Because if people can't agree on what a word means, it leads to potential for misunderstandings and fraud. I don't think anyone can define "App" in the way that agrees with how Apple, Google and everyone else is using the word.
Chrome has a fundamental flaw, lack of customization. For example, you can't even customize your history, something that every browser since Netscape and IE have been able to do. But somehow in Chrome there is no ability to switch between full history and super-ultra-privacy mode. Not to mention there is no Chrome equivalent to about:config that Firefox has. As someone who likes to customize my most used piece of software how I like it, Chrome just fails in that regard. If Chrome was as customizable as Firefox, I would use Chrome as my primary browser, but since it doesn't have customization features that even IE has... I'm sticking with Firefox until it becomes completely unusable.
Hm, lets see here, Qatar reserves the right to kill you for "apostasy" or leaving a religion. Sure, they haven't actually killed anyone under it but no such law is on the books in the US and really, its rather terrifying in 2011 to even have that law on the books. Freedom of expression is severely limited to the point where you can't even display a cross in public legally, or allow foreigners to preach their religion. And Qatar has many, many, many other human right abuses. I'm not saying the US is perfect but to claim that it is better in an oppressive regime in Qatar with very little individual freedom when compared to the US with a lot of individual freedom is silly, especially since the restrictions in Qatar are much more apt to affect an individual than the abuses in the US. And while people in Qatar have more economic freedom in some aspects than the people in the US (no income taxes for individuals or Qatari owned businesses) I wouldn't say that the human rights are worth the cost.
Qatar has made strong leaps forward when compared to much of the middle east, but is under more tyranny than the west, the US included.
No because laws don't determine what is right or wrong. For example, if tomorrow it was legal to kill children under the age of 8, would it still be murder? Would it be right simply because it is legal? Things like theft, fraud and murder transcend laws, they are moral and natural principles practiced by every civilization, by every human. For example, if you take some kids and have them play and one kid takes something that belongs to the other, most likely they are going to protest. Why? There was no legal code, they might not even be able to read, rather, it is a violation of natural rights. Taxation is the same way, regardless of legal code, it is a violation of your absolute and natural right to own property.
Except for the fact that the vast majority of the internet is, like all other forms of media, prone to biases. The nice thing about the internet is that you can choose to pick your bias, but it will still have bias. Things like Openleaks which only serve to pass on leaks to other organizations doesn't help to solve this problem. Everything is filtered, everything has guidelines to what they will publish or deny. And really, most Americans don't want to think beyond their own world. They want to see a site where the democrats are looked at as incompetent morons and the republicans are brilliant defenders of freedom or they want to see where the republicans are looked at as moronic and the democrats as superior. Neither side wants to embrace the underlying sameness of the 2 parties and see that they can be both wrong and because they don't want to see it, they will cling to the media outlets they already use which will take things out of context to paint a picture for the democrats or republicans that pleases their audience.
Quite honestly, part of me hopes that stuff like that happens to show how stupid our culture is. First off, SSNs weren't designed for identification, older ones will even say "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" on the card. SSNs aren't secure and it is utter crap to think that it is a secure password. Seemingly everything uses it for no real reason, it used to be that large universities used it rather than your name or a different ID number, thankfully most of them have stopped using that. Rather than using SSNs, we should focus on making secure forms of identification so identity theft is unlikely.
AT&T removing "unlimited" data was a really stupid mistake. If they wanted to offer lower plans, they should have had introduced a variable plan, where the money you pay per month is based on bandwidth usage. They only pay the $15 or whatever it is for the pathetic amount of data, the $25 or whatever it is for the 2 GB of data and after 2 GB it just jumps up to the usual $30.
You really think that the New York Times would have published anything like what Wikileaks did? Or, do you think that the New York Times would have just turned the other way and decided not to deal with it and the liabilities. And really, the problem with the New York Times is that it doesn't -want- to stir up anything. While the New York Times (and all other mainstream media for that matter) has no problem attacking either the Republican or Democrat party, they still believe in the utter importance of American imperialism.
