Just as freedom of speech protects the content on the speech but not the means of delivery (eg. throwing a brick with a message into a window is not protected speech), censorship is removing speech because of the content and not because of the means of delivery. For example:
-slashdot.org closing itself down would not be censorship, since the removal is done because hosting is getting too expensive, something which is inherent in the act of posting messages on the internet. -You cleaning your car is not censorship - your intent is to remove the paint, not the message (you'd still do it if someone wrote something neutral, eg. the word "banana", on your car). This is more murky than the previous example, since having "motherf*cker" on your car is more unpleasant than "banana" but it's leaning more on the "not censorship" side. -Apple removing all posts about a specific topic is censorship - it's about the content.
This is my definition, not the Webster dictionary one, so feel free to disagree.
After 3 years playing World of Warcraft I could recite the names of every zone and almost every significant town and city. Just imagine if the game was set in the real world and I was learning real geography. So yes, games can be educational without being "educational".
Google has been getting pro-Flash lately, with their recent blog post and the integration of Flash into Chrome. It looks like a strategy against iPhones and iPads more than anything else.
The Chrome extensions system has the concept of permissions, where an extension must list the special permissions it needs in its manifest.json file. If the extension requires special permissions, the user is warned. If the extension tries to do something requiring permissions without asking for them, it fails. One comment in TFA says that the proof of concept extension given does require permissions. If that's true, then this is a nonstory, since it would be just as hard to get in by convincing the user to download an extension as it is to get in by convincing the user to download a program.
1. An icon indicating that users must cease forward movement for a designated period of time comprising a large octagonal metal plate with white letters spelling the word "STOP" on a red background with a thin white border.
1. A passive visual information transmission mechanism comprising of an octagonal plate consisting of metallic elements with an instruction to cease forward movement inscribed in a visual lexical information transmission medium, with a background consisting of a thin coating of material that reflects electromagnetic radiation primarily of wavelengths between 630 and 740 nanometers with a thin border encircling the outside that reflects radiation in the entire visible portion of the spectrum.
It depends what you mean by worse. I buy a (spinny) hard drive, I, statistically, have 0.99 drives after whatever amount of time. My SSD using friend only has 0.90 drives. Thus, he's getting 91% of the value that I am.
It's a 10x variance in failure, but I'm looking at the variance in success. I'd argue that my metric is the more useful one, given that Moore's law necessitates upgrades every 5-10 years anyway.
I can't see how you can say it is ok for ANY government in the world to offer their population less freedom. Who are we to say how they should live? We are the free and brave. Who is anyone to say that liberty is ok for us but not for the rest of the world? Why should the Chinese have less freedom of information, or an Arabian less freedom of religion, or a Sudanese less freedom of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
I never said that it's ok. The US's copyright expansionism and China's internet censorship are both bad, but what the US is doing is worse because it's also trying to force the policies on other sovereign nations.
Mod parent up. He's making rather good posts if you account for the fact that the subject line only allows for 50 characters, a mere 36% of that allowed by Twitter - his post would even be above average on Twitter despite the 64% character penalty he's incurring.
No, I'm a 3 year veteran of Slashdot, and a 2 year veteran of the World of Warcraft forums. In the WoW forums, where every post is linked to a character, people judge others' posts by the quality of their gear rather than just the quality of the posts. On Slashdot, this doesn't happen.
I know that the popular opinion of anonymity is that it just invites trolling, but I've had the opposite experience.
So you like other people not being anonymous, but you want yourself to still be anonymous? That kind of reminds me of this.
I personally think internet anonymity is a good thing. It forces people to attack each other's arguments rather than resorting to ad hominems, and ensures an even playing field, since newbies' arguments are heard on the same level as those of our celebrities (at least in theory).
The US is always right. That's why the US can have 2400 active warheads while Iran having even one is geopolitical heresy, why the US pushing copyright on the rest of the world is acceptable while China pushing internet censorship on just their own citizens is not, and why the US can invade Afghanistan and Iraq while Russia can't invade Georgia.
At least that's what the US media says. I imagine Pravda et al. are equally biased in their own directions.
Carrying capacity today. Given current technologies, levels of consumption, and socioeconomic organization, has ingenuity made today's population sustainable? The answer to this question is clearly no, by a simple standard. The current population of 5.5 billion is being maintained only through the exhaustion and dispersion of a one-time inheritance of natural capital (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990), including topsoil, groundwater, and biodiversity.
Repealing the second law of thermodynamics doesn't repeal conservation of energy. If we can, I'd say why not - with the law intact you can't live forever.
And the same thing for all the minerals that have already been mined from the earth
Without mining minerals from the earth, we'd be stuck in the Stone Age. It's a tradeoff - our generation gets less minerals to work with, but in exchange we get all our technology. With that in mind, it's reasonable to say that things created by people are the property of their creators, since you have the same (arguably better with all of your aforementioned technology) chance at creating stuff that they did. Since everything on Earth that lasts long enough to be multi-generational and is scarce enough to bother having a property system around is either land, minerals or products, it looks like only land ownership is unfair (a point that can be argued rather convincingly, IMO).
Slashdot Mirror
I'd put it in the "bad, but should not be illegal" category.
Just as freedom of speech protects the content on the speech but not the means of delivery (eg. throwing a brick with a message into a window is not protected speech), censorship is removing speech because of the content and not because of the means of delivery. For example:
-slashdot.org closing itself down would not be censorship, since the removal is done because hosting is getting too expensive, something which is inherent in the act of posting messages on the internet.
-You cleaning your car is not censorship - your intent is to remove the paint, not the message (you'd still do it if someone wrote something neutral, eg. the word "banana", on your car). This is more murky than the previous example, since having "motherf*cker" on your car is more unpleasant than "banana" but it's leaning more on the "not censorship" side.
