Maybe. Maybe, just like the writers of that Black Mirror episode, they realized how crazy people can get about virtual points on the internet and how easily it can shape human behaviour when those virtual points are at stake. On sites like Reddit or Imgur it's called the "hive mind", where dissent is downvoted into 'oblivion'. Here on Slashdot itself it's not too different.
And what makes it even scarier is findings like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/e... which I can confirm from personal experience. Disliked contributions are more likely to be disliked and liked contributions are more likely to be liked regardless of their content.
Invulnerabilities of the Security Processor had been reported to AMD last year by researchers from Google. Apparently AMD found a workaround by letting people disable the entire PSP. Considering that both the "Masterkey" and "Ryzenfall" vulnerability groups allegedly depend on exploiting the PSP, these problems already appear to be fixed by AMD, somewhat.
So if someone with a Ryzen is concerned there's something they can do about it.
Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.c...
Sure they didn't have to disclose them to the public. But to be honest I still prefer this than them keeping it for themselves or perhaps selling it to some intelligence agency without telling anyone else. I mean they probably have already. But by telling the public the consumers can pressure the manufacturer to change something in the future. For example I'm not fond of that Secure Processor thing in itself and would not mind if both Intel and AMD ditched such implementations altogether.
Of course this is assuming that these security flaws are real and not made up.
What? Give people some control back over the software they've boug... err let people pirate the multi-player? Are you mad?
I mean there's still a lot of games around that use P2P networks between the clients for multi-player. A lot of console games do it, where the connection to an actual server is only for things like game statistics. Even modern MMO type games do it. Take Elite: Dangerous as an example, there they do it most likely to cut server costs. But it's still an always online game. The offline mode they've promised during their kickstarter campaign got scrapped most likely for DRM purposes. If you didn't need the background simulation in that game, and for a lot of players it is almost utterly irrelevant, it would be able to run in a P2P fashion in your own LAN.
In University I learned that an electric current is a flow of charged particles. Particles like electrons, protons and all kinds of ions like hadrons for example. It does not matter in what medium the motion happens. It may happen in solids like copper, liquids like acidic water, gasses like air (lightning) and of course by exentision ionized plasmas (lightning). It even happens in a vacuum which is evident by the electron current that flows through vacuum tubes that we've used for many decades in electronics.
So if a relativistic jet is comprised of ionized particles by definition it represents an electric current.
Blocking Gutenberg is really the only thing that Germany could actively do in such a case. And Germany has no leverage here, because Gutenberg is not dependent on doing business with Germany. And as far as I know American companies also do hold the rights for the titles that are published there, hence it's not an actual case of copyright infringement if they choose to reduce the prices to 0. So Gutenberg went ahead and blocked them - good move Project Gutenberg. And I say that as a German.
Since you're talking about "not the one and only cause" - there's a lot more factors to it than just gun ownership and video game violence if you want to compare the society in the USA and the Netherlands or Europe in general. I mean even in Czechia where the gun laws are extremely lax for an EU country gun related crime is considerably lower than in the USA.
Do you have any evidence for that? I mean for the 40+ against teens. I don't doubt that you don't do that well with thumbsticks as I've got my problems with them either (34). I do well with full sized joysticks, even when using one in each hand, which is what it takes when you play modern space sims with 6DoF flight.
But I also play a bit of RTS and FPS games and know from experience that there's a high number of young players that do pretty well. It's especially true for those games that mostly favour twitch gameplay and are less focused on tactical thinking and or teamwork.
Where things could become problematic for teens is when they're mostly used to touchsceen input and sitting comfortable on a sofa or couch. They may not do very well with KB+M or full sized joysticks until they develop their motor memory for those devices.
Yes, behaviour is complex. Cultural and also somewhat racial effects have to be taken notice of, since your genetics also play some role in your hormone levels. And in the end it still comes down to a case by case issue because it is so complex.
However if this is ignored and we start singling out certain cultural influences on behaviour like video games and depict them as a culprit, we better have some data to back it up. Here the social sciences are still the best approach we got to the matter.
