The G+ android app allows you do that. The iPhone app has been submitted but it's awaiting approval. Don't know why Apple hasn't approved it yet, surely they don't mind Google apps?
A negative side, not for me but for others, would be the lack of games, but we'll see...
Man, that's one of the biggest things I love about it. I know it's futile to expect Zynga and such to stay away from a revenue stream, but the inane games were one of the reasons I quit facebook a few months ago, I got sick of all the spam and having to block apps and people constantly. People would just go around the filters and post crap on my wall about it, "Can you log in quick and give me some horseshoes?" and all that stupidity.
I suppose we should just enjoy the relative peace and quiet while it lasts. So far I've had a very positive experience...
It's not fascination, it's how we designate between white collar country club prison and the prison that the rest of us go to because we're not rich enough to get out of it.
Why buy a phone you have to jailbreak to do what you want with it if you can buy one that lets you do so right out of the box?
That's the one thing I always hear when talking about phones and why I stay away from the iPhone, that it's "easy to jailbreak". Why the hell should I buy a device I need to hack in order to use it fully? That doesn't make sense to me, especially given the fact that there are plenty of alternatives out there now that don't require a person to go through all that hassle. And the requirement to use iTunes is a huge turn-off for me as well. I don't know why people like it, but I can't stand it...I never had a good experience with the software.
I don't know, around these parts, I see a lot more non-Apple MP3 players than I do iPods anymore. Most people in my circle have since stopped carrying a standalone MP3 player completely and use their phones as one instead. The few people that don't (due to the fact that they have "dumbphones") rarely have an iPod, and instead have a Samsung or SanDisk cheapo.
Most of them probably couldn't even tell you the name brand of their MP3 player, but they're not concerned with brand names; they want a cheap MP3 player that holds a few hours of music for in the car or wen they're working out. I know a few people that deliberately went that route for a workout MP3 player because they broke their expensive Apple toys at the gym a few times and would rather be out $50 when they inevitably drop in on the treadmill and stomp on it then the $399 or whatever they paid for their iPod or iPhone.
Now, 5 years ago I would have agreed, pretty much everyone carried an iPod. But today, I know very few people that, if they do have one, actually carry it around and use it. You can add me to that list, as my iPod is currently rotting in a drawer because the battery won't hold a charge, Apple wants to charge me $100 to replace it, and I can listen to all the same songs on my Droid. I bet a lot of them are sitting in drawers and glove boxes all over the country.
There is nothing you could say that would offend me more than censoring anything anyone says.
I totally agree. I don't understand why people are just incapable of ignoring the imbeciles of the world that spread stupidity around every time they open their mouths. When I come across someone spewing garbage, I pretty much turn them off. Freedom of speech means freedom of speech you don't like, and unpopular speech...at least, that's how it was always explained to me.
Obviously that doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your words, but I think we need to draw a firmer line at what speech can actually be shown to be damaging in some way. Like others have said, say anything and you will find someone that takes offense somewhere. At some point people just need to move on and accept the fact that they are forced to coexist with morons. Why would any rational adult allow themselves to be forced out of a community like that, because one user is a douchebag? It's not like the entire community stood up and agreed with her, or even a group of a few people. It was one guy. Show me the community, especially the online community, that does not include at least one asshole. It doesn't exist. Hell, if that was the determining factor in whether or not I would participate in something, I'd be a quivering mess in my bedroom avoiding mass media like the plague.
Hell, I'd never even make it onto the subway.
Anyway, people just need to say their piece and move on when confronted with situations like this. People act like dickheads so they can get attention. Don't feed the trolls.
Actually, the private eye who actually did the crime is in jail already.
And who was he working for again? Oh, right, I'm sure they had no idea how he was getting the information he was passing along to them. And now that there is evidence that they were actively courting other people to break the law and hack into other voice mail 10 year ago, we're supposed to believe that it's just some big coincidence and that the corporation had no idea what he was doing?
Come on. They were obviously commissioning people to break the law on their behalf. If an individual did this, they would be in handcuffs and justice would be done. You think justice is gonna be done here? Please.
