before they try to run. At one time Mozilla ran like the wind, then they just ran, then they walked, now they're crawling. Trying to run from where they are now, directly to "develop an understanding of browser activity at scale", (whatever the hell that means), would seem to be WAY beyond their current capabilities. Especially when their share of the market is dropping to the point where whatever data they might collect may not be enough to be statistically meaningful...
If memory serves me right, about 50% of commercial airline crashes were either terror attacks, Russian military shooting down aircrafts, or a pilot losing it and crashing the plane... In other words, this is just your regular panic related ideas. Nothing to take too seriously.
I actually came here to point out how much safer flying is than driving, and that we ought to concentrate on automobile safety first. But your post makes me think there might be more of a case than I first thought for the design proposed in TFA.
First, a bomb placed in the cargo hold of a plane is less likely to kill people if that cargo hold is the entirely separate, air-gapped structure specified in the new design. Second, in the case of either a bomb or a suicidal pilot, separate passenger pods that can be jettisoned by air crew inside the pods could significantly reduce fatalities.
I still think driving safety should be our first priority, but the new airplane concept being proposed doesn't sound as irrelevant to me as it first did. Also, the design of everything, from the planes themselves to the infrastructure needed to support them, is sufficiently different from what we have now that it's likely to result in some useful technological innovations. Plus, the 'think of the economy' crowd ought to love it. So now, I'm not so ready to dismiss the idea as I was when I first read about it.
FTS: "...workers traveling between the two cities would spend less time commuting and more time working."
If I have a chance to cut my commute time significantly, why would I spend the extra time working instead of with family and friends, or on hobbies or other leisure activities? Hell, even when I had a job in which I worked overtime without pay just because what I was working on was interesting, any time saved off my commute wouldn't have been donated to the company.
And if you're still of those complaining about the australis UI and using that as excuse for people to switch to Pale Moon - please, go and install "Classic Theme Restorer" like the rest of us.
Been there, done that, turned my nose up at the T-shirt. Classic Theme Restorer may give back access to old themes, but the post-Australis browser configuration experience sucks balls. THAT is why I switched to Pale Moon. Plus, I wanted to be part of the message to Mozilla that they need to stop ignoring the desires of the majority of their user base if they want to maintain relevance and grow their market share. Australis was just the last 'Fuck You' that came my way from Mozilla before I sent back one of my own. Yes, I understand that browsers are horrendously complex and need to change in the face of changing standards, innovations, and technical requirements. That's no excuse for many of the changes in FF, nor is it an excuse for the way they've treated their loyal supporters. So, Pale Moon it is. If Mozilla should ever decide to get its head out of its ass and try to regain market leadership, they could do a lot worse than take their cues from Pale Moon.
Why? They provide a good service at the right price.
Yes, the price, in dollars and cents, is zero. However, the cost to the user, in things such as privacy, lock-in, targeted advertising, etc, is more than zero. Some people seem to have 'privacy to burn', so to speak; to them, the cost is trivial. Others prefer to buy products and services for specified sums of money, rather than for unspecified quantities of personal data. Me? I like to know how much I'm paying, in what currency, and how long the payments will last, before I 'purchase' something.
... Big businesses, Government? If we are not willingly giving control of our lives to those entities, why would we do so to an AI created by one?
Look around you. Facebook. Big Pharma. Propagandistic TV shows. Planned obsolescence. Journalists in the pockets of those they are 'investigating'. A critical mass of our fellow citizens has already drunk the Kool-Aid and signed on for substantial control over their existences. What makes you think they'll kick up a fuss over AI controlling their lives, so long as said AI keeps them comfortably numb and maintains the supply of bread and circuses?
I've been coming here for 7 years, and I've always browsed at -1. Comments modded down for inappropriate reasons has always been a problem, at least during my time here, but I agree that it's become much worse in the last few years. When I have points I always mod such comments back up. I also mod up comments which I don't agree with, and which I may consider assholish, but which I feel are well thought out and/or important to the overall discussion.
