The difference is, usually "think of the children" is used to reduce our rights. It's used to argue for web filtering,.xxx domain, logging of your traffic on internet servers, adding security cameras on the street, etc.
So yes, it's still a crappy argument, but the cases are definitely different.
Honestly, are there better uses of your time than keeping in touch with the various friends and family that you have? Sharing images of your life, and seeing other people's images? Sharing special occasions with people? You know, the things that humans have been doing and loving to do for millions of years?
You made a random prediction, I'll make mine. Social networks will be around forever. Facebook may go the way of MySpace and others, but there will always be something around. A safe bet would be it would be something better suited to a mobile experience, but there will always be something like it.
I grew up in a tiny town in Africa. We barely had electricity (just for a few hours a day, sporadically) and definitely no video games or TV. My parents, being peacenik missionaries, never bought me any toy guns or knives or anything, opting instead for Legos and Construx and such. So what did I do? I made guns out of Legos and sticks and whatnot, and still played "war" and "cops and robbers" with my friends. It seems to be hard-wired into us, in some ways.
Personally, I would rather my kids (when I have them) take out their aggressive tendencies in the safe confines of a video game, rather than get into fights in the neighborhood because they're bored. Yeah, Manhunt is a ridiculous game, but as a parent I would be able to NOT BUY THAT for my kids.
Or, I can just not bother, and get on with my life. It doesn't seem reasonable that I should have to jump through hoops and argue with anonymous people that know the system way better than I do, to maybe have my edit go through. I can think of many better things to do with my free time. If the Wikipedia organizers want more people to edit the articles and make it better, they need to start by removing these ridiculous articles. This is a constant criticism that comes up every time a Wikipedia article gets posted on Slashdot, so fix it already.
You have to work pretty hard to install apps on an iPhone that DON'T come from the Apple App Store(tm). You have to use a security hole in the OS to root it and install a modified OS. You void your warranty, you open your phone up to potential security issues, and you have to battle with it each time Apple releases an iOS update. With Android, you select the "Allow install of 3rd-party apps" checkbox, and you can install an app from any old website. Super-easy!
So yeah, there's going to be a lot more piracy on Android; the barrier is really low. I don't think it has anything to do with the relative costs of the devices, they're pretty much the same. It's still ridiculous that people pirate a $2 app - just eat one less donut this week, jackoffs.
In another story, somebody had an idea to crush unemployment - move to a 3-day weekend. Since companies would get 20% less time out of everybody, they'd have to hire more people. For the same pay, everybody would get more leisure time. Simple!
The Wii can at least play DVDs. I bought the PS3 in large part because it can play BluRay disks, the only HD disk format in use. It's easier to justify paying ~$100 more than a stand-alone BluRay player and get a high-end gaming system. Without that, the Wii U has to completely stand on its own as a gaming system, taking up more space in your crowded cabinet. Maybe they have better data than I, and know that everybody that would want a BluRay player already has one.
I hope they'll at least play nice with Netflix streaming, Amazon On Demand, and such. I could buy that a large chunk of the population might skip BluRay disks altogether and just watch streaming movies and shows.
You hit a nerve with me. I wanted to watch a movie earlier in the week, and I hadn't changed my password or done the update yet since the whole PSN debacle. It didn't even register that there was a BluRay disk in the slot. After resetting my password and doing the mandatory software update, I could finally watch the movie. Thanks, Sony.
(sigh) It still works better than my old Samsung BluRay player, which I had to ship back to them a couple of times, and I like that I can play a game occasionally when I have time, so I'll stick with it. I really think that if the XBOX 360 had a BluRay drive (even as an add-on), Sony would not be selling nearly as many PS3s.
Yeah, it's kind of ironic. The places that get the most snow generally don't have snow days, since they have the systems in place to deal with the snow; an army of snow plows, reliable (ish) public transportation, etc. I had several snow days growing up in Virginia, which occasionally gets freakish snow, but not often enough to warrant a lot of snow-clearing equipment. My wife grew up in Chicago, and remembers school being canceled only once, when the wind chill was -50 and they couldn't have kids freezing into solid chunks waiting for the bus.
