The app is comparing DNS records with a client-side database of cheat sites, and if it finds a match sending it to Valve's servers for verification & ban-hammer. It's not sending every site you visit, unless the only sites you visit were via DNS records used by cheat developers.
Compare: We record images using your laptop's webcam, but we only look at them if our software algorithm thinks the images show you doing something that violates our ToS.
Killing shipping neutrality would enable Amazon to pay UPS for prioritized shipping, which could result in more Christmas packages arriving on time.
But the maximum societal value of carriage networks comes from their operators being common carriers; from all who need package transport, large and small, being able to ship the same size package for the same price and knowing that it will receive equal priority as the incumbents. It is a test that has been run on real economies, worldwide, over and over again. We already know the answer that maximizes long-run GDP growth. (as an aside, the most beneficial outcome also involves less competition than we would want for pure market-based optimization, because having enough independent carriage networks to overcome discriminatory profit-seeking would require a cost ineffective level of capital investment in competing networks)
Also, beta sucks. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors. If you kill the authors, you will kill your content. Ask yourself this question, Dice: Do you have the writing chops to compete with Ars Technica on their turf? Has any article on SlashBI generated the same traffic as a mediocre comment thread on Slashdot? Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Make the right business decision.
displayed on a nerd=site where all negative comments about the quality of the site are hidden away as -1 or off topic
Don't look now, but your negative comment about the quality of this site is currently modded as +4 Interesting.
Ah-Ha! But that only proves the point! You see, they intentionally allowed your comment to be modded up so they can point to it and say, "See, we didn't mod that one into oblivion!" Tricksy Hobbitses!
Most of the unnecessary parts of code are there for clarity, to make the code less cryptic. Most of the cryptic stuff is cryptic because it has been condensed. Consider iterating with a counter:
for $i in ( 1..100 )
That's about as concise as it can possibly be, and still get the job done. Most languages get a little more verbose, to add specificity and clarity:
for ( int i = 1; i <= 100; i++ )
That specifies the type of the holder (int), that it should use include i=100 as the final iteration, and it explicitly states that i should be increased by 1 each time through. That's just a tiny example, but that is how most code is. It is as simple as possible, without becoming too noise-like, but no simpler. Some langauges, like PERL, even embrace becoming noise-like in their concision.
As for doing it with pictures instead of text, we try that every five or ten years. GUI IDEs, MDA, Rational Rose, UML, etc (there's some overlap there, but you get the picture).
I suspect the core problem is that code is a perfect model of a machine that solves a problem. The model necessarily must be at least as complex as the solution it represents. That could be done in pictures or with text glyphs. Why are text glyphs more successful? I'm guessing it is because we are a verbal kind of animal. Our brains are better adapted to doing precise IO and storage of complex notions with text than with pictures. It's also faster to enter complex and precise notions with the 40 or 50 handy binary switches on a keyboard than with the fuzzy analog mouse. But at this point I'm just spitballing, so on to another topic:
Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.
But don't forget that big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs. In 2012 alone, the U.S. government and private companies spent a combined $130 billion (PDF) on medical research.
Ahh, very large numbers without context. Does such a good job of sounding like it means something. Here's some context: 70% increase in profits in the past 10 years, and we have way more drugs available than we can afford. Increasing government imposed restrictions on competition to drive up market price is what you do when a critical industry is having problems, not when they're flush with cash and demand and prices are skyrocketing. It's freaking econ 101 ferfucksake.
Also: Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.
They are the product, sold to ad agencies, and the site is the manufacturing facility. The Beta is a new manufacturing process line being constructed, and the complaints are product being rejected by quality control. If the issues are not resolved by the time the new line goes live, manufacturing volume will suffer, customers will not have anything to purchase, and profits will suffer.
Awww, see how you are? You've gone and ruined a perfectly good incoherent rant with senseless rational analysis.
So the new thing is to walk up, grab their phone out of their hands, and take off. This type of theft is skyrocketing,
That's the stat I'm asking for. The stat in the article does not help assess that. Unfortunately, neither does your compelling, but undocumented, hypothesis.
If I were a mugger, I'd take my victim's cell phone regardless of whether it was a smart phone or $10 Tracfone. You don't want your victims calling the cops right after you flee.
Already half of all robberies in San Francisco and 75 percent of those in Oakland involve a mobile device and the number is rising in Los Angeles, according to police figures.