This is a terrible idea for a number of reasons. First of all, how many people's friends actually simply tag themselves in photos of themselves. People tag themselves in all sorts of things, many of which are not themselves. Someone might tag themselves as George Washington, or the Mona Lisa or even just random things like a corner of a photo of a concert they attended. Secondly even if that was 100% perfect the fact still remains that the greatest threat to the average person's privacy isn't the guy who promises to 3nlarg3 y0ur p3n1s, though, that is a valid threat, but is more often it is someone with a grudge against you. While it is rather easy to laugh off the 3nlarg3 y0ur p3n1s guy and just say "sorry if you got any spam from me" but someone with a grudge against you might ruin your life, especially if you aren't on Facebook 24/7 and have added people like your boss, your parents, your in-laws, etc.
Is it just me or is this data rather skewed because it comes from openDNS? In general, the people who run and configure OpenDNS are completely different in what they block/allow when compared to something like DansGuardian, SonicWall, NortonFamily and other programs meant to target the average user. So to claim that Facebook is more blocked than porn sites most likely is not true, its just that those people are using things that aren't openDNS.
No, corporations are designed to maximize profits which in a free economy leads to greater wealth in that economy. For example, thanks to corporations such as HP, Sony, Dell and other computer manufacturers, we are able to have a quality of life people could only dream of just thirty years ago. Just think about how much things have changed for the better. And all that wouldn't happen without computer manufacturers cutting prices to improve their bottom line. If computers still cost $3,000 for a basic model that really couldn't do all that much, how many people could afford a computer? Today, everyone can. Sure, they might not be able to afford the top-of-the line Core i7s with 3 GPUs, but they can afford a cheap $300 laptop or a used desktop. Heck, just look at how much better quality has life has gotten when it comes to agriculture. It used to be that there wasn't enough food to go around and water could kill you. But due to people acting in their own self-interest, we've developed modern techniques of agriculture to the point where everyone can be fully fed unless they are under an oppressive government (such as most of Africa). I know we love to think that life was great without business and we all lived in nature, but the reality is, life was unpleasant, brutal and short back then. Starvation, sicknesses and accidents were common. Today it is considered to be a major tragedy when a child dies. Just a few hundred years ago it was just a common occurrence. Today when someone dies at the age of 50 or 60 we think that they died young. It wasn't too long ago when it was considered lucky to live past 30. The idea that industrialization, capitalism and corporations are inherently evil is laughable, rather, through them acting in their own interests they have lead us to a high standard of living.
Except for the fact that Assange isn't some great revolutionary. Yes, we can admire the fact that he started it, but that was it. He started it. He didn't leak documents. While Assange is important and is to be commended for starting such a site, he seems to get all the credit which he doesn't deserve. The real revolutionaries are those who leaked things like the Iraq War documents, the "collateral murder" video, the diplomatic cables, etc. all Assange did was host them, which, while noble, doesn't make him a revolutionary.
Yes, and you had to modify the game code to access it, just like every other idea that gets put into a game then latter scrapped. It is silly to rate a game on what can be done outside of the game itself. It was their own decision to access a part of the game that could not be accessed normally, and if we take this to its logical conclusion, we should be rating all Mario games M because someone could make a game save or a patch that makes texts in the games say FUCK simply because there is an F, U, C and K sprite. But yet we aren't doing this. And perhaps you want to look at the sales figures, GTA San Andreas is the highest selling game for the PS2 and it refutes the claim that AO games wouldn't sell well because no one would buy them.
In games, a lot of content gets scrapped, levels get unused, and such. Yes, you can modify the game code to let you access it, but such things are not part of the game itself and shouldn't be rated as being part of the game because it isn't, it is a third party patch where users are clearly warned what they are doing. This isn't some kid finding out they can press up up down down L1 L2 X and Start and it will suddenly play the minigame, rather you have to use a third party tool to edit the hex data of the game.
and its really appalling that Republicans who blather on about freedom are the first to support authoritarian censorship
Right, and I'm sure that no democrats would ever want to censor something... Oh wait... In 2010 out of the 19 senators to support the censorship of the internet (AKA COICA) the majority of them were... democrats. Now, I'm not saying that both parties aren't to blame for the censorship in our society but it is laughable to claim that one of the two very similar parties in power is more guilty than another.