I love your point about the scarcity of comments, and I agree that the mod system needs to be tweaked. Doing so might even start to raise the level of discourse again and bring back some worthwhile voices that have left in frustration at Slashdot's downward slide. While we're on the (off-topic) subject, I think people need to back off from slagging the editors so much. They're doing a difficult job, trying to balance the desires of a very cranky, picky membership with the need to keep the site financially viable. Yes, we still need to call them out on obvious Slashvertisements - but beyond that, they're doing a pretty good job. We need to be careful here - otherwise the ghost of Timothy will come back to haunt us; or, worse yet, Slashdot will cease to exist.
It's great that those of us normal people who have already updated to Windows 10 will receive this update. Meanwhile, the neckbeards and tinfoil hat Lunix zealots will be stuck without a secure and up to date system. Seems like a good deal to me.
Obviously you don't have much experience at trolling - that attempt was about as subtle a sledgehammer, and reeked of incompetence. Go away, and don't come back 'til you have some skillz.
FTS: "train up to 50,000 computer science teachers in the next decade" and "attaching a green card to the diplomas of foreign-born students earning STEM degrees".
As Syndrome said in 'The Incredibles', "when everyone's super, no one will be". This is where labour markets inevitably end up, with lots of qualified and essentially interchangeable people driving down salaries. Silicon Valley is simply speeding up the process via their Hillary sock puppet.
I wonder if they've given any thought to what it will be like negotiating with a large, strong, unionized labour force. I also wonder why they're doing this when AI and automation seem poised to make redundant so many of the positions they're trying to create candidates for.
It also strikes me that we may be headed for the kind of extreme class stratification exemplified by India's caste system.
If it ever gets released, will users actually own their own phones? Will we be able to download apps without having an account, and without being tied to an email address? Will we be able to actually use the GPS functionality without the device phoning home and telling everybody who's interested our current whereabouts? Will it be easily and safely rootable, or even rooted by default? Will it be easily configurable, so I can avoid the kinds of rank UX stupidities that are baked in to even the stock Android setup? Perhaps more importantly, will it be free of built-in backdoors, spyware, and kill switches that might be mandated by the Chinese government?
Without these things, it will hold no interest for me. And given that it will be vying for the attention of the don't-know-don't-care-just-give-me-my-shiny folks that have made Android so popular, I suspect it won't hold much interest for anyone, at least on this continent.
a phone which is incapable of being used in speakerphone mode. Why? Because eliminating it saves weight, costs less, and reduces the size by a tiny amount. Or, because eliminating it boosts sales of 'accessories' and fattens the bottom line. Want speakerphone mode? Buy a dongle.
Even a few months ago I would have said the above only jokingly, but at this point I won't be at all surprised if it actually comes to pass.
"User-Hostile and Stupid" describes both Apple and Google, along with so many other companies. They get away with stuff like this because people not only keep coming back for more abuse, but keep paying for the 'privilege' of being abused. I've often said that some of us get the governments that our neighbours deserve, and the same idea applies to products and services. If the majority keeps being suckers, then there's not much left other than sucker-bait for the rest of us.
...PayPal thought that this service was facilitating illegal file sharing, similar to MegaUpload, and that violates PayPal's ToS... I just understand why PayPal did what they did...
I understand that PayPal did what they did because they're hypocritical shits with hypocritical ToS, and they shouldn't be given even a hair's width of slack when they pull stunts like this. They regularly steal money from their clients, and the last time I checked that was illegal. I know PayPal enjoys the power and immunity that seem to apply so universally to banksters, but that's no excuse for them to also be such assholes about holding others to a standard which they clearly refuse to apply to themselves.
More than you might think. The FBI does stings all the time and arrests people who want to commit domestic terrorism. I'm pretty sure that some of this has been found by exactly what you bitch about.
You may have a point, but I'm not convinced. As the AC who also responded to your post pointed out, the TLA's would be expected to publicize their successes at thwarting terrorism, yet we hear almost nothing. If you have citations, please provide them.
