Your analogy is seriously flawed. When you are out working in your front yard, shopping, driving, or walking down the street, you do have privacy. Unless of course you walk around handing out cards to every single person you pass that includes your full name, city, country,
Easily obtainable from my license plate or the address of my house.
gender
Should be rather obvious, I'd hope...
picture
I'm in public. They can take as many pictures as they'd like.
a list of all clubs/networks
Ok, so it wouldn't be a list of all clubs/networks... But I bet you could come up with a number of them from publicly available information - not including any social networking sites.
I doubt if it would be hard to find out, for example, where I work just given my full name and address and access to some public records. Nor would it likely be hard to find out where I went to school. And I bet, with that information, you could probably come up with yearbooks and pictures from various events/clubs/gatherings/outings.
Again, it wouldn't be exhaustive... But it isn't like that information is actually private.
a list of all your friends and their associated full names, cities, countries, genders, pictures, clubs/networks, etc....
Once again, I suspect that it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a lot of this just from publicly available (non-social network site) information. Again, it wouldn't be exhaustive... But I'm sure you could find quite a bit of it.
Limits socializing, who knew? Seriously though, I have some friends from highschool that I wouldn't mind getting back in contact with and tried to look up on facebook. But with a common name like Mike Smith and no profile picture or friend information how are you supposed to find people? Maybe these people don't want to be found but that seems to be odd seeing as you have a Facebook profile. If you only want to have contact with people you are already in contact with something else would work, eg. email, Facebook IMHO is meant to help people find people they've lost contact with. This is impossible with too much privacy on the site.
Exactly.
Set your privacy too high and nobody can find you.
I'll get an invite from someone whose name looks familiar, but I don't recognize it. And they've got their security cranked up. Where do they live? Did I go to school with them? Do they know one of my friends? Are they a distant family member? Who knows!
If you want to be found, you need to sacrifice some privacy.
If you don't want to be found, what the hell are you doing on Facebook?
They do not "get" it. I am convinced Facebook does not want to preserve the privacy of its users. When I went to Facebook last night, I was presented with a pop up menu to select my new privacy options. All the defaults were set to looser privacy than I had previously set for my account. I had to manually restore the stricter privacy settings.
.
Facebook does not care about the privacy of its users. Get used to it.
I suspect that it is you that does not "get it."
Facebook is a social networking site on the Internet. The Internet is quite possibly the most public place in the world. Anything you post anywhere on the Internet is pretty much guaranteed to show up somewhere you'd rather it didn't - privacy policies be damned. Social networking sites are all about finding and connecting with other people. This is done by being able to see the names, locations, and interests of those other people.
In other words, if you want privacy, you shouldn't be using Facebook.
Everything I put on Facebook is public. if I want some secrets I keep it off of facebook. You can watch me walk down the road, watch me shop, watch me play with my kids in the park etc etc etc. Life itself has very few privacy controls when you are in a public space. Facebook is a public space.
You don't need to be my "friend" to see my content.
I think a lot of folks here on Slashdot are a little paranoid about privacy... Or, at least try to sound like they're paranoid about privacy.
The fact of the matter is that there's precious little privacy in the world. When I'm working out in my front yard, I've got no privacy. When I'm shopping or driving or walking down the street, I've got no privacy. At work I've got no privacy.
Why would anyone expect that posting something on the Internet, quite possibly the most public space in the world, would be private?
It seems to me that when you sign up for a social networking site like facebook any of the information you give them is going to be well.. socially networked.
If you don't want your name, address, phone, measurements, work history and other info made available for the whole world to see, DON'T POST IT.
It's odd that anyone wanting privacy would be using a social networking tool when that is precisely what the tool was not designed to do.
I agree.
It's one thing to talk about privacy policies in respect to, for example, generic web searches. If I'm just looking for random information I should be able to expect some degree of privacy. I don't expect Google or Microsoft or Yahoo attach my name and address to my search results and send them to all my friends and family.
But on a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace... Well, the whole point is to be social. You're supposed to be able to find people you know and communicate with them. Maybe meet new people in the area. Find interesting things going on. Etc. If everyone's privacy is carefully protected, how are you going to find anyone?
Regardless of how much they like color or what kind of DRM they want to bolt on, they're also going to want to actually sell their content. So they'll license the format to folks. And if Amazon is actually threatened at all by their devices or whatever... They'll do whatever it takes to license it.
Either that, or these companies will refuse to license the format... Which will quickly become irrelevant because it doesn't work on many devices... And they'll wind up abandoning it.
The nook's first shipments have already gone out. Several of those shipments will be on doorsteps well before Christmas. There was plenty of opportunity, if you had already made up your mind, to purchase one in time for Christmas. Granted, they're now back-ordered... If you buy one today it won't ship until January 15th... But what do you expect with a brand new electronic device launching just in time for Christmas? It isn't like this is the first time a hot new Christmas gift has been hard to get. Either plan ahead, or deal with the delay.
$300 for a device that's easier on the eyes than an LCD screen, and can store 1500 books? I think that's a perfectly reasonable price for what you get.
I would agree with you, except you still have to purchase all 1,500 books. And they are not discounted to reflect the savings of no physical production, shipping, storefront, etc.
