If this technology is realized and becomes cheap, any bets on whether or not it becomes the standard for consumer electronics?
After all, it's the ultimate kill switch. Whether it's government agencies looking to disable citizens' tech devices for whatever spurious 'justification' they make up, or corporations arbitrarily and absolutely enforcing 'planned obsolescence', I predict that very bad things will be done with this if it ever becomes sufficiently cost-effective to be mass-produced.
... I also really wish someone would show some proof of something close to a security threat in one of these products before the whole world goes crazy about "OMG the Spies!!!"...There is tons of hardware by these companies available all over the world, and so far (to my knowledge) nobody has ever found any evidence of a back door...
Firmware update, anyone? Or, how about any of several other ways to introduce backdoors and other security holes after the fact, perhaps even using purpose-built hardware 'features' that aren't detectable prior to remote activation?
Note that I'm not specifically China-bashing here - I don't trust Cisco and the like either, and if I was a patriotic Chinese citizen I sure AS HELL wouldn't trust them. Bottom line: governments and corporations spy, because information is power. They WILL attempt to gather information covertly, and will exploit any opportunity to do so.
...when I make one up I later forget it and wind up entering a good one in while trying to guess it...
I keep all my passwords in a Keepassx database. A version of Keepass is even available for Android phones, so I can always carry my passwords with me if I want to. Yes, it's still on my phone, but at least it's encrypted, and doesn't involve trusting third-party mega-corps.
The hardware encoded autheticator would be valuable to sites like these, and Netflix, where I give lots of friends my password because I don't care if they use it..
Do you live in the States? If so, you're breaking the law: http://news.yahoo.com/computer-hacking-laws-criminal-002552864.html. Not that this should be a matter of law at all, but increasingly you risk a felony conviction for the online equivalent of momentarily stepping onto your pissy neighbour's front lawn. And yes, this is related to the TFA - would I trust the kinds of companies that favour the CFAA to manage my access to just about everything? No, I wouldn't.
I applaud Microsoft and Intel for their decision to finally lead.
Really? You applaud Intel for issuing the edict that "all next-generation ultrabooks based on its 'Haswell' chip must be touch"? Would you applaud them if they told you that you can only use the next processor you buy from them with a specific OS or a specific motherboard, not because it won't work with the OS or the MoBo, but just because they prefer it that way?
Although I abhor the practice of compulsory biometric tracking, in the case of employees I can at least see some small justification for it, because employees receive paycheques in exchange for adhering to their employers' rules.
But when an institution to which I am paying money for a service wants my fingerprints so they can track me, they can just fuck right off. And the government too, for that matter. Brits ought to be calling loudly for the heads of the decision makers on this one.
Although I believe it often goes too far, I'll admit the need for some kind of immigration monitoring and enforcement. But when that monitoring turns ordinary innocent citizens into the subjects of invasive surveillance, it's time to draw the line. This is 'death by a thousand cuts' stuff, and what's being cut and killed is our very freedom. This shit has to stop.
I don't want Google to give me what it thinks I want, or SHOULD want, or even what "most people" want - I want a pure result set basic on simple pattern matching in the dataset.
This, exactly. For my purposes, Google has become significantly more inconvenient to use, and its results much less useful, over the past 5 years or more. I now have to use an 'allintext' operator for almost every search, and often the directive is simply ignored. And increasingly I have to put double quotes around every search term, because otherwise I get results that contain Google's idea of synonyms, (and not-so-synonyms), of my search terms; the 'synonyms' almost universally represent irrelevant junk.
From the sound of it, with this new initiative Google is about to become entirely useless for 90+ percent of my searches. I really have no objection to them coming up with new filtering and relational algorithms - just let me turn off all of the preemptive, predictive, and utterly wrong crap-filled processing so I can get the info I need without trying to figure out how to game their intrusive filters and pointless predictions.