I prefer more of a western European model, with a socially liberal atmosphere and little or no censorship, nude beaches etc, and governments that concern themselves with making sure people have food, housing, good jobs, and health care, and education, rather than obsesssing over imposing arbitrary ideologies on people. As a social libertatian, that is what we believe in and leads to a truly safe society.
The idea that western Europe is truly socially liberal is a lie. Heck, in some places you can't even portray Nazi symbols, even in a video game like Wolfenstein when the entire idea is... to get out of a Nazi prison camp. Sure, in some aspects western Europe is more socially liberal than the US, but in many other aspects it isn't. Whereas in the US any censorship is really restricted to corporate policy which can be avoided by not patronizing the businesses with restrictive policies, in much of western Europe they have the force of law.
and systems of oppressive social control designed to take away individuals freedom, not preserve them.
And yet much of Europe -is- under oppressive social control designed to take away individual freedom. Take for instance the laws against holocaust denial which makes it a crime to even question issues about the holocaust in much of Europe. For example in France the law reads:
Art 9. - As an amendment to Article 24 of the law of July 29, 1881 on the freedom of the press, article 24 (a) is as follows written:
Yes, essentially in France they do have laws against the freedom of thought and free expression of that thought. Even though I don't agree with what holocaust deniers say, I believe it is in direct opposition to the overwhelming evidence that shows the brutality of the Nazi regime, I don't believe that they should be censored. France isn't the only country, the entire EU has laws made to destroy freedom of thought:
European Union Framework Decision for Combating Racism and Xenophobia (2007)
The text establishes that the following intentional conduct will be punishable in all EU Member States:
- Publicly inciting to violence or hatred , even by dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.
- Publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising
- crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court (Articles 6, 7 and 8) directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin, and
- crimes defined by the Tribunal of Nuremberg (Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, London Agreement of 1945) directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.
Member States may choose to punish only conduct which is either carried out in a manner likely to disturb public order or which is threatening, abusive or insulting.
The reference to religion is intended to cover, at least, conduct which is a pretext for directing acts against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour
Re:Very similar to smoking bans
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There is no one forcing someone to work at a bar or restaurant that allows smoking. Rather, it is a choice where you work. It is similarly a choice where you eat or drink, no one forces you to go to a bar where smoking is allowed, no one even says you have to go to a bar. Rather, it should be left up to the owners of the business if they will allow or deny smoking on their property and it should be only the owner's choice. It is impossible to live a risk-free life, life is about matching risks and rewards. If you prefer to take a job where you are exposed to smoke rather than taking a more challenging or lower-paying job that doesn't have you exposed to smoke, that is your choice. If you choose to take a job where you are exposed to smoke, that is your choice.
It is up to the employee to choose where he or she wishes to work and know about the potential risks that they have working there. It is up to the owner of that establishment to choose whether he or she wishes to allow certain things on the property such as smoking. It is up to the customer to choose whether or not to visit that establishment. If someone feels so strongly against smoking, and doesn't visit bars that allow smoking, non-smoking bars will become a bit more profitable. If someone enjoys smoking and only visits bars that allow smoking, that smoking bar will be a little bit more profitable. But there is no reason why they can't coexist just like everything else. If you don't like smoking, don't work for or go to places that allow smoking. If you like smoking, don't go to or work for places that deny smoking.
Re:The market works?
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So...what you're saying is that consumer demand for NC-17 and AO products is pretty low, therefore content providers don't produce much of it?
No, AO games sell fine when they aren't AO. Look at GTA: San Andreas. It sold fine, then it became rated AO and was removed from store shelves at the time, despite the fact that the content couldn't be normally accessed. It wasn't any merits of the game itself that caused it to be removed from store shelves, but rather a pointless rating system by the ESRB.