As many have already pointed out, there are plenty of public domain ebooks available from Project Gutenberg and Google Books.
Some publishers also give away free ebooks to build readership - like the Baen Free Library.
Some libraries also lend ebooks. My local library does, and we're a pretty small town. I'd imagine that if my library is doing it, it must be fairly widespread.
Also, while most ebooks are not discounted, there are some available. I've been watching the Barnes & Noble website for a couple months now and they'll periodically have a decent ebook on sale for just a dollar or two. I've picked up several that way.
Plus, both the Kindle and the nook can read PDFs. I don't know about you, but most of the manuals I get these days are PDFs. It is much easier to read a PDF on something small and portable with a paper-like screen than to print out everything you need, or keep running back to a computer to read it.
And then there's the possibility of subscribing to a newspaper or magazine on the thing.
The game was about the monsters after 5 minutes. The game was also about the ship (and later the marker) throughout.
The game was certainly not about killing the monsters. It was about getting the ship repaired and such - the monsters were just an obstacle.
Gonna have to disagree.
For the first half (or so) of the game it felt like I was trying to fix the ship. Most of the objectives directly involved fixing something that was broken. And generally the process of fixing the thing involved locating spare parts and flipping switches. There were certainly monsters in the way, but they were simply obstacles. The goal was to get some gizmo up and running (for whatever reason) - not just to kill something nasty.
After some point (and I'll admit it has been a while since I last played, so I can't very well identify exactly when it happened) it felt like the primary goal was to kill the monsters - not fix the ship. The regenerating super-necromorph is a good example of this... You had an entire couple of levels that seemed to revolve entirely around killing this guy.
Yes, of course, the marker and the monsters were always part of the story - even before you knew what the marker was or where the monsters came from. And the ship was always part of the story - even when you were eyeball-deep in necromorphs.
And I realize there weren't a whole lot of real boss monsters in the game.
Nor am I suggesting that you ever got a mission objective that simply said "kill the boss necromorph."
But it seems to me that at some point the ultimate goal changed from get enough of the ship working again to get out of this alive to kick necromorph ass and chew bubblegum.
Not that there's really anything wrong with kicking necromorph ass and chewing bubblegum... But it feels different.
The first half of the game felt like I was stuck on a rapidly sinking ship with some unpleasant monsters. The monsters were less of a worry (because I could kill them) than the sinking ship. The primary threat to my continued existence was the environment (the ship) itself. If that ship was allowed to sink, it wouldn't matter if I killed monsters or not, because I'd be dead either way.
Once the ship had been sufficiently fixed, it became just like pretty much any other shooter/horror game. I was no longer on a rapidly sinking ship, but rather on firm ground. I could take my time to deal with the monsters in whatever manner I felt necessary.
I've always felt that a hostile environment adds a wonderful amount of tension to a horror movie/game/story/book/whatever. Look at something like Alien - not only is there a monster that wants to eat you, but there's nowhere to run to. Or The Thing - you can't just walk away, you're out in the middle of the ice and snow.
Once the ship had been stabilized, that sense of a hostile environment was largely alleviated. Sure, you were still stuck on the ship out in space... But it was a freaking huge ship. It felt distinctly possible that you could find a quiet place to hide out and wait for rescue.
And that meant that you were some kind of lone warrior taking the fight to the enemy - much like in Halo or Quake or just about any other shooter I've ever played.
..but no more clunky asteroid shooting sequences, please. That was like checking into an elegant hotel and then finding a steaming turd in the toilet that took way too many tries to flush. Made me not want to replay it. Add more zero gee bits instead.
Yeah... Did not like that sequence at all. Very awkward. Messed up the pacing of the game. Seemed completely contrived.
Man, that storyline was full-blown asinine. It played out like a bad Sci-fi movie channel. After hours of monsters jumping out with Hollywood precision and yet *another* fire to extinguish, I found myself bored even with the frightening shock attacks. Too many contrived challenges and obstacles, and a writing team obsessed with trying to be original even at the expense of the plausible.
It almost seemed to me like there were two games mashed together into one.
The first half of the game made a lot more sense. You were sent out to investigate this ship that wasn't responding... The ship itself is in really rough shape, almost falling apart. So of course you've got to get the reactor working again, or try to send a message home, or fix the orbit, or whatever. That all makes some kind of sense. I was OK with pretty much all of that.
But somewhere along the line it stopped being about the ship, and started being about the monsters. And then you had one level after another where you were basically just trying to kill some giant boss monster. It didn't seem like you were really trying to accomplish anything in particular... Just kill the next boss and continue towards the end of the game.
Man did that game ever drag on and on. I did enjoy the slower pacing of the gameplay, and the feeling that you're trudging through molasses while your enemies are rollerblading down a smooth asphalt hill. It really added to the tension.
The overwhelming feeling of "Yeah, I've been here before, at least three times" just killed it for me. I never progressed past the Leviathan because I had just had my fill of spending an hour in an area where every single room looked exactly the same. It's weird, because I love movies like Alien, 2001, Moon, Sunshine, etc.
The pace was a little slower... But given the slightly awkward controls and camera, I think that was a good thing. Especially since you had to aim rather deliberately to cut up some of the creatures. Something truly fast-paced might not have worked well.