The other thing that Japan is known for is going from cheap, low quality cars to having some of the highest quality cars in the world. Was there a "shock" event that caused that as well? Genuinely curious.
Couldn't they have used the email address on the account to send a security token, something like that?
"An email has been sent to ********@yahoo.com with your confirmation code. Please check your email and enter this code to continue."
Overall, wow - using the stolen information to re-register your account? Why bother making people change their password then? Heaping spoonful of FAIL.
And they could, at any time, decide to change the rules for the disks you get shipped from J. Random & Sons. Make them licensed, not pwned. They were #fail in their old post-hoc EULA attempt at it, but if they make you physically sign a contract before you can take delivery, you may no longer be able to say you own it just because you bought it.
If they could do that, they would, wouldn't they? The studios bent Blockbuster and Netflix over the barrel and made them buy "rentable" versions, sure. But once Netflix has bought them, they're pretty much free to use them as they wish, rent them out to as many people as they want. The studios can't retroactively go back and say "hey, that movie from the 1990's that is suddenly popular? Pull it out of circulation." Also look at Redbox - they're independently owned, and the owners generally just go to Walmart and buy the movies and rent them out to people. There's nothing the studios can do about it. The only weapon the studios have is the time window. They'll sell the movies to Blockbuster first (at a higher price) and hold off selling them to Walmart for a few months.
For digital, they have a lot more control for some reason, even though it should be the same thing. I see stuff disappear off of Netflix Streaming all of the time.
This would require me to plan ahead what I'm going to watch that night. In which case, I could just plan ahead a couple of days, and get the DVD itself. The beauty of Netflix streaming is that I can watch whatever the hell I feel like whenever I want. Hung over Saturday morning? Watch a bunch of episodes of an old show you missed. Want something on while you're doing homework? Watch a dumb zombie action flick.
The real Netflix fix is for broadband companies to get off their collective asses and invest in their infrastructure. I live in Chicago, one of the most densely populated cities in North America, and my broadband speeds are middle of the road compared to most of the world, and yet more expensive. And even so, I can watch HD movies on Netflix streaming after only a few seconds of buffering.
Sure. But I would argue that if I'm sober, I have the right to drive from one place to the other, and not be forced to stop and have my car and belongings searched. That's why people have an issue with the checkpoints - for every 1 drunk driver you might catch, many more innocent drivers are subjected to a search. A search that you could reasonably argue is unconstitutional.
I know what you mean, but... have you ever pulled out one of those old books and read them? If so, how many? If all you had to do was replace the books that you actually might re-read from time to time, I don't think it'd be too expensive. I'm getting pretty comfortable living only in my Kindle. I have a paper book that I bought several months ago, I never get around to reading it, because it's so much less convenient than my e-reader, which is always in my bag anyway.
True, but the payment processor is not generally "online" to the world. They can lock their systems down, and only let their corporate customers communicate to them through secure, encrypted channels. They could even white-list IPs, and so on. They don't need to even be visible to the rest of the world. Doesn't mean they can't be hacked, but they should still be a much smaller target than the PSN.
We give this right to the government to help commerce along. Honestly. It's good that Amazon can trademark "Amazon" and keep others from using it. They can spend years working on delivering great service, improving their offerings and so on, and not worry about somebody opening "Amazon Shopping" and ripping people off, destroying their good name. Imagine if you could open a "Pizza Hut" right next to an actual Pizza Hut, same colors and everything, but with even less concern for quality. As a consumer, how can you tell what's the real deal? When you tell your friends that Pizza Hut sucks, which one do you mean?
But yeah, there should be limits. Other pizza joints can have "pizza" in their name, just not "Pizza Hut." The argument is whether or not "app store" - together, not each word - counts as something you can trademark. I don't think so, there were other app stores before Apple, although not as popular. And I don't think anybody is confusing the Amazon App Store with the Apple App Store - they don't even sell the same thing. Overall, lame.