Or you know if the actual site has you using something like Flash, Java or Silverlight it isn't going to be viewable on the iPad through the browser since great leader Jobs doesn't think that people need useful stuff like that.
Agree, but why people do this mess over the iPhone but not over video game consoles? They are even more closed and have been around longer. There do are a few groups working on their jailbreak but you don't hear the huge accusations against THOSE manufacturers. What makes Apple any more evil than Nintendo, Sega (in their day), Sony and Microsoft in the gaming department?
For a number of reasons. The primary one is that Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft didn't and don't try to portray their devices as all inclusive. No one buys a 360 to surf the net, Microsoft doesn't push the Xbox as an alternative to a computer or claim that their device is perfect for tasks other than gaming. No one buys a Wii to type up documents and Nintendo doesn't market it that way, they market it as a game console. But Apple and their fanboys seem to think that an iPad is essentially a replacement for a laptop for most tasks and not a crippled machine at twice the price of a laptop. They seem to think that it does everything one could ever want with no room for improvement and rather than expanding their line, addressing user concerns and removing the walled garden, Apple (and their fanboys) instead prefer to claim that users really have no problems with them and that what they are doing is some task that they shouldn't do in the first place. A game console is marketed to do one thing, play games, just like the Kindle is marketed to do one thing, to read books. The iPad is marketed to do anything you want to do on a laptop and fails at that goal and is naturally taking backlash because of it.
And "a few groups" working on jailbreaks? The Wii has a thriving homebrew scene with many, many applications and creative programs. And while Nintendo does release a yearly update to block homebrew, it is generally worked around within a few days and you can go back to playing with no loss in functionality. Not only that, but there is full documentation to use Wii hardware with standard PC bluetooth hardware. The 360 has a small homebrew scene but it is limited mostly by Microsoft's banning of people with modified 360 consoles on Xbox live and is, quite honestly, used mostly for warez than legitimate homebrew when compared to things like the DS, PSP and Wii homebrew scenes. Most people don't criticize MS for their stance for a number of reasons, first off the Xbox live marketplace is pretty open and the other fact is that it is their services you are accessing and it is their right to choose to allow you on there or not. The PS3 though is a different story, there has been a number of developments, a number of patches and a number of features Sony has removed from the PS3 simply to thwart homebrew and Sony has been fairly and justly criticized for their actions, but again, Sony never marketed the PS3 as anything more than a blu-ray player, game system and media centre, however, they did market it as being able to run alternate OSes and when Sony removed that feature, many users I believe in the EU were able to get their money back because of Sony's fraudulent advertising.
Given Nokia's previous track record, I don't think that you could then find the phone outside of Europe, it will have a tiny market of applications when compared to the iPhone or Android, and then Nokia will fragment it by releasing a separate operating system for all new phones.
If Chrome had as much customization as Firefox did, I'd switch to Chrome, but seriously, Chrome doesn't even have basic history controls that even IE does. I'd like to have a happy medium between searching your history when it comes up in the URL bar and having completely private, cookie-free browsing, and that is just the start of the lack of customization on Chrome. Really, my web browser is the most (manually) accessed program on my computer, I'd like to customize it to fit my own tastes.
It is rather pointless to get this information and perhaps dangerous. Things said in-game could be construed by others to mean things other than what they intended. While undoubtedly Loughtner is guilty, it sets a disturbing precedent where people will be judged out of context for what they said. I mean, whats next? Arresting someone because they said in the middle of a Call of Duty game that they were going to shoot someone (referring to the game)?
Already, in-depth information is surfacing on how the hacks were committed. It appears that the Agence tunisienne d'Internet, a government agency which supervises all of Tunisia's ISPs, or someone with access to the agency committed them. Tunisian ISPs are running a Java script that siphons off login credentials from users of Facebook, Yahoo and Gmail.
I think what they are doing is injecting extra scripts into the Facebook login which compromises the site and then sends the password to a different site.
When you can't trust your ISP and that the site you are connecting to is genuine, I don't think HTTPS works that well.
Slashdot Mirror
Because if people can't agree on what a word means, it leads to potential for misunderstandings and fraud. I don't think anyone can define "App" in the way that agrees with how Apple, Google and everyone else is using the word.