Some of the environments became a bit repetitive, that is true. But if you paid attention there were usually some changes from the last time you were there. Not enough to hide the fact that you'd been there before... But better than having it completely identical.
You mention Alien... Frankly, Dead Space reminded me a ton of Alien.
Nothing happens at all for the first half of Alien. They're waking up, figuring out where they are, landing the ship, etc. The most exciting thing is when they break something while landing. No monsters, no blood, no chaos... Nice and slow. And just as you're settling in and getting used to the pace of things, it all goes to hell.
But even after it all goes to hell - even after we've discovered the monster and he's killing people one by one - the pacing still alternates between calm and chaos. You'll have a scene or two where the monster is killing someone and there's screaming and crying and blood and everything... And then you'll have a scene where the remaining survivors figure out what has happened and deal with their decreased chances of getting out alive.
Dead Space had a similar kind of pacing. There were lulls where you were steadily trudging through some area that was more or less safe... Some area you'd been through before, or some area with just some pansy monsters... And then they'd drop something worrisome on top of you. A new monster you didn't expect, or one of those tentacles that drags you away, or whatever.
It may have been a great game, but they absolutely ruined it with the camera. The fact that the center of rotation was still on your character, which was permanently stuck covering up one side of your screen, meant that the camera, and thus your weapon, rotated faster in one direction than the other. This only compounded the problems that arose from the fact that you couldn't see what was coming from the "slow" direction.
I understand that they were going for some kind of "cinematic view" or something, but it completely got in the way of the gameplay.
I really didn't find the camera rotation to be a big problem...
Yeah, it was occasionally difficult to see what was going on because your character was in the way, but only occasionally. I've played plenty of games that got it far more wrong than Dead Space did.
You don't have to email things to get them on the kindle. Out of the box pdf is just that, plug it into a computer, dump the PDF's on it, and they will read (formatting letter into a 6" screen aside).
I was under the impression you still had to email the PDF to an address to have it reformatted for the Kindle. Is this no longer the case with the new firmware update?
Also, i really question the use of the wifi, do i need to download books faster than 3g? why don't i just plug it into my computer usb style?
I'm not terribly worried about the speed, but rather the coverage. I've got a Verizon cell phone, so I have no idea what AT&T's network looks like out here... But cell coverage is kind of spotty. There are plenty of places where I can't place a call. I'm thinking I will be able to fall back on the Wi-Fi for connectivity where the 3G fails.
Around 5 years ago, the internet was down for comcast subscribers in northern Indiana and a good chunk of the midwest-
I figured out it was just their DNS servers that were down and quickly switched over to AT&T's. That evening I saw the fastest internet I've ever seen. It was glorious.
That's roughly the same experience I had about a year ago with Charter here.
The Internet went to hell for the better part of a week... Slow, had trouble looking up anything, web pages took forever to load, couldn't send mail. It was awful. I didn't initially think much of it as we routinely have trouble... But then one day it just cut out completely.
I did some basic troubleshooting to make sure it wasn't my own hardware, and found out I could ping pretty much anything by IP address, but Charter's DNS servers just weren't responding.
So I threw in OpenDNS's servers, and everything started working again. Actually, faster than it ever had. I haven't tried my ISP's DNS servers again since then - why switch when OpenDNS works so much better?
You don't need to trust your ISP, they are legally binded to protect your privacy on most of the countries.
Yeah, right.
How many stories have there been on here about various telecom companies handing records over to investigators with very little, if any, reason to do so?
How often do we hear about records being lost or leaked or stolen?
How often do we actually hear about ISPs or telecom companies getting in trouble for any of this?
Regardless of whatever laws and contracts you may think you have on your side... The ISP is going to do pretty much whatever it wants, and you can either put up with it or go find a different ISP (which will also do pretty much whatever it wants).
However with Google, you have nothing.
You have a privacy policy that states their logs will be deleted every 48 hours. You can believe that or not... But it's about as substantial as anything you'll get from your ISP.
and one of the world's largest advertising companies, masquerading as a technology company (though only as a vehicle for their advertising) isn't EVER going to start throwing up link farms or ads in response to NX queries? You, sir, have more faith than the pope.
One of the big complaints about NXDOMAIN redirection is that it breaks certain bits of the Internet that rely on DNS lookups functioning properly. And Google has a pretty big interest in making sure that the Internet keeps working correctly. So they've got some incentive not to play around with NXDOMAIN results too much.
OpenDNS provides typo-correction and search lookups for NXDOMAIN results. That's how they make money. But they also allow you to opt-out. Unlike the opt-out that some cable companies use, there is no cookie. It is configured by your IP address. Which means that your NXDOMAIN behaves correctly on any computer behind that router, even if you aren't using a web browser with that cookie set.
If OpenDNS can both garner advertising revenue and keep NXDOMAIN working correctly for the folks who need it, I'm going to assume that Google can do the same.
Then you are a fool. This is exactly what I mean by trusting your ISP. I sympathize with you and your situation (and I understand that it happens), but all your country has to do is implement some system that will change the UDP packets coming from Google DNS to change the answers, thus accomplishing the same censorship. The more people who use Google DNS, the more likely a country or ISP is to do this.