I absolutely disagree, I think that those of us that do know the dangers of the internet should be beating it into the heads of every person we know that doesn't. People need to learn that the internet is not a fantasy land with unicorns and funny images. People get taken advantage of due to their ignorance all day long. It's never going to stop. There are no internet police. For every shady app or program or attachment or virus you eradicate in the wild another one is going to pop up.
Imagine how many problems could be avoided in the world if everyone finally got it through their head that you do not open attachments from unknown sources, ever? Imagine how many people less a year would get their online accounts hacked if everyone just miraculously understood that your password should not be a dictionary word or "123456"? How many less cases of identity theft would there be a year if people just realized that you never, ever give your personal information out over the telephone or internet?
What you're saying is the equivalent of saying "people should not have to know that if they don't lock their doors when they go out they might get burglarized." I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of malware and viruses spread not because the people that created them were so smart or the programs or hacks used were that advanced, but because the people did not have the common sense to see either the danger in their lax security practices or lack of them completely.
Personally, I'll make my own decisions. I don't need Google or Apple to decide what is good or not for me, and frankly, I don't feel I should have to live at the same level as those that do, especially when what is at stake is my electronic devices. If 95% of people out there can't handle installing and using custom firmware, for instance, I don't think the option should be taken away to use it.
Google already makes the Android market secure. They've yanked malware off the official market many times. Outside of technical issues such as things locking up, your mom or uncle is perfectly safe downloading from the official market, and most issues like that are easily discerned in reading the reviews of an app. Chances are, if it's got less than a 3 star rating, it's probably not worth the download, and even the most non-technical person should be able to read those reviews and make an intelligent decision.
However, the trade-off I was referring to is the ability to install apps from outside of the store. There is an option right there, Options/Settings/Applications "Unkown Sources: Allow installation of non-market applications". Mom and uncle leave that box unchecked, all is well. Nothing is forcing anyone to install apps from out in the wild. I would rather that functionality be there than to have it removed to "protect" the people that do not have the ability to protect themselves. It's not Google's responsibility to make sure everyone is being smart with their devices...
I'll grant you the illegal aspect (of the action) because, well duh, but are the words truly offensive to a lot of people? Seems like it's only offensive to a very select few.
My point is, if we're going to let offensiveness dictate the actions of the community, there needs to be some sort of level of offensiveness the actions attains before they start yanking them down or censoring them. If just a few people can pull the "offensive" card and cause a project to be censored, what's stopping anyone from doing it for whatever reason they wish, even down to the most trivial "I don't like the person that did this, so I'm going to invent a reason he offends me and get a few friends to back me up on it to screw him over"? What if I created a project and called it "Project Breaking and Entering" or "Project Auto Theft", would we be having this conversation? Would there be any outrage at all? Would it be on/.?
I'll admit that this project name seems like it was selected specifically to be provocative or amusing, and not for any really legitimate reason, but at the end of the day, the most powerful and effective way to deal with the things that offend us is obviously to ignore them. If I were superman and wrote an article every time someone in a community was offended by the actions of another member of that community, especially an online community, I truly think I would outpace even Google in terms of storage capacity required.
So one barely risque project name is indicative of being a community of antisocial jerks?
Come on, it's not like we're talking about Project Child Rapist or Project NAMBLA here. You can depict someone trying to get upskirt pics in a comedy and get a PG rating. This women was just too uptight. She made the right choice for her, but I'm sure 99% of people couldn't care less...and the alternative is far worse than a few mildly offensive project names.
If you want the freedom to install whatever you want from wherever you want, you have to accept that some of those things may not be good for you or your devices. To me, it's worth the trade off.
In the end, the best protection will always be common sense. To those that do not feel they possess enough knowledge to make their own decisions in this regard, there is always Apple who will gladly make the decision for you. To each their own.
I'll have to call my local media later. Someone holding a sign with a racial slur made me cross the street once. I don't know how I managed to cope with this without bringing my plight to the masses...
That's the beautiful thing about freedom, you're free not to use media or software that offends you...
There's plenty of bigots and assholes out there. If you feel it's worth the fight, be my guest. I'm gonna go with the second choice, which is ignoring it. They'll both have the same end result, anyway...
If it gets to the point that the authorities are trying to force a person to decrypt their computer, then I seriously doubt the threat of additional prison time is going to sway said people to do so.