Chrome has a fundamental flaw, lack of customization. For example, you can't even customize your history, something that every browser since Netscape and IE have been able to do. But somehow in Chrome there is no ability to switch between full history and super-ultra-privacy mode. Not to mention there is no Chrome equivalent to about:config that Firefox has. As someone who likes to customize my most used piece of software how I like it, Chrome just fails in that regard. If Chrome was as customizable as Firefox, I would use Chrome as my primary browser, but since it doesn't have customization features that even IE has... I'm sticking with Firefox until it becomes completely unusable.
Hm, lets see here, Qatar reserves the right to kill you for "apostasy" or leaving a religion. Sure, they haven't actually killed anyone under it but no such law is on the books in the US and really, its rather terrifying in 2011 to even have that law on the books. Freedom of expression is severely limited to the point where you can't even display a cross in public legally, or allow foreigners to preach their religion. And Qatar has many, many, many other human right abuses. I'm not saying the US is perfect but to claim that it is better in an oppressive regime in Qatar with very little individual freedom when compared to the US with a lot of individual freedom is silly, especially since the restrictions in Qatar are much more apt to affect an individual than the abuses in the US. And while people in Qatar have more economic freedom in some aspects than the people in the US (no income taxes for individuals or Qatari owned businesses) I wouldn't say that the human rights are worth the cost.
Qatar has made strong leaps forward when compared to much of the middle east, but is under more tyranny than the west, the US included.
No because laws don't determine what is right or wrong. For example, if tomorrow it was legal to kill children under the age of 8, would it still be murder? Would it be right simply because it is legal? Things like theft, fraud and murder transcend laws, they are moral and natural principles practiced by every civilization, by every human. For example, if you take some kids and have them play and one kid takes something that belongs to the other, most likely they are going to protest. Why? There was no legal code, they might not even be able to read, rather, it is a violation of natural rights. Taxation is the same way, regardless of legal code, it is a violation of your absolute and natural right to own property.
Except for the fact that the vast majority of the internet is, like all other forms of media, prone to biases. The nice thing about the internet is that you can choose to pick your bias, but it will still have bias. Things like Openleaks which only serve to pass on leaks to other organizations doesn't help to solve this problem. Everything is filtered, everything has guidelines to what they will publish or deny. And really, most Americans don't want to think beyond their own world. They want to see a site where the democrats are looked at as incompetent morons and the republicans are brilliant defenders of freedom or they want to see where the republicans are looked at as moronic and the democrats as superior. Neither side wants to embrace the underlying sameness of the 2 parties and see that they can be both wrong and because they don't want to see it, they will cling to the media outlets they already use which will take things out of context to paint a picture for the democrats or republicans that pleases their audience.
Quite honestly, part of me hopes that stuff like that happens to show how stupid our culture is. First off, SSNs weren't designed for identification, older ones will even say "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" on the card. SSNs aren't secure and it is utter crap to think that it is a secure password. Seemingly everything uses it for no real reason, it used to be that large universities used it rather than your name or a different ID number, thankfully most of them have stopped using that. Rather than using SSNs, we should focus on making secure forms of identification so identity theft is unlikely.
AT&T removing "unlimited" data was a really stupid mistake. If they wanted to offer lower plans, they should have had introduced a variable plan, where the money you pay per month is based on bandwidth usage. They only pay the $15 or whatever it is for the pathetic amount of data, the $25 or whatever it is for the 2 GB of data and after 2 GB it just jumps up to the usual $30.
You really think that the New York Times would have published anything like what Wikileaks did? Or, do you think that the New York Times would have just turned the other way and decided not to deal with it and the liabilities. And really, the problem with the New York Times is that it doesn't -want- to stir up anything. While the New York Times (and all other mainstream media for that matter) has no problem attacking either the Republican or Democrat party, they still believe in the utter importance of American imperialism.