The recent Orlando attacker didn't drive to the front gate of a US military facility in Florida and start opening fire. He went to a nightclub he was known to visit because he knew that the odds were high that nobody there would have a weapon that could stop him. Terrorists want easy targets with just about 100% chance of success. They're not looking for difficult targets where they may get stopped or caught.
Let me give you some help with this. If you're going to choose a specific incident to make your case, it would be better to choose one in which the perpetrator very clearly chose his target for its easy accessibility and vulnerability, and not because he might very well have been conflicted about his own sexual orientation.
piss on the Constitution and wipe their dirty jackboots with the Stars and Stripes? I'm a Canadian so to a certain extent I don't have a horse in the race; but even so, this really bothers me, if for no other reason than the US government's history of getting its own laws and practices and Peeping Tom-ness implemented extraterritorially. If I actually lived in the States, I'd be ready to chew battleships and spit out nails over this latest attempt to circumvent due process.
Or should I re-phrase that as "because bogeymen"? I mean, really, how many terrorists attacks, anywhere in the world, have been prevented as a result of the privacy we've already been forced to give up?
If terrorists didn't exist, governments would have to invent them, to justify their megalomaniacal policies. Oddly enough, Russia is (uncharacteristically) late to the party on this one - it seems that they're simply following the lead of the Free World. That alone should be a cause for serious concern among those ostensibly 'free' countries.
For me as well. I actually buy music. I'm not interested in streaming services at all.
Yup. I rip my CD's to FLAC and play them off a computer. Occasionally I'll just play a CD. I have no interest in streaming. (Unless you count the canned music channels that come with our cable subscription as 'streaming' - we use those as background music sometimes). I DO listen to a lot of stuff on YouTube, and I've found quite a bit of new music there that I like. I'll download it from YouTube, then if I find I listen to it more than a few times, I'll buy the CD.
When I want stuff that I can't find on CD, I have no qualms about using youtube-dl or BitTorrent. I'm happy to pay for music, (if it's in a lossless format), but if the music company sees fit not to make it available in some permanent, non-DRM'd format, then too bad, so sad, oh well - I can usually get what I'm looking for in some other way.
Chrome has had "profiles" since Chrome 16. They do exactly this. not approximately. exactly.
Incorrect. Profiles, (which, BTW, also exist in FF, and have for a long time now), allow one to launch separate instances of the browser, with separate settings, extension, cookies, etc. FF's latest nightlies allow for different profiles within the same browser instance, so you only have to start your browser once to have multiple profiles available simultaneously.
I won't try this new feature, because I abandoned FF proper when they forced Australis on users. But if the feature ever makes its way into Pale Moon, I'll be happy to have it - I make extensive use of profiles, and it would be nice to have them all in one browser instance.
If the theory is correct, then researchers will actually know how the damned thing works. That should allow allow them to make the drive much more efficient.
Aside from a few Sheldon Coopers out there who would be shut-ins without social media, most people do not want to be tracked by GPS by a company which exists to sell information about them to advertisers.
This is it for me and the FB mobile app, I have just deleted it and will not be reinstalling it.
I only have WiFi or mobile data turned on when needed, usually for brief periods. After I'm finished, I turn them off until I need them again. I don't enable location services - never have. And I don't have a Facebook account - never have. I've rooted my phone, and the FB app, (along with all similar bloatware), was the first to go. And still, I'm sure I'm being tracked all over the place, if only to the degree of granularity allowed for by cell tower triangulation. If my provider can monetize that data, I'm certain they will. In short, these days there's only so much we can do, (short of dropping out of mainstream society altogether), to thwart advertisers and other collectors of personal data.
On a daily basis I think 'Fuck it, I'll cave in and let my privacy be whored out - I'll join Facebook, turn location services on, be one of the crowd, and try not to worry about it.'. But somehow, I can never quite manage to pull the trigger. Stubborn, I guess...
Slashdot Mirror
before they try to run. At one time Mozilla ran like the wind, then they just ran, then they walked, now they're crawling. Trying to run from where they are now, directly to "develop an understanding of browser activity at scale", (whatever the hell that means), would seem to be WAY beyond their current capabilities. Especially when their share of the market is dropping to the point where whatever data they might collect may not be enough to be statistically meaningful...