Some missing stats here: How many robberies is that, how many were there five years ago, and what percentage of robberies involved a wallet? Is this a sign of increasing crime due to cell phones, or are cell phones just a thing of value that most people carry that is taken along with the victim's wallet and watch? What percentage of these crimes will be prevented if a kill switch is implemented?
Without that information, this is just another case of, "Bad things happen, therefore we need more laws!" Effective laws do an excellent job of reducing crime. Crime stats in the US have been on an impressive and near continual downward trend, and that is an excellent thing to achieve. Ineffectual laws do not solve problems, however, and they weaken the system.
Also: Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.
So, it is tempting to resurrect Technocrat.net now that Slashdot stinks worse than the last two times I shut down technocrat.net.
In my ponderings on the idea of an exodus, the thing that kept hanging me up is that we'd need someone with some serious cred, someone whose integrity and dedication to the geek community is nigh unimpeachable. I think you've got that one licked.
Thank you for listening, and for taking our passion for this site and its battle-tested interface to heart. I look forward to seeing how serious you are about providing -- at least as an option -- the kind of lean, dense, static UI that made Slashdot work so well for so long.
Shame, I'd actually like to discuss this topic. But, then I'd be jeopardizing every future discussion.
Javascript dancing baloney and giant pretty pictures belong on USA Today, not Slashdot.
The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.
Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Alternative alternative: Dice; make us an offer. If you really have written this thing off, give us your stats so we can crunch the numbers and tell us your price. It should be pretty clear that the path you're on will not be lucrative, so show your lowest and best offer. There's some pretty affluent folks here, and this place is important to us. If the workers at Harley Davidson could do it, surely it is possible for us to do the same.
No legitimate discussion until Slashdot classic is restored. Sacrifice a few days of discussion now to save all the days in the future. The Spirit of Mohdri Dragon Lives! (feel free to get drunk and naked while posting)
Javascript dancing baloney and giant pretty pictures belong on USA Today, not Slashdot.
The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.
Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
No legitimate discussion until Slashdot classic is restored. Sacrifice a few days of discussion now to save all the days in the future. The Spirit of Mohdri Dragon Lives! (feel free to get drunk and naked while posting)
The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.
Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I *LOVE* Slashdot. That's why I have spent so much time creating comments that I hope add value to the discourse, and put so much effort into my otherwise tenuous self-restraint regarding flaming. I come here to read comments, and to add value to the comment trees. I am happy for Dice to make a profit selling ads on the content our community creates by playing host.
That is a really good trade for all of us, Dice. Don't screw it up.
As for my personal #1 gripe: Don't require Javascript to read comments. OpenStreetMaps is content that begs to be browsed dynamically. Reading a comment tree is an almost entirely static endeavor. Keeping Javascript disabled on most sites is something I'm guessing a large portion of the audience here does. And remember: The audience creates the content. Lose one, you lose the other.
Holy Crap! I just tried Beta. It's pretty bad. I wouldn't call it as horrifying as some, but it is really quite bad from a design perspective.
But here's my main complaint: You can't read comments without Javascript enabled. Javascript is really cool, it's great for creating dynamic web pages. Things like OpenStreetMap have made my life fundamentally better when doing dynamic content perusal.
But there's a gap there; reading a comment tree is not dynamic content perusal. I click my desired mod level, then read the entire tree without any changes. Occasionally I pop open a new tab to reply to an existing comment, but that is rare enough that it can be done with static pages.
I don't enable Javascript by default, and I don't enable it on sites that don't need it. It's a security thing, like not leaving services running that you don't need. It's also about not chewing up memory and CPU for dancing baloney.
The value of Slashdot is the community comments. That is why I come here. It is why I spend so much time carefully crafting and editing comments that I hope will add to the experience for others (and often censoring my more bile-laden knee-jerk responses that would make it a more combustible environment).
Like so many members of the Slashdot community, I put a lot into making this a place that people like to visit. And I am happy for Dice to make a profit selling ad space on the comments that my community creates, in exchange for playing host. That's a pretty good trade all around. Don't fuck it up.
I think you've laid out the problem really well. The non-net-neutral solution based on what you've outlined seems to be: Social programs or other transfer payments to support Wikipedia and other art in the public interest, and Antitrust proceedings to regulate ISP market distortions.
