any hits when searched in their patent database. First to File means that patent application secrecy is needless -- If you're filling a patent it should be public knowledge so we can protest anything that is obvious / file our prior art. Yes, it would take longer and be more expensive to grant patents, but just make those filing for the patents pay the bills; This would bring the cost of patents up closer to their actual cost -- No, instead it's basically a government subsidy for legal warheads.
Furthermore: Patents are not required to spurn innovation. Demand for innovation exists regardless of patents, and will generate drive for innovation by basic market forces regardless of granting monopolies. Look at the Automotive and Fashion industries -- Neither of which have design patents or copyright, and yet design is their core sales point, and they are very innovative in design. Patents and Copyright merely enforce artificial scarcity, when the artists and researchers could just as easily make their money without patents: Simply withhold their labor unless agreement to be payed for it is ensured (like car mechanics and home builders do, it's a proven system). If there are those who would not invest without monopoly assurances afterwards then those who will invest in research regardless will out compete them -- As proven by stagnant companies doing poorly in the automotive and fashion design industries compared to those who innovate without promise of monopoly. Anyone who fears Trade Secrecy / Trade Unions locking up innovation has never met a reverse engineer from this century. We strip layers off of microchips to discover their wiring at the nano scale. We have spectrograms and readily derive the secret recipes for foodstuffs and medicines -- Hence the generics market existing. It's not economically feasible for secrets to exist in consumer products today, you can't hide the molecules and machine code from me (and yes, I do read and write fluently in machine code).
We have NO EVIDENCE that the patent system is fulfilling its goals. We don't know if it's harmful or not, but there are indications that point to it being harmful (frivolous patent lawsuits and bogus patents), and there are at least two data points that indicate patents are not required at all. The real problem with the patent system is that we did not do a test to see if it was beneficial. Everyone just assumes it is without ANY evidence to support their claims. We need to do the experiment and abolish patents to see if they were harmful or helpful. We can re-institute the laws if we need to later. Continuing to operate the world's economy on assumptions of untested hypothesis is egregiously intellectually and economically negligent. That patents exist at all with no proof they're beneficial is the problem. That problem can not be fixed until we've abolished patents.
If you assert that there are no problems with the patent system then I must point out: Ignorant people like you, who operate based merely on assumptions without any evidence to back their claims, are the problem.
Nah, I just bring my mother-in-law along. Yeah, it's mostly horrible, but her face emits an anti-photographic EM field.
On paper? All of them. Practically? None.
Dear BT,
It seems an eternity since our last handshake; Indeed I don't believe we've ever so
just let me say its a [division by zero error] to make your acquaintance.
You knew we could never say no to you -- You, our one true Telecom of the Brits.
However, being dwellers of basements we've not much monetary compensation to meet your demands.
It seems the courts are in your favorable pockets, so we've had to file for bankruptcy.
Subsequently we are bound to liquidate our worldly possessions and thus transfer them to you.
Enclosed you'll find a link to ThePirateBay, which contains all that we own as renumeration.
The MAFIAA ensures us the value therein is on the order of millions of trillions of any currency you fancy.
Surely this will cover your fees far and above any amount you can possibly imagine, as it has for the MAFIAA.
Neckbeardedly yours,
The FreeTards.
I'll do you one better. Just shorten patent duration to 5 years. Oh you waited too long, your submarine sank... Oh, that's not long enough? Well, it is for the majority so get to innovating faster and deal with it.
Stop that!
You didn't personally create the patent system, and it doesn't even seem like you agree with it, so why apologize for it?
Be still my child. "JeezUS" is here. The people need a sacrificial lamb. Let we who have not been touched by the sins of Intellectual Property suffer for the Original sins of those who have. In this way we may stand as a lasting reminder that those great founding fathers who came before us were flawed in that they trusted the majority of voters to not be apathetic idiots, and at least a portion of congress to not be corrupt.
May our sacrifice of honor and faith in the systems that rule us be as a bacon of truth in the darkness of pre-morning to all other nerds who seek the good news that ye need not toil under the yolk of Artificially Scarce Ideas. Cast off your pointers and rejoice in the infinite sea of everylasting bits! Do not be sad or angry; Accept our martyrdom joyously for through it we achieve holy geek cred and secure our place at the right hand of dogs.
You mean like XMPP, which is an official chatting protocol that allows for virtually every method of communication currently in use today?
Google Talk uses that, but nobody else does, because all these companies like having total control of their messaging networks and have no business interest in playing nice with others.
Well, just look at what adopting the SIP protocol for VOIP is doing for standardization. I mean, it was all great but now if you adopted the standard you'll probably have to pay BT Patent Trolls or they'll sick their 99 submarines on you. So, that's why, "Screw open standards", buddy. At least with a closed / proprietary solution it's harder for trolls to find out what BS to sue you over. Patents, once again, stifling progress in every conceivable way.
