I started off writing this with; "While I have great respect and admiration for Linus I seriously doubt that having one unilateral "decision maker" is an advantage..."
After some thought it turned into; "Sure there is always a slow-down due to additional debate when there is more than one person at the helm however, when they reach a consensus and fail they will not be able to pinpoint the guilty party.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you have a wagon and that's pulled by 10 horses that's great, as long as they all pull in the same direction.
Given widespread surveillance, by law or otherwise it will and has driven people to encrypt all traffic.
My traffic is like my mail. You cannot look into every letter just because you suspect copyright infringement. You need a court order allowing you to pry into my mail.
I do not like people reading my mail, even if I am only wishing my mother happy birthday. It's none of your business.
Encrypt your mail/communications. Private means private.
I rent a mail service from my ISP, to deliver the friggin mail, not to read it at the behest of greedy, ignorant bastards.
It's these sort of things that make you paranoid about the world+dog having access to everything.
If it's not outright surveillance it's accidental. If not by design then by lack of design. A bug, a user error, a missed setting, a weak password etc.
*puts on tin foil hat*
Screw this, I'm going somewhere, underground, without electricity or things that need it. Log that.
Eventually there will be more and more censorship of the internet, it's already happening and cannot be stopped.
In truth that battle for "internet freedom" is a pointless fight. Like all censorship it will never be absolute, it will always fail.
People will always find ways around censorship. If I cannot speak my mind on your site, I will go elsewhere.
Of course I would argue that if you cannot bear to read thoughts which go completely against your beliefs it should not be me that has to make a change. If we were neighbors, which on the internet we might as well be because distance becomes less relevant for the purposes of communication, would I have to be considerate? of course. Would you have to respect my rights? you bet.
To my Saudi Arabia neighbors I can only say that if you don't like the neighborhood, move away. No one is forcing you to use the internet, facebook etc.
I don't get why they bothered, By the time anyone gets around to bothering with an exploit on a mass scale Firefox 17 would have been released.
Besides, who really wants to know I visit "extra lunch money" on a daily basis?
While they are still making profit, unlike nokia, I believe they have gambled on the wrong feature. I love my HTC One X, but seriously, who makes use of a quad 1.5Ghz CPU in a phone? True, this is not a server chip, but I'm pretty sure a dual core would have been more than sufficient.
In my opinion it would make more sense to have sleeker user interface features, more battery life and or better camera etc.
So between the software lock-in "features" of IOS & the superior implementation and marketing of Samsung the third player loses because they are competing for the same segment.
Who knows, maybe windows will save it. At least it will be different and not easily comparable. A different quality product would not necessarily compete for the same customers.
Give us usability, cross device sync, larger than 2GB file support, playback of popular.mkv formats, give us the option to remove "features" we do not want...the list goes on, there is real room to innovate here, if there wasn't why are there so many mods for android out there?
Unlimited storage for $5/mo? I have to get on this shit.
Website says $3.96/m for unlimited data.
Something tells me this business model will not survive without some serious bandwidth limitations. After all, if you upload is limited to 100mb then you ability to (non commercially) fill Terabytes of data is limited.
Richard Stallman, often considered a nutcase, once said that he won't use a cell phone because he does not want to be tracked.
Whether by design, by accident or by the nature of the device, the fact is you can be tracked. Of course I don't care about that, because I have nothing to hide...then again what will this information be/is used for? big brother stuff, of course not!? Naturally, it's all just a big misunderstanding.
We'll use European cars that already get that sort of milage!
Not sure if Americans know, but cars in the US are stupidly large for no good reason. Might help the fuel bills to get a smaller, more practical car.
Oh yeah, some people in the US are stupidly large, for no good reason either. Might help food bills...
What the heck has this guy been smoking? it must have been phenomenal. Average life expectancy of a hobbit? is the the sort of hobbit that has a healthy lifestyle, balanced diet and regular exercise? do they drink yakult?! does that factor in dark lords and undead agents?