I mean, what the hell are they gonna do? Send you off to Guantanamo or some other gulag?
I'll go ahead and decrypt this big middle finger for them, though. Hell, I'll even throw in a second one.
A person gets caught doing this to a corporation, and 9 times out of 10 they end up in Federal 'Pound Me In The Ass' Prison with a fine so large it'll take years to pay back.
But if a corporation does it to a person...well, maybe they'll get a strongly worded email or something, or an unflattering article in a major newspaper (but not too unflattering, don't want to get sued for defamation or anything!)
...and people wonder why nobody trusts big business or the government anymore...
Right now, due to the lack of mouth breathing masses on the site, it's actually kinda nice. For instance, I've yet to see a single "OMG SO MANY H8TRS SO JELOUSE OF ME U WISH U HAD THIS!!!!!1!1!" or "SUM DAYS I JUST WANT 2 SCREAM BUT THEN I REMEBER JESUS LOVES ME AND U 2, PASS IT ON!!!!" there, and that in itself is a big plus.
I'm sure a lot of people felt the same way about Facebook before it made the leap from college students only to mainstream, and I'm sure that will be the eventual fate of Google+, but for now, it's nice having a quiet place to have intelligent discussions with small groups of people without all the stupidity. I'll probably bail once Zynga gets their fingers in it, though.
I put in a fake one a usual only this time I made the mistake of making myself too young.
You are the first person I've ever known to do that.
Everyone I know picks the maximum setting, which is why all of my friends are like 108 years old according to the computer. I thought that was pretty much the standard thing when asked for a birthdate?
Of course we've been doing that, the problem is that in the months leading up to that, we killed thousands of innocent civilians.
Maybe next time, before they bomb out half the cities of whatever country our current "enemies" live in, they could try helping the people first. We have to win over the people if we ever want to win the war, and by killing the wrong people (as we can't seem to stop doing) we do nothing but ensure another generation of people with a deep-seated hatred of us. All the good will we've created by building school and handing out MRE's is quickly eroded when we accidentally kill non-combatant women and children.
If we actually show the people that we are there to help them, they will go out of their way to turn over these operatives to us. Clearly we're not showing them that we're there to help, and the fact is, a lot of people in these countries see us in the same light as the horrible dictators that have abused them for so long...
If we would have taken the money we spent on fighting the 'War on Terror', and instead applied it to actually helping people get access to food and clean drinking water, helped them set up schools, the amount of good will we would have in the region and around the world would be enormous. Al Qaeda would not be able to exist because the people would not allow it to.
But as with anything, it's easier to destroy than create.
Why can there not be a public list of blocked websites? And how hard is it to set up some sort of oversight that allows for an appeals process for wrongfully blocked addresses?
I know the answer is most likely "because they don't care" but still, have they even tried to come up with a reason for these shortcomings? Or is it pretty much just going to be one of those "well, if you're against this you must be for child porn, because we live in a world that has no gray area whatsoever" that is so typical in cases like these?
You can, but according to one article (possibly this one, I didn't read it) they wipe every computer in the store nightly.
Complete BS. They'll wipe and reinstall whenever someone borks a display model (rare, but it happens), and they keep software updated for the most part, but they don't do full wipes every night. [source: many friends working in the Apple Store]
I haven't carried a wallet in 10 years. Money clip is all you need, really. What do you need besides your license and a couple credit cards? Why carry all that crap around?
Large corporations carry large life insurance policies on their employees all the time, they call it "dead peasants" insurance plans. Walmart got caught doing it a few years back, people that made $20k a year annually had life insurance policies on them by Walmart for $75,000, and that's for entry level employees. A husband found out when his 20-something year old wife died from asthma and the receipt for the life insurance policy payable to Walmart Inc got sent to her home address by mistake.
There was actually another company where emails or something were leaked where the head honcho was complaining to someone in his financial division that their entry level employees weren't dying enough and they weren't making enough money on the policies. That was pretty nice, I thought.
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The G+ android app allows you do that. The iPhone app has been submitted but it's awaiting approval. Don't know why Apple hasn't approved it yet, surely they don't mind Google apps?
