>As far as apps being moved to a paid model, look at something as stupid as Solitaire. Free in Windows 7, pay to remove ads in Windows 10
I knew someone was going to mention Solitare! So if you offer a free app in your OS, you are obligated till the end of time to enhance, update and include it free in all future versions of the OS? Especially something as irrelevant as a card game?
>Any time I have to use Windows, I feel vaguely unclean.
Be careful you don't cut yourself on that edge there. One of the reasons Linux is having trouble taking off as a mainstream desktop is because of the mental image projected by comments like yours above. None of what you've 'prophesied' has come to pass in Win10 updates, so unless/until it does you sound like a crank, and by association that paints general Linux users in the same hue with current Windows users who encounter comments like that.
How about we stick to legitimate, factual criticisms of Windows, as there are tons of those?
> Those who think this is a good idea is the same type of people who want to treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
Disagree. Those who think this is a good idea are the type of people who are threatened by change and want things to stay as they are, or even go back to the "good old days", whatever the hell those were, and believe tools like this are a path to accomplishing that stability and regression.
Give it time. He's going to prison, maybe he bumps into someone there who had a family member die because they couldn't afford treatment and that person will see it as a chance to even the score.
It's worthy of a news story because the environment that this facial recognition did its job in and "worked as advertised" is a massively challenging problem for this type of system. It's also worthy of a news story because it is a harbinger of more to come like this, and not just in China. As this tech gets better, agencies will be able to track everyone's movements in public 24/7 and store all of it for unknown purposes. Today it's criminals, tomorrow it's people on no fly lists (rightly or wrongly) getting "randomly" stopped, the day after it's persons of interest, and so it goes. Eventually everyone will become used to having an invisible boot on their neck.
> (nothing like advertising to your CS:GO friends that you've played Hentai Strip Poker 3 for 120 hours).
Exactly. In fact I expect that being able to (finally) go invisible on Steam will undoubtedly lead to more sales of games to people who for various social reasons didn't want to have the ownership and playing of those games broadcast to their friends. Reminds me of a story that was posted to another forum of odd game store encounters where one guy recounted working the till when a bunch of gang bangers came into the store and were all hyped up and boisterous for the new NBA release and they each bought a copy and left, then 20 minutes later one of the crew came back alone, much more subdued, to pick up the copy of Ni No Kuni he'd preordered.
Many parts of the US it's a freakin' monopoly. THAT is one of the reasons Net Neutrality was so important. Now that the leash is off, everyone better get the lube and bend over.
> I would prefer my ISP to prioritize gaming traffic ahead of other traffic: Youtube / Netflix / Facebook / bittorrent don't have the same latency requirements as online games. In fact, it makes sense to me that gamers should prefer a net neutrality repeal because it would now allow prioritization of that.
You'd think, but then what happens when another use comes along that is arguably more time sensitive and the fast lane for games gets the boot in favor of the other thing?
Or - FAR more likely - the ISPs say "hey, want good game performance? All you need to do is buy our GameNitro add on for your service, only $14.99 per month!" and then they target any game traffic from people who aren't buying the addon and drop its service level through the floor. No problem, you'll just switch to another ISP right? Well...
Seriously, Microsoft has done shady legal shit in the past (and present) but none of it was of the patent troll pattern of shaking people down on obvious patents unlike the action we've seen from NPEs against small developers. If you have an example that I've missed of MS doing that, post it. If not, STFU.
Madden, FIFA, NHL, NBA, MLB games are an outlier as for interest with their fans they rely on staying within shouting distance of the real teams' rosters so a game that's even 2 years out of date will not be a "realistic" experience. Look at the NHL right now for example, who's on fire and a widely liked underdog? The Las Vegas Golden Knights. Who's NOT in NHL16? The Las Vegas Golden Knights....
Sure, but a lot of the games I buy are mainly single player - or single player playable anyway - the Borderlands series is an odd mix of both and I've played through it both as a single player and with friends in co-op.
And if you're a publisher that's shutting down matchmaking servers for a game released only a couple of years ago, you're probably not going to be getting much repeat business from customers when your new game comes out. How long you support your product is a factor in many peoples' buying decisions. So the smart companies will spend a few bucks a month keeping the lights on for older games. The dumb companies won't be around too long anyway.
Like hell. I'm "a gamer". It's perfect for me. I'm also the type of gamer who doesn't go run off and buy the new shiny for $80 when I can get the bugfixed GOTY edition with all the extra content a year later for $20 on a Steam sale. There are many different types of "gamers" and what's on Linux would satisfy a surprising percentage of them if they knew it was there.
> There are plenty of Linux titles on Steam. Maybe not many AAA ones, but a lot of indies, that is for sure.