FWIW, the fact that Google DOESN'T differentiate between "Taj Mahal' the palace and 'Taj Mahal' the artist without deliberate user prompting is a GOOD thing. Such ambiguities are the stuff of diversity, the pathway to new knowledge, and the breeding ground for new associations, ideas, and connections. Google's latest bit of shiny is a path to sterility, and a dumbing-down of the Web.
Google has always been good at mining the Web for raw data, but they have always totally sucked at divining and predicting needs and intentions, and I really wish they'd just stop trying.
When this scenario plays out, I will gladly walk into and out of every store if I can expect a 10% off coupon for doing so.
Do you really think you're saving any money in the long run? When people get such discounts, the base price of everything goes up - after all, ultimately the manufacturer or seller isn't picking up the tab, the consumers are. So it's a temporary advantage, offset both by the higher prices other buyers pay as a result of YOUR discount, and by the higher prices YOU pay when you buy something that you don't get a discount on, but other buyers do. To paraphrase Syndrome in the Incredibles, "When everyone gets a discount, then no one does". Also, via Heinlein, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
The whole thing is a zero-sum game, except for the manufacturers and sellers - they get their fingers on our privacy and entranceways into our lives, and we, ultimately, get nothing in return.
Seriously though, the gap between technology available to consumers and that available to the military only has narrowed drastically over the last decade or two. And I think it's a good thing - it helps to level the playing field between oppressive regimes, (or would-be oppressive regimes), and citizens.
Anything that puts power into the hands of the otherwise disenfranchised is probably, on the whole, a good thing.
...but as for you with the usual "I'm not a fan of MS, but"(sic) why not add "Long time X User, but" or "I've been using X for years, but..."
OK, here goes: "I'm not at all a fan of MS, and have used Linux, (starting with Ubuntu and moving to Debian/Gnome, then Debian/XFCE), for about 5 years now. But what you say makes sense and is reasonable to me - Windows is so pervasive, is used in business on a daily basis by so many people, and is so thoroughly integrated into business workflows, that the sudden loss of Microsoft would cause a major dislocation. Perhaps "disaster" is too strong a word, so how about "great big costly inconvenient pain in the ass"?
rather than calling people who don't promote your agenda with insults *generic unpopular group* with *sudo religious*;*emotional reasoning*,actually put together a creative argument that either supports or refutes the statement.
If I had an agenda, it was simply to point out the growing trend I've seen on Slashdot, (and yes, I'm sometimes guilty of it too), for people to grind axes and promote agendas rather than engage in fruitful discussion - there DO seem to be a lot of shills and astro-turfers here, and no, I'm not just calling them that because they disagree with my views. As for my use of the word "faithful", a lot of the sentiment expressed here has, to me, a religious feel to it. I'm just calling it as I see it.
And as for "a creative argument that either supports or refutes the statement", parent already had that in hand - I simply felt that he was being downmodded unfairly, so I said something.
I'm not at all a fan of MS, but what you say makes sense and is reasonable to me. I don't understand why you've been modded down - if I had points left I'd mod you up.
Maybe the sock-puppets and astro-turfers - and the shills on BOTH sides of the Win/Lin divide - modded you down 'cause you're obviously not among the faithful.
A quick visit to the FIA site revealed no information regarding the original source of the energy that powers these cars. Without that, any discussion of the "greenness" of this endeavour is entirely moot.
I'm getting really tired of this meme that electric cars are automatically green. They *can* produce fewer carbon emissions, but when all of the factors, (greenhouse gases emitted during manufacture and maintenance, as well as charging the batteries), are taken into account, electric cars may be no better than their internal-combustion counterparts.
Because they produce no tailpipe emissions, electric cars are probably a step in the right direction. I just wish they were promoted as such, rather than being touted as the 'OMG-that's-wonderful' answer to climate change and sustainability.
FTA: "Mr. Sussmann suggested that the Police Department could limit its subpoenas to phone calls beginning on the hour, not the day, of the theft, and ending as soon as the victim has transferred the number to a new phone."