Beyond the smoke I can see talk of Dragon paleontology, maybe for a slot next month.
What's next on the agenda, Nazgul Kamasutra? how about some Elven Feng shui??
Why don't you get out of your mother's basement and speak to real people! heck you might even get to know some.
1. Target audience, we're less prone to being polite and conform to social norms with strangers. Simply put, in a forum full of nicknames and no physical connection with the people behind those nicknames we often don't care what they think.
2. Anonymity, there's no consequence to behaving badly/rudely. In fact some people are encouraged they managed to upset another person.
3. Motivation, often when a person is confronted with a similar pattern or argument they would opt to dismiss it, as quickly and as long lasting as possible. This often happens with rehashed debates when people simply give up or excuse themselves from having to explain or repeat. They resort to an emotional response, anger, trolling or ridicule. Often a mix of a few things.
So it regresses to a response that may be useless to one person and more useful to the person responding. Instead of wasting their time hearing something they disagree with people want their beliefs reinforced, not challenged. This is doubly true if the challenge is obviously flawed or flat out wrong.
So more often than not, when someone asks a question that has an obvious answer, is flawed etc someone will make fun of it. A social currency if you will, I have taken time to consider your words, you have said something I deem foolish, I wasted my time but have made fun of you as to at least derive satisfaction. right, wrong, moral or not.
It also allows some people to get attention. This is especially easy if they are consistently funny and other users read their responses, jokes, input, trolling etc.
4. Medium, The way we process written language differs to the way we process verbal language. Typing often allows you to put down raw thoughts that you later revise, edit and refine. When we speak we often think twice about what we are saying, to whom and how that may sound to them.
Conveying emotion is text is much harder, there is no tone of voice, no pitch, volume, pronunciation or accent etc.
5. Human nature, being rude, trolling, it may be a form of rough play. I believe it is imperative that some people experience some of that rough play, it's character building and will allow them to understand they are not a special and unique snow flake that happened to be the 8th winner, their just dumb, fat and live in their mother's basement.
I wanted to highlight fine points about Diablo 3's shortcomings but in the end I can only say this:
I am buying torchlight 2.
P.S.
I hope the money coming in will make torchlight 3 the game Diablo never managed to be.
As the saying goes. Why don't we continue to run candidates in parallel to SHA-2 usage and when there are signs that SHA-2 is about to be compromised or obsolete we'll just switch to whatever candidate was the best afterwards.
Naturally if SHA-3 is significantly better in speed, security and compression etc then we have already made SHA-2 obsolete and need not wait until it "breaks".
My two pence.
This is a prime example of cognitive dissonance and personal bias. People are biased in their own favor to the point where decisions and even memories will be reconstructed to agree with themselves.
Assuming a person is fooled into thinking a past decision was purely their own; what happens when a person has to explain something he does not remember? he makes it up!
It's sort of a basic "Oh it was my idea so I must be right" and the smarter the person the more elaborate the explanation around it will be.
Personally I believe that it is this sort of situation that should make one question an idea he himself has thought up even "intuition". It's surprising that people assume/are biased that just because a thought occurred to them it must be somehow more correct.
Apples has never been more successful, surely they are doing something right.
It may be the case that the next "criticism" waved at apple will be maniacally laughed off.
Sure, IF the did X then Y would happen. Yeah, we're all smarter in retrospect.
My take on it is that Knight of the old republic was a single player game, a brilliant one at that. KOTR 2 was a half finished mess, but with fan edits & mods (and the eventual remake now on steam) it can be pretty good at times...
Now, following that, what made them think that that success of a single player game will directly translate to an MMORPG?
Better yet, how did they think they will manage to get all those users in a saturated market when they are not pack leader in terms of features and gameplay?
I for one never wanted this online star wars multiplayer thing. I wanted a KOTR 3 that is as well made as the first one. I wanted THAT game, something tells me I wasn't alone.
SWTOR just did not deliver that.