If memory serves me right, about 50% of commercial airline crashes were either terror attacks, Russian military shooting down aircrafts, or a pilot losing it and crashing the plane... In other words, this is just your regular panic related ideas. Nothing to take too seriously.
I actually came here to point out how much safer flying is than driving, and that we ought to concentrate on automobile safety first. But your post makes me think there might be more of a case than I first thought for the design proposed in TFA.
First, a bomb placed in the cargo hold of a plane is less likely to kill people if that cargo hold is the entirely separate, air-gapped structure specified in the new design. Second, in the case of either a bomb or a suicidal pilot, separate passenger pods that can be jettisoned by air crew inside the pods could significantly reduce fatalities.
I still think driving safety should be our first priority, but the new airplane concept being proposed doesn't sound as irrelevant to me as it first did. Also, the design of everything, from the planes themselves to the infrastructure needed to support them, is sufficiently different from what we have now that it's likely to result in some useful technological innovations. Plus, the 'think of the economy' crowd ought to love it. So now, I'm not so ready to dismiss the idea as I was when I first read about it.
FTS: "...workers traveling between the two cities would spend less time commuting and more time working."
If I have a chance to cut my commute time significantly, why would I spend the extra time working instead of with family and friends, or on hobbies or other leisure activities? Hell, even when I had a job in which I worked overtime without pay just because what I was working on was interesting, any time saved off my commute wouldn't have been donated to the company.
And if you're still of those complaining about the australis UI and using that as excuse for people to switch to Pale Moon - please, go and install "Classic Theme Restorer" like the rest of us.
Been there, done that, turned my nose up at the T-shirt. Classic Theme Restorer may give back access to old themes, but the post-Australis browser configuration experience sucks balls. THAT is why I switched to Pale Moon. Plus, I wanted to be part of the message to Mozilla that they need to stop ignoring the desires of the majority of their user base if they want to maintain relevance and grow their market share. Australis was just the last 'Fuck You' that came my way from Mozilla before I sent back one of my own. Yes, I understand that browsers are horrendously complex and need to change in the face of changing standards, innovations, and technical requirements. That's no excuse for many of the changes in FF, nor is it an excuse for the way they've treated their loyal supporters. So, Pale Moon it is. If Mozilla should ever decide to get its head out of its ass and try to regain market leadership, they could do a lot worse than take their cues from Pale Moon.
Why? They provide a good service at the right price.
Yes, the price, in dollars and cents, is zero. However, the cost to the user, in things such as privacy, lock-in, targeted advertising, etc, is more than zero. Some people seem to have 'privacy to burn', so to speak; to them, the cost is trivial. Others prefer to buy products and services for specified sums of money, rather than for unspecified quantities of personal data. Me? I like to know how much I'm paying, in what currency, and how long the payments will last, before I 'purchase' something.
... Big businesses, Government? If we are not willingly giving control of our lives to those entities, why would we do so to an AI created by one?
Look around you. Facebook. Big Pharma. Propagandistic TV shows. Planned obsolescence. Journalists in the pockets of those they are 'investigating'. A critical mass of our fellow citizens has already drunk the Kool-Aid and signed on for substantial control over their existences. What makes you think they'll kick up a fuss over AI controlling their lives, so long as said AI keeps them comfortably numb and maintains the supply of bread and circuses?
... I would like to see a machine genuinely cry at my wake because it knows it will miss our co-op game playing.
Ummm... you'll be DEAD dude! You ain't gonna see shit at your own wake!
LOL - I'd love to mod you up. Too bad I already posted here.
I've been coming here for 7 years, and I've always browsed at -1. Comments modded down for inappropriate reasons has always been a problem, at least during my time here, but I agree that it's become much worse in the last few years. When I have points I always mod such comments back up. I also mod up comments which I don't agree with, and which I may consider assholish, but which I feel are well thought out and/or important to the overall discussion.