If it only was an argument. Unfortunately it's mostly a monologue and tons of fallacies on all sides because no rational argument can take place any more. There's been an article on/. about exactly this phenomenon. https://politics.slashdot.org/...
I'd really appreciate it if we could move back towards topics where rational thinking is not overshadowed by identity politics. But I also believe that hoping for this is a very naive thing.
Hence one cannot say that 'loot boxes' violate German laws, as each integration has to be evaluated as separate case.
Hence no blanket bans.
Anyway trading cards are pretty much in the same bracket. There you have the competitive nature of the game, which compels you to develop better tactics and strategies. That in itself was certainly a good aspect of the game, because it made you think. Unfortunately this often involves getting the proper cards for your deck, which costs money. Then there's also power creep where new cards are often made more useful in general then older cards. Hence you constantly have to buy new stuff in order to be competitive. In MtG for example you also have tournament formats where bans and restrictions may apply to older cards.
I played MtG during the 90s and early 2000s. Even then my friends and I realized that it was stupid to buy booster packs because of the low odds of getting the desired cards and the resulting costs. So we went to the comic book store and browsed their card catalogue to see what's good and bought cards individually. Later we would do the same over the internet.
At some point even that became too much of a rip off in my eyes. But since I was still interested in the tactical nature of the game I started to print out my own copies of official cards (proxies). Playing with friends was fine that way, but you won't find a lot of tournaments that allow you to do this. Eventually I just stopped.
It probably depends on the person to what degree the additional delays are noticeable. I suppose you can get used to it, like we were used to play things like Counter Strike with 200ms+ pings over dial up, but if you see the differences more directly the reduced responsiveness does lessen the enjoyment of fast paced games in my eyes.
I tried to stream Fallout 4, Skyrim and Prey (2017) through Steam to my notebook. I did it over Wifi within the same room and made sure that no other one was using the network. I can tell you that you probably would not like the additional latency that's added on top of all other latencies through streaming.
I'm not too optimistic with this technology. But of course it's the wet dream of copy right fanatics - the perfect form of DRM for software - so they're going to continue to push it.
Well, like I said, I find all of the political parties here idiotic. And every 4 years I get to choose the one that I think will cause the least harm to my country. It's silly, yes. But not as silly as the constant animosity and bickering between Democrats and Republicans looks from the outside.
I don't know who looks more delusional to me. Here in Germany we have dozens of political parties, six of which have prospects to be elected into the parliament. I find all of them very poor in pragmatism and rich in ideological nonsense. Looking at the two party system that has been in control of the US for a long time, and especially at people who subscribe to either side while (often) rejecting the other for the sake of opposition. Identity politics at its worst. It's miraculous that despite of this or perhaps as a result of this you've still got a functional country.
You've got it backwards. Just because everyone else does it, doesn't mean that it's suddenly not bad when China does it to YOU.
What kind of logic is that anyway? (Don't answer the question is rhetorical)
They do try to do that every couple of years. Fortunately the strong consumer protection lobbies in German are quick to sue over something like that. And because the German justice system still seems to work independently from the government, the courts have ruled virtually all of these technologies to be unconstitutional.
But who knows how long that will last.
Good that you've mentioned millennials here. It's one of those upvote generating buzzwords for people who can't be bothered with making more than just split decisions.
It's a hive mind with herd and mob mentality when it comes to the comment section. But I have to admit that it is not too far from what slashdot is nowadays, when I see strawman fallacies, false dichotomies, and whataboutism getting modded insightful.
The last time I checked ISP already have all the rights to block/throttle the distribution of unlawful content. See: https://transition.fcc.gov/Dai... page 49.
Further, the no-blocking rule adopted today again applies to transmissions of lawful content and does not prevent or restrict a broadband provider
from refusing to transmit unlawful material, such as child pornography or copyright-infringing materials.
So what's up with these claims that the FCC is 'finally' going up against copyright-infringement?