Why does that make them wrong? Apple is stupid for using a generic term for their product, then trying to trademark it. If Apple had called it something else, they could have trademarked it, and then marketed the hell out of it. Instead, they trademarked extremely common words and now they're potentially paying the price.
It was wrong for Amazon to get the 1-click patent, but I can't fault them for trying. But Amazon is still on the right side of this.
They should get massively fined, in proportion to the monetary losses they are pushing onto customers, banks and vendors. $100 per account sounds like a good start. The money should go towards getting their users' credit histories back on track, as well as additional monitoring by the credit bureaus.
They should fall out of PCI compliance, and be forced to bring their system fully up to compliance before they can charge even one more credit card. Or, they should only process pre-paid PSN cards, and leave merchant processing to the big boys who can secure the data properly.
Overall, If people who are publishing the internals of the PS3 are subject to lawsuits, fines and possible imprisonment, then it stands to reason that revealing the private information of 77 MILLION people should have similar ramifications. If Sony can just say "We're sorry, we're working on it," then Geohot should have had that option too.
I have my credit card on file with them. I bought the "Walking Dead" premier because I missed it and couldn't find it anywhere (didn't want to torrent it). So that's another way to get screwed.
It sounds like they encrypted the card numbers at least, which is why they are thinking the card numbers are safe. Annoyingly, some douchebag now has my full name, billing address, and date of birth (why does Sony need that??). Thanks, Sony, now I have to worry about some hacker trying to steal my identity, because you couldn't be bothered to encrypt a couple of database fields.
I can at least cancel my credit cards. My full identity is more valuable to identity thieves, and more damaging to me.
Not true at all. They can store the credit card number, but they have to encrypt it. The encryption keys are supposed to be stored away from the encrypted data.
If they couldn't store the CC number, you would have to enter it in every time, which I don't think is the case with PSN.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is, usually "think of the children" is used to reduce our rights. It's used to argue for web filtering, .xxx domain, logging of your traffic on internet servers, adding security cameras on the street, etc.
So yes, it's still a crappy argument, but the cases are definitely different.
Honestly, are there better uses of your time than keeping in touch with the various friends and family that you have? Sharing images of your life, and seeing other people's images? Sharing special occasions with people? You know, the things that humans have been doing and loving to do for millions of years?
You made a random prediction, I'll make mine. Social networks will be around forever. Facebook may go the way of MySpace and others, but there will always be something around. A safe bet would be it would be something better suited to a mobile experience, but there will always be something like it.
I grew up in a tiny town in Africa. We barely had electricity (just for a few hours a day, sporadically) and definitely no video games or TV. My parents, being peacenik missionaries, never bought me any toy guns or knives or anything, opting instead for Legos and Construx and such. So what did I do? I made guns out of Legos and sticks and whatnot, and still played "war" and "cops and robbers" with my friends. It seems to be hard-wired into us, in some ways.
Personally, I would rather my kids (when I have them) take out their aggressive tendencies in the safe confines of a video game, rather than get into fights in the neighborhood because they're bored. Yeah, Manhunt is a ridiculous game, but as a parent I would be able to NOT BUY THAT for my kids.
Or, I can just not bother, and get on with my life. It doesn't seem reasonable that I should have to jump through hoops and argue with anonymous people that know the system way better than I do, to maybe have my edit go through. I can think of many better things to do with my free time. If the Wikipedia organizers want more people to edit the articles and make it better, they need to start by removing these ridiculous articles. This is a constant criticism that comes up every time a Wikipedia article gets posted on Slashdot, so fix it already.
You have to work pretty hard to install apps on an iPhone that DON'T come from the Apple App Store(tm). You have to use a security hole in the OS to root it and install a modified OS. You void your warranty, you open your phone up to potential security issues, and you have to battle with it each time Apple releases an iOS update. With Android, you select the "Allow install of 3rd-party apps" checkbox, and you can install an app from any old website. Super-easy!
So yeah, there's going to be a lot more piracy on Android; the barrier is really low. I don't think it has anything to do with the relative costs of the devices, they're pretty much the same. It's still ridiculous that people pirate a $2 app - just eat one less donut this week, jackoffs.