Actually at this point there's lots of what I'd class as AA and AAA titles that are on Linux. It sometimes takes a bit to get them ported but a surprising percentage of my Steam library works under Linux. Borderlands series, Bioshock series, Metro series, XCOM and XCOM2, Rocket League (maybe not AAA, but it's the best value I've ever gotten for $20 - 400+ hours in so far...), etc.
"But break down the losses, and the situation is a bit more nuanced. Delivering packages, it turns out, is a growth business, and it actually makes the Postal Service money: The revenue from package increased $2.1 billion, and was up 11.8 percent for fiscal year 2017. "
Furthermore, the financial crisis the USPS is currently in is entirely manufactured by the Republican congress of 2006: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-usps-trump-20180102-story.html
"What the Postal Service's critics (including Trump) almost never mention is that the real drag on its earnings is another congressional directive. I wrote in 2012 that the USPS' fiscal crisis was "as artificial as they come" — it was the product of a 2006 congressional mandate that the service must prepay over the next 10 years all its future expected retiree healthcare benefits."
"Those payments totaled $38 billion through 2011, with further installments of between $5.6 billion and $11.1 billion a year due through 2016. At least $34 billion is still owed, according to the annual report."
***"Conservatives who maintain that the USPS should be operated profitably, like a private business, fail to explain why the service should be burdened with a prepayment mandate that its competitors don't face." ***
The Republicans have had the knives out for the USPS for decades and this is straight up right wing ops 101 as seen worldwide. Take public service, cut funding, burden it financially until it can't function, loudly scream about how public services just don't work, and then privatize it and sell the scraps off to your donors for pennies on the dollar. Move on to the next one.
> and then the passenger (user) brings a bomb (WebRTC) on the plane
Your analogy doesn't work because your passenger knows they're bringing a bomb onto the plane. I bet you $100 that 99 out of 100 VPN customers have never heard of WebRTC, let alone know what it does and certainly don't know it breaks the VPN's privacy.
Not everyone can be expected to be an expert in security. That's like saying if you get on a plane that hasn't had its maintenance done and it crashes, it was your fault for getting on the plane without knowing what its maintenance status was.
> Worse they pick up mood, so it can tell if you are pissed off.
Wow, won't be long until they're logging your Crime Coefficient Index and pulling you off the street for pre-crime indicators. Maybe if your CCI gets high enough the cops will be authorized to terminate you on the spot...
> If you'll believe some anonymous US intelligence source that, contrary to the findings of many courts in copyright infringement lawsuits, an IP address uniquely identifies a person, I have a bridge to sell you. And a prime island in New York City, only occupied by one rather large green lady.
Cool, will you throw in Coney Island too? I've always wanted an amusement park.
Nobody with a brain would correlate IP = person. However let's assume this is US intelligence source is correct that Guccifer had activity tied to him linked to an IP belonging to the GRU in Moscow. Even if he's some pasty white kid in Colorado living in a ski shack, it's pretty damn odd that would happen. False flag op by Guccifer? "Sure, let's try tying my identity to the one thing that would discredit all this work I've done with Roger Stone and get the intelligence community's attention, that seems like an excellent plan"
Never attribute to malice/cleverness that which can be adequately explained by mistake or stupidity.
And even super smart people accidentally fucking up that one time out of 10,000 and getting caught has also been "getting caught 101" since the beginning of time.
How'd they nail that Silk Road guy? Because he fucked up with his gmail address once. How'd they nail Berkowitz (aka the Son of Sam)? A parking ticket.
You will be. Tariffs don't work, and they especially don't work when you have outsourced all your manufacturing and then decide to slap tariffs on the main country you outsourced all your manufacturing to.
Enjoy your price increases on everything from an iPhone to a Bic pen. So. Much. Winning.
> Most of the clamoring for a UBI is essentially this if you read between the lines
Bullshit. Most of the UBI clamoring is instead directed at addressing massive poverty even with "full time" workers. Look no further than one of the country's largest employers - Walmart. Most 'full time' work there is 31 hours a week at minimum wage and many of those full time workers are also on the food stamp program because they make so little they qualify. The same story can be told for millions of workers in similar positions in the service industry. And automation is going to make that problem worse.
I agree with cutting or eliminating H1B use but it's not going to have the effect you think it will on the economy as a whole, only a modest chunk of the tech sector.
Slashdot Mirror
>As far as apps being moved to a paid model, look at something as stupid as Solitaire. Free in Windows 7, pay to remove ads in Windows 10
I knew someone was going to mention Solitare! So if you offer a free app in your OS, you are obligated till the end of time to enhance, update and include it free in all future versions of the OS? Especially something as irrelevant as a card game?
>Any time I have to use Windows, I feel vaguely unclean.
Be careful you don't cut yourself on that edge there. One of the reasons Linux is having trouble taking off as a mainstream desktop is because of the mental image projected by comments like yours above. None of what you've 'prophesied' has come to pass in Win10 updates, so unless/until it does you sound like a crank, and by association that paints general Linux users in the same hue with current Windows users who encounter comments like that.