Somehow I don't think that will happen. Information is now the world's most valuable currency - with the devolution from a 'real economy' to a financial economy, data has taken the place of gold as a prime currency, and everyone who can is hoarding it. Corporations, governments, and, yes, law enforcement agencies are gathering all they can, saving it for a rainy day, trading it, and buying livelihoods with it.
Whether or not the players conciously realize it, it's now an information economy, and those with reserves of data and the means to gather more of it will defend them just as they would defend their jobs or the cash in their mattresses.
...there is nothing stopping the motherboard makers from soldering their own socket to the board, then soldering the chip to a carrier PCB that plugs into the new socket.
With the speed of next-gen chips, a setup using a carrier PCB and a socket might make it difficult or impossible to adequately control the impedances and/or equalize the propagation delays.
I don't think that my advertising is "obnoxious", since it's information that people are actually searching for and obviously want to receive.
I think Parent was referring to unrequested advertising. You're reaching out to a pre-qualified constituency that seeks out you and your service - not putting ads on Slashdot or Google where people who couldn't care less are forced to view it. It's the difference between "pull advertising" and "push advertising" - the former is necessary and convenient, while the latter is often obnoxious and unwelcome.
Seems to me that if an advertising scheme is so obnoxious that an entire category of software arises to block it, then it's the fault of the medium of advertising being too invasive, too obnoxious. Not the fault of the people who block it.
I agree that it's "not the fault of the people who block it". But, honestly, how many people would voluntarily allow advertising while browsing the Web if they knew they had a choice in the matter, even if said advertising managed to be consistently NOT invasive and obnoxious?
Perhaps the current Internet advertising models are becoming obsolete, just as the old movie industry and recording industry business models have. People can copy music and videos easily, and they do so, regardless of DRM and legal impediments. Increasingly, they can also block Internet advertising, and they probably will. And if the advertisers can't mount a credible response, then they'll end up circling the same drain the various *AA's are so well acquainted with.
How will the bills get paid when the advertisers are gone? I don't know, but I'm more than willing to watch the ad industry get thrown under a bus and see what happens in their absence.
FTA: "And while we certainly hope that many users will find the new ways comfortable and refreshing after a short learning phase, we should not fault people who prefer the old way."
Translation: "We've lost so many users and had so many complaints that we have to do something, but we're not willing to totally capitulate, so we'll toss them something that looks like a compromise and see if they swallow it."
FTA: "After all, these features were a selling point of GNOME 2 for ten years!"
Note the exclamation point. I'd expect that from someone who's been fighting all along to keep some of GNOME 2's legacy intact - I don't expect it, and don't trust it, from someone who was, and possibly still is, ready and willing to throw all of GNOME 2 under a bus.
I'm glad they're finally making some concessions to their users, but I'd be more convinced of their sincerity if they'd been more responsive to criticism earlier on, instead of covering their ears and digging in their heels for so long.
For the time being I'm just fine with XFCE, and regardless of GNOME 3's newfound tweakability, I don't think I'll be looking to move back to the GNOME fold any time soon.
If I were a terrorist I'd just detonate my bag full of explosives/ball bearings in the line for the scanner.
The unspoken intention of the airport security is that it's better to have a few hundred people killed at the security checkpoint than have someone get control of an airplane and fly it into a building.
If terrorists were as motivated, competent, and plentiful as all the security theatre seems to indicate, wouldn't they do precisely that, i.e. set bombs off at the check-in points of a half-dozen major airports? Not as much splash as flying a plane into a building, but it would still make air transport grind to a halt and cause huge economic and psychic damage.
The terrorists won on 9/11. The proof of that is seen in the pervasiveness, (and growing acceptance), of surveillance, loss of personal privacy, curtailment of personal freedoms, and an underlying siege mentality. They really don't need to fly any more planes into any more buildings.