I love your point about the scarcity of comments, and I agree that the mod system needs to be tweaked. Doing so might even start to raise the level of discourse again and bring back some worthwhile voices that have left in frustration at Slashdot's downward slide. While we're on the (off-topic) subject, I think people need to back off from slagging the editors so much. They're doing a difficult job, trying to balance the desires of a very cranky, picky membership with the need to keep the site financially viable. Yes, we still need to call them out on obvious Slashvertisements - but beyond that, they're doing a pretty good job. We need to be careful here - otherwise the ghost of Timothy will come back to haunt us; or, worse yet, Slashdot will cease to exist.
It's great that those of us normal people who have already updated to Windows 10 will receive this update. Meanwhile, the neckbeards and tinfoil hat Lunix zealots will be stuck without a secure and up to date system. Seems like a good deal to me.
Obviously you don't have much experience at trolling - that attempt was about as subtle a sledgehammer, and reeked of incompetence. Go away, and don't come back 'til you have some skillz.
FTS: "train up to 50,000 computer science teachers in the next decade" and "attaching a green card to the diplomas of foreign-born students earning STEM degrees".
As Syndrome said in 'The Incredibles', "when everyone's super, no one will be". This is where labour markets inevitably end up, with lots of qualified and essentially interchangeable people driving down salaries. Silicon Valley is simply speeding up the process via their Hillary sock puppet.
I wonder if they've given any thought to what it will be like negotiating with a large, strong, unionized labour force. I also wonder why they're doing this when AI and automation seem poised to make redundant so many of the positions they're trying to create candidates for.
It also strikes me that we may be headed for the kind of extreme class stratification exemplified by India's caste system.
If it ever gets released, will users actually own their own phones? Will we be able to download apps without having an account, and without being tied to an email address? Will we be able to actually use the GPS functionality without the device phoning home and telling everybody who's interested our current whereabouts? Will it be easily and safely rootable, or even rooted by default? Will it be easily configurable, so I can avoid the kinds of rank UX stupidities that are baked in to even the stock Android setup? Perhaps more importantly, will it be free of built-in backdoors, spyware, and kill switches that might be mandated by the Chinese government?
Without these things, it will hold no interest for me. And given that it will be vying for the attention of the don't-know-don't-care-just-give-me-my-shiny folks that have made Android so popular, I suspect it won't hold much interest for anyone, at least on this continent.
a phone which is incapable of being used in speakerphone mode. Why? Because eliminating it saves weight, costs less, and reduces the size by a tiny amount. Or, because eliminating it boosts sales of 'accessories' and fattens the bottom line. Want speakerphone mode? Buy a dongle.
Even a few months ago I would have said the above only jokingly, but at this point I won't be at all surprised if it actually comes to pass.
"User-Hostile and Stupid" describes both Apple and Google, along with so many other companies. They get away with stuff like this because people not only keep coming back for more abuse, but keep paying for the 'privilege' of being abused. I've often said that some of us get the governments that our neighbours deserve, and the same idea applies to products and services. If the majority keeps being suckers, then there's not much left other than sucker-bait for the rest of us.
...PayPal thought that this service was facilitating illegal file sharing, similar to MegaUpload, and that violates PayPal's ToS... I just understand why PayPal did what they did...
I understand that PayPal did what they did because they're hypocritical shits with hypocritical ToS, and they shouldn't be given even a hair's width of slack when they pull stunts like this. They regularly steal money from their clients, and the last time I checked that was illegal. I know PayPal enjoys the power and immunity that seem to apply so universally to banksters, but that's no excuse for them to also be such assholes about holding others to a standard which they clearly refuse to apply to themselves.
More than you might think. The FBI does stings all the time and arrests people who want to commit domestic terrorism. I'm pretty sure that some of this has been found by exactly what you bitch about.
You may have a point, but I'm not convinced. As the AC who also responded to your post pointed out, the TLA's would be expected to publicize their successes at thwarting terrorism, yet we hear almost nothing. If you have citations, please provide them.