Actually, it'd be far easier to just capture all DNS queries and send them to the server you control. We set such things up all the time. Doesn't even take crazy-expensive hardware.
But why does using OpenDNS or Google DNS make this guy a fool?
Is he supposed to just sit back and enjoy the censorship?
So what if the government notices this and implements better censorship... Are you then going to suggest that he not try to circumvent that?
Its funny how the Google hype is driving so much talk about something like DNS, a service which probably 95% of non-tech people don't know exists. Most people wouldn't care about DNS normally, but since its Google it must be something to get excited about.
I don't think I've seen any talk of Google DNS in the mainstream media... Pretty much just on the technical/network sites. Which is where folks actually know and care about DNS.
I doubt really that any significant number of people will switch to using 8.8.8.8
Home users? Probably not. Businesses? Maybe.
I know I'll be using Google DNS as an alternative to OpenDNS for our clients with dynamic IP addresses.
I worry that if they do, one of the the original goals for DNS will be lost. That its distributed
Well, first of all, DNS isn't all that distributed. I mean, it is... But ultimately you're talking to the same few root servers. So if something goes seriously wrong at the root, it doesn't much matter what DNS server you're using.
Second, they have the standard primary/secondary server thing going on. So if one of their addresses goes down, the other one can still respond.
Third, just because they're only handing out two IP addresses doesn't mean there are literally two servers. I assume that they've got some kind of distributed cluster thing going on.
Just ask yourself one question, if you don't trust your internet provider enough to do DNS correctly, should you trust them at all?
My ISP does a crappy job of DNS. I'm not entirely sure what their problem is... Maybe the hardware is overworked, maybe the admins are incompetent, whatever. The end result is that their DNS servers are slow and flaky. I switched to OpenDNS a year or so ago in order to fix problems with my DNS.
That's not to mention the NXDOMAIN hijinks that some ISPs pull... Redirecting your NXDOMAIN results to a search or portal page of some sort to generate more revenue.
As for why I'd trust them at all if they can't handle DNS... Well, I guess trust is a fairly strong word. I don't trust them. I have no confidence that they're going to provide quality service or that they'll defend my privacy or that some admin somewhere isn't snooping on my traffic. But they're pretty much the only game available at my location. So, I put up with their problems.
..and the chance of them getting working A.I. to handle the suggested visual recognition task reasonably well is so small that it also boggles the mind.
Since when do you need AI?
There's already plenty of machine vision software out there... Hell, my crappy digital camera is able to recognize a face well enough to tell if somebody blinked. All it has to do is match the image you just took to another image in its database with some degree of accuracy.
Then it can use the tags on the similar image to look things up... Or the words surrounding that similar image on the web...
Buy a kindle 1, cheaper, replaceable battery, SD card, reads any real format file.
That being said, i bought a kindle 1 for that reason, and i have to admit that there is really no reason to have a SD card. All the books i can read in a reasonable amount of time fit into internal memory, and having then just sit on a SD card just drains battery life (indexing, searching, etc...). Maybe if I had a big kindle for PDF's i would need 4gb of books. . . but the technology just isn't there yet for that.
One of the major reasons I went with the nook, as opposed to the Kindle, was the combination of PDF support and an SD slot.
At work I'm constantly referencing documentation in PDF format. I have an SD card already that I use to shuffle documentation between the various computers I use throughout the day. I intend to simply slot that card into my nook and be able to read the documentation that way. It should be easier than printing everything out or hauling a laptop into the wiring closet with me.
I understand that the Kindle now has full-fledged PDF support, but it did not at the time I placed my order. And I'm still not terribly thrilled with the idea that you have to email your PDF to an address to be reformatted for the Kindle to read.
People keep complaining about the Kindle and DRM, and I don't think they realize that you can turn the wireless off and get your books from ANYWHERE and read them on the kindle with NO problem. Amazon has made it read several formats, and there are ton of converters out there, if you have something weird. My kindle does exactly what i want it to do, display books. I don't need it to be open source, i need it to work, and it has for the past year wonderfully.
Yeah, I'm not terribly worried about DRM or terribly excited about Android. The fact that it is technically an open-source platform is kind of neat... But it's been heavily modified to work with the e-ink display and doesn't have access to the Android app store - so I'm not sure that it really matters anymore. It could be pretty much any OS under there.
And, while I'm sure I'll purchase plenty of ebooks, I'm not terribly worried about DRM. I've got a ton of public domain ebooks already in various open formats that'll work just fine on it (and would also have worked just fine on a Kindle).
Would i buy a Nook? No. The Kindle has far surpassed my expectations, and i see nothing about the nook that makes it any better, just a product that is a year behind the polish of it's competitors.
I agree with the lack of polish. The nook is a brand new product that has just started shipping. The Kindle has had a couple years of tweaking and fixes. I'm sure it'll be rough around the edges.
But no amount of updating or patching can add an SD slot or a removable battery to an existing Kindle. Nor can it add Wi-Fi. Nor can it eliminate the keyboard down at the bottom.
So I went with the one that had nicer hardware... And I'm hoping that the software will catch up soon.
The problem is that PDFs are usually designed for A4 or A5 paper, not the small eBook reader screen. Scrolling around when screen updates take 3-4 seconds is painful.
