"Cybercriminals Shifting Focus To Non-Windows OSes"
Ugh... I've been playing too much Shadowrun apparently, because this headline brought on all sorts of odd imagery.
Whoa. Hold on a minute. Did the editors read something I didn't?
we support legislation and federal regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet for all
Man, I hope that's a quote from his speech, because the grand sum total of the article on the Internet is:
As the Internet continues to grow in its influence and prominence in Americans’ lives, we support legislation and federal regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet for all, including religious and non-profit agencies, as well as those in more sparsely populated or economically distressed areas. True net neutrality is necessary for people to flourish in a democratic society.
Notice that legislation and federal regulations are nowhere in there. And there's an important distinction between whats written and what was said. We have a (mostly) neutral network. That's how it was built and how everyone assumes it works. That's part of what makes the Internet a Good Thing. Network neutrality regulation is the enforcement thereof. Because we can all see the horizon here, and with the consolidation of the big ISPs, and especially now with telcom companies buying media companies, we can all see that they'd want to break down NN just to make a buck.
But no-one wants regulation for regulation's sake. What we want is the networks to remain neutral.
As for only giving their money away to pharmaceutical companies, I would like to see a citation for that.
Except that I never said they only gave to pharmaceutical companies. They give a million out here and there to all sorts of things. But asking for citations is well within your right.
But, uh, do you really expect me to audit something like that? Do you really expect ANYONE to be able to do that?
But here you go. There's a lot of stuff there. But notice the bulk goes towards HIV researchers and a foundation for immunizations. Huh, and they really have put a lot of money towards schools. Well there you go I guess.
How dare you get me to educate myself. The fact of my post stands however.
And now his is spending billions on his philanthropy.
Well sort of. His billions, those in the foundation at least, are invested anywhere and everywhere with a ROI in mind. The interest and tax-free profits thereof are in turn given away. Well, not to Africa, but rather to pharma companies whose investors share interests with Bill Gates. These pharma companies give drugs and aid to Africans. But only if the nation agree to abide by US IP laws so that they can't go buy cheap generic versions when Gates money moves elsewhere.
The Gates Foundation is probably doing real meaningful good in the world. But there are shady backroom deals going on with it.
I think the biggest problem is that there's a portion of the human populace that feels the need to believe in a near-future doomsday. At every point in history, there has been people out on the corner preaching about one form of the endtimes or whatever. It's their personality or something. I don't really get it.
But what they do is dilute the message of people who really know how when everything is heading south. It's like conspiracy nuts. The best aid to big conspirators are the nutcases who make believing in big conspiracies seem, well, nutty. Same case with the doomsayers. Eventually no one pays attention to chicken little.
Well, you see I disagree. While I know some people that enjoy driving, and they're kinda motor-heads anyway, I personally can only take about 3 hours before driving gets really old. And when it ISN'T boring, it's actually pretty scary.
Try reading the ads for cars some time.
WHISKEY
TANGO
FOXTROT
I sincerely hope this is some form of subtle satire that I'm missing, and this all ends in a whoosh, but what the hell!?
1. You look at ads? Seriously, why would you do that? The entire point of advertising is to corrupt and impair your judgment. Marketeers are in the business of LYING to you as subtly as possible. (Yeah, yeah, product awareness, blah blah blah, I'm talking about the top 90% of ads).
2. You are using the pleasant looking experience of an ad to justify that an activity is pleasent? Oh, for sure, why don't you go look at the ads for colonoscopies, rehab, air travel, fast food, whatever. And oh look! Those people a JUST SO HAPPY! I NEED TO BE THAT HAPPY! MUST. EAT. BURGER!
3. Car ads specifically. There is no sub-field of marketing as repulsive as car ads. Beer ads can be funny, that's where the creative people go. The fine text on drug ads are as long as the ad. But car ads. People selling cars are the reason my father requires an extra large mute button. Now, you did mention "reading". Maybe magazines are different. In what magazines I have read, I've kind of formed a mental block for most ads.
I'm just having a really hard time getting over the idea that someone would try to use the argument "It's fun, just look at the ads". Please, justify this to me somehow. Tell me you're young, or you're in marketing, or you own a car dealership or something!
Well GameStop should really invest in some quality security. I hear that lava walls and gravel walls are moderately secure. Of course they're by-passable with time, but they're far more efficient then creating a mob generator.