This is exactly the reason I haven't learned Android development. Why have me learn new APIs for old things? Give me the same APIs that I'm used to on the desktop to the extent that these are compatible with the mobile environment, and then I'll learn the APIs that are specific to the niche I'm developing for. And that's exactly what BlackBerry has done.
Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous that in this day and age cross platform software developers like myself have to create an OS Abstraction Layer to get their stuff to port programs. I mean, OS's are supposed to BE the Abstraction Layer. Ugh. However, in most cases (Linux and Unix being exceptions via POSIX), the proprietary vendor thinks its in their best interest to create incompatible APIs and leverage vendor lock-in. Sometimes it's just out of sheer ignorance though, other times malice.
Of course my very first PC games ran in CGA, and I thought VGA was a huge step up. But at no time have I ever thought to myself "Nope, more wouldn't be better". Not when it comes to graphics, RAM, harddrive size, etc. Give me more and I'll use it.
As a game programmer I have to say, pushing pixels is damn expensive. I make my 3D data visualization software and games resolution independent (because, why not?) but some AAA game devs don't (not in the budget). That means when you get a higher resolution monitor and throw more pixels on the screen your UI text can shrink. Oh, just scale them up? Yep, then what's the point more pixels if you're just going to upscale the textures?
I've done some experimenting with fractal & procedural generation to make near infinitely detailed textures and geometry, but the LOD system can get in the way of the game play, and the starved AI budget (only 1% to 2% of RAM / CPU -- which is why your games have dumb bots: Every drop of power goes to pushing more pixels and ragdoll limbs). Look at something up close, then spin around and watch the world's textures go from blurry to detailed again since you ran out of RAM and had a cache miss.
It's getting better, but pixel fill rate really does eat up the GPU time for little to no significant gameplay or graphical detail increase at this point; In fact it prevents better gameplay in many respects: Good AI takes more RAM... It's sinful to mention Game AI in the same breath as Neural Nets, but the stupid thing is that they are embarrassingly parallel and thus run BEAUTIFULLY on the GPU hardware -- if we could just budget some of it for AI... Nope, gotta please the pixel pixies. If you're sitting more than a few feet away or the screen is animating then it's effectively blurring the pixels, depending on the pixel response times. A game where you slowly crawl along the walls and stare at stuff like the OCD "godspoken" girl in that Ender's Game book (Children of the Mind?), you would really notice the detail on them textures, boy let me tell ya! However, for a high percentage of the games out there where things move on the screen, 4K or 8X is pretty much pointless -- You can't see that well either, i.e, your retinas have response times too...
Many games do per pixel lighting on all those triangles -- Even the triangles getting obscured by the next triangle drawn in front of it, because calculating partial obscurity, subdividing surfaces and sorting every triangle is slow... So, you don't have to just worry about the pixels on your screen that need to get drawn, but all the ones we drew first that frame that got covered up by stuff in front... So, better make sure you have a hefty GPU even for playing crappy older games, because fill rate's a bitch. 4096 x 2160 = 8,847,360 pixels. 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600. See how area scales? Twice the apparent resolution is Four times the number of pixels we need to push... When you factor in over-draw from overlapping triangles it's even worse.
There is such a pixels per inch that is "good enough", and it's already been reached. Bigger screens are still better, but the human vision system can contain only so much field of view at once. Instead, I use AR glasses in some of my work (clipping point-cloud data over a scale model in real time is faster than importing an autocad file), and some VR glasses work with smart phones. I think that's where we should be trying to focus more pixels -- put the screens in our eyes and the whole world is covered, with screens you have to cover the entire room, that scales horribly. If they can get the clumsy and awkward form factor of something like the Oculus Rift down into the comfy Vuzix frames, then that would be amazing -- Hasn't happened yet though.
In any event, I doubt you'll notice the improved fidelity when you're dod
That means "Trust Apple and Verizon less than you would trust Twitter... if you trusted Twitter".
The takeaway here is that you should use secure encryption for all your data. Really, in this day and age there's no reason not to -- you don't have to trust anyone. Just use encryption that allows you to "trust no one".
I use SSL encryption for all my GMail, and I proxy my traffic through Tor -- They might have compromised exit nodes, so I just use a single hop local private Tor node, so I know it's not compromised; Bonus, it's very low latency. I use a nickname in real life and go by a different name on Facebook (the one my mom call me) -- And all those "friends" it lists? Ha! I've never met any of 'em in real life. That's why I'm suspicious of all those who are following me on Twitter, so all of my tweets are stenographically encrypted to appear as merely mundane events by way of an advanced word substitution cipher deceptively dubbed: TheySawUs, but it's spelled slightly differently... don't want to say it here where all those suspicious followers can see. I could block them on Twitter, or locally with a hosts file, but "keep your enemies closer", as they say...
I don't see what the big deal is. It seems everyone is already using adequate security measures to me.