When I read about the colour LCD I was hoping it would be overlaid on the eInk screen. That way it could give you a fast but less readable preview to help navigation, with the eInk screen kicking in a second or two later.
Yeah... That's what I'm a little worried about.
I know some devices are able to re-flow some PDFs... But I don't know how much of that is a function of the PDF, and how much is a function of the device, or whether the nook specifically is able to re-flow any PDFs at all... I guess I'll find out.
I like the idea, but I'm not going to buy any eBook reader until I can safely read it in the bathtub like a regular book. Crazy, maybe, but that's my criteria.
This is exactly what my wife asked me when I ordered my nook this year - can you use it in the bathtub.
I don't think I've ever read a book in the bathtub, and I'm really not sure that I'd want to. Paper isn't exactly water-safe. I once made the mistake of bringing a book to an amusement park with me, and it was absolutely ruined when we went on some white-water raft ride. Completely destroyed.
Do people actually do this? Do folks actually read in the bathtub?
Don't the pages get all weird from the humidity? What if you drop your book in the water? Don't your wet hands mess up the pages?
Could someone please explain the advantage of a dedicated e-book reader? I don't understand why I would buy either when I can get a netbook for $50 more (at worst) that can read both PDFs and Amazon e-books. Is it the battery life of these things, or is the hardware form factor really nice? I don't know.
The battery life is generally rated in days, as opposed to hours.
They are typically shaped more like a book or slate, and less like a laptop. A netbook is going to have the keyboard sticking out of the bottom and the screen is oriented horizontally rather than vertically.
The e-ink screen is more like a printed page, and easier to read under similar lighting conditions. LCDs typically have problems with bright light, and can cause eye strain after prolonged reading.
Both the Kindle and the nook offer free 3G to purchase ebooks, which your netbook probably wouldn't.
If you don't read much and you just want something that can display a PDF, obviously an ebook reader isn't going to be necessary. Just throw it at your computer.
But if you read for recreation, an ebook reader can be very nice. It allows you to condense a huge book into a very small and portable form factor. It allows you to carry a large selection of books with you. It allows you to quickly and easily purchase more books without having to locate the nearest bookstore. And it is designed to allow you to keep reading for hour after hour, day after day.
A book offers permanence. Books are created so the only infrastructure required to receive the information within is your brain. And how can you get rid of books authorities no longer like? Well, because of the light infrastructure requirements, you CAN'T. No book burning has ever deleted an entire work from the culture.
But if a corporation decides to "burn" an e-reader book, can they? They sure CAN! And the book will be gone with no chance of ever discovering an unburnt copy.
Sorry, no. The function I want is PERMANENCE. That cannot be built into an e-reader.
Actually... If you're worried about permanence... I'd go for an (open) electronic format over the printed page...
Much easier to throw a PDF on the interwebs and ensure that it lives forever. Or copy it to a couple dozen USB keys or SD cards and scatter them around. Or email it to hundreds of people. Or encrypt the thing so authorities can't touch it. Or print out a few dozen copies. Or burn it to a CD/DVD. Throw a copy on your iPod Touch, on your iPhone, on your Blackberry.
Yeah, DRM is bad. And Amazon has demonstrated just how bad it can be. But the nook supports both PDF and EPUB files and has an SD card reader - so I can put pretty much any written document on it and Barnes & Noble can't do much about it.
And as far as the light infrastructure requirements...
With a printed book you need more than just a brain - you need to be able to read. There have been many times in history when it was far easier to get your hands on a printed book than it was to learn how to read. And if you can't read, you're just trusting somebody else to tell you what it says. No need to burn the book then - just lie about the contents.
Slashdot Mirror
Your analogy is seriously flawed. When you are out working in your front yard, shopping, driving, or walking down the street, you do have privacy. Unless of course you walk around handing out cards to every single person you pass that includes your full name, city, country,
Easily obtainable from my license plate or the address of my house.
gender
Should be rather obvious, I'd hope...
picture
I'm in public. They can take as many pictures as they'd like.
a list of all clubs/networks
Ok, so it wouldn't be a list of all clubs/networks... But I bet you could come up with a number of them from publicly available information - not including any social networking sites.
I doubt if it would be hard to find out, for example, where I work just given my full name and address and access to some public records. Nor would it likely be hard to find out where I went to school. And I bet, with that information, you could probably come up with yearbooks and pictures from various events/clubs/gatherings/outings.
Again, it wouldn't be exhaustive... But it isn't like that information is actually private.
a list of all your friends and their associated full names, cities, countries, genders, pictures, clubs/networks, etc....
Once again, I suspect that it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a lot of this just from publicly available (non-social network site) information. Again, it wouldn't be exhaustive... But I'm sure you could find quite a bit of it.
Limits socializing, who knew? Seriously though, I have some friends from highschool that I wouldn't mind getting back in contact with and tried to look up on facebook. But with a common name like Mike Smith and no profile picture or friend information how are you supposed to find people? Maybe these people don't want to be found but that seems to be odd seeing as you have a Facebook profile. If you only want to have contact with people you are already in contact with something else would work, eg. email, Facebook IMHO is meant to help people find people they've lost contact with. This is impossible with too much privacy on the site.
Exactly.
Set your privacy too high and nobody can find you.