A negative side, not for me but for others, would be the lack of games, but we'll see...
Man, that's one of the biggest things I love about it. I know it's futile to expect Zynga and such to stay away from a revenue stream, but the inane games were one of the reasons I quit facebook a few months ago, I got sick of all the spam and having to block apps and people constantly. People would just go around the filters and post crap on my wall about it, "Can you log in quick and give me some horseshoes?" and all that stupidity.
I suppose we should just enjoy the relative peace and quiet while it lasts. So far I've had a very positive experience...
It's a line from a movie, Office Space, that's kinda caught on.
Here's the clip from the movie
It's not fascination, it's how we designate between white collar country club prison and the prison that the rest of us go to because we're not rich enough to get out of it.
Why buy a phone you have to jailbreak to do what you want with it if you can buy one that lets you do so right out of the box?
That's the one thing I always hear when talking about phones and why I stay away from the iPhone, that it's "easy to jailbreak". Why the hell should I buy a device I need to hack in order to use it fully? That doesn't make sense to me, especially given the fact that there are plenty of alternatives out there now that don't require a person to go through all that hassle. And the requirement to use iTunes is a huge turn-off for me as well. I don't know why people like it, but I can't stand it...I never had a good experience with the software.
To each their own, of course....
I don't know, around these parts, I see a lot more non-Apple MP3 players than I do iPods anymore. Most people in my circle have since stopped carrying a standalone MP3 player completely and use their phones as one instead. The few people that don't (due to the fact that they have "dumbphones") rarely have an iPod, and instead have a Samsung or SanDisk cheapo.
Most of them probably couldn't even tell you the name brand of their MP3 player, but they're not concerned with brand names; they want a cheap MP3 player that holds a few hours of music for in the car or wen they're working out. I know a few people that deliberately went that route for a workout MP3 player because they broke their expensive Apple toys at the gym a few times and would rather be out $50 when they inevitably drop in on the treadmill and stomp on it then the $399 or whatever they paid for their iPod or iPhone.
Now, 5 years ago I would have agreed, pretty much everyone carried an iPod. But today, I know very few people that, if they do have one, actually carry it around and use it. You can add me to that list, as my iPod is currently rotting in a drawer because the battery won't hold a charge, Apple wants to charge me $100 to replace it, and I can listen to all the same songs on my Droid. I bet a lot of them are sitting in drawers and glove boxes all over the country.
To each their own...
There is nothing you could say that would offend me more than censoring anything anyone says.
I totally agree. I don't understand why people are just incapable of ignoring the imbeciles of the world that spread stupidity around every time they open their mouths. When I come across someone spewing garbage, I pretty much turn them off. Freedom of speech means freedom of speech you don't like, and unpopular speech...at least, that's how it was always explained to me.
Obviously that doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your words, but I think we need to draw a firmer line at what speech can actually be shown to be damaging in some way. Like others have said, say anything and you will find someone that takes offense somewhere. At some point people just need to move on and accept the fact that they are forced to coexist with morons. Why would any rational adult allow themselves to be forced out of a community like that, because one user is a douchebag? It's not like the entire community stood up and agreed with her, or even a group of a few people. It was one guy. Show me the community, especially the online community, that does not include at least one asshole. It doesn't exist. Hell, if that was the determining factor in whether or not I would participate in something, I'd be a quivering mess in my bedroom avoiding mass media like the plague.
Hell, I'd never even make it onto the subway.
Anyway, people just need to say their piece and move on when confronted with situations like this. People act like dickheads so they can get attention. Don't feed the trolls.
Actually, the private eye who actually did the crime is in jail already.
And who was he working for again? Oh, right, I'm sure they had no idea how he was getting the information he was passing along to them. And now that there is evidence that they were actively courting other people to break the law and hack into other voice mail 10 year ago, we're supposed to believe that it's just some big coincidence and that the corporation had no idea what he was doing?
Come on. They were obviously commissioning people to break the law on their behalf. If an individual did this, they would be in handcuffs and justice would be done. You think justice is gonna be done here? Please.
Users don't know (and should not have to know)...