This is a terrible idea for a number of reasons. First of all, how many people's friends actually simply tag themselves in photos of themselves. People tag themselves in all sorts of things, many of which are not themselves. Someone might tag themselves as George Washington, or the Mona Lisa or even just random things like a corner of a photo of a concert they attended. Secondly even if that was 100% perfect the fact still remains that the greatest threat to the average person's privacy isn't the guy who promises to 3nlarg3 y0ur p3n1s, though, that is a valid threat, but is more often it is someone with a grudge against you. While it is rather easy to laugh off the 3nlarg3 y0ur p3n1s guy and just say "sorry if you got any spam from me" but someone with a grudge against you might ruin your life, especially if you aren't on Facebook 24/7 and have added people like your boss, your parents, your in-laws, etc.
Is it just me or is this data rather skewed because it comes from openDNS? In general, the people who run and configure OpenDNS are completely different in what they block/allow when compared to something like DansGuardian, SonicWall, NortonFamily and other programs meant to target the average user. So to claim that Facebook is more blocked than porn sites most likely is not true, its just that those people are using things that aren't openDNS.
No, corporations are designed to maximize profits which in a free economy leads to greater wealth in that economy. For example, thanks to corporations such as HP, Sony, Dell and other computer manufacturers, we are able to have a quality of life people could only dream of just thirty years ago. Just think about how much things have changed for the better. And all that wouldn't happen without computer manufacturers cutting prices to improve their bottom line. If computers still cost $3,000 for a basic model that really couldn't do all that much, how many people could afford a computer? Today, everyone can. Sure, they might not be able to afford the top-of-the line Core i7s with 3 GPUs, but they can afford a cheap $300 laptop or a used desktop. Heck, just look at how much better quality has life has gotten when it comes to agriculture. It used to be that there wasn't enough food to go around and water could kill you. But due to people acting in their own self-interest, we've developed modern techniques of agriculture to the point where everyone can be fully fed unless they are under an oppressive government (such as most of Africa). I know we love to think that life was great without business and we all lived in nature, but the reality is, life was unpleasant, brutal and short back then. Starvation, sicknesses and accidents were common. Today it is considered to be a major tragedy when a child dies. Just a few hundred years ago it was just a common occurrence. Today when someone dies at the age of 50 or 60 we think that they died young. It wasn't too long ago when it was considered lucky to live past 30. The idea that industrialization, capitalism and corporations are inherently evil is laughable, rather, through them acting in their own interests they have lead us to a high standard of living.
By that logic everyone is pro-evil.
Except for the fact that Assange isn't some great revolutionary. Yes, we can admire the fact that he started it, but that was it. He started it. He didn't leak documents. While Assange is important and is to be commended for starting such a site, he seems to get all the credit which he doesn't deserve. The real revolutionaries are those who leaked things like the Iraq War documents, the "collateral murder" video, the diplomatic cables, etc. all Assange did was host them, which, while noble, doesn't make him a revolutionary.
Yes, and you had to modify the game code to access it, just like every other idea that gets put into a game then latter scrapped. It is silly to rate a game on what can be done outside of the game itself. It was their own decision to access a part of the game that could not be accessed normally, and if we take this to its logical conclusion, we should be rating all Mario games M because someone could make a game save or a patch that makes texts in the games say FUCK simply because there is an F, U, C and K sprite. But yet we aren't doing this. And perhaps you want to look at the sales figures, GTA San Andreas is the highest selling game for the PS2 and it refutes the claim that AO games wouldn't sell well because no one would buy them.
In games, a lot of content gets scrapped, levels get unused, and such. Yes, you can modify the game code to let you access it, but such things are not part of the game itself and shouldn't be rated as being part of the game because it isn't, it is a third party patch where users are clearly warned what they are doing. This isn't some kid finding out they can press up up down down L1 L2 X and Start and it will suddenly play the minigame, rather you have to use a third party tool to edit the hex data of the game.
and its really appalling that Republicans who blather on about freedom are the first to support authoritarian censorship
Right, and I'm sure that no democrats would ever want to censor something... Oh wait... In 2010 out of the 19 senators to support the censorship of the internet (AKA COICA) the majority of them were... democrats. Now, I'm not saying that both parties aren't to blame for the censorship in our society but it is laughable to claim that one of the two very similar parties in power is more guilty than another.
