the Federal government, along with some State governments, (most notably Florida's), has announced that distributors and sellers of firearms will henceforth be both civilly and criminally liable for injuries and deaths caused by guns and ammunition they have sold. Oh, wait...
An individual can be hounded and sued into oblivion for providing a platform which others use to distribute copies of music and videos. Yet gun makers and sellers are held harmless, and continue to profit, while the products they sell result in illegal deaths on a more-than-hourly basis. So basically, the profits of music companies and movie studios are more important, in the eyes of the law, than the lives of average people. What a fucked up set of priorities in a thoroughly obscene legal system.
If this decrease actually constitutes a trend, and the trend accelerates, then in five years FB will have bigger problems to worry about than encouraging its users to be less literate.
Also, in light of the fantastical nature of Mendelsohn's conjecture, I'd say that Facebook's Kool-Aid is laced with some very powerful hallucinogens.
Snaps are useful for programs with a tricky set of dependencies to have them easily met
I suspect snaps will be used for far more than 'tricky dependencies'. They'll be used as an excuse to not keep code up-to date, because developers will be able to continue using obsolete 'legacy' libraries instead of coding against newer ones which will presumably be more secure and/or more stable.
Having said that, I still look forward to the day when I can install a snap of almost any application, in almost any version, (and even several versions of one program, say, Kicad), and be fairly likely to have them all Just Work. Besides, I like the idea of programs being more self-contained - in spite of the redundancy factor and the additional drive space required, it just seems cleaner to me.
It would be great if the EFF got involved so The Spoiling Dead could take AMC to court. And IMHO this would be worth the EFF's time and money. Somebody needs to keep (re-)drawing the line between legitimate copyright claims, and spurious ownership claims made by corporations that piss on everything in sight like some not-house-broken dog in their efforts to mark it all as their own. Under the current civil law setup, average citizens simply can't afford to defend their own rights against bullies such as AMC.
a large percentage of our society can find the money to help pay for the ridiculous incomes enjoyed by major sports figures and their leagues, and movie / music stars and the MAFIAA, but cancer "researchers are having to be creative in obtaining funding for their work" because patent expiration renders that research insufficiently profitable for Big Pharma? It seems to me that, as a society, our values are seriously skewed in favour of paying for bread and circuses, and the latest bit of techno-shiny, instead of things that would give us greater longevity and a better quality of life.
I'm probably about as guilty as the next person, and am just pointing out something I think everyone should look at.
Good idea - thanks. I'm mostly a hardware guy so the advice isn't as applicable as it would be to many others here, but I'll search for some open hardware projects that I can make contributions to.
It might be time to close my LinkedIn account and get the flock outta there. I've pretty much avoided social networking - no Facebook, no Twitter, etc. - but LinkedIn seemed to be almost a necessity for job hunting. But I read recently that I'm already out of contention for most jobs anyway, because I'm not on FB, and because my online presence is mostly pseudonymous, which means it doesn't exist as far as most prospective employers are concerned. Apparently that's a real red flag for HR types. So I guess I'm hooped anyway, and dumping LinkedIn won't significantly hinder my already dismal job prospects.
And this pig installs itself in your life whether you want it or not, and then spies on you. So who gives a crap about the damned lipstick on this oinker?
If this idea goes forward and is widely embraced, then perhaps there will be two "Dark Webs" - the current one, (used mostly by criminals), and "Dark Web Lite". The latter will be used mostly by the new class of criminals created by the new legislation; namely, those who say "fuck that" to the whole misguided 'papers please!' version of the Internet and establish their own online territory where anonymity is honoured, and where government ID's aren't required and don't mean shit.
Here in Canada, our British cousins are already helping us out with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFfUSxPUXKA
http://brickingitforcanada.com/
Of course, we're happy for all the help we can get with this wall, especially from our American cousins!:) Please be advised that Tronald J. Dump won't be making us pay for any walls though...