Well what IS a B921XF anyway? I mean, sure it may be a light bulb. But none of the top 5 sites returned by bing, altavista, or yahoo (but I guess I'm being redundant there) had anything about B921XF. Dogpile returned one more hit then bing, huh. All 6 sites sold light bulbs, and each had their own search, and none of them had anything to do with B921XF.
So if Bing is so fantastic, and knows that B921XF is a light bulb, then why don't any of the subsites it links to know that B921XF is a light bulb? And how exactly does Bing classify B921XF as a light bulb?
I really wouldn't put it past Microsoft to default to a list of topics that have paid advertising, and simply not tell you that you're shit out of luck.
Afghans do not like, and have never liked, the Taliban
Except for the ones that ARE the Taliban. It's like saying that Americans do not like the GOP. That's only true if you consider the majority of America the "one true America". It's not that simple here or in Afghanistan.
the people of Iraq were dealt a losing hand long ago, and it wasn't by the US.
Uh, you hate to break it to you, but the USA helped install Saddam's party as the ruler of Iraq. You know, because they hated Iran and we wanted them to fight our war by proxy. Because Iran overthrew the puppet party we installed there. So, uh, if you don't think it was rainbows and sunshine under Saddam, then the good'ol USA is partially responsible for that.
Also, the US military is the largest humanitarian relief organization in the world.
Which, as the cable leaks show, is a tool to badger other countries into supporting the international agreements we like.
Wait, the US military? Ah, yes, they do fly stuff around now and then don't they. But calling the US military a "humanitarian relief organization" is such a stretch that I couldn't conceptualize it at first. Really ludicrous right there. Imagine a marine repelling of a helicopter screaming "we're going to relieve the shit out of these fuckers", which is funny on a number of levels.
The "DERP DERP I HATE GEORGE W BUSH" hate train that's so trendy to hop on to today might win you peer approval at the moment, but it's a rather petty sentiment in the grand scheme of things.
I'd have to agree with anon there, that was a pretty hip train 2001. By 2006, yeah it was trendy enough that even republicans were hopping on. but in 2011, we are now past the short-term gain and we are experiencing the long term effects. Trillions of dollars wasted, hundreds of thousands dead (that probably wouldn't have died under Saddam), thousands of which are American, with no stabilizing effect on the middle-east. No no, the train has now switched tracks and is now on the "we hate the ramifications of George W Bush's choices" line.
Hatred and anger dominate politics to an unfortunate degree.
Sadly that's true. (and here's a cheap shot) Like putting crosshairs on your opponent's district.
Came here for this, and I'm not leaving disappointed. Bravo/.
I played it once, saved me and my girl, and that's simply that. Ultimately, I think it's an artsy piece specifically made to draw out that feeling of "what if I had done something differently", and then like a bastard, leaving that question unanswered.
Yeah, I agree, a big open world full of possibilities is an awesome place to explore. That's tempered by idea that it's not fun if there's no point. So ideally I think you want an open sandbox world with an ultimate goal presented. Some tools to affect the world. And with that world and those tools some emergent gameplay should be able to form that eventually lets you accomplish the goal AND WIN THE GAME.
Yeah, that's the thing about table-top. The potential is massive, but usually it's kind of "meh", and sometimes requires mind-bleach. Plus it's always a huge time investment. The biggest factor is probably the DM, then the players, then maybe which game you guys actually play.
Huh, upon reading the article, I found that they're trying to prove that Julian assisted Manning with the leak. Which you'd expect from vindictive politicians.
Simply being in communication with Manning isn't espionage. That's way too vague and I haven't read Manning's chat log to see what that means.
If wikileaks is considered "the press", then even if Julian "actively encouraged" Manning, I'm not sure it's espionage.
It's the difference between a classified document landing on a reporters desktop (which has gone to court with the report cleared before)
How would that work exactly? The leaker goes to court, and gets a judge to approve the leak before it gets leaked to a reporter? That's nuts.
Union Carbide, Headquarters: Houston Texas. Now, they only owned 51%, with the Indian government owning the rest, but you don't see Chinese lawyers getting half a billion out of the companies, and "economic rehabilitation" to the families of the miners in Sunjiawan or Shanxi.
India isn't the best, but they're not as bad as China.
How about the decline of the Soviet Empire? Costly wars, corrupt politicians, and runaway military budgets.
The only thing we're lacking is a culture of murder.
You need a large mass of humanity to run the machines and do the hard labor. As far was world population goes, there's China, India, and everyone else. So India is really the only threat to China in terms of being the manufacturer of the world, and I don't think that India is quite oppressive enough to suppress the currency and subject their subjects to that kind of pollution.