In another story, somebody had an idea to crush unemployment - move to a 3-day weekend. Since companies would get 20% less time out of everybody, they'd have to hire more people. For the same pay, everybody would get more leisure time. Simple!
The Wii can at least play DVDs. I bought the PS3 in large part because it can play BluRay disks, the only HD disk format in use. It's easier to justify paying ~$100 more than a stand-alone BluRay player and get a high-end gaming system. Without that, the Wii U has to completely stand on its own as a gaming system, taking up more space in your crowded cabinet. Maybe they have better data than I, and know that everybody that would want a BluRay player already has one.
I hope they'll at least play nice with Netflix streaming, Amazon On Demand, and such. I could buy that a large chunk of the population might skip BluRay disks altogether and just watch streaming movies and shows.
Free market, indeed. Sometimes I wish our CRTC had balls like the FCC.
Really? That's pretty much the saddest thing I've ever heard!
Nice! Please to feed parent many mod points.
You hit a nerve with me. I wanted to watch a movie earlier in the week, and I hadn't changed my password or done the update yet since the whole PSN debacle. It didn't even register that there was a BluRay disk in the slot. After resetting my password and doing the mandatory software update, I could finally watch the movie. Thanks, Sony.
(sigh) It still works better than my old Samsung BluRay player, which I had to ship back to them a couple of times, and I like that I can play a game occasionally when I have time, so I'll stick with it. I really think that if the XBOX 360 had a BluRay drive (even as an add-on), Sony would not be selling nearly as many PS3s.
Yeah, it's kind of ironic. The places that get the most snow generally don't have snow days, since they have the systems in place to deal with the snow; an army of snow plows, reliable (ish) public transportation, etc. I had several snow days growing up in Virginia, which occasionally gets freakish snow, but not often enough to warrant a lot of snow-clearing equipment. My wife grew up in Chicago, and remembers school being canceled only once, when the wind chill was -50 and they couldn't have kids freezing into solid chunks waiting for the bus.
Thank you! So many people seem to be missing this point. Making copies for educational use is supposed to be allowed under copyright law.
The other thing that Japan is known for is going from cheap, low quality cars to having some of the highest quality cars in the world. Was there a "shock" event that caused that as well? Genuinely curious.
Couldn't they have used the email address on the account to send a security token, something like that?
"An email has been sent to ********@yahoo.com with your confirmation code. Please check your email and enter this code to continue."
Overall, wow - using the stolen information to re-register your account? Why bother making people change their password then? Heaping spoonful of FAIL.
And they could, at any time, decide to change the rules for the disks you get shipped from J. Random & Sons. Make them licensed, not pwned. They were #fail in their old post-hoc EULA attempt at it, but if they make you physically sign a contract before you can take delivery, you may no longer be able to say you own it just because you bought it.
If they could do that, they would, wouldn't they? The studios bent Blockbuster and Netflix over the barrel and made them buy "rentable" versions, sure. But once Netflix has bought them, they're pretty much free to use them as they wish, rent them out to as many people as they want. The studios can't retroactively go back and say "hey, that movie from the 1990's that is suddenly popular? Pull it out of circulation." Also look at Redbox - they're independently owned, and the owners generally just go to Walmart and buy the movies and rent them out to people. There's nothing the studios can do about it. The only weapon the studios have is the time window. They'll sell the movies to Blockbuster first (at a higher price) and hold off selling them to Walmart for a few months.
For digital, they have a lot more control for some reason, even though it should be the same thing. I see stuff disappear off of Netflix Streaming all of the time.
This would require me to plan ahead what I'm going to watch that night. In which case, I could just plan ahead a couple of days, and get the DVD itself. The beauty of Netflix streaming is that I can watch whatever the hell I feel like whenever I want. Hung over Saturday morning? Watch a bunch of episodes of an old show you missed. Want something on while you're doing homework? Watch a dumb zombie action flick.
The real Netflix fix is for broadband companies to get off their collective asses and invest in their infrastructure. I live in Chicago, one of the most densely populated cities in North America, and my broadband speeds are middle of the road compared to most of the world, and yet more expensive. And even so, I can watch HD movies on Netflix streaming after only a few seconds of buffering.