I absolutely disagree, I think that those of us that do know the dangers of the internet should be beating it into the heads of every person we know that doesn't. People need to learn that the internet is not a fantasy land with unicorns and funny images. People get taken advantage of due to their ignorance all day long. It's never going to stop. There are no internet police. For every shady app or program or attachment or virus you eradicate in the wild another one is going to pop up.
Imagine how many problems could be avoided in the world if everyone finally got it through their head that you do not open attachments from unknown sources, ever? Imagine how many people less a year would get their online accounts hacked if everyone just miraculously understood that your password should not be a dictionary word or "123456"? How many less cases of identity theft would there be a year if people just realized that you never, ever give your personal information out over the telephone or internet?
What you're saying is the equivalent of saying "people should not have to know that if they don't lock their doors when they go out they might get burglarized." I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of malware and viruses spread not because the people that created them were so smart or the programs or hacks used were that advanced, but because the people did not have the common sense to see either the danger in their lax security practices or lack of them completely.
Personally, I'll make my own decisions. I don't need Google or Apple to decide what is good or not for me, and frankly, I don't feel I should have to live at the same level as those that do, especially when what is at stake is my electronic devices. If 95% of people out there can't handle installing and using custom firmware, for instance, I don't think the option should be taken away to use it.
Google already makes the Android market secure. They've yanked malware off the official market many times. Outside of technical issues such as things locking up, your mom or uncle is perfectly safe downloading from the official market, and most issues like that are easily discerned in reading the reviews of an app. Chances are, if it's got less than a 3 star rating, it's probably not worth the download, and even the most non-technical person should be able to read those reviews and make an intelligent decision.
However, the trade-off I was referring to is the ability to install apps from outside of the store. There is an option right there, Options/Settings/Applications "Unkown Sources: Allow installation of non-market applications". Mom and uncle leave that box unchecked, all is well. Nothing is forcing anyone to install apps from out in the wild. I would rather that functionality be there than to have it removed to "protect" the people that do not have the ability to protect themselves. It's not Google's responsibility to make sure everyone is being smart with their devices...
I'll grant you the illegal aspect (of the action) because, well duh, but are the words truly offensive to a lot of people? Seems like it's only offensive to a very select few.
My point is, if we're going to let offensiveness dictate the actions of the community, there needs to be some sort of level of offensiveness the actions attains before they start yanking them down or censoring them. If just a few people can pull the "offensive" card and cause a project to be censored, what's stopping anyone from doing it for whatever reason they wish, even down to the most trivial "I don't like the person that did this, so I'm going to invent a reason he offends me and get a few friends to back me up on it to screw him over"? What if I created a project and called it "Project Breaking and Entering" or "Project Auto Theft", would we be having this conversation? Would there be any outrage at all? Would it be on /.?
I'll admit that this project name seems like it was selected specifically to be provocative or amusing, and not for any really legitimate reason, but at the end of the day, the most powerful and effective way to deal with the things that offend us is obviously to ignore them. If I were superman and wrote an article every time someone in a community was offended by the actions of another member of that community, especially an online community, I truly think I would outpace even Google in terms of storage capacity required.
Again, this is newsworthy because...?
So one barely risque project name is indicative of being a community of antisocial jerks?
Come on, it's not like we're talking about Project Child Rapist or Project NAMBLA here. You can depict someone trying to get upskirt pics in a comedy and get a PG rating. This women was just too uptight. She made the right choice for her, but I'm sure 99% of people couldn't care less...and the alternative is far worse than a few mildly offensive project names.
If you want the freedom to install whatever you want from wherever you want, you have to accept that some of those things may not be good for you or your devices. To me, it's worth the trade off.
In the end, the best protection will always be common sense. To those that do not feel they possess enough knowledge to make their own decisions in this regard, there is always Apple who will gladly make the decision for you. To each their own.
she's not developing in the community anymore.
And this is newsworthy because...?
I'll have to call my local media later. Someone holding a sign with a racial slur made me cross the street once. I don't know how I managed to cope with this without bringing my plight to the masses...
That's the beautiful thing about freedom, you're free not to use media or software that offends you...
There's plenty of bigots and assholes out there. If you feel it's worth the fight, be my guest. I'm gonna go with the second choice, which is ignoring it. They'll both have the same end result, anyway...
