Every year or more often, it seems, we have yet another jaw-droppingly fascist and Orwellian proposition to fight.
Some wrinkly old dipshit psychopath completely disconnected from reality, at the behest of his (or her, but mostly his) corporate cronies, makes some astoundingly malevolent proposition to sacrifice the rights of everyone but himself and selected entitled individuals. We then have to step up and expend an enormous amount of time and energy battling to retain the rights we should be able to take for granted. Time and energy that could otherwise be used constructively.
If this becomes a big enough threat, the response needs to be alike to that of SOPA. Even after the people won, they rubbed it in: practically half the web went dark and DC went batshit. It's been little more than a year since then, have they already forgotten or has the dark lens of pure evil blinded them that much?
Wait, what? Are you sure "unlocking" doesn't actually refer to the cellular communication and not the operating system? They're completely different things.
Criminalizing either one is asinine, but at least locking the communication system to one carrier during the contract period makes an ever-so-slight amount of sense.
I've always thought it was a quite a messy hack, trying to develop AI to the point of recognizing the infinite possible variations of roadways, traffic, control systems, etc.
The correct way to do it would be to install digital beacons (solar powered?) along every road with a failsafe communication protocol that always assumes failure until it confirms normal operation.
Yes, I realize this would be out of Google's hands (or would at least require a lot of paperwork that the AI doesn't) and would take an enormous effort, but it would be the correct way, nonetheless... and not to mention, offer a whole lot closer to 0% collision rate.
So you're saying that it's unlikely the government could be acting vindictively at the behest of their corporate cronies? They're kind of known for doing that.
Indeed the hardware is there and is capable, but it's only half of the equation. The other half is software, which is where Microsoft still has the upper hand.
Mobile software still sucks for anything but consumption. Apps are so crippled and limited that I struggle to call them "apps" more so than I do "applets".
Don't forget: also get rid of those retarded "charms" mouseovers and all the gaudy Metro infestations into the desktop interface (WinKey+TAB, network connection management, etc.)
Honestly, their best move at this point would be to fork 8 and call it Windows Tablet, then build SP2 for 7 and call it 9.
No, it's because you are *far* more likely to be a victim of government oppression than you are of a terrorist attack.
See: NSA warrantless wiretapping, the TSA, stingray phone communication interception with a warrant obtained on deceitful premise, increasingly violent LEOs, a myriad of ways you can be in violation of laws you aren't even allowed to know exist...
Isn't it sad that the first thought I have after, "those poor people, I hope they're OK!", is, " Oh, great, *now* what civil rights is the US government going to shit all over?"
Indeed, they do. It's basically a catch-all enabling anyone with a modicum of power effect a bullshit charge on literally anything their imagination can conjure up, to be against any minor "inconvenience" who isn't technically doing anything illegal.
I read a really good article a while ago on why this such an incredibly bad law, I wish I could find it. But all it takes is a quick Google News search for the term "ASBO" and you'll find out for yourself quite easily.
"You're having a dispute with your neighbor. How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial video camera that they can point in your general direction from their backyard? It just watches your house all day. How would you feel about it?... I'm not going to pass judgment on whether constant surveillance should exist, but I would prefer to not spread and democratize the ability to record video to every single human being. It's got to be regulated... It's one thing for governments, who have some legitimacy in what they're doing, but have other people doing it... it's not going to happen."
Indeed, there's little reason for anyone to buy a new PC anymore. I'm typing this up on a Core Duo 1.8Ghz with 3GB RAM. It's maybe not as snappy as my primary machine with an i7 and 8GB and awesome switchable VGAs, but it's still sufficiently capable for web dev and graphic design and certainly any office tasks. But I have a hard time believing that Windows 8 as no role in this... it's a massive dose of WTF is this shit?