How about we stick to legitimate, factual criticisms of Windows, as there are tons of those?
> Those who think this is a good idea is the same type of people who want to treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
Disagree. Those who think this is a good idea are the type of people who are threatened by change and want things to stay as they are, or even go back to the "good old days", whatever the hell those were, and believe tools like this are a path to accomplishing that stability and regression.
> Martin Shkreli got off scot-free
Give it time. He's going to prison, maybe he bumps into someone there who had a family member die because they couldn't afford treatment and that person will see it as a chance to even the score.
It's worthy of a news story because the environment that this facial recognition did its job in and "worked as advertised" is a massively challenging problem for this type of system. It's also worthy of a news story because it is a harbinger of more to come like this, and not just in China. As this tech gets better, agencies will be able to track everyone's movements in public 24/7 and store all of it for unknown purposes. Today it's criminals, tomorrow it's people on no fly lists (rightly or wrongly) getting "randomly" stopped, the day after it's persons of interest, and so it goes. Eventually everyone will become used to having an invisible boot on their neck.
> (nothing like advertising to your CS:GO friends that you've played Hentai Strip Poker 3 for 120 hours).
Exactly. In fact I expect that being able to (finally) go invisible on Steam will undoubtedly lead to more sales of games to people who for various social reasons didn't want to have the ownership and playing of those games broadcast to their friends. Reminds me of a story that was posted to another forum of odd game store encounters where one guy recounted working the till when a bunch of gang bangers came into the store and were all hyped up and boisterous for the new NBA release and they each bought a copy and left, then 20 minutes later one of the crew came back alone, much more subdued, to pick up the copy of Ni No Kuni he'd preordered.
You have a link to back up that rather interesting assertion?
OR, they could compete
I mentioned this in another reply, but what is this "compete" you speak of?
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-million-us-homes-have-only-one-25mbps-internet-provider-or-none-at-all/
Many parts of the US it's a freakin' monopoly. THAT is one of the reasons Net Neutrality was so important. Now that the leash is off, everyone better get the lube and bend over.
> I would prefer my ISP to prioritize gaming traffic ahead of other traffic: Youtube / Netflix / Facebook / bittorrent don't have the same latency requirements as online games. In fact, it makes sense to me that gamers should prefer a net neutrality repeal because it would now allow prioritization of that.
You'd think, but then what happens when another use comes along that is arguably more time sensitive and the fast lane for games gets the boot in favor of the other thing?
Or - FAR more likely - the ISPs say "hey, want good game performance? All you need to do is buy our GameNitro add on for your service, only $14.99 per month!" and then they target any game traffic from people who aren't buying the addon and drop its service level through the floor. No problem, you'll just switch to another ISP right? Well...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-million-us-homes-have-only-one-25mbps-internet-provider-or-none-at-all/
and even if you could switch to another broadband provider, why would they pass up the chance to extort your need to game?
NEVER assume the big US ISPs will do anything beneficial for free, and that they will pass up an opportunity to extort - ahem - offer services.
Says the AC....
Seriously, Microsoft has done shady legal shit in the past (and present) but none of it was of the patent troll pattern of shaking people down on obvious patents unlike the action we've seen from NPEs against small developers. If you have an example that I've missed of MS doing that, post it. If not, STFU.
Madden, FIFA, NHL, NBA, MLB games are an outlier as for interest with their fans they rely on staying within shouting distance of the real teams' rosters so a game that's even 2 years out of date will not be a "realistic" experience. Look at the NHL right now for example, who's on fire and a widely liked underdog? The Las Vegas Golden Knights. Who's NOT in NHL16? The Las Vegas Golden Knights....
Care to explain? I haven't really seen much patent trolling from Microsoft. I have seen them being attacked by a ton of patent trolls though...
Sure, but a lot of the games I buy are mainly single player - or single player playable anyway - the Borderlands series is an odd mix of both and I've played through it both as a single player and with friends in co-op.
And if you're a publisher that's shutting down matchmaking servers for a game released only a couple of years ago, you're probably not going to be getting much repeat business from customers when your new game comes out. How long you support your product is a factor in many peoples' buying decisions. So the smart companies will spend a few bucks a month keeping the lights on for older games. The dumb companies won't be around too long anyway.
> And that's not good enough for a gamer
Like hell. I'm "a gamer". It's perfect for me. I'm also the type of gamer who doesn't go run off and buy the new shiny for $80 when I can get the bugfixed GOTY edition with all the extra content a year later for $20 on a Steam sale. There are many different types of "gamers" and what's on Linux would satisfy a surprising percentage of them if they knew it was there.
> There are plenty of Linux titles on Steam. Maybe not many AAA ones, but a lot of indies, that is for sure.