Finally, after years of waiting, I can have the same console, that does the same things in a smaller package.
Thank you Sony. thank you for thinking about the user.
Let's just give people an option in their web browsers to filter content. Perhaps a similar option to "do not track" we can have a "stick head in the sand" option?
Perhaps better described as; "If I can't see you you can't see me too"
On a more serious google is a multinational business. As a business it must protect its revenue. A good business knows better than to anger it's customers. When you will anger them anyways, you choose the lesser of two evils. Perfectly understandable on their part.
Besides, the people that really want to see the video will find a way.
About the video...yes the video is intentionally provocative and at the same time it does not preach violence. It makes a mockery of a religion.
I'm not a scholar of Islam but I am told that a Muslim must always try to represent Islam in a positive manner. If anything such an approach would lead one to behave in a manner that was better.
Is this how those people hat are burning flags and embassies want to represent Islam? will this lead people to respect your beliefs?
Just because some people believe in some unicorns does not mean it's special. Does not mean it demands respect. Heck it can be a genuine fact based belief and still would be made fun of.
I believe that humor is the real offense to totalitarian regimes, the real danger to unilateral and undisputed rule.
The irony is that if Nicola Roxon posted this on twitter it would have had to be removed due to trolling.
Because really, how do you draw the line between trolling and comments you dislike or anger you and your fat mother?
They really had an opportunity here. What would be cooler than a bald eagle with a shiny carbon-fiber-and-titanium beak? Maybe make him some razor sharp metal talons too. That would give the poachers pause!
This one was never to be one of metal-beak's tytos. His gizzard is better than that!
Slashdot Mirror
I started off writing this with; "While I have great respect and admiration for Linus I seriously doubt that having one unilateral "decision maker" is an advantage..."
After some thought it turned into; "Sure there is always a slow-down due to additional debate when there is more than one person at the helm however, when they reach a consensus and fail they will not be able to pinpoint the guilty party.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you have a wagon and that's pulled by 10 horses that's great, as long as they all pull in the same direction.
Given widespread surveillance, by law or otherwise it will and has driven people to encrypt all traffic. My traffic is like my mail. You cannot look into every letter just because you suspect copyright infringement. You need a court order allowing you to pry into my mail. I do not like people reading my mail, even if I am only wishing my mother happy birthday. It's none of your business. Encrypt your mail/communications. Private means private. I rent a mail service from my ISP, to deliver the friggin mail, not to read it at the behest of greedy, ignorant bastards.
It's these sort of things that make you paranoid about the world+dog having access to everything. If it's not outright surveillance it's accidental. If not by design then by lack of design. A bug, a user error, a missed setting, a weak password etc. *puts on tin foil hat* Screw this, I'm going somewhere, underground, without electricity or things that need it. Log that.
The reasons for censorship are irrelevant.
Eventually there will be more and more censorship of the internet, it's already happening and cannot be stopped.
In truth that battle for "internet freedom" is a pointless fight. Like all censorship it will never be absolute, it will always fail.
People will always find ways around censorship. If I cannot speak my mind on your site, I will go elsewhere.
Of course I would argue that if you cannot bear to read thoughts which go completely against your beliefs it should not be me that has to make a change. If we were neighbors, which on the internet we might as well be because distance becomes less relevant for the purposes of communication, would I have to be considerate? of course. Would you have to respect my rights? you bet.
To my Saudi Arabia neighbors I can only say that if you don't like the neighborhood, move away. No one is forcing you to use the internet, facebook etc.
I don't get why they bothered, By the time anyone gets around to bothering with an exploit on a mass scale Firefox 17 would have been released. Besides, who really wants to know I visit "extra lunch money" on a daily basis?
While they are still making profit, unlike nokia, I believe they have gambled on the wrong feature. I love my HTC One X, but seriously, who makes use of a quad 1.5Ghz CPU in a phone? True, this is not a server chip, but I'm pretty sure a dual core would have been more than sufficient.