There is no right to drive drunk.
Sure. But I would argue that if I'm sober, I have the right to drive from one place to the other, and not be forced to stop and have my car and belongings searched. That's why people have an issue with the checkpoints - for every 1 drunk driver you might catch, many more innocent drivers are subjected to a search. A search that you could reasonably argue is unconstitutional.
I know what you mean, but ... have you ever pulled out one of those old books and read them? If so, how many? If all you had to do was replace the books that you actually might re-read from time to time, I don't think it'd be too expensive. I'm getting pretty comfortable living only in my Kindle. I have a paper book that I bought several months ago, I never get around to reading it, because it's so much less convenient than my e-reader, which is always in my bag anyway.
Also, via OverDrive, you can get library books on your Kindle now (and other e-readers). So you don't even have to necessarily buy your old books if you really don't want to, you can just check them out for free. Amazing. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/04/amazon-to-launch-library-lending-for-kindle-books/1
(Whoosh!)
True, but the payment processor is not generally "online" to the world. They can lock their systems down, and only let their corporate customers communicate to them through secure, encrypted channels. They could even white-list IPs, and so on. They don't need to even be visible to the rest of the world. Doesn't mean they can't be hacked, but they should still be a much smaller target than the PSN.
We give this right to the government to help commerce along. Honestly. It's good that Amazon can trademark "Amazon" and keep others from using it. They can spend years working on delivering great service, improving their offerings and so on, and not worry about somebody opening "Amazon Shopping" and ripping people off, destroying their good name. Imagine if you could open a "Pizza Hut" right next to an actual Pizza Hut, same colors and everything, but with even less concern for quality. As a consumer, how can you tell what's the real deal? When you tell your friends that Pizza Hut sucks, which one do you mean?
But yeah, there should be limits. Other pizza joints can have "pizza" in their name, just not "Pizza Hut." The argument is whether or not "app store" - together, not each word - counts as something you can trademark. I don't think so, there were other app stores before Apple, although not as popular. And I don't think anybody is confusing the Amazon App Store with the Apple App Store - they don't even sell the same thing. Overall, lame.
Why does that make them wrong? Apple is stupid for using a generic term for their product, then trying to trademark it. If Apple had called it something else, they could have trademarked it, and then marketed the hell out of it. Instead, they trademarked extremely common words and now they're potentially paying the price.
It was wrong for Amazon to get the 1-click patent, but I can't fault them for trying. But Amazon is still on the right side of this.
They should get massively fined, in proportion to the monetary losses they are pushing onto customers, banks and vendors. $100 per account sounds like a good start. The money should go towards getting their users' credit histories back on track, as well as additional monitoring by the credit bureaus.
They should fall out of PCI compliance, and be forced to bring their system fully up to compliance before they can charge even one more credit card. Or, they should only process pre-paid PSN cards, and leave merchant processing to the big boys who can secure the data properly.
Overall, If people who are publishing the internals of the PS3 are subject to lawsuits, fines and possible imprisonment, then it stands to reason that revealing the private information of 77 MILLION people should have similar ramifications. If Sony can just say "We're sorry, we're working on it," then Geohot should have had that option too.
I have my credit card on file with them. I bought the "Walking Dead" premier because I missed it and couldn't find it anywhere (didn't want to torrent it). So that's another way to get screwed.
It sounds like they encrypted the card numbers at least, which is why they are thinking the card numbers are safe. Annoyingly, some douchebag now has my full name, billing address, and date of birth (why does Sony need that??). Thanks, Sony, now I have to worry about some hacker trying to steal my identity, because you couldn't be bothered to encrypt a couple of database fields.
I can at least cancel my credit cards. My full identity is more valuable to identity thieves, and more damaging to me.
Not true at all. They can store the credit card number, but they have to encrypt it. The encryption keys are supposed to be stored away from the encrypted data.
If they couldn't store the CC number, you would have to enter it in every time, which I don't think is the case with PSN.