If it gets to the point that the authorities are trying to force a person to decrypt their computer, then I seriously doubt the threat of additional prison time is going to sway said people to do so.
I mean, what the hell are they gonna do? Send you off to Guantanamo or some other gulag?
I'll go ahead and decrypt this big middle finger for them, though. Hell, I'll even throw in a second one.
A person gets caught doing this to a corporation, and 9 times out of 10 they end up in Federal 'Pound Me In The Ass' Prison with a fine so large it'll take years to pay back.
But if a corporation does it to a person...well, maybe they'll get a strongly worded email or something, or an unflattering article in a major newspaper (but not too unflattering, don't want to get sued for defamation or anything!)
...and people wonder why nobody trusts big business or the government anymore...
If they stuck to weed, it be more like 99%.
Of course, it will take them 4 hours to get home as they creep along at 15 mph...
Right now, due to the lack of mouth breathing masses on the site, it's actually kinda nice. For instance, I've yet to see a single "OMG SO MANY H8TRS SO JELOUSE OF ME U WISH U HAD THIS!!!!!1!1!" or "SUM DAYS I JUST WANT 2 SCREAM BUT THEN I REMEBER JESUS LOVES ME AND U 2, PASS IT ON!!!!" there, and that in itself is a big plus.
I'm sure a lot of people felt the same way about Facebook before it made the leap from college students only to mainstream, and I'm sure that will be the eventual fate of Google+, but for now, it's nice having a quiet place to have intelligent discussions with small groups of people without all the stupidity. I'll probably bail once Zynga gets their fingers in it, though.
I put in a fake one a usual only this time I made the mistake of making myself too young.
You are the first person I've ever known to do that.
Everyone I know picks the maximum setting, which is why all of my friends are like 108 years old according to the computer. I thought that was pretty much the standard thing when asked for a birthdate?
Of course we've been doing that, the problem is that in the months leading up to that, we killed thousands of innocent civilians.
Maybe next time, before they bomb out half the cities of whatever country our current "enemies" live in, they could try helping the people first. We have to win over the people if we ever want to win the war, and by killing the wrong people (as we can't seem to stop doing) we do nothing but ensure another generation of people with a deep-seated hatred of us. All the good will we've created by building school and handing out MRE's is quickly eroded when we accidentally kill non-combatant women and children.
If we actually show the people that we are there to help them, they will go out of their way to turn over these operatives to us. Clearly we're not showing them that we're there to help, and the fact is, a lot of people in these countries see us in the same light as the horrible dictators that have abused them for so long...
If we would have taken the money we spent on fighting the 'War on Terror', and instead applied it to actually helping people get access to food and clean drinking water, helped them set up schools, the amount of good will we would have in the region and around the world would be enormous. Al Qaeda would not be able to exist because the people would not allow it to.
But as with anything, it's easier to destroy than create.
Why can there not be a public list of blocked websites? And how hard is it to set up some sort of oversight that allows for an appeals process for wrongfully blocked addresses?
I know the answer is most likely "because they don't care" but still, have they even tried to come up with a reason for these shortcomings? Or is it pretty much just going to be one of those "well, if you're against this you must be for child porn, because we live in a world that has no gray area whatsoever" that is so typical in cases like these?
You can, but according to one article (possibly this one, I didn't read it) they wipe every computer in the store nightly.
Complete BS. They'll wipe and reinstall whenever someone borks a display model (rare, but it happens), and they keep software updated for the most part, but they don't do full wipes every night. [source: many friends working in the Apple Store]
I haven't carried a wallet in 10 years. Money clip is all you need, really. What do you need besides your license and a couple credit cards? Why carry all that crap around?
Large corporations carry large life insurance policies on their employees all the time, they call it "dead peasants" insurance plans. Walmart got caught doing it a few years back, people that made $20k a year annually had life insurance policies on them by Walmart for $75,000, and that's for entry level employees. A husband found out when his 20-something year old wife died from asthma and the receipt for the life insurance policy payable to Walmart Inc got sent to her home address by mistake.
There was actually another company where emails or something were leaked where the head honcho was complaining to someone in his financial division that their entry level employees weren't dying enough and they weren't making enough money on the policies. That was pretty nice, I thought.