No one can "Spy On You" using this method on any stock production phone. The vibration motor is connected to an *output* of the chip that drives it, not an *input*. Additionally, that output is likely to be digital rather than analog, so even its direction could be magically reversed, the likelihood of the chip being able to process whatever signal the motor would produce in response to ambient sounds would be just about zero. And if someone was modifying your phone in order to hear your conversations, there are *much* easier, faster, more reliable, less convoluted ways of doing it - like piggybacking on the microphone that's already there.
The ability to use a vibration motor as a microphone is a technical curiosity, but it's not at all surprising to anyone familiar with basic electrical and electronic concepts. The researchers' work is a nice proof-of-concept which may find useful application at some point. But really, the title of TFA, (and TFS), is solidly in the province of yellow journalism. There are more than enough *real* reasons to fear for our privacy - there's absolutely no need to further stoke that fire with false fears like those being promoted here.
Tech companies and privacy advocates are warning against new legislation that would give the FBI the ability to access "electronic communication transactional records" (ECTRs) without a warrant in spy and terrorism cases.
For the article to have been accurate I'm pretty sure the words "in spy and terrorism cases" should have been omitted. Who added those words? Is it an un-attributed quote, or was it put there by some overly zealous and/or boot-licking reporter or editor? Does anybody really believe that the scope of such investigations will be limited to those that can legitimately be called "spy and terrorism cases"?
If this ever starts to take hold it might really screw up those people who use the same password in multiple places. If I use a password frequently in a place where autocorrect is implemented, I might re-memorize the password incorrectly both in mind and in muscle memory. Then, when I enter the 'same' password in the place where I use it less frequently, and where autocorrect isn't implemented... OOPS!
for district attorneys to file criminal charges against those who are clearly and repeatedly abusing the civil litigation process. Tens of thousands of dollars claimed over a forty dollar printer? It's hard to view this as anything other than theft, and thieves have done hard jail time for far lower dollar values than those sought by the plaintiff in this case. Civil law shouldn't be a lottery, and criminal law should have the power to prevent people from treating it as one.
Some worry that such an aggressive approach to defense and security may break laws. It does not. To be clear, proactive hunting is not “hacking back” or illegally “shooting back” at cyber adversaries beyond the infrastructure you own. Hunting is essential, while hacking back is illegal.
I can just hear it now - the sound of yet more privacy being trampled underfoot as all those 'proactive hunting' parties go traipsing through our virtual back yards.Lovely!
It would be cool if they could occasionally honk at an attractive and well-put-together man or woman that they see walking down the street. Now THAT would signal the arrival of true AI!
The "artificial delays" are simply a specific form of artificial scarcity, and we humans always do our damnedest to route around them.
We also *really* don't want to be lectured to about piracy when we're watching a legally purchased DVD, nor do we want to watch ads, (except for movie trailers), in a DVD we've already fscking paid for. But media producers and distributors seem positively addicted to the practice of strapping on a pair of cleats and stepping on their own dicks.
No, in my opinion they are far from the worst, although for me they are some of the most immediately annoying. I thought of some of those other things when I posted, and I expected someone might comment as you did. But I decided to keep it light. I was going for humour, and am a bit surprised that I've been modded 'Insightful'.
then will the owners please debug the code and/or get the hardware fixed? I'm getting sick and tired of glitches like 'Real Housewives', Kardashians, and Donald Trump.
Slashdot Mirror
the Federal government, along with some State governments, (most notably Florida's), has announced that distributors and sellers of firearms will henceforth be both civilly and criminally liable for injuries and deaths caused by guns and ammunition they have sold. Oh, wait...
An individual can be hounded and sued into oblivion for providing a platform which others use to distribute copies of music and videos. Yet gun makers and sellers are held harmless, and continue to profit, while the products they sell result in illegal deaths on a more-than-hourly basis. So basically, the profits of music companies and movie studios are more important, in the eyes of the law, than the lives of average people. What a fucked up set of priorities in a thoroughly obscene legal system.
FTS: "... consider the way Facebook is decreasing an emphasis on text ..."
Consider the way people seem to be decreasing their use of Facebook and other social media.