I'll get an invite from someone whose name looks familiar, but I don't recognize it. And they've got their security cranked up. Where do they live? Did I go to school with them? Do they know one of my friends? Are they a distant family member? Who knows!
If you want to be found, you need to sacrifice some privacy.
If you don't want to be found, what the hell are you doing on Facebook?
They do not "get" it. I am convinced Facebook does not want to preserve the privacy of its users. When I went to Facebook last night, I was presented with a pop up menu to select my new privacy options. All the defaults were set to looser privacy than I had previously set for my account. I had to manually restore the stricter privacy settings.
.
Facebook does not care about the privacy of its users. Get used to it.
I suspect that it is you that does not "get it."
Facebook is a social networking site on the Internet. The Internet is quite possibly the most public place in the world. Anything you post anywhere on the Internet is pretty much guaranteed to show up somewhere you'd rather it didn't - privacy policies be damned. Social networking sites are all about finding and connecting with other people. This is done by being able to see the names, locations, and interests of those other people.
In other words, if you want privacy, you shouldn't be using Facebook.
Everything I put on Facebook is public. if I want some secrets I keep it off of facebook. You can watch me walk down the road, watch me shop, watch me play with my kids in the park etc etc etc. Life itself has very few privacy controls when you are in a public space. Facebook is a public space.
You don't need to be my "friend" to see my content.
I think a lot of folks here on Slashdot are a little paranoid about privacy... Or, at least try to sound like they're paranoid about privacy.
The fact of the matter is that there's precious little privacy in the world. When I'm working out in my front yard, I've got no privacy. When I'm shopping or driving or walking down the street, I've got no privacy. At work I've got no privacy.
Why would anyone expect that posting something on the Internet, quite possibly the most public space in the world, would be private?
It seems to me that when you sign up for a social networking site like facebook any of the information you give them is going to be well.. socially networked.
If you don't want your name, address, phone, measurements, work history and other info made available for the whole world to see, DON'T POST IT.
It's odd that anyone wanting privacy would be using a social networking tool when that is precisely what the tool was not designed to do.
I agree.
It's one thing to talk about privacy policies in respect to, for example, generic web searches. If I'm just looking for random information I should be able to expect some degree of privacy. I don't expect Google or Microsoft or Yahoo attach my name and address to my search results and send them to all my friends and family.
But on a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace... Well, the whole point is to be social. You're supposed to be able to find people you know and communicate with them. Maybe meet new people in the area. Find interesting things going on. Etc. If everyone's privacy is carefully protected, how are you going to find anyone?
Will this pose a threat at all to the Kindle?
Nope.
Regardless of how much they like color or what kind of DRM they want to bolt on, they're also going to want to actually sell their content. So they'll license the format to folks. And if Amazon is actually threatened at all by their devices or whatever... They'll do whatever it takes to license it.
Either that, or these companies will refuse to license the format... Which will quickly become irrelevant because it doesn't work on many devices... And they'll wind up abandoning it.
B&N doesn't have an ereader store (or an ereader that will ship before the biggest consumer day in the western world - nice job, guys).
Barnes & Noble has been selling ebooks on their site for quite some time now. Further, most of their normal books have an indicator right on the page when they are available in ebook format.
Their ereader is available for download on the iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry, PC, and Mac - and has been for a while.
The nook's first shipments have already gone out. Several of those shipments will be on doorsteps well before Christmas. There was plenty of opportunity, if you had already made up your mind, to purchase one in time for Christmas. Granted, they're now back-ordered... If you buy one today it won't ship until January 15th... But what do you expect with a brand new electronic device launching just in time for Christmas? It isn't like this is the first time a hot new Christmas gift has been hard to get. Either plan ahead, or deal with the delay.
$300 for a device that's easier on the eyes than an LCD screen, and can store 1500 books? I think that's a perfectly reasonable price for what you get.
I would agree with you, except you still have to purchase all 1,500 books. And they are not discounted to reflect the savings of no physical production, shipping, storefront, etc.
As many have already pointed out, there are plenty of public domain ebooks available from Project Gutenberg and Google Books.
Some publishers also give away free ebooks to build readership - like the Baen Free Library.
Some libraries also lend ebooks. My local library does, and we're a pretty small town. I'd imagine that if my library is doing it, it must be fairly widespread.
Also, while most ebooks are not discounted, there are some available. I've been watching the Barnes & Noble website for a couple months now and they'll periodically have a decent ebook on sale for just a dollar or two. I've picked up several that way.
Plus, both the Kindle and the nook can read PDFs. I don't know about you, but most of the manuals I get these days are PDFs. It is much easier to read a PDF on something small and portable with a paper-like screen than to print out everything you need, or keep running back to a computer to read it.
And then there's the possibility of subscribing to a newspaper or magazine on the thing.
Wrong. There were very few "bosses" in the game.
The game was about the monsters after 5 minutes.
The game was also about the ship (and later the marker) throughout.
The game was certainly not about killing the monsters. It was about getting the ship repaired and such - the monsters were just an obstacle.
Gonna have to disagree.
For the first half (or so) of the game it felt like I was trying to fix the ship. Most of the objectives directly involved fixing something that was broken. And generally the process of fixing the thing involved locating spare parts and flipping switches. There were certainly monsters in the way, but they were simply obstacles. The goal was to get some gizmo up and running (for whatever reason) - not just to kill something nasty.