And China can only keep it up to the point where (a significant number of) factory workers start dieing on the factory floor. Which was a few years ago, which is why the government is starting to care about pollution. I wish them good luck.
The part where it's horribly expensive (even by military standards), unreliable (even by helicopter standards), with limited benefits (again, even by military standards).
Soooo, yeah, Freenet. And funnily enough, both Rushkoff and Freenet completely ignore the PHYSICAL TRANSPORTATION MEDIUM.
Freenet assumes you have an Internet connection. It runs on the Internet. Rushkoff, on the other hand, provided an "super simple" example where he relied entirely on phone lines. Like that's somehow better.
Now... he DOES offer some alternatives, like HAM radio, Wi-max, that jazz. And an ad-hoc mesh network of everyone's wireless router WOULD be super neat. But such a thing can't compete with physical lines going across the continent and across the ocean. And that's really expensive.
No my friend, we will not bulldoze the city so we can build a utopia on an open field. And this is one of the biggest reasons that I really don't want the Internet to be fucked up; it's going to exist that way for a very long time.
uhhhh..... hate to break this to you, but they don't even need that anymore. Remember that thing with Mark Klein where he blew the whistle about the NSA doing wholesale wiretapping at AT&T? How all the big telcoms (except Qwest) were doing likewise? Remember that thing where Bush pushed to give them retroactive immunity? Remember the "compromise" that candidate Obama helped pass that gave them immunity only if they could get a hand-written permission directly from the president?
Did you forget all of that bullshit? Cause I'm still kinda pissed about it.
Now, the NSA aren't beat cops, and beat cops don't just phone up the NSA. So it really only comes into play when the government doesn't like you. Are you willing to accept that the laws only apply when it's convenient?
Dumping the currency, or the embargo? Because the answer is still "yes", either way. Globalization means we're all in this together. You can't hurt the othe without hurting yourself.
And, consequently, if they fuck up with say, a huge housing bubble or some such, it'll mean we have to share the pain.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh, that's an odd "shit" embargo in the news corps in 2007.
"Cybercriminals Shifting Focus To Non-Windows OSes"
Ugh... I've been playing too much Shadowrun apparently, because this headline brought on all sorts of odd imagery.
we support legislation and federal regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet for all
Man, I hope that's a quote from his speech, because the grand sum total of the article on the Internet is:
As the Internet continues to grow in its influence and prominence in Americans’ lives, we support legislation and federal regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet for all, including religious and non-profit agencies, as well as those in more sparsely populated or economically distressed areas. True net neutrality is necessary for people to flourish in a democratic society.
Notice that legislation and federal regulations are nowhere in there. And there's an important distinction between whats written and what was said. We have a (mostly) neutral network. That's how it was built and how everyone assumes it works. That's part of what makes the Internet a Good Thing. Network neutrality regulation is the enforcement thereof. Because we can all see the horizon here, and with the consolidation of the big ISPs, and especially now with telcom companies buying media companies, we can all see that they'd want to break down NN just to make a buck.
But no-one wants regulation for regulation's sake. What we want is the networks to remain neutral.
As for only giving their money away to pharmaceutical companies, I would like to see a citation for that.
Except that I never said they only gave to pharmaceutical companies. They give a million out here and there to all sorts of things. But asking for citations is well within your right.
But, uh, do you really expect me to audit something like that? Do you really expect ANYONE to be able to do that?
But here you go. There's a lot of stuff there. But notice the bulk goes towards HIV researchers and a foundation for immunizations. Huh, and they really have put a lot of money towards schools. Well there you go I guess.
How dare you get me to educate myself. The fact of my post stands however.
And now his is spending billions on his philanthropy.
Well sort of. His billions, those in the foundation at least, are invested anywhere and everywhere with a ROI in mind. The interest and tax-free profits thereof are in turn given away. Well, not to Africa, but rather to pharma companies whose investors share interests with Bill Gates. These pharma companies give drugs and aid to Africans. But only if the nation agree to abide by US IP laws so that they can't go buy cheap generic versions when Gates money moves elsewhere.
The Gates Foundation is probably doing real meaningful good in the world. But there are shady backroom deals going on with it.
I think the biggest problem is that there's a portion of the human populace that feels the need to believe in a near-future doomsday. At every point in history, there has been people out on the corner preaching about one form of the endtimes or whatever. It's their personality or something. I don't really get it.