The biggest joke of all is the underlying assumption that terrorists are helpless so long as they can't get past airport security.
To me, the "biggest joke" is that we believe we're powerless to address this problem at its source. I don't think I'm going all 'kumbaya' when I say that if nations set out with a will to stop meddling in each other's affairs for political and financial gain, a LOT of the terrorist threats would simply disappear. We wouldn't be totally safe - there'll always be crazies with an axe to grind - but we could go back to the days when travel security was a minor inconvenience and not a major hassle / personal violation.
As for the 'terrorist threats' since 9/11, how many have there been, apart from those made up by the FBI and other agencies in order to fatten their funding and broaden their power base? Does anyone here have access to credible stats on the real increase in terrorist activity in the developed world over the past decade?
for posts like this that give me tips on how to feel better about myself and my life. And for *anything* that reminds me of all I have to be grateful for, because I find it far too easy to forget.
The article at the second link in TFA talks about the "upside" of "global warming" for Canada, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries - longer growing season, opening up the Northwest Passage, etc.
What these fucktards are failing to take into account is the colossal change in weather patterns that we'll almost certainly experience. No, I don't want warmer winters and cheaper produce here in Canada if the price is vastly increased destruction of property and life as a result of monster-sized hail storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, and increased insect populations. The latter of these, BTW, will likely offset any agricultural gains that might result from a longer growing season - all those bugs will just love eating food crops and trees. Never mind the horrendous effects that climate change is already having in warmer climates...
The so called "global warming experts" quoted would probably claim suntans as an upside to nuclear bombs. Do we no longer teach science and critical thinking in our schools?
I get seriously pissed off with LibreOffice, (and with Linux for that matter).
So you're using these products not because they make you more productive but because of philosophical beliefs? Fine and dandy if you have the luxury of the time/expense to be able to do that. It doesn't work that way in business.
Sounds to me as though you're advocating "short term gain for long term pain".
The only way for the Freiburgs of the world to throw off the yoke of MS oppression...
Plays well to the masses here on/., of course, but this kind of statement does come across as a little extreme to people who don't automatically see big corporations as evil and instead work on dollars and efficiency.
Your criticism rests on a faulty assumption. The possibility that what I said "does come across as a little extreme to people who don't automatically see big corporations as evil" has nothing whatsoever to do with evaluating its validity. As for seeing "big corporations as evil", I believe that power corrupts, that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that big corporations have far too much power and far too little accountability. I also believe that people who argue "the market will eventually deal with corporate abuses" either are naive, or are shills. Note that these are *beliefs*, not *statements of fact*.
And no level of government has any business conducting OUR affairs using propietary data formats that can be easily held hostage.
Oh come on. Do you really think Microsoft is going to blackmail world governments, or leave them without any recourse?
I agree, that's not likely to happen in this specific case. But if you were to ask me "Do you really think that some large corporations can and will use proprietary knowledge and standards to screw over governments and their citizens in the name of power and profit?", my answer would be "You betcha!"
Not to mention the fact that there are entire cottage industries that have grown up around the concept of third party interaction with these data formats.
Just what we need - more "industries" whose only claim to usefulness is decoding and circumventing opaque proprietary formats, so the users get to pay twice.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to act seriously. Don't throw around stupid accusations.
In reviewing my initial comment I see that I may have "thrown around" suspicions and opinions, but I don't see that I uttered any "accusations".
And don't tell governments that they positively must use a product, and in the very next breath rail about how terrible it is. That weakens your argument quite a lot.
Then allow me to repharase: "Governments, you must not use software that holds data in proprietary, non-open formats."
Slashdot Mirror
...'Escape from New York'. Then 'Escape from LA'. Is Miami next?
Where is Snake Plissken when we need him?
If this technology is realized and becomes cheap, any bets on whether or not it becomes the standard for consumer electronics?