Then enter the proliferation of tablets and smartphones, and suddenly a lot of people have no reason to own a fully-fledged computer. Why buy an over-featured device that will just add complication? If all you need is something for email and dicking around on FaceTwitstagramtrest, a tablet or smartphone is all you need. They are devices with interfaces designed for consumption with little interference of features. This is why mobile software mostly sucks and desktop software is so much more fully-featured. They are necessarily limited by their interfaces.
If PC makers expect to live through this transition, they need to refocus their efforts to users who actually use their computers as computers, not glorified TV sets. No more shiny-ass, overstyled, glitzy shit laptops would be a nice start, ie.: go back to making this tidy, understated and decidedly square, business-looking sort of thing, stop removing useful features, give us the form factor we actually want and stop making the godawful shiny, plasticky lumps of crippled shit that laptops are today.
Oh, and please, please, PLEASE give us our 7-row desktop-style keyboards back! How does anyone actually manage to get anything done on these bullshit 6-row monstrosities?
What programs? Their web browser? Word processor and spreadsheet? Graphics viewers and editors? VOIP software? Right, because Linux doesn't have any of those things.
And hardware support has gotten *way* better. The only hardware that doesn't work, at least sufficiently, is fringe and obscure.
And guess what? Most users *are* lightweight and spend all their time in the browser.
Petty much this. The only reason I upgraded to an i7 is because my 5-year-old C2D was dying and I needed something now before it gave out completely. $50 for new heatsink and fan assemblies and now it's my Netflix machine... and also backup machine in case I need to send in my new one for warranty work.
But that's the point: if my new laptop becomes unavailable, the old one can still do everything I need it to. Maybe not quite as quickly or instantaneously, but an SSD would change that.
Really, you only need the latest if you're doing CAD work, video editing, high end gaming and the like... but if you are, you already knew that.
What if you mount it to the windshield and use it as and like a GPS device?
It essentially *is* a GPS device in this case, though I would hardly be shocked to find that courts and LEOs are too technologically unsophisticated to understand this simile.
A flashy UI that is actually very nice, very useful in many ways (Aero peek, preview, etc.) and doesn't look like Microsoft subcontracted PlaySkool to design it.
File operations that actually handle errors properly instead of just, "aw, fuck it, there's one error in a copy operation of a thousand files, I'll just drop them all..."
Much improved dealing with unpredictable loads by somewhat separating the UI with background processes (try loading an explorer window with a bunch of mapped drives on XP, then try it on 7)
Drag-n-snap Windows to and from screen edges for quick resizing and Windows that can't be lost off-screen.
I'm know there are more I've forgotten and have yet to discover. I actually used XP until earlier this year and I was reluctant to switch for a while, especially in the early days with bad driver support. But I had worked on enough customer PCs to know that I'd be able to get used to it, and I'm glad I switched.
We (are supposed to) have standards for this kind of thing. There's no technological reason that this shouldn't work, therefore no reason it shouldn't work. Anything else is bureaucratic, dick wagging horseshit.
Everyone has different "feelings" about other people using their computer. I see my computer as an extension of myself because it contains my job and so much of my life.
Anyone who uses my computer only ever does so for a very short time and only under my constant supervision.
Maybe it's because I don't run A/V and I disable UAC as I find them annoying as hell. My computers have never had an infection or been compromised... because I'm not retarded with how I use my computer.
My advice is to setup an open and isolated AP and tell people to BYOD. You can do this with a dual-channel router or by throwing dd-wrt on any compatible router you can find on eBay for $20.
If you *must* let people onto your PC, put them in a sandboxed, non-persistent VM and set it to full screen. Make the VM "let me back into the host system" combination something that they'll never press.
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Every year or more often, it seems, we have yet another jaw-droppingly fascist and Orwellian proposition to fight.
Some wrinkly old dipshit psychopath completely disconnected from reality, at the behest of his (or her, but mostly his) corporate cronies, makes some astoundingly malevolent proposition to sacrifice the rights of everyone but himself and selected entitled individuals. We then have to step up and expend an enormous amount of time and energy battling to retain the rights we should be able to take for granted. Time and energy that could otherwise be used constructively.