But what they do is dilute the message of people who really know how when everything is heading south. It's like conspiracy nuts. The best aid to big conspirators are the nutcases who make believing in big conspiracies seem, well, nutty. Same case with the doomsayers. Eventually no one pays attention to chicken little.
Driving is fun.
Well, you see I disagree. While I know some people that enjoy driving, and they're kinda motor-heads anyway, I personally can only take about 3 hours before driving gets really old. And when it ISN'T boring, it's actually pretty scary.
Try reading the ads for cars some time.
WHISKEY
TANGO
FOXTROT
I sincerely hope this is some form of subtle satire that I'm missing, and this all ends in a whoosh, but what the hell!?
1. You look at ads? Seriously, why would you do that? The entire point of advertising is to corrupt and impair your judgment. Marketeers are in the business of LYING to you as subtly as possible. (Yeah, yeah, product awareness, blah blah blah, I'm talking about the top 90% of ads).
2. You are using the pleasant looking experience of an ad to justify that an activity is pleasent? Oh, for sure, why don't you go look at the ads for colonoscopies, rehab, air travel, fast food, whatever. And oh look! Those people a JUST SO HAPPY! I NEED TO BE THAT HAPPY! MUST. EAT. BURGER!
3. Car ads specifically. There is no sub-field of marketing as repulsive as car ads. Beer ads can be funny, that's where the creative people go. The fine text on drug ads are as long as the ad. But car ads. People selling cars are the reason my father requires an extra large mute button. Now, you did mention "reading". Maybe magazines are different. In what magazines I have read, I've kind of formed a mental block for most ads.
I'm just having a really hard time getting over the idea that someone would try to use the argument "It's fun, just look at the ads". Please, justify this to me somehow. Tell me you're young, or you're in marketing, or you own a car dealership or something!
It'll always be Scorched Earth to me. Kids these days though, they'll probably just remember worms or worms or worms3D or possibly even Scorched Earth 3D if they're really hip.
Well GameStop should really invest in some quality security. I hear that lava walls and gravel walls are moderately secure. Of course they're by-passable with time, but they're far more efficient then creating a mob generator.
Earthdawn (Earthdawn lasted 10 years or longer),
Wow, sorry to hear that. My condolences.
There's an important lesson here about life choices you know.
Well what IS a B921XF anyway? I mean, sure it may be a light bulb. But none of the top 5 sites returned by bing, altavista, or yahoo (but I guess I'm being redundant there) had anything about B921XF. Dogpile returned one more hit then bing, huh. All 6 sites sold light bulbs, and each had their own search, and none of them had anything to do with B921XF.
So if Bing is so fantastic, and knows that B921XF is a light bulb, then why don't any of the subsites it links to know that B921XF is a light bulb? And how exactly does Bing classify B921XF as a light bulb?
I really wouldn't put it past Microsoft to default to a list of topics that have paid advertising, and simply not tell you that you're shit out of luck.
Afghans do not like, and have never liked, the Taliban
Except for the ones that ARE the Taliban. It's like saying that Americans do not like the GOP. That's only true if you consider the majority of America the "one true America". It's not that simple here or in Afghanistan.
the people of Iraq were dealt a losing hand long ago, and it wasn't by the US.
Uh, you hate to break it to you, but the USA helped install Saddam's party as the ruler of Iraq. You know, because they hated Iran and we wanted them to fight our war by proxy. Because Iran overthrew the puppet party we installed there. So, uh, if you don't think it was rainbows and sunshine under Saddam, then the good'ol USA is partially responsible for that.
Also, the US military is the largest humanitarian relief organization in the world.
Which, as the cable leaks show, is a tool to badger other countries into supporting the international agreements we like.
Wait, the US military? Ah, yes, they do fly stuff around now and then don't they. But calling the US military a "humanitarian relief organization" is such a stretch that I couldn't conceptualize it at first. Really ludicrous right there. Imagine a marine repelling of a helicopter screaming "we're going to relieve the shit out of these fuckers", which is funny on a number of levels.
The "DERP DERP I HATE GEORGE W BUSH" hate train that's so trendy to hop on to today might win you peer approval at the moment, but it's a rather petty sentiment in the grand scheme of things.
I'd have to agree with anon there, that was a pretty hip train 2001. By 2006, yeah it was trendy enough that even republicans were hopping on. but in 2011, we are now past the short-term gain and we are experiencing the long term effects. Trillions of dollars wasted, hundreds of thousands dead (that probably wouldn't have died under Saddam), thousands of which are American, with no stabilizing effect on the middle-east. No no, the train has now switched tracks and is now on the "we hate the ramifications of George W Bush's choices" line.