-Apple removing all posts about a specific topic is censorship - it's about the content.
This is my definition, not the Webster dictionary one, so feel free to disagree.
After 3 years playing World of Warcraft I could recite the names of every zone and almost every significant town and city. Just imagine if the game was set in the real world and I was learning real geography. So yes, games can be educational without being "educational".
>>> SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal
See, it's much harder to implement than it looks.
Unfortunately, because anyone can print money
Anyone can mine gold. It's supposed to eventually get hard enough to be impractical for most people and still a thin profit margin for everyone else.
Google has been getting pro-Flash lately, with their recent blog post and the integration of Flash into Chrome. It looks like a strategy against iPhones and iPads more than anything else.
And this. An entire movie made with the Neverwinter Nights game engine (and released under a CC license). Movie making has never been easier.
I really should poke your face.
<Groans suddenly redirect with 3 times the force>
The Chrome extensions system has the concept of permissions, where an extension must list the special permissions it needs in its manifest.json file. If the extension requires special permissions, the user is warned. If the extension tries to do something requiring permissions without asking for them, it fails. One comment in TFA says that the proof of concept extension given does require permissions. If that's true, then this is a nonstory, since it would be just as hard to get in by convincing the user to download an extension as it is to get in by convincing the user to download a program.
1. An icon indicating that users must cease forward movement for a designated period of time comprising a large octagonal metal plate with white letters spelling the word "STOP" on a red background with a thin white border.
1. A passive visual information transmission mechanism comprising of an octagonal plate consisting of metallic elements with an instruction to cease forward movement inscribed in a visual lexical information transmission medium, with a background consisting of a thin coating of material that reflects electromagnetic radiation primarily of wavelengths between 630 and 740 nanometers with a thin border encircling the outside that reflects radiation in the entire visible portion of the spectrum.
1.5 million orders is "no real success"? I find it rather impressive.
"Your honor, I only killed two people! That can't be so bad - look what Hitler did!"
Already taken by a different solar flying craft
No, but he's descended from a Roman consul. That still automatically makes you relevant, doesn't it?
It depends what you mean by worse. I buy a (spinny) hard drive, I, statistically, have 0.99 drives after whatever amount of time. My SSD using friend only has 0.90 drives. Thus, he's getting 91% of the value that I am.
It's a 10x variance in failure, but I'm looking at the variance in success. I'd argue that my metric is the more useful one, given that Moore's law necessitates upgrades every 5-10 years anyway.
90% of SSDs survive, 99% of hard drives survive. 90%/99% = 90.909% = 9.091% worse.
I can't see how you can say it is ok for ANY government in the world to offer their population less freedom. Who are we to say how they should live? We are the free and brave. Who is anyone to say that liberty is ok for us but not for the rest of the world? Why should the Chinese have less freedom of information, or an Arabian less freedom of religion, or a Sudanese less freedom of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
I never said that it's ok. The US's copyright expansionism and China's internet censorship are both bad, but what the US is doing is worse because it's also trying to force the policies on other sovereign nations.
Mod parent up. He's making rather good posts if you account for the fact that the subject line only allows for 50 characters, a mere 36% of that allowed by Twitter - his post would even be above average on Twitter despite the 64% character penalty he's incurring.
We will not see Juan Rodriguez post a long, and insightful analysis of warlock DPS only to have about 50 replies using the term "dirty mexian"?
Thanks for proving my point regarding anonymity and ad hominems.
No, I'm a 3 year veteran of Slashdot, and a 2 year veteran of the World of Warcraft forums. In the WoW forums, where every post is linked to a character, people judge others' posts by the quality of their gear rather than just the quality of the posts. On Slashdot, this doesn't happen.
I know that the popular opinion of anonymity is that it just invites trolling, but I've had the opposite experience.
So you like other people not being anonymous, but you want yourself to still be anonymous? That kind of reminds me of this.
I personally think internet anonymity is a good thing. It forces people to attack each other's arguments rather than resorting to ad hominems, and ensures an even playing field, since newbies' arguments are heard on the same level as those of our celebrities (at least in theory).
The US is always right. That's why the US can have 2400 active warheads while Iran having even one is geopolitical heresy, why the US pushing copyright on the rest of the world is acceptable while China pushing internet censorship on just their own citizens is not, and why the US can invade Afghanistan and Iraq while Russia can't invade Georgia.
At least that's what the US media says. I imagine Pravda et al. are equally biased in their own directions.
http://dieoff.org/page112.htm
Specifically (emphasis mine):
Carrying capacity today. Given current technologies, levels of consumption, and socioeconomic organization, has ingenuity made today's population sustainable? The answer to this question is clearly no, by a simple standard. The current population of 5.5 billion is being maintained only through the exhaustion and dispersion of a one-time inheritance of natural capital (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990), including topsoil, groundwater, and biodiversity.
Repealing the second law of thermodynamics doesn't repeal conservation of energy. If we can, I'd say why not - with the law intact you can't live forever.
And the same thing for all the minerals that have already been mined from the earth
Without mining minerals from the earth, we'd be stuck in the Stone Age. It's a tradeoff - our generation gets less minerals to work with, but in exchange we get all our technology. With that in mind, it's reasonable to say that things created by people are the property of their creators, since you have the same (arguably better with all of your aforementioned technology) chance at creating stuff that they did. Since everything on Earth that lasts long enough to be multi-generational and is scarce enough to bother having a property system around is either land, minerals or products, it looks like only land ownership is unfair (a point that can be argued rather convincingly, IMO).