If this becomes a big enough threat, the response needs to be alike to that of SOPA. Even after the people won, they rubbed it in: practically half the web went dark and DC went batshit. It's been little more than a year since then, have they already forgotten or has the dark lens of pure evil blinded them that much?
I'll take the "attack risk" every day that ends in Y far sooner than I'll accept the "corporate control" risk, thank you very much.
Wait, what? Are you sure "unlocking" doesn't actually refer to the cellular communication and not the operating system? They're completely different things.
Criminalizing either one is asinine, but at least locking the communication system to one carrier during the contract period makes an ever-so-slight amount of sense.
I've always thought it was a quite a messy hack, trying to develop AI to the point of recognizing the infinite possible variations of roadways, traffic, control systems, etc.
The correct way to do it would be to install digital beacons (solar powered?) along every road with a failsafe communication protocol that always assumes failure until it confirms normal operation.
Yes, I realize this would be out of Google's hands (or would at least require a lot of paperwork that the AI doesn't) and would take an enormous effort, but it would be the correct way, nonetheless ... and not to mention, offer a whole lot closer to 0% collision rate.
So you're saying that it's unlikely the government could be acting vindictively at the behest of their corporate cronies? They're kind of known for doing that.
Indeed the hardware is there and is capable, but it's only half of the equation. The other half is software, which is where Microsoft still has the upper hand.
Mobile software still sucks for anything but consumption. Apps are so crippled and limited that I struggle to call them "apps" more so than I do "applets".
These are exactly the dangers I intended to convey when I submitted this story.
DRM has no place in web standards and these points clarify precisely why it's so dangerous.
Wait, what? Did you just slander the TrackPoint?
HERESY, BURN HIM AT THE STAKE!!
Don't forget: also get rid of those retarded "charms" mouseovers and all the gaudy Metro infestations into the desktop interface (WinKey+TAB, network connection management, etc.)
Honestly, their best move at this point would be to fork 8 and call it Windows Tablet, then build SP2 for 7 and call it 9.
No, it's because you are *far* more likely to be a victim of government oppression than you are of a terrorist attack.
See: NSA warrantless wiretapping, the TSA, stingray phone communication interception with a warrant obtained on deceitful premise, increasingly violent LEOs, a myriad of ways you can be in violation of laws you aren't even allowed to know exist...
Isn't it sad that the first thought I have after, "those poor people, I hope they're OK!", is, " Oh, great, *now* what civil rights is the US government going to shit all over?"
Just use Twitter!
And how much energy does it take to make, say, minted currencies? Surely many orders of magnitude more...
Indeed, they do. It's basically a catch-all enabling anyone with a modicum of power effect a bullshit charge on literally anything their imagination can conjure up, to be against any minor "inconvenience" who isn't technically doing anything illegal.
I read a really good article a while ago on why this such an incredibly bad law, I wish I could find it. But all it takes is a quick Google News search for the term "ASBO" and you'll find out for yourself quite easily.
"You're having a dispute with your neighbor. How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial video camera that they can point in your general direction from their backyard? It just watches your house all day. How would you feel about it? ... I'm not going to pass judgment on whether constant surveillance should exist, but I would prefer to not spread and democratize the ability to record video to every single human being. It's got to be regulated... It's one thing for governments, who have some legitimacy in what they're doing, but have other people doing it... it's not going to happen."
Windows 8 sucks so much, it can lift matter back past the event horizon of a black hole.
Best Windows 8 summary ever.
Indeed, there's little reason for anyone to buy a new PC anymore. I'm typing this up on a Core Duo 1.8Ghz with 3GB RAM. It's maybe not as snappy as my primary machine with an i7 and 8GB and awesome switchable VGAs, but it's still sufficiently capable for web dev and graphic design and certainly any office tasks. But I have a hard time believing that Windows 8 as no role in this ... it's a massive dose of WTF is this shit?