Hatred and anger dominate politics to an unfortunate degree.
Sadly that's true. (and here's a cheap shot) Like putting crosshairs on your opponent's district.
Came here for this, and I'm not leaving disappointed. Bravo /.
I played it once, saved me and my girl, and that's simply that. Ultimately, I think it's an artsy piece specifically made to draw out that feeling of "what if I had done something differently", and then like a bastard, leaving that question unanswered.
Yeah, I agree, a big open world full of possibilities is an awesome place to explore. That's tempered by idea that it's not fun if there's no point. So ideally I think you want an open sandbox world with an ultimate goal presented. Some tools to affect the world. And with that world and those tools some emergent gameplay should be able to form that eventually lets you accomplish the goal AND WIN THE GAME.
Yeah, that's the thing about table-top. The potential is massive, but usually it's kind of "meh", and sometimes requires mind-bleach. Plus it's always a huge time investment. The biggest factor is probably the DM, then the players, then maybe which game you guys actually play.
Simply being in communication with Manning isn't espionage. That's way too vague and I haven't read Manning's chat log to see what that means.
If wikileaks is considered "the press", then even if Julian "actively encouraged" Manning, I'm not sure it's espionage.
It's the difference between a classified document landing on a reporters desktop (which has gone to court with the report cleared before)
How would that work exactly? The leaker goes to court, and gets a judge to approve the leak before it gets leaked to a reporter? That's nuts.
Union Carbide, Headquarters: Houston Texas.
Now, they only owned 51%, with the Indian government owning the rest, but you don't see Chinese lawyers getting half a billion out of the companies, and "economic rehabilitation" to the families of the miners in Sunjiawan or Shanxi.
India isn't the best, but they're not as bad as China.
How about the decline of the Soviet Empire? Costly wars, corrupt politicians, and runaway military budgets. The only thing we're lacking is a culture of murder.
You need a large mass of humanity to run the machines and do the hard labor. As far was world population goes, there's China, India, and everyone else. So India is really the only threat to China in terms of being the manufacturer of the world, and I don't think that India is quite oppressive enough to suppress the currency and subject their subjects to that kind of pollution.
And China can only keep it up to the point where (a significant number of) factory workers start dieing on the factory floor. Which was a few years ago, which is why the government is starting to care about pollution. I wish them good luck.
The part where it's horribly expensive (even by military standards), unreliable (even by helicopter standards), with limited benefits (again, even by military standards).
OK, skip all the crazy stuff, just answer me this:
Who is marrying who?
Soooo, yeah, Freenet. And funnily enough, both Rushkoff and Freenet completely ignore the PHYSICAL TRANSPORTATION MEDIUM.
Freenet assumes you have an Internet connection. It runs on the Internet. Rushkoff, on the other hand, provided an "super simple" example where he relied entirely on phone lines. Like that's somehow better.
Now... he DOES offer some alternatives, like HAM radio, Wi-max, that jazz. And an ad-hoc mesh network of everyone's wireless router WOULD be super neat. But such a thing can't compete with physical lines going across the continent and across the ocean. And that's really expensive.
No my friend, we will not bulldoze the city so we can build a utopia on an open field. And this is one of the biggest reasons that I really don't want the Internet to be fucked up; it's going to exist that way for a very long time.
uhhhh..... hate to break this to you, but they don't even need that anymore. Remember that thing with Mark Klein where he blew the whistle about the NSA doing wholesale wiretapping at AT&T? How all the big telcoms (except Qwest) were doing likewise? Remember that thing where Bush pushed to give them retroactive immunity? Remember the "compromise" that candidate Obama helped pass that gave them immunity only if they could get a hand-written permission directly from the president?
Did you forget all of that bullshit? Cause I'm still kinda pissed about it.
Now, the NSA aren't beat cops, and beat cops don't just phone up the NSA. So it really only comes into play when the government doesn't like you. Are you willing to accept that the laws only apply when it's convenient?
It's reassuring to know there's a man out there whose fault everything is.
Dumping the currency, or the embargo? Because the answer is still "yes", either way. Globalization means we're all in this together. You can't hurt the othe without hurting yourself.
And, consequently, if they fuck up with say, a huge housing bubble or some such, it'll mean we have to share the pain.