If this decrease actually constitutes a trend, and the trend accelerates, then in five years FB will have bigger problems to worry about than encouraging its users to be less literate.
Also, in light of the fantastical nature of Mendelsohn's conjecture, I'd say that Facebook's Kool-Aid is laced with some very powerful hallucinogens.
You've already been modded up to 5, so rather than burning a mod point I'll just say "Right on, dude!"
Snaps are useful for programs with a tricky set of dependencies to have them easily met
I suspect snaps will be used for far more than 'tricky dependencies'. They'll be used as an excuse to not keep code up-to date, because developers will be able to continue using obsolete 'legacy' libraries instead of coding against newer ones which will presumably be more secure and/or more stable.
Having said that, I still look forward to the day when I can install a snap of almost any application, in almost any version, (and even several versions of one program, say, Kicad), and be fairly likely to have them all Just Work. Besides, I like the idea of programs being more self-contained - in spite of the redundancy factor and the additional drive space required, it just seems cleaner to me.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160613/01084434693/pure-bullshit-amc-threatens-huge-fan-community-with-copyright-claim-over-spoiler-predictions.shtml
It would be great if the EFF got involved so The Spoiling Dead could take AMC to court. And IMHO this would be worth the EFF's time and money. Somebody needs to keep (re-)drawing the line between legitimate copyright claims, and spurious ownership claims made by corporations that piss on everything in sight like some not-house-broken dog in their efforts to mark it all as their own. Under the current civil law setup, average citizens simply can't afford to defend their own rights against bullies such as AMC.
...The trick is being able to access it quickly and not looking like a dork :).
If you're that worried about looking like a dork, then you're not a geek. Time to hand in your membership card. ;-)
a large percentage of our society can find the money to help pay for the ridiculous incomes enjoyed by major sports figures and their leagues, and movie / music stars and the MAFIAA, but cancer "researchers are having to be creative in obtaining funding for their work" because patent expiration renders that research insufficiently profitable for Big Pharma? It seems to me that, as a society, our values are seriously skewed in favour of paying for bread and circuses, and the latest bit of techno-shiny, instead of things that would give us greater longevity and a better quality of life.
I'm probably about as guilty as the next person, and am just pointing out something I think everyone should look at.
Sure ! Just sign my petition on Facebook !
Can't. Anything FB-related is banned from my network.
Whoosh? I loved your original comment, but I kinda think AC had tongue firmly in cheek - my first response was laughter.
-- Microsoft is going for "Free as in herpes"
I love your sig... I've taken to calling Windows 10 a CTD, a "Computer-Transmitted Disease" or "Windows NSA Edition", if you prefer...
Thanks, but I can't take credit for the line. I stole it from another comment on Slashdot - I guess I should dig it up and attribute the quote.
Good idea - thanks. I'm mostly a hardware guy so the advice isn't as applicable as it would be to many others here, but I'll search for some open hardware projects that I can make contributions to.
It might be time to close my LinkedIn account and get the flock outta there. I've pretty much avoided social networking - no Facebook, no Twitter, etc. - but LinkedIn seemed to be almost a necessity for job hunting. But I read recently that I'm already out of contention for most jobs anyway, because I'm not on FB, and because my online presence is mostly pseudonymous, which means it doesn't exist as far as most prospective employers are concerned. Apparently that's a real red flag for HR types. So I guess I'm hooped anyway, and dumping LinkedIn won't significantly hinder my already dismal job prospects.
And this pig installs itself in your life whether you want it or not, and then spies on you. So who gives a crap about the damned lipstick on this oinker?
If this idea goes forward and is widely embraced, then perhaps there will be two "Dark Webs" - the current one, (used mostly by criminals), and "Dark Web Lite". The latter will be used mostly by the new class of criminals created by the new legislation; namely, those who say "fuck that" to the whole misguided 'papers please!' version of the Internet and establish their own online territory where anonymity is honoured, and where government ID's aren't required and don't mean shit.