After all, it's the ultimate kill switch. Whether it's government agencies looking to disable citizens' tech devices for whatever spurious 'justification' they make up, or corporations arbitrarily and absolutely enforcing 'planned obsolescence', I predict that very bad things will be done with this if it ever becomes sufficiently cost-effective to be mass-produced.
What the hell any of this has to do with ultrabooks, I can't imagine
Mod parent up.
Too bad it's not possible to mod the summary down - it reads more like an advert than a news piece.
... I also really wish someone would show some proof of something close to a security threat in one of these products before the whole world goes crazy about "OMG the Spies!!!" ...There is tons of hardware by these companies available all over the world, and so far (to my knowledge) nobody has ever found any evidence of a back door...
Firmware update, anyone? Or, how about any of several other ways to introduce backdoors and other security holes after the fact, perhaps even using purpose-built hardware 'features' that aren't detectable prior to remote activation?
Note that I'm not specifically China-bashing here - I don't trust Cisco and the like either, and if I was a patriotic Chinese citizen I sure AS HELL wouldn't trust them. Bottom line: governments and corporations spy, because information is power. They WILL attempt to gather information covertly, and will exploit any opportunity to do so.
India is simply being prudent.
...when I make one up I later forget it and wind up entering a good one in while trying to guess it...
I keep all my passwords in a Keepassx database. A version of Keepass is even available for Android phones, so I can always carry my passwords with me if I want to. Yes, it's still on my phone, but at least it's encrypted, and doesn't involve trusting third-party mega-corps.
The hardware encoded autheticator would be valuable to sites like these, and Netflix, where I give lots of friends my password because I don't care if they use it..
Do you live in the States? If so, you're breaking the law: http://news.yahoo.com/computer-hacking-laws-criminal-002552864.html. Not that this should be a matter of law at all, but increasingly you risk a felony conviction for the online equivalent of momentarily stepping onto your pissy neighbour's front lawn. And yes, this is related to the TFA - would I trust the kinds of companies that favour the CFAA to manage my access to just about everything? No, I wouldn't.
I applaud Microsoft and Intel for their decision to finally lead.
Really? You applaud Intel for issuing the edict that "all next-generation ultrabooks based on its 'Haswell' chip must be touch"? Would you applaud them if they told you that you can only use the next processor you buy from them with a specific OS or a specific motherboard, not because it won't work with the OS or the MoBo, but just because they prefer it that way?
Coercion != Leadership
Although I abhor the practice of compulsory biometric tracking, in the case of employees I can at least see some small justification for it, because employees receive paycheques in exchange for adhering to their employers' rules.
But when an institution to which I am paying money for a service wants my fingerprints so they can track me, they can just fuck right off. And the government too, for that matter. Brits ought to be calling loudly for the heads of the decision makers on this one.
Although I believe it often goes too far, I'll admit the need for some kind of immigration monitoring and enforcement. But when that monitoring turns ordinary innocent citizens into the subjects of invasive surveillance, it's time to draw the line. This is 'death by a thousand cuts' stuff, and what's being cut and killed is our very freedom. This shit has to stop.
I don't want Google to give me what it thinks I want, or SHOULD want, or even what "most people" want - I want a pure result set basic on simple pattern matching in the dataset.
This, exactly. For my purposes, Google has become significantly more inconvenient to use, and its results much less useful, over the past 5 years or more. I now have to use an 'allintext' operator for almost every search, and often the directive is simply ignored. And increasingly I have to put double quotes around every search term, because otherwise I get results that contain Google's idea of synonyms, (and not-so-synonyms), of my search terms; the 'synonyms' almost universally represent irrelevant junk.
From the sound of it, with this new initiative Google is about to become entirely useless for 90+ percent of my searches. I really have no objection to them coming up with new filtering and relational algorithms - just let me turn off all of the preemptive, predictive, and utterly wrong crap-filled processing so I can get the info I need without trying to figure out how to game their intrusive filters and pointless predictions.