Actually at this point there's lots of what I'd class as AA and AAA titles that are on Linux. It sometimes takes a bit to get them ported but a surprising percentage of my Steam library works under Linux. Borderlands series, Bioshock series, Metro series, XCOM and XCOM2, Rocket League (maybe not AAA, but it's the best value I've ever gotten for $20 - 400+ hours in so far...), etc.
> Amazon has profited at our expense. They should be paying for the burden
Wrong:
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/29/16830128/amazon-trump-twitter-postal-service-feud
"But break down the losses, and the situation is a bit more nuanced. Delivering packages, it turns out, is a growth business, and it actually makes the Postal Service money: The revenue from package increased $2.1 billion, and was up 11.8 percent for fiscal year 2017. "
Furthermore, the financial crisis the USPS is currently in is entirely manufactured by the Republican congress of 2006:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-usps-trump-20180102-story.html
"What the Postal Service's critics (including Trump) almost never mention is that the real drag on its earnings is another congressional directive. I wrote in 2012 that the USPS' fiscal crisis was "as artificial as they come" — it was the product of a 2006 congressional mandate that the service must prepay over the next 10 years all its future expected retiree healthcare benefits."
"Those payments totaled $38 billion through 2011, with further installments of between $5.6 billion and $11.1 billion a year due through 2016. At least $34 billion is still owed, according to the annual report."
***"Conservatives who maintain that the USPS should be operated profitably, like a private business, fail to explain why the service should be burdened with a prepayment mandate that its competitors don't face." ***
The Republicans have had the knives out for the USPS for decades and this is straight up right wing ops 101 as seen worldwide. Take public service, cut funding, burden it financially until it can't function, loudly scream about how public services just don't work, and then privatize it and sell the scraps off to your donors for pennies on the dollar. Move on to the next one.
I'm sure the guy sitting in 24c is a pilot, as is the lady in 14b...
> Oh come on! This is Internet101 stuff that anyone can do.
Does your mom or your brother or uncle or cousin run a VPN with an RPi? Did they set it up themselves? If not, why not?
Internet 101 is AOL level knowledge for most of the population, the people who post to /. have just a little more expertise than the average person...
> and then the passenger (user) brings a bomb (WebRTC) on the plane
Your analogy doesn't work because your passenger knows they're bringing a bomb onto the plane. I bet you $100 that 99 out of 100 VPN customers have never heard of WebRTC, let alone know what it does and certainly don't know it breaks the VPN's privacy.
Not everyone can be expected to be an expert in security. That's like saying if you get on a plane that hasn't had its maintenance done and it crashes, it was your fault for getting on the plane without knowing what its maintenance status was.
> Worse they pick up mood, so it can tell if you are pissed off.
Wow, won't be long until they're logging your Crime Coefficient Index and pulling you off the street for pre-crime indicators. Maybe if your CCI gets high enough the cops will be authorized to terminate you on the spot...
> If you'll believe some anonymous US intelligence source that, contrary to the findings of many courts in copyright infringement lawsuits, an IP address uniquely identifies a person, I have a bridge to sell you. And a prime island in New York City, only occupied by one rather large green lady.
Cool, will you throw in Coney Island too? I've always wanted an amusement park.
Nobody with a brain would correlate IP = person. However let's assume this is US intelligence source is correct that Guccifer had activity tied to him linked to an IP belonging to the GRU in Moscow. Even if he's some pasty white kid in Colorado living in a ski shack, it's pretty damn odd that would happen. False flag op by Guccifer? "Sure, let's try tying my identity to the one thing that would discredit all this work I've done with Roger Stone and get the intelligence community's attention, that seems like an excellent plan"
Never attribute to malice/cleverness that which can be adequately explained by mistake or stupidity.
> Masking your IP address is hacking 101.
And even super smart people accidentally fucking up that one time out of 10,000 and getting caught has also been "getting caught 101" since the beginning of time.
How'd they nail that Silk Road guy? Because he fucked up with his gmail address once. How'd they nail Berkowitz (aka the Son of Sam)? A parking ticket.
You will be. Tariffs don't work, and they especially don't work when you have outsourced all your manufacturing and then decide to slap tariffs on the main country you outsourced all your manufacturing to.
Enjoy your price increases on everything from an iPhone to a Bic pen. So. Much. Winning.
> Most of the clamoring for a UBI is essentially this if you read between the lines
Bullshit. Most of the UBI clamoring is instead directed at addressing massive poverty even with "full time" workers. Look no further than one of the country's largest employers - Walmart. Most 'full time' work there is 31 hours a week at minimum wage and many of those full time workers are also on the food stamp program because they make so little they qualify. The same story can be told for millions of workers in similar positions in the service industry. And automation is going to make that problem worse.
I agree with cutting or eliminating H1B use but it's not going to have the effect you think it will on the economy as a whole, only a modest chunk of the tech sector.