The recent Orlando attacker didn't drive to the front gate of a US military facility in Florida and start opening fire. He went to a nightclub he was known to visit because he knew that the odds were high that nobody there would have a weapon that could stop him. Terrorists want easy targets with just about 100% chance of success. They're not looking for difficult targets where they may get stopped or caught.
Let me give you some help with this. If you're going to choose a specific incident to make your case, it would be better to choose one in which the perpetrator very clearly chose his target for its easy accessibility and vulnerability, and not because he might very well have been conflicted about his own sexual orientation.
piss on the Constitution and wipe their dirty jackboots with the Stars and Stripes? I'm a Canadian so to a certain extent I don't have a horse in the race; but even so, this really bothers me, if for no other reason than the US government's history of getting its own laws and practices and Peeping Tom-ness implemented extraterritorially. If I actually lived in the States, I'd be ready to chew battleships and spit out nails over this latest attempt to circumvent due process.
Or should I re-phrase that as "because bogeymen"? I mean, really, how many terrorists attacks, anywhere in the world, have been prevented as a result of the privacy we've already been forced to give up?
If terrorists didn't exist, governments would have to invent them, to justify their megalomaniacal policies. Oddly enough, Russia is (uncharacteristically) late to the party on this one - it seems that they're simply following the lead of the Free World. That alone should be a cause for serious concern among those ostensibly 'free' countries.
For me as well. I actually buy music. I'm not interested in streaming services at all.
Yup. I rip my CD's to FLAC and play them off a computer. Occasionally I'll just play a CD. I have no interest in streaming. (Unless you count the canned music channels that come with our cable subscription as 'streaming' - we use those as background music sometimes). I DO listen to a lot of stuff on YouTube, and I've found quite a bit of new music there that I like. I'll download it from YouTube, then if I find I listen to it more than a few times, I'll buy the CD.
When I want stuff that I can't find on CD, I have no qualms about using youtube-dl or BitTorrent. I'm happy to pay for music, (if it's in a lossless format), but if the music company sees fit not to make it available in some permanent, non-DRM'd format, then too bad, so sad, oh well - I can usually get what I'm looking for in some other way.
On storing Credit Card data?
Not all companies do. For example, Digi-Key gives asks me if I want my CC data saved. Of course, I always decline.
Chrome has had "profiles" since Chrome 16. They do exactly this. not approximately. exactly.
Incorrect. Profiles, (which, BTW, also exist in FF, and have for a long time now), allow one to launch separate instances of the browser, with separate settings, extension, cookies, etc. FF's latest nightlies allow for different profiles within the same browser instance, so you only have to start your browser once to have multiple profiles available simultaneously.
I won't try this new feature, because I abandoned FF proper when they forced Australis on users. But if the feature ever makes its way into Pale Moon, I'll be happy to have it - I make extensive use of profiles, and it would be nice to have them all in one browser instance.
Where's Ed Wood when we need him?
If the theory is correct, then researchers will actually know how the damned thing works. That should allow allow them to make the drive much more efficient.
and Death is Textless.
Aside from a few Sheldon Coopers out there who would be shut-ins without social media, most people do not want to be tracked by GPS by a company which exists to sell information about them to advertisers.
This is it for me and the FB mobile app, I have just deleted it and will not be reinstalling it.
I only have WiFi or mobile data turned on when needed, usually for brief periods. After I'm finished, I turn them off until I need them again. I don't enable location services - never have. And I don't have a Facebook account - never have. I've rooted my phone, and the FB app, (along with all similar bloatware), was the first to go. And still, I'm sure I'm being tracked all over the place, if only to the degree of granularity allowed for by cell tower triangulation. If my provider can monetize that data, I'm certain they will. In short, these days there's only so much we can do, (short of dropping out of mainstream society altogether), to thwart advertisers and other collectors of personal data.
On a daily basis I think 'Fuck it, I'll cave in and let my privacy be whored out - I'll join Facebook, turn location services on, be one of the crowd, and try not to worry about it.'. But somehow, I can never quite manage to pull the trigger. Stubborn, I guess...