FWIW, the fact that Google DOESN'T differentiate between "Taj Mahal' the palace and 'Taj Mahal' the artist without deliberate user prompting is a GOOD thing. Such ambiguities are the stuff of diversity, the pathway to new knowledge, and the breeding ground for new associations, ideas, and connections. Google's latest bit of shiny is a path to sterility, and a dumbing-down of the Web.
Google has always been good at mining the Web for raw data, but they have always totally sucked at divining and predicting needs and intentions, and I really wish they'd just stop trying.
When this scenario plays out, I will gladly walk into and out of every store if I can expect a 10% off coupon for doing so.
Do you really think you're saving any money in the long run? When people get such discounts, the base price of everything goes up - after all, ultimately the manufacturer or seller isn't picking up the tab, the consumers are. So it's a temporary advantage, offset both by the higher prices other buyers pay as a result of YOUR discount, and by the higher prices YOU pay when you buy something that you don't get a discount on, but other buyers do. To paraphrase Syndrome in the Incredibles, "When everyone gets a discount, then no one does". Also, via Heinlein, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
The whole thing is a zero-sum game, except for the manufacturers and sellers - they get their fingers on our privacy and entranceways into our lives, and we, ultimately, get nothing in return.
are going to be on the ITAR list?
Seriously though, the gap between technology available to consumers and that available to the military only has narrowed drastically over the last decade or two. And I think it's a good thing - it helps to level the playing field between oppressive regimes, (or would-be oppressive regimes), and citizens.
Anything that puts power into the hands of the otherwise disenfranchised is probably, on the whole, a good thing.
OK, here goes: "I'm not at all a fan of MS, and have used Linux, (starting with Ubuntu and moving to Debian/Gnome, then Debian/XFCE), for about 5 years now. But what you say makes sense and is reasonable to me - Windows is so pervasive, is used in business on a daily basis by so many people, and is so thoroughly integrated into business workflows, that the sudden loss of Microsoft would cause a major dislocation. Perhaps "disaster" is too strong a word, so how about "great big costly inconvenient pain in the ass"?
rather than calling people who don't promote your agenda with insults *generic unpopular group* with *sudo religious*;*emotional reasoning*,actually put together a creative argument that either supports or refutes the statement.
If I had an agenda, it was simply to point out the growing trend I've seen on Slashdot, (and yes, I'm sometimes guilty of it too), for people to grind axes and promote agendas rather than engage in fruitful discussion - there DO seem to be a lot of shills and astro-turfers here, and no, I'm not just calling them that because they disagree with my views. As for my use of the word "faithful", a lot of the sentiment expressed here has, to me, a religious feel to it. I'm just calling it as I see it.
And as for "a creative argument that either supports or refutes the statement", parent already had that in hand - I simply felt that he was being downmodded unfairly, so I said something.
I'm not at all a fan of MS, but what you say makes sense and is reasonable to me. I don't understand why you've been modded down - if I had points left I'd mod you up.
Maybe the sock-puppets and astro-turfers - and the shills on BOTH sides of the Win/Lin divide - modded you down 'cause you're obviously not among the faithful.
A quick visit to the FIA site revealed no information regarding the original source of the energy that powers these cars. Without that, any discussion of the "greenness" of this endeavour is entirely moot.
I'm getting really tired of this meme that electric cars are automatically green. They *can* produce fewer carbon emissions, but when all of the factors, (greenhouse gases emitted during manufacture and maintenance, as well as charging the batteries), are taken into account, electric cars may be no better than their internal-combustion counterparts.
Because they produce no tailpipe emissions, electric cars are probably a step in the right direction. I just wish they were promoted as such, rather than being touted as the 'OMG-that's-wonderful' answer to climate change and sustainability.
FTA: "Mr. Sussmann suggested that the Police Department could limit its subpoenas to phone calls beginning on the hour, not the day, of the theft, and ending as soon as the victim has transferred the number to a new phone."