After some point (and I'll admit it has been a while since I last played, so I can't very well identify exactly when it happened) it felt like the primary goal was to kill the monsters - not fix the ship. The regenerating super-necromorph is a good example of this... You had an entire couple of levels that seemed to revolve entirely around killing this guy.
Yes, of course, the marker and the monsters were always part of the story - even before you knew what the marker was or where the monsters came from. And the ship was always part of the story - even when you were eyeball-deep in necromorphs.
And I realize there weren't a whole lot of real boss monsters in the game.
Nor am I suggesting that you ever got a mission objective that simply said "kill the boss necromorph."
But it seems to me that at some point the ultimate goal changed from get enough of the ship working again to get out of this alive to kick necromorph ass and chew bubblegum.
Not that there's really anything wrong with kicking necromorph ass and chewing bubblegum... But it feels different.
The first half of the game felt like I was stuck on a rapidly sinking ship with some unpleasant monsters. The monsters were less of a worry (because I could kill them) than the sinking ship. The primary threat to my continued existence was the environment (the ship) itself. If that ship was allowed to sink, it wouldn't matter if I killed monsters or not, because I'd be dead either way.
Once the ship had been sufficiently fixed, it became just like pretty much any other shooter/horror game. I was no longer on a rapidly sinking ship, but rather on firm ground. I could take my time to deal with the monsters in whatever manner I felt necessary.
I've always felt that a hostile environment adds a wonderful amount of tension to a horror movie/game/story/book/whatever. Look at something like Alien - not only is there a monster that wants to eat you, but there's nowhere to run to. Or The Thing - you can't just walk away, you're out in the middle of the ice and snow.
Once the ship had been stabilized, that sense of a hostile environment was largely alleviated. Sure, you were still stuck on the ship out in space... But it was a freaking huge ship. It felt distinctly possible that you could find a quiet place to hide out and wait for rescue.
And that meant that you were some kind of lone warrior taking the fight to the enemy - much like in Halo or Quake or just about any other shooter I've ever played.
..but no more clunky asteroid shooting sequences, please. That was like checking into an elegant hotel and then finding a steaming turd in the toilet that took way too many tries to flush. Made me not want to replay it. Add more zero gee bits instead.
Yeah... Did not like that sequence at all. Very awkward. Messed up the pacing of the game. Seemed completely contrived.
Man, that storyline was full-blown asinine. It played out like a bad Sci-fi movie channel. After hours of monsters jumping out with Hollywood precision and yet *another* fire to extinguish, I found myself bored even with the frightening shock attacks. Too many contrived challenges and obstacles, and a writing team obsessed with trying to be original even at the expense of the plausible.
It almost seemed to me like there were two games mashed together into one.
The first half of the game made a lot more sense. You were sent out to investigate this ship that wasn't responding... The ship itself is in really rough shape, almost falling apart. So of course you've got to get the reactor working again, or try to send a message home, or fix the orbit, or whatever. That all makes some kind of sense. I was OK with pretty much all of that.
But somewhere along the line it stopped being about the ship, and started being about the monsters. And then you had one level after another where you were basically just trying to kill some giant boss monster. It didn't seem like you were really trying to accomplish anything in particular... Just kill the next boss and continue towards the end of the game.
Man did that game ever drag on and on. I did enjoy the slower pacing of the gameplay, and the feeling that you're trudging through molasses while your enemies are rollerblading down a smooth asphalt hill. It really added to the tension.
The overwhelming feeling of "Yeah, I've been here before, at least three times" just killed it for me. I never progressed past the Leviathan because I had just had my fill of spending an hour in an area where every single room looked exactly the same. It's weird, because I love movies like Alien, 2001, Moon, Sunshine, etc.
The pace was a little slower... But given the slightly awkward controls and camera, I think that was a good thing. Especially since you had to aim rather deliberately to cut up some of the creatures. Something truly fast-paced might not have worked well.
Some of the environments became a bit repetitive, that is true. But if you paid attention there were usually some changes from the last time you were there. Not enough to hide the fact that you'd been there before... But better than having it completely identical.
You mention Alien... Frankly, Dead Space reminded me a ton of Alien.
Nothing happens at all for the first half of Alien. They're waking up, figuring out where they are, landing the ship, etc. The most exciting thing is when they break something while landing. No monsters, no blood, no chaos... Nice and slow. And just as you're settling in and getting used to the pace of things, it all goes to hell.
But even after it all goes to hell - even after we've discovered the monster and he's killing people one by one - the pacing still alternates between calm and chaos. You'll have a scene or two where the monster is killing someone and there's screaming and crying and blood and everything... And then you'll have a scene where the remaining survivors figure out what has happened and deal with their decreased chances of getting out alive.
Dead Space had a similar kind of pacing. There were lulls where you were steadily trudging through some area that was more or less safe... Some area you'd been through before, or some area with just some pansy monsters... And then they'd drop something worrisome on top of you. A new monster you didn't expect, or one of those tentacles that drags you away, or whatever.