He is hiding from Sweden. The country known for neutrality.
Ummm... Did you perhaps mean Switzerland? Then again, I don't think Assange is hiding from the Swiss.
That 'sw' combination at the beginning of a word can be confusing. Of course, so can that 'wh' combination. You know, as in whore...
Here in Canada, our British cousins are already helping us out with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFfUSxPUXKA
http://brickingitforcanada.com/
Of course, we're happy for all the help we can get with this wall, especially from our American cousins! :) Please be advised that Tronald J. Dump won't be making us pay for any walls though...
No one can "Spy On You" using this method on any stock production phone. The vibration motor is connected to an *output* of the chip that drives it, not an *input*. Additionally, that output is likely to be digital rather than analog, so even its direction could be magically reversed, the likelihood of the chip being able to process whatever signal the motor would produce in response to ambient sounds would be just about zero. And if someone was modifying your phone in order to hear your conversations, there are *much* easier, faster, more reliable, less convoluted ways of doing it - like piggybacking on the microphone that's already there.
The ability to use a vibration motor as a microphone is a technical curiosity, but it's not at all surprising to anyone familiar with basic electrical and electronic concepts. The researchers' work is a nice proof-of-concept which may find useful application at some point. But really, the title of TFA, (and TFS), is solidly in the province of yellow journalism. There are more than enough *real* reasons to fear for our privacy - there's absolutely no need to further stoke that fire with false fears like those being promoted here.
Tech companies and privacy advocates are warning against new legislation that would give the FBI the ability to access "electronic communication transactional records" (ECTRs) without a warrant in spy and terrorism cases.
For the article to have been accurate I'm pretty sure the words "in spy and terrorism cases" should have been omitted. Who added those words? Is it an un-attributed quote, or was it put there by some overly zealous and/or boot-licking reporter or editor? Does anybody really believe that the scope of such investigations will be limited to those that can legitimately be called "spy and terrorism cases"?
If Samsung was the last phone maker in the world I'd be using two tin cans and a string rather than buying anything from them.
If this ever starts to take hold it might really screw up those people who use the same password in multiple places. If I use a password frequently in a place where autocorrect is implemented, I might re-memorize the password incorrectly both in mind and in muscle memory. Then, when I enter the 'same' password in the place where I use it less frequently, and where autocorrect isn't implemented... OOPS!
for district attorneys to file criminal charges against those who are clearly and repeatedly abusing the civil litigation process. Tens of thousands of dollars claimed over a forty dollar printer? It's hard to view this as anything other than theft, and thieves have done hard jail time for far lower dollar values than those sought by the plaintiff in this case. Civil law shouldn't be a lottery, and criminal law should have the power to prevent people from treating it as one.
FTA:
Some worry that such an aggressive approach to defense and security may break laws. It does not. To be clear, proactive hunting is not “hacking back” or illegally “shooting back” at cyber adversaries beyond the infrastructure you own. Hunting is essential, while hacking back is illegal.
I can just hear it now - the sound of yet more privacy being trampled underfoot as all those 'proactive hunting' parties go traipsing through our virtual back yards.Lovely!
It would be cool if they could occasionally honk at an attractive and well-put-together man or woman that they see walking down the street. Now THAT would signal the arrival of true AI!
The "artificial delays" are simply a specific form of artificial scarcity, and we humans always do our damnedest to route around them.
We also *really* don't want to be lectured to about piracy when we're watching a legally purchased DVD, nor do we want to watch ads, (except for movie trailers), in a DVD we've already fscking paid for. But media producers and distributors seem positively addicted to the practice of strapping on a pair of cleats and stepping on their own dicks.
No, in my opinion they are far from the worst, although for me they are some of the most immediately annoying. I thought of some of those other things when I posted, and I expected someone might comment as you did. But I decided to keep it light. I was going for humour, and am a bit surprised that I've been modded 'Insightful'.
then will the owners please debug the code and/or get the hardware fixed? I'm getting sick and tired of glitches like 'Real Housewives', Kardashians, and Donald Trump.