Somehow I don't think that will happen. Information is now the world's most valuable currency - with the devolution from a 'real economy' to a financial economy, data has taken the place of gold as a prime currency, and everyone who can is hoarding it. Corporations, governments, and, yes, law enforcement agencies are gathering all they can, saving it for a rainy day, trading it, and buying livelihoods with it.
Whether or not the players conciously realize it, it's now an information economy, and those with reserves of data and the means to gather more of it will defend them just as they would defend their jobs or the cash in their mattresses.
...there is nothing stopping the motherboard makers from soldering their own socket to the board, then soldering the chip to a carrier PCB that plugs into the new socket.
With the speed of next-gen chips, a setup using a carrier PCB and a socket might make it difficult or impossible to adequately control the impedances and/or equalize the propagation delays.
we imported a HIPPApotamus...!
That's HIPAApotamus - as in Health Information Portability and Accountability Act
By the way, why you were modded as "Interesting" instead of "Funny" is beyond me.
I don't think that my advertising is "obnoxious", since it's information that people are actually searching for and obviously want to receive.
I think Parent was referring to unrequested advertising. You're reaching out to a pre-qualified constituency that seeks out you and your service - not putting ads on Slashdot or Google where people who couldn't care less are forced to view it. It's the difference between "pull advertising" and "push advertising" - the former is necessary and convenient, while the latter is often obnoxious and unwelcome.
Seems to me that if an advertising scheme is so obnoxious that an entire category of software arises to block it, then it's the fault of the medium of advertising being too invasive, too obnoxious. Not the fault of the people who block it.
I agree that it's "not the fault of the people who block it". But, honestly, how many people would voluntarily allow advertising while browsing the Web if they knew they had a choice in the matter, even if said advertising managed to be consistently NOT invasive and obnoxious?
Perhaps the current Internet advertising models are becoming obsolete, just as the old movie industry and recording industry business models have. People can copy music and videos easily, and they do so, regardless of DRM and legal impediments. Increasingly, they can also block Internet advertising, and they probably will. And if the advertisers can't mount a credible response, then they'll end up circling the same drain the various *AA's are so well acquainted with.
How will the bills get paid when the advertisers are gone? I don't know, but I'm more than willing to watch the ad industry get thrown under a bus and see what happens in their absence.
FTA: "And while we certainly hope that many users will find the new ways comfortable and refreshing after a short learning phase, we should not fault people who prefer the old way."
Translation: "We've lost so many users and had so many complaints that we have to do something, but we're not willing to totally capitulate, so we'll toss them something that looks like a compromise and see if they swallow it."
FTA: "After all, these features were a selling point of GNOME 2 for ten years!"
Note the exclamation point. I'd expect that from someone who's been fighting all along to keep some of GNOME 2's legacy intact - I don't expect it, and don't trust it, from someone who was, and possibly still is, ready and willing to throw all of GNOME 2 under a bus.
I'm glad they're finally making some concessions to their users, but I'd be more convinced of their sincerity if they'd been more responsive to criticism earlier on, instead of covering their ears and digging in their heels for so long.
For the time being I'm just fine with XFCE, and regardless of GNOME 3's newfound tweakability, I don't think I'll be looking to move back to the GNOME fold any time soon.
If I were a terrorist I'd just detonate my bag full of explosives/ball bearings in the line for the scanner.
The unspoken intention of the airport security is that it's better to have a few hundred people killed at the security checkpoint than have someone get control of an airplane and fly it into a building.
If terrorists were as motivated, competent, and plentiful as all the security theatre seems to indicate, wouldn't they do precisely that, i.e. set bombs off at the check-in points of a half-dozen major airports? Not as much splash as flying a plane into a building, but it would still make air transport grind to a halt and cause huge economic and psychic damage.