We've been having a very similar situation here in Germany for quite some time with the fields of business administration - where a higher education is basically free (the tuitions people have to pay are usually negligible like
It's been the go-to for school graduates who didn't know what to do with their lives but wanted to have a higher degree in something that can possibly make a lot of money. However Universities adapted for the influx not by implementing failure rates that force 70% of the students out of class, so that only the best remain, but by increasing the number of possible seats. Which resulted in thousands of BA bachelor degrees and masters (to some extend). All that in an economy that cries for qualified (blue collar) workers and engineers and already had plenty of managers. Well wasted tax money if you ask me, which makes me think that subsidizing all education is not a good idea in the end.
Yes, and also no. There's certainly the PC movement that pushes for censorship. I find them to be a problem as well, but in this context, mentioning them is a red herring. When it comes to getting rid of services that make it more difficult to trace people through the internet, the biggest supporters would be those who have an interest in increased surveillance. Here in Germany we had ideas of installing spyware on the phones of immigrants, track their social network activities, internet searches and so forth - things that are unconstitutional, because those laws don't only apply to German citizens but humans in general. Of course it's justified because it is all in the name of the greater good, and it would only be used to protect the innocent people. Services and technologies like DNScrypt, VPNs, TOR, SSL are thorns in their side. Criticism is brushed aside because 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'. Fortunately the majority still doesn't see it that way in my country, but fear is a very strong motivator that may very well change things within the next decade.
You underestimate the fear of "terrorist" and "evil immigrants", which helped nationalistic authoritarians to rise to significant political power once again in Europe. Those fears seen to outweigh any moral high ground that could be gained by doing thing differently than Russia at the moment.
Perhaps you remember the Iconian Gateways that were seen in TNG and later in DS9 again.
Developed by an ancient race - the Iconians - who perished some 200,000 years ago. In both TNG and DS9 the technology was deemed to be too dangerous and therefore destroyed by the Starfleet officers respectively. If we can believe Memory Alpha as a reliable source of information on Star Trek, then the Iconians did make some kind of appearance in one of the Discovery episodes: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/... . Although I can neither confirm nor deny it personally.
So if you are willing to suspend your disbelief for the older Treks, is it so difficult to accept that they could have stumbled upon a similar technology in Discovery and might later abandon it for moralistic reasons?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe. Maybe, just like the writers of that Black Mirror episode, they realized how crazy people can get about virtual points on the internet and how easily it can shape human behaviour when those virtual points are at stake. On sites like Reddit or Imgur it's called the "hive mind", where dissent is downvoted into 'oblivion'. Here on Slashdot itself it's not too different.
And what makes it even scarier is findings like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/e... which I can confirm from personal experience. Disliked contributions are more likely to be disliked and liked contributions are more likely to be liked regardless of their content.
Well, I meant vulnerabilities there, not invulnerabilities.
Invulnerabilities of the Security Processor had been reported to AMD last year by researchers from Google. Apparently AMD found a workaround by letting people disable the entire PSP. Considering that both the "Masterkey" and "Ryzenfall" vulnerability groups allegedly depend on exploiting the PSP, these problems already appear to be fixed by AMD, somewhat.
So if someone with a Ryzen is concerned there's something they can do about it. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.c...
Sure they didn't have to disclose them to the public. But to be honest I still prefer this than them keeping it for themselves or perhaps selling it to some intelligence agency without telling anyone else. I mean they probably have already. But by telling the public the consumers can pressure the manufacturer to change something in the future. For example I'm not fond of that Secure Processor thing in itself and would not mind if both Intel and AMD ditched such implementations altogether.
Of course this is assuming that these security flaws are real and not made up.
What? Give people some control back over the software they've boug... err let people pirate the multi-player? Are you mad?
I mean there's still a lot of games around that use P2P networks between the clients for multi-player. A lot of console games do it, where the connection to an actual server is only for things like game statistics. Even modern MMO type games do it. Take Elite: Dangerous as an example, there they do it most likely to cut server costs. But it's still an always online game. The offline mode they've promised during their kickstarter campaign got scrapped most likely for DRM purposes. If you didn't need the background simulation in that game, and for a lot of players it is almost utterly irrelevant, it would be able to run in a P2P fashion in your own LAN.