In my opinion it would make more sense to have sleeker user interface features, more battery life and or better camera etc.
So between the software lock-in "features" of IOS & the superior implementation and marketing of Samsung the third player loses because they are competing for the same segment.
Who knows, maybe windows will save it. At least it will be different and not easily comparable. A different quality product would not necessarily compete for the same customers.
Give us usability, cross device sync, larger than 2GB file support, playback of popular
Unlimited storage for $5/mo? I have to get on this shit.
Website says $3.96/m for unlimited data. Something tells me this business model will not survive without some serious bandwidth limitations. After all, if you upload is limited to 100mb then you ability to (non commercially) fill Terabytes of data is limited.
Richard Stallman, often considered a nutcase, once said that he won't use a cell phone because he does not want to be tracked.
Whether by design, by accident or by the nature of the device, the fact is you can be tracked. Of course I don't care about that, because I have nothing to hide...then again what will this information be/is used for? big brother stuff, of course not!? Naturally, it's all just a big misunderstanding.
We'll use European cars that already get that sort of milage! Not sure if Americans know, but cars in the US are stupidly large for no good reason. Might help the fuel bills to get a smaller, more practical car. Oh yeah, some people in the US are stupidly large, for no good reason either. Might help food bills...
What the heck has this guy been smoking? it must have been phenomenal. Average life expectancy of a hobbit? is the the sort of hobbit that has a healthy lifestyle, balanced diet and regular exercise? do they drink yakult?! does that factor in dark lords and undead agents?
Beyond the smoke I can see talk of Dragon paleontology, maybe for a slot next month.
What's next on the agenda, Nazgul Kamasutra? how about some Elven Feng shui??
Why don't you get out of your mother's basement and speak to real people! heck you might even get to know some.
While it may be in extremely bad taste this opens the door to some very grey areas.
After all, how can you measure how offended I am? sure people would appeal to things like "common sense" perhaps "civility" and "morals".
The problem only becomes apparent when people start to realize that , morals are made up and really what offends you will not necessarily offend me.
What I see as funny you may not agree with, to jail people over things which offend in my opinion borders on madness.
I wonder if this sort of nonsense is how they ultimately began public stoning, witch burning.
1. Target audience, we're less prone to being polite and conform to social norms with strangers. Simply put, in a forum full of nicknames and no physical connection with the people behind those nicknames we often don't care what they think.
2. Anonymity, there's no consequence to behaving badly/rudely. In fact some people are encouraged they managed to upset another person.
3. Motivation, often when a person is confronted with a similar pattern or argument they would opt to dismiss it, as quickly and as long lasting as possible. This often happens with rehashed debates when people simply give up or excuse themselves from having to explain or repeat. They resort to an emotional response, anger, trolling or ridicule. Often a mix of a few things.
So it regresses to a response that may be useless to one person and more useful to the person responding. Instead of wasting their time hearing something they disagree with people want their beliefs reinforced, not challenged. This is doubly true if the challenge is obviously flawed or flat out wrong.
So more often than not, when someone asks a question that has an obvious answer, is flawed etc someone will make fun of it. A social currency if you will, I have taken time to consider your words, you have said something I deem foolish, I wasted my time but have made fun of you as to at least derive satisfaction. right, wrong, moral or not.
It also allows some people to get attention. This is especially easy if they are consistently funny and other users read their responses, jokes, input, trolling etc.
4. Medium, The way we process written language differs to the way we process verbal language. Typing often allows you to put down raw thoughts that you later revise, edit and refine. When we speak we often think twice about what we are saying, to whom and how that may sound to them.
Conveying emotion is text is much harder, there is no tone of voice, no pitch, volume, pronunciation or accent etc.
5. Human nature, being rude, trolling, it may be a form of rough play. I believe it is imperative that some people experience some of that rough play, it's character building and will allow them to understand they are not a special and unique snow flake that happened to be the 8th winner, their just dumb, fat and live in their mother's basement.