The alternative, under net neutrality, is for Comcast to not discriminate between services and, if they wish, to charge their customers based on size and weight. So we can either set up social programs that would be subject to misappropriation of funds and failure to reach those that deserve it, and antitrust proceedings that would occasionally punish the wrong people and fail to punish the actual bad actors. Or we can simply require ISPs to act as neutral common carriers, to bill neutrally for the quantity of services consumed, like UPS, toll roads and bridges, telephone services, etc.
Both of those approaches have been tested in other fields in our economy. The latter is far more efficient, with an outcome that more closely approximates the ideal free market when operating on our non-ideal human-based system.
Your post is interesting and I don't want to detract from your interesting solution, but just to clarify:
Comcast wants to charge Netflix et. al. for carrying content on their network, simply because Netflix eats all their bandwidth.
Netflix doesn't push anything down Comcast's network. I pull it. I eat all of Comcast's bandwidth. Whether I do it with Netflix or Youtube or Linux distro torrents is none of Comcast's business. I pay Comcast for carriage, like when I pay UPS to transport a package; it's none of UPS's business (or liability) what I put in the box. They charge me by weight and/or size and distance, not what I'm sending or who the recipient is.
Not all evidence is admissable in court. Evidence that is illegally obtainted can't be used in a prosecution. And any resulting evidence (like from a traffic stop as described in the article) is excluded as fruit of the poisoned tree.
The one I've been noodling on lately is privileged communications. Doctor/patient, supplicant/confessor, and attorney/client privilege come to mind. Could the government tap the communication between a criminal and his lawyer and use the information to construct a parallel evidence chain? Seems that fear of such would have a chilling effect on medical care, legal representation, and mystical absolution.
Slashdot Mirror
The app is comparing DNS records with a client-side database of cheat sites, and if it finds a match sending it to Valve's servers for verification & ban-hammer. It's not sending every site you visit, unless the only sites you visit were via DNS records used by cheat developers.
Compare: We record images using your laptop's webcam, but we only look at them if our software algorithm thinks the images show you doing something that violates our ToS.
Sure, we put a camera in your bathroom, but it's OK, we don't look at the footage.
Killing Net Neutrality Could Be Good For You
Killing shipping neutrality would enable Amazon to pay UPS for prioritized shipping, which could result in more Christmas packages arriving on time.
But the maximum societal value of carriage networks comes from their operators being common carriers; from all who need package transport, large and small, being able to ship the same size package for the same price and knowing that it will receive equal priority as the incumbents. It is a test that has been run on real economies, worldwide, over and over again. We already know the answer that maximizes long-run GDP growth. (as an aside, the most beneficial outcome also involves less competition than we would want for pure market-based optimization, because having enough independent carriage networks to overcome discriminatory profit-seeking would require a cost ineffective level of capital investment in competing networks)
Also, beta sucks. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors. If you kill the authors, you will kill your content. Ask yourself this question, Dice: Do you have the writing chops to compete with Ars Technica on their turf? Has any article on SlashBI generated the same traffic as a mediocre comment thread on Slashdot? Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Make the right business decision.
Have a good week off, Slashdot -- see you next Monday.
displayed on a nerd=site where all negative comments about the quality of the site are hidden away as -1 or off topic
Don't look now, but your negative comment about the quality of this site is currently modded as +4 Interesting.
Ah-Ha! But that only proves the point! You see, they intentionally allowed your comment to be modded up so they can point to it and say, "See, we didn't mod that one into oblivion!" Tricksy Hobbitses!
Oh yeah, and, Fuck Beta.
Most of the unnecessary parts of code are there for clarity, to make the code less cryptic. Most of the cryptic stuff is cryptic because it has been condensed. Consider iterating with a counter:
for $i in ( 1..100 )
That's about as concise as it can possibly be, and still get the job done. Most languages get a little more verbose, to add specificity and clarity:
for ( int i = 1; i <= 100; i++ )
That specifies the type of the holder (int), that it should use include i=100 as the final iteration, and it explicitly states that i should be increased by 1 each time through. That's just a tiny example, but that is how most code is. It is as simple as possible, without becoming too noise-like, but no simpler. Some langauges, like PERL, even embrace becoming noise-like in their concision.