In University I learned that an electric current is a flow of charged particles. Particles like electrons, protons and all kinds of ions like hadrons for example. It does not matter in what medium the motion happens. It may happen in solids like copper, liquids like acidic water, gasses like air (lightning) and of course by exentision ionized plasmas (lightning). It even happens in a vacuum which is evident by the electron current that flows through vacuum tubes that we've used for many decades in electronics.
So if a relativistic jet is comprised of ionized particles by definition it represents an electric current.
Blocking Gutenberg is really the only thing that Germany could actively do in such a case. And Germany has no leverage here, because Gutenberg is not dependent on doing business with Germany. And as far as I know American companies also do hold the rights for the titles that are published there, hence it's not an actual case of copyright infringement if they choose to reduce the prices to 0. So Gutenberg went ahead and blocked them - good move Project Gutenberg. And I say that as a German.
Since you're talking about "not the one and only cause" - there's a lot more factors to it than just gun ownership and video game violence if you want to compare the society in the USA and the Netherlands or Europe in general. I mean even in Czechia where the gun laws are extremely lax for an EU country gun related crime is considerably lower than in the USA.
Do you have any evidence for that? I mean for the 40+ against teens.
I don't doubt that you don't do that well with thumbsticks as I've got my problems with them either (34). I do well with full sized joysticks, even when using one in each hand, which is what it takes when you play modern space sims with 6DoF flight. But I also play a bit of RTS and FPS games and know from experience that there's a high number of young players that do pretty well. It's especially true for those games that mostly favour twitch gameplay and are less focused on tactical thinking and or teamwork.
Where things could become problematic for teens is when they're mostly used to touchsceen input and sitting comfortable on a sofa or couch. They may not do very well with KB+M or full sized joysticks until they develop their motor memory for those devices.
Yes, behaviour is complex. Cultural and also somewhat racial effects have to be taken notice of, since your genetics also play some role in your hormone levels. And in the end it still comes down to a case by case issue because it is so complex.
However if this is ignored and we start singling out certain cultural influences on behaviour like video games and depict them as a culprit, we better have some data to back it up. Here the social sciences are still the best approach we got to the matter.
If it only was an argument. Unfortunately it's mostly a monologue and tons of fallacies on all sides because no rational argument can take place any more. There's been an article on /. about exactly this phenomenon. https://politics.slashdot.org/...
I'd really appreciate it if we could move back towards topics where rational thinking is not overshadowed by identity politics. But I also believe that hoping for this is a very naive thing.
Hence no blanket bans.
Anyway trading cards are pretty much in the same bracket. There you have the competitive nature of the game, which compels you to develop better tactics and strategies. That in itself was certainly a good aspect of the game, because it made you think. Unfortunately this often involves getting the proper cards for your deck, which costs money. Then there's also power creep where new cards are often made more useful in general then older cards. Hence you constantly have to buy new stuff in order to be competitive. In MtG for example you also have tournament formats where bans and restrictions may apply to older cards.
I played MtG during the 90s and early 2000s. Even then my friends and I realized that it was stupid to buy booster packs because of the low odds of getting the desired cards and the resulting costs. So we went to the comic book store and browsed their card catalogue to see what's good and bought cards individually. Later we would do the same over the internet.
At some point even that became too much of a rip off in my eyes. But since I was still interested in the tactical nature of the game I started to print out my own copies of official cards (proxies). Playing with friends was fine that way, but you won't find a lot of tournaments that allow you to do this. Eventually I just stopped.
It probably depends on the person to what degree the additional delays are noticeable. I suppose you can get used to it, like we were used to play things like Counter Strike with 200ms+ pings over dial up, but if you see the differences more directly the reduced responsiveness does lessen the enjoyment of fast paced games in my eyes.
I tried to stream Fallout 4, Skyrim and Prey (2017) through Steam to my notebook. I did it over Wifi within the same room and made sure that no other one was using the network. I can tell you that you probably would not like the additional latency that's added on top of all other latencies through streaming.