I prefer more of a western European model, with a socially liberal atmosphere and little or no censorship, nude beaches etc, and governments that concern themselves with making sure people have food, housing, good jobs, and health care, and education, rather than obsesssing over imposing arbitrary ideologies on people. As a social libertatian, that is what we believe in and leads to a truly safe society.
The idea that western Europe is truly socially liberal is a lie. Heck, in some places you can't even portray Nazi symbols, even in a video game like Wolfenstein when the entire idea is... to get out of a Nazi prison camp. Sure, in some aspects western Europe is more socially liberal than the US, but in many other aspects it isn't. Whereas in the US any censorship is really restricted to corporate policy which can be avoided by not patronizing the businesses with restrictive policies, in much of western Europe they have the force of law.
and systems of oppressive social control designed to take away individuals freedom, not preserve them.
And yet much of Europe -is- under oppressive social control designed to take away individual freedom. Take for instance the laws against holocaust denial which makes it a crime to even question issues about the holocaust in much of Europe. For example in France the law reads:
Art 9. - As an amendment to Article 24 of the law of July 29, 1881 on the freedom of the press, article 24 (a) is as follows written:
Yes, essentially in France they do have laws against the freedom of thought and free expression of that thought. Even though I don't agree with what holocaust deniers say, I believe it is in direct opposition to the overwhelming evidence that shows the brutality of the Nazi regime, I don't believe that they should be censored. France isn't the only country, the entire EU has laws made to destroy freedom of thought:
European Union Framework Decision for Combating Racism and Xenophobia (2007) The text establishes that the following intentional conduct will be punishable in all EU Member States: - Publicly inciting to violence or hatred , even by dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin. - Publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising - crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court (Articles 6, 7 and 8) directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin, and - crimes defined by the Tribunal of Nuremberg (Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, London Agreement of 1945) directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin. Member States may choose to punish only conduct which is either carried out in a manner likely to disturb public order or which is threatening, abusive or insulting. The reference to religion is intended to cover, at least, conduct which is a pretext for directing acts against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour
There is no one forcing someone to work at a bar or restaurant that allows smoking. Rather, it is a choice where you work. It is similarly a choice where you eat or drink, no one forces you to go to a bar where smoking is allowed, no one even says you have to go to a bar. Rather, it should be left up to the owners of the business if they will allow or deny smoking on their property and it should be only the owner's choice. It is impossible to live a risk-free life, life is about matching risks and rewards. If you prefer to take a job where you are exposed to smoke rather than taking a more challenging or lower-paying job that doesn't have you exposed to smoke, that is your choice. If you choose to take a job where you are exposed to smoke, that is your choice.
It is up to the employee to choose where he or she wishes to work and know about the potential risks that they have working there. It is up to the owner of that establishment to choose whether he or she wishes to allow certain things on the property such as smoking. It is up to the customer to choose whether or not to visit that establishment. If someone feels so strongly against smoking, and doesn't visit bars that allow smoking, non-smoking bars will become a bit more profitable. If someone enjoys smoking and only visits bars that allow smoking, that smoking bar will be a little bit more profitable. But there is no reason why they can't coexist just like everything else. If you don't like smoking, don't work for or go to places that allow smoking. If you like smoking, don't go to or work for places that deny smoking.
So...what you're saying is that consumer demand for NC-17 and AO products is pretty low, therefore content providers don't produce much of it?
No, AO games sell fine when they aren't AO. Look at GTA: San Andreas. It sold fine, then it became rated AO and was removed from store shelves at the time, despite the fact that the content couldn't be normally accessed. It wasn't any merits of the game itself that caused it to be removed from store shelves, but rather a pointless rating system by the ESRB.
Or you know if the actual site has you using something like Flash, Java or Silverlight it isn't going to be viewable on the iPad through the browser since great leader Jobs doesn't think that people need useful stuff like that.