As for doing it with pictures instead of text, we try that every five or ten years. GUI IDEs, MDA, Rational Rose, UML, etc (there's some overlap there, but you get the picture).
I suspect the core problem is that code is a perfect model of a machine that solves a problem. The model necessarily must be at least as complex as the solution it represents. That could be done in pictures or with text glyphs. Why are text glyphs more successful? I'm guessing it is because we are a verbal kind of animal. Our brains are better adapted to doing precise IO and storage of complex notions with text than with pictures. It's also faster to enter complex and precise notions with the 40 or 50 handy binary switches on a keyboard than with the fuzzy analog mouse. But at this point I'm just spitballing, so on to another topic:
Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.
But don't forget that big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs. In 2012 alone, the U.S. government and private companies spent a combined $130 billion (PDF) on medical research.
Ahh, very large numbers without context. Does such a good job of sounding like it means something. Here's some context: 70% increase in profits in the past 10 years, and we have way more drugs available than we can afford. Increasing government imposed restrictions on competition to drive up market price is what you do when a critical industry is having problems, not when they're flush with cash and demand and prices are skyrocketing. It's freaking econ 101 ferfucksake.
Also: Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.
They are the product, sold to ad agencies, and the site is the manufacturing facility. The Beta is a new manufacturing process line being constructed, and the complaints are product being rejected by quality control. If the issues are not resolved by the time the new line goes live, manufacturing volume will suffer, customers will not have anything to purchase, and profits will suffer.
Awww, see how you are? You've gone and ruined a perfectly good incoherent rant with senseless rational analysis.
So the new thing is to walk up, grab their phone out of their hands, and take off. This type of theft is skyrocketing,
That's the stat I'm asking for. The stat in the article does not help assess that. Unfortunately, neither does your compelling, but undocumented, hypothesis.
If I were a mugger, I'd take my victim's cell phone regardless of whether it was a smart phone or $10 Tracfone. You don't want your victims calling the cops right after you flee.
Very interesting thought!
Already half of all robberies in San Francisco and 75 percent of those in Oakland involve a mobile device and the number is rising in Los Angeles, according to police figures.
Some missing stats here: How many robberies is that, how many were there five years ago, and what percentage of robberies involved a wallet? Is this a sign of increasing crime due to cell phones, or are cell phones just a thing of value that most people carry that is taken along with the victim's wallet and watch? What percentage of these crimes will be prevented if a kill switch is implemented?
Without that information, this is just another case of, "Bad things happen, therefore we need more laws!" Effective laws do an excellent job of reducing crime. Crime stats in the US have been on an impressive and near continual downward trend, and that is an excellent thing to achieve. Ineffectual laws do not solve problems, however, and they weaken the system.
Also: Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.
So, it is tempting to resurrect Technocrat.net now that Slashdot stinks worse than the last two times I shut down technocrat.net .
In my ponderings on the idea of an exodus, the thing that kept hanging me up is that we'd need someone with some serious cred, someone whose integrity and dedication to the geek community is nigh unimpeachable. I think you've got that one licked.
I like the idea.
Love it. Your comment is now my sig.
Thank you for listening, and for taking our passion for this site and its battle-tested interface to heart. I look forward to seeing how serious you are about providing -- at least as an option -- the kind of lean, dense, static UI that made Slashdot work so well for so long.
Decided to stop being an anonymous coward after 12+ years so that I can say Fuck Beta!
Wait -- you're saying you're Anonymous Coward, finally unmasked?!? Holy crap do you post a lot.
Fuck Beta!
Shame, I'd actually like to discuss this topic. But, then I'd be jeopardizing every future discussion.
Javascript dancing baloney and giant pretty pictures belong on USA Today, not Slashdot.
The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.
Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Alternative alternative: Dice; make us an offer. If you really have written this thing off, give us your stats so we can crunch the numbers and tell us your price. It should be pretty clear that the path you're on will not be lucrative, so show your lowest and best offer. There's some pretty affluent folks here, and this place is important to us. If the workers at Harley Davidson could do it, surely it is possible for us to do the same.
No legitimate discussion until Slashdot classic is restored. Sacrifice a few days of discussion now to save all the days in the future. The Spirit of Mohdri Dragon Lives! (feel free to get drunk and naked while posting)
Javascript dancing baloney and giant pretty pictures belong on USA Today, not Slashdot.
The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.
Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
No legitimate discussion until Slashdot classic is restored. Sacrifice a few days of discussion now to save all the days in the future. The Spirit of Mohdri Dragon Lives! (feel free to get drunk and naked while posting)
The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.
Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I *LOVE* Slashdot. That's why I have spent so much time creating comments that I hope add value to the discourse, and put so much effort into my otherwise tenuous self-restraint regarding flaming. I come here to read comments, and to add value to the comment trees. I am happy for Dice to make a profit selling ads on the content our community creates by playing host.
That is a really good trade for all of us, Dice. Don't screw it up.
As for my personal #1 gripe: Don't require Javascript to read comments. OpenStreetMaps is content that begs to be browsed dynamically. Reading a comment tree is an almost entirely static endeavor. Keeping Javascript disabled on most sites is something I'm guessing a large portion of the audience here does. And remember: The audience creates the content. Lose one, you lose the other.
The Spirit of Mohdri Dragon Lives!
Holy Crap! I just tried Beta. It's pretty bad. I wouldn't call it as horrifying as some, but it is really quite bad from a design perspective.
But here's my main complaint: You can't read comments without Javascript enabled. Javascript is really cool, it's great for creating dynamic web pages. Things like OpenStreetMap have made my life fundamentally better when doing dynamic content perusal.
But there's a gap there; reading a comment tree is not dynamic content perusal. I click my desired mod level, then read the entire tree without any changes. Occasionally I pop open a new tab to reply to an existing comment, but that is rare enough that it can be done with static pages.
I don't enable Javascript by default, and I don't enable it on sites that don't need it. It's a security thing, like not leaving services running that you don't need. It's also about not chewing up memory and CPU for dancing baloney.
The value of Slashdot is the community comments. That is why I come here. It is why I spend so much time carefully crafting and editing comments that I hope will add to the experience for others (and often censoring my more bile-laden knee-jerk responses that would make it a more combustible environment).
Like so many members of the Slashdot community, I put a lot into making this a place that people like to visit. And I am happy for Dice to make a profit selling ad space on the comments that my community creates, in exchange for playing host. That's a pretty good trade all around. Don't fuck it up.
I think you've laid out the problem really well. The non-net-neutral solution based on what you've outlined seems to be: Social programs or other transfer payments to support Wikipedia and other art in the public interest, and Antitrust proceedings to regulate ISP market distortions.
The alternative, under net neutrality, is for Comcast to not discriminate between services and, if they wish, to charge their customers based on size and weight. So we can either set up social programs that would be subject to misappropriation of funds and failure to reach those that deserve it, and antitrust proceedings that would occasionally punish the wrong people and fail to punish the actual bad actors. Or we can simply require ISPs to act as neutral common carriers, to bill neutrally for the quantity of services consumed, like UPS, toll roads and bridges, telephone services, etc.
Both of those approaches have been tested in other fields in our economy. The latter is far more efficient, with an outcome that more closely approximates the ideal free market when operating on our non-ideal human-based system.
For example, Netflix creates up to a third of internet traffic in the evening hours.
Netflix does not create any traffic. ISP customers create the traffic by telling the Netflix servers to send them a stream.
Your post is interesting and I don't want to detract from your interesting solution, but just to clarify:
Comcast wants to charge Netflix et. al. for carrying content on their network, simply because Netflix eats all their bandwidth.
Netflix doesn't push anything down Comcast's network. I pull it. I eat all of Comcast's bandwidth. Whether I do it with Netflix or Youtube or Linux distro torrents is none of Comcast's business. I pay Comcast for carriage, like when I pay UPS to transport a package; it's none of UPS's business (or liability) what I put in the box. They charge me by weight and/or size and distance, not what I'm sending or who the recipient is.
Not all evidence is admissable in court. Evidence that is illegally obtainted can't be used in a prosecution. And any resulting evidence (like from a traffic stop as described in the article) is excluded as fruit of the poisoned tree.
The one I've been noodling on lately is privileged communications. Doctor/patient, supplicant/confessor, and attorney/client privilege come to mind. Could the government tap the communication between a criminal and his lawyer and use the information to construct a parallel evidence chain? Seems that fear of such would have a chilling effect on medical care, legal representation, and mystical absolution.
How screwed up has our society become when it makes cheesy 80's hair metal seem substantive and poignant?