I'm not too optimistic with this technology. But of course it's the wet dream of copy right fanatics - the perfect form of DRM for software - so they're going to continue to push it.
Well, like I said, I find all of the political parties here idiotic. And every 4 years I get to choose the one that I think will cause the least harm to my country. It's silly, yes. But not as silly as the constant animosity and bickering between Democrats and Republicans looks from the outside.
I don't know who looks more delusional to me.
Here in Germany we have dozens of political parties, six of which have prospects to be elected into the parliament. I find all of them very poor in pragmatism and rich in ideological nonsense.
Looking at the two party system that has been in control of the US for a long time, and especially at people who subscribe to either side while (often) rejecting the other for the sake of opposition. Identity politics at its worst. It's miraculous that despite of this or perhaps as a result of this you've still got a functional country.
You've got it backwards. Just because everyone else does it, doesn't mean that it's suddenly not bad when China does it to YOU. What kind of logic is that anyway? (Don't answer the question is rhetorical)
They do try to do that every couple of years. Fortunately the strong consumer protection lobbies in German are quick to sue over something like that. And because the German justice system still seems to work independently from the government, the courts have ruled virtually all of these technologies to be unconstitutional. But who knows how long that will last.
Good that you've mentioned millennials here. It's one of those upvote generating buzzwords for people who can't be bothered with making more than just split decisions.
It's a hive mind with herd and mob mentality when it comes to the comment section. But I have to admit that it is not too far from what slashdot is nowadays, when I see strawman fallacies, false dichotomies, and whataboutism getting modded insightful.
So what's up with these claims that the FCC is 'finally' going up against copyright-infringement?
We've been having a very similar situation here in Germany for quite some time with the fields of business administration - where a higher education is basically free (the tuitions people have to pay are usually negligible like
It's been the go-to for school graduates who didn't know what to do with their lives but wanted to have a higher degree in something that can possibly make a lot of money. However Universities adapted for the influx not by implementing failure rates that force 70% of the students out of class, so that only the best remain, but by increasing the number of possible seats. Which resulted in thousands of BA bachelor degrees and masters (to some extend). All that in an economy that cries for qualified (blue collar) workers and engineers and already had plenty of managers. Well wasted tax money if you ask me, which makes me think that subsidizing all education is not a good idea in the end.
Yes, and also no. There's certainly the PC movement that pushes for censorship. I find them to be a problem as well, but in this context, mentioning them is a red herring.
When it comes to getting rid of services that make it more difficult to trace people through the internet, the biggest supporters would be those who have an interest in increased surveillance. Here in Germany we had ideas of installing spyware on the phones of immigrants, track their social network activities, internet searches and so forth - things that are unconstitutional, because those laws don't only apply to German citizens but humans in general. Of course it's justified because it is all in the name of the greater good, and it would only be used to protect the innocent people. Services and technologies like DNScrypt, VPNs, TOR, SSL are thorns in their side. Criticism is brushed aside because 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'. Fortunately the majority still doesn't see it that way in my country, but fear is a very strong motivator that may very well change things within the next decade.
You underestimate the fear of "terrorist" and "evil immigrants", which helped nationalistic authoritarians to rise to significant political power once again in Europe. Those fears seen to outweigh any moral high ground that could be gained by doing thing differently than Russia at the moment.
Perhaps you remember the Iconian Gateways that were seen in TNG and later in DS9 again.
Developed by an ancient race - the Iconians - who perished some 200,000 years ago. In both TNG and DS9 the technology was deemed to be too dangerous and therefore destroyed by the Starfleet officers respectively. If we can believe Memory Alpha as a reliable source of information on Star Trek, then the Iconians did make some kind of appearance in one of the Discovery episodes: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/... . Although I can neither confirm nor deny it personally.
So if you are willing to suspend your disbelief for the older Treks, is it so difficult to accept that they could have stumbled upon a similar technology in Discovery and might later abandon it for moralistic reasons?