The terrorists won on 9/11. The proof of that is seen in the pervasiveness, (and growing acceptance), of surveillance, loss of personal privacy, curtailment of personal freedoms, and an underlying siege mentality. They really don't need to fly any more planes into any more buildings.
The biggest joke of all is the underlying assumption that terrorists are helpless so long as they can't get past airport security.
To me, the "biggest joke" is that we believe we're powerless to address this problem at its source. I don't think I'm going all 'kumbaya' when I say that if nations set out with a will to stop meddling in each other's affairs for political and financial gain, a LOT of the terrorist threats would simply disappear. We wouldn't be totally safe - there'll always be crazies with an axe to grind - but we could go back to the days when travel security was a minor inconvenience and not a major hassle / personal violation.
As for the 'terrorist threats' since 9/11, how many have there been, apart from those made up by the FBI and other agencies in order to fatten their funding and broaden their power base? Does anyone here have access to credible stats on the real increase in terrorist activity in the developed world over the past decade?
for posts like this that give me tips on how to feel better about myself and my life. And for *anything* that reminds me of all I have to be grateful for, because I find it far too easy to forget.
The article at the second link in TFA talks about the "upside" of "global warming" for Canada, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries - longer growing season, opening up the Northwest Passage, etc.
What these fucktards are failing to take into account is the colossal change in weather patterns that we'll almost certainly experience. No, I don't want warmer winters and cheaper produce here in Canada if the price is vastly increased destruction of property and life as a result of monster-sized hail storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, and increased insect populations. The latter of these, BTW, will likely offset any agricultural gains that might result from a longer growing season - all those bugs will just love eating food crops and trees. Never mind the horrendous effects that climate change is already having in warmer climates...
The so called "global warming experts" quoted would probably claim suntans as an upside to nuclear bombs. Do we no longer teach science and critical thinking in our schools?
I get seriously pissed off with LibreOffice, (and with Linux for that matter).
So you're using these products not because they make you more productive but because of philosophical beliefs? Fine and dandy if you have the luxury of the time/expense to be able to do that. It doesn't work that way in business.
Sounds to me as though you're advocating "short term gain for long term pain".
The only way for the Freiburgs of the world to throw off the yoke of MS oppression...
Plays well to the masses here on /., of course, but this kind of statement does come across as a little extreme to people who don't automatically see big corporations as evil and instead work on dollars and efficiency.
Your criticism rests on a faulty assumption. The possibility that what I said "does come across as a little extreme to people who don't automatically see big corporations as evil" has nothing whatsoever to do with evaluating its validity. As for seeing "big corporations as evil", I believe that power corrupts, that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that big corporations have far too much power and far too little accountability. I also believe that people who argue "the market will eventually deal with corporate abuses" either are naive, or are shills. Note that these are *beliefs*, not *statements of fact*.
And no level of government has any business conducting OUR affairs using propietary data formats that can be easily held hostage.
Oh come on. Do you really think Microsoft is going to blackmail world governments, or leave them without any recourse?
I agree, that's not likely to happen in this specific case. But if you were to ask me "Do you really think that some large corporations can and will use proprietary knowledge and standards to screw over governments and their citizens in the name of power and profit?", my answer would be "You betcha!"
Not to mention the fact that there are entire cottage industries that have grown up around the concept of third party interaction with these data formats.
Just what we need - more "industries" whose only claim to usefulness is decoding and circumventing opaque proprietary formats, so the users get to pay twice.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need to act seriously. Don't throw around stupid accusations.
In reviewing my initial comment I see that I may have "thrown around" suspicions and opinions, but I don't see that I uttered any "accusations".
And don't tell governments that they positively must use a product, and in the very next breath rail about how terrible it is. That weakens your argument quite a lot.
Then allow me to repharase: "Governments, you must not use software that holds data in proprietary, non-open formats."
Hostess isn't/wasn't a golden goose. It was a cancer ridden death swan riddled with bird herpes.
Thanks for that - LMFAO! Made my day that one did!