Since the iPad doesn't have flash it breaks the formatting of many sites and requires an "app" to get them to work halfway decently.
Agree, but why people do this mess over the iPhone but not over video game consoles? They are even more closed and have been around longer. There do are a few groups working on their jailbreak but you don't hear the huge accusations against THOSE manufacturers. What makes Apple any more evil than Nintendo, Sega (in their day), Sony and Microsoft in the gaming department?
For a number of reasons. The primary one is that Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft didn't and don't try to portray their devices as all inclusive. No one buys a 360 to surf the net, Microsoft doesn't push the Xbox as an alternative to a computer or claim that their device is perfect for tasks other than gaming. No one buys a Wii to type up documents and Nintendo doesn't market it that way, they market it as a game console. But Apple and their fanboys seem to think that an iPad is essentially a replacement for a laptop for most tasks and not a crippled machine at twice the price of a laptop. They seem to think that it does everything one could ever want with no room for improvement and rather than expanding their line, addressing user concerns and removing the walled garden, Apple (and their fanboys) instead prefer to claim that users really have no problems with them and that what they are doing is some task that they shouldn't do in the first place. A game console is marketed to do one thing, play games, just like the Kindle is marketed to do one thing, to read books. The iPad is marketed to do anything you want to do on a laptop and fails at that goal and is naturally taking backlash because of it.
And "a few groups" working on jailbreaks? The Wii has a thriving homebrew scene with many, many applications and creative programs. And while Nintendo does release a yearly update to block homebrew, it is generally worked around within a few days and you can go back to playing with no loss in functionality. Not only that, but there is full documentation to use Wii hardware with standard PC bluetooth hardware. The 360 has a small homebrew scene but it is limited mostly by Microsoft's banning of people with modified 360 consoles on Xbox live and is, quite honestly, used mostly for warez than legitimate homebrew when compared to things like the DS, PSP and Wii homebrew scenes. Most people don't criticize MS for their stance for a number of reasons, first off the Xbox live marketplace is pretty open and the other fact is that it is their services you are accessing and it is their right to choose to allow you on there or not. The PS3 though is a different story, there has been a number of developments, a number of patches and a number of features Sony has removed from the PS3 simply to thwart homebrew and Sony has been fairly and justly criticized for their actions, but again, Sony never marketed the PS3 as anything more than a blu-ray player, game system and media centre, however, they did market it as being able to run alternate OSes and when Sony removed that feature, many users I believe in the EU were able to get their money back because of Sony's fraudulent advertising.
Given Nokia's previous track record, I don't think that you could then find the phone outside of Europe, it will have a tiny market of applications when compared to the iPhone or Android, and then Nokia will fragment it by releasing a separate operating system for all new phones.
If Chrome had as much customization as Firefox did, I'd switch to Chrome, but seriously, Chrome doesn't even have basic history controls that even IE does. I'd like to have a happy medium between searching your history when it comes up in the URL bar and having completely private, cookie-free browsing, and that is just the start of the lack of customization on Chrome. Really, my web browser is the most (manually) accessed program on my computer, I'd like to customize it to fit my own tastes.
It is rather pointless to get this information and perhaps dangerous. Things said in-game could be construed by others to mean things other than what they intended. While undoubtedly Loughtner is guilty, it sets a disturbing precedent where people will be judged out of context for what they said. I mean, whats next? Arresting someone because they said in the middle of a Call of Duty game that they were going to shoot someone (referring to the game)?
Open Source is already mainstream. Android has made Linux mainstream, most browsers other than IE and Opera are mostly open source, etc.
Already, in-depth information is surfacing on how the hacks were committed. It appears that the Agence tunisienne d'Internet, a government agency which supervises all of Tunisia's ISPs, or someone with access to the agency committed them. Tunisian ISPs are running a Java script that siphons off login credentials from users of Facebook, Yahoo and Gmail.
I think what they are doing is injecting extra scripts into the Facebook login which compromises the site and then sends the password to a different site.
When you can't trust your ISP and that the site you are connecting to is genuine, I don't think HTTPS works that well.