It may have been a great game, but they absolutely ruined it with the camera. The fact that the center of rotation was still on your character, which was permanently stuck covering up one side of your screen, meant that the camera, and thus your weapon, rotated faster in one direction than the other. This only compounded the problems that arose from the fact that you couldn't see what was coming from the "slow" direction.
I understand that they were going for some kind of "cinematic view" or something, but it completely got in the way of the gameplay.
I really didn't find the camera rotation to be a big problem...
Yeah, it was occasionally difficult to see what was going on because your character was in the way, but only occasionally. I've played plenty of games that got it far more wrong than Dead Space did.
You don't have to email things to get them on the kindle. Out of the box pdf is just that, plug it into a computer, dump the PDF's on it, and they will read (formatting letter into a 6" screen aside).
I was under the impression you still had to email the PDF to an address to have it reformatted for the Kindle. Is this no longer the case with the new firmware update?
Also, i really question the use of the wifi, do i need to download books faster than 3g? why don't i just plug it into my computer usb style?
I'm not terribly worried about the speed, but rather the coverage. I've got a Verizon cell phone, so I have no idea what AT&T's network looks like out here... But cell coverage is kind of spotty. There are plenty of places where I can't place a call. I'm thinking I will be able to fall back on the Wi-Fi for connectivity where the 3G fails.
Around 5 years ago, the internet was down for comcast subscribers in northern Indiana and a good chunk of the midwest-
I figured out it was just their DNS servers that were down and quickly switched over to AT&T's. That evening I saw the fastest internet I've ever seen. It was glorious.
That's roughly the same experience I had about a year ago with Charter here.
The Internet went to hell for the better part of a week... Slow, had trouble looking up anything, web pages took forever to load, couldn't send mail. It was awful. I didn't initially think much of it as we routinely have trouble... But then one day it just cut out completely.
I did some basic troubleshooting to make sure it wasn't my own hardware, and found out I could ping pretty much anything by IP address, but Charter's DNS servers just weren't responding.
So I threw in OpenDNS's servers, and everything started working again. Actually, faster than it ever had. I haven't tried my ISP's DNS servers again since then - why switch when OpenDNS works so much better?
You don't need to trust your ISP, they are legally binded to protect your privacy on most of the countries.
Yeah, right.
How many stories have there been on here about various telecom companies handing records over to investigators with very little, if any, reason to do so?
How often do we hear about records being lost or leaked or stolen?
How often do we actually hear about ISPs or telecom companies getting in trouble for any of this?
Regardless of whatever laws and contracts you may think you have on your side... The ISP is going to do pretty much whatever it wants, and you can either put up with it or go find a different ISP (which will also do pretty much whatever it wants).
However with Google, you have nothing.
You have a privacy policy that states their logs will be deleted every 48 hours. You can believe that or not... But it's about as substantial as anything you'll get from your ISP.
and one of the world's largest advertising companies, masquerading as a technology company (though only as a vehicle for their advertising) isn't EVER going to start throwing up link farms or ads in response to NX queries? You, sir, have more faith than the pope.
One of the big complaints about NXDOMAIN redirection is that it breaks certain bits of the Internet that rely on DNS lookups functioning properly. And Google has a pretty big interest in making sure that the Internet keeps working correctly. So they've got some incentive not to play around with NXDOMAIN results too much.
OpenDNS provides typo-correction and search lookups for NXDOMAIN results. That's how they make money. But they also allow you to opt-out. Unlike the opt-out that some cable companies use, there is no cookie. It is configured by your IP address. Which means that your NXDOMAIN behaves correctly on any computer behind that router, even if you aren't using a web browser with that cookie set.
If OpenDNS can both garner advertising revenue and keep NXDOMAIN working correctly for the folks who need it, I'm going to assume that Google can do the same.
Then you are a fool. This is exactly what I mean by trusting your ISP. I sympathize with you and your situation (and I understand that it happens), but all your country has to do is implement some system that will change the UDP packets coming from Google DNS to change the answers, thus accomplishing the same censorship. The more people who use Google DNS, the more likely a country or ISP is to do this.
Actually, it'd be far easier to just capture all DNS queries and send them to the server you control. We set such things up all the time. Doesn't even take crazy-expensive hardware.
But why does using OpenDNS or Google DNS make this guy a fool?
Is he supposed to just sit back and enjoy the censorship?
So what if the government notices this and implements better censorship... Are you then going to suggest that he not try to circumvent that?
Its funny how the Google hype is driving so much talk about something like DNS, a service which probably 95% of non-tech people don't know exists. Most people
wouldn't care about DNS normally, but since its Google it must be something to get excited about.
I don't think I've seen any talk of Google DNS in the mainstream media... Pretty much just on the technical/network sites. Which is where folks actually know and care about DNS.
I doubt really that any significant number of people will
switch to using 8.8.8.8
Home users? Probably not. Businesses? Maybe.
I know I'll be using Google DNS as an alternative to OpenDNS for our clients with dynamic IP addresses.
I worry that if they do, one of the the original goals for DNS will be lost. That its distributed
Well, first of all, DNS isn't all that distributed. I mean, it is... But ultimately you're talking to the same few root servers. So if something goes seriously wrong at the root, it doesn't much matter what DNS server you're using.
Second, they have the standard primary/secondary server thing