Then enter the proliferation of tablets and smartphones, and suddenly a lot of people have no reason to own a fully-fledged computer. Why buy an over-featured device that will just add complication? If all you need is something for email and dicking around on FaceTwitstagramtrest, a tablet or smartphone is all you need. They are devices with interfaces designed for consumption with little interference of features. This is why mobile software mostly sucks and desktop software is so much more fully-featured. They are necessarily limited by their interfaces.
If PC makers expect to live through this transition, they need to refocus their efforts to users who actually use their computers as computers, not glorified TV sets. No more shiny-ass, overstyled, glitzy shit laptops would be a nice start, ie.: go back to making this tidy, understated and decidedly square, business-looking sort of thing, stop removing useful features, give us the form factor we actually want and stop making the godawful shiny, plasticky lumps of crippled shit that laptops are today.
Oh, and please, please, PLEASE give us our 7-row desktop-style keyboards back! How does anyone actually manage to get anything done on these bullshit 6-row monstrosities?
What programs? Their web browser? Word processor and spreadsheet? Graphics viewers and editors? VOIP software? Right, because Linux doesn't have any of those things.
And hardware support has gotten *way* better. The only hardware that doesn't work, at least sufficiently, is fringe and obscure.
And guess what? Most users *are* lightweight and spend all their time in the browser.
Petty much this. The only reason I upgraded to an i7 is because my 5-year-old C2D was dying and I needed something now before it gave out completely. $50 for new heatsink and fan assemblies and now it's my Netflix machine ... and also backup machine in case I need to send in my new one for warranty work.
But that's the point: if my new laptop becomes unavailable, the old one can still do everything I need it to. Maybe not quite as quickly or instantaneously, but an SSD would change that.
Really, you only need the latest if you're doing CAD work, video editing, high end gaming and the like ... but if you are, you already knew that.
If we are all in autonomous vehicles, why do we need traffic laws?
What if you mount it to the windshield and use it as and like a GPS device?
It essentially *is* a GPS device in this case, though I would hardly be shocked to find that courts and LEOs are too technologically unsophisticated to understand this simile.
Nobody. They call you.
This is Windows support calling, your system has an infection.
A flashy UI that is actually very nice, very useful in many ways (Aero peek, preview, etc.) and doesn't look like Microsoft subcontracted PlaySkool to design it.
File operations that actually handle errors properly instead of just, "aw, fuck it, there's one error in a copy operation of a thousand files, I'll just drop them all..."
Much improved dealing with unpredictable loads by somewhat separating the UI with background processes (try loading an explorer window with a bunch of mapped drives on XP, then try it on 7)
Drag-n-snap Windows to and from screen edges for quick resizing and Windows that can't be lost off-screen.
I'm know there are more I've forgotten and have yet to discover. I actually used XP until earlier this year and I was reluctant to switch for a while, especially in the early days with bad driver support. But I had worked on enough customer PCs to know that I'd be able to get used to it, and I'm glad I switched.
We (are supposed to) have standards for this kind of thing. There's no technological reason that this shouldn't work, therefore no reason it shouldn't work. Anything else is bureaucratic, dick wagging horseshit.
Everyone has different "feelings" about other people using their computer. I see my computer as an extension of myself because it contains my job and so much of my life.
Anyone who uses my computer only ever does so for a very short time and only under my constant supervision.
Maybe it's because I don't run A/V and I disable UAC as I find them annoying as hell. My computers have never had an infection or been compromised ... because I'm not retarded with how I use my computer.
My advice is to setup an open and isolated AP and tell people to BYOD. You can do this with a dual-channel router or by throwing dd-wrt on any compatible router you can find on eBay for $20.
If you *must* let people onto your PC, put them in a sandboxed, non-persistent VM and set it to full screen. Make the VM "let me back into the host system" combination something that they'll never press.