You think this is a privacy win? think again!
If your employer wants your Facebook details he'll have to pay Facebook like everyone else. No more shortcuts!
I wanted to highlight fine points about Diablo 3's shortcomings but in the end I can only say this: I am buying torchlight 2. P.S. I hope the money coming in will make torchlight 3 the game Diablo never managed to be.
As the saying goes. Why don't we continue to run candidates in parallel to SHA-2 usage and when there are signs that SHA-2 is about to be compromised or obsolete we'll just switch to whatever candidate was the best afterwards. Naturally if SHA-3 is significantly better in speed, security and compression etc then we have already made SHA-2 obsolete and need not wait until it "breaks". My two pence.
Noteworthy: over the next 50 years my anxiety will rise 1-2% about it.
This is a prime example of cognitive dissonance and personal bias. People are biased in their own favor to the point where decisions and even memories will be reconstructed to agree with themselves.
Assuming a person is fooled into thinking a past decision was purely their own; what happens when a person has to explain something he does not remember? he makes it up!
It's sort of a basic "Oh it was my idea so I must be right" and the smarter the person the more elaborate the explanation around it will be.
Personally I believe that it is this sort of situation that should make one question an idea he himself has thought up even "intuition". It's surprising that people assume/are biased that just because a thought occurred to them it must be somehow more correct.
Apples has never been more successful, surely they are doing something right. It may be the case that the next "criticism" waved at apple will be maniacally laughed off.
Sure, IF the did X then Y would happen. Yeah, we're all smarter in retrospect. My take on it is that Knight of the old republic was a single player game, a brilliant one at that. KOTR 2 was a half finished mess, but with fan edits & mods (and the eventual remake now on steam) it can be pretty good at times... Now, following that, what made them think that that success of a single player game will directly translate to an MMORPG? Better yet, how did they think they will manage to get all those users in a saturated market when they are not pack leader in terms of features and gameplay? I for one never wanted this online star wars multiplayer thing. I wanted a KOTR 3 that is as well made as the first one. I wanted THAT game, something tells me I wasn't alone. SWTOR just did not deliver that.
Finally, after years of waiting, I can have the same console, that does the same things in a smaller package. Thank you Sony. thank you for thinking about the user.
*ahem*
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/17/0156230/how-the-critics-of-the-apollo-program-were-proven-wrong
*cough* You didn't follow the link, did you. *cough*
It would be far wiser If they just spend all those millions on poverty programs.
Let's just give people an option in their web browsers to filter content. Perhaps a similar option to "do not track" we can have a "stick head in the sand" option?
Perhaps better described as; "If I can't see you you can't see me too"
On a more serious google is a multinational business. As a business it must protect its revenue. A good business knows better than to anger it's customers. When you will anger them anyways, you choose the lesser of two evils. Perfectly understandable on their part.
Besides, the people that really want to see the video will find a way.
About the video...yes the video is intentionally provocative and at the same time it does not preach violence. It makes a mockery of a religion.
I'm not a scholar of Islam but I am told that a Muslim must always try to represent Islam in a positive manner. If anything such an approach would lead one to behave in a manner that was better.
Is this how those people hat are burning flags and embassies want to represent Islam? will this lead people to respect your beliefs?
Just because some people believe in some unicorns does not mean it's special. Does not mean it demands respect. Heck it can be a genuine fact based belief and still would be made fun of.
I believe that humor is the real offense to totalitarian regimes, the real danger to unilateral and undisputed rule.
The irony is that if Nicola Roxon posted this on twitter it would have had to be removed due to trolling. Because really, how do you draw the line between trolling and comments you dislike or anger you and your fat mother?
They really had an opportunity here. What would be cooler than a bald eagle with a shiny carbon-fiber-and-titanium beak? Maybe make him some razor sharp metal talons too. That would give the poachers pause!
This one was never to be one of metal-beak's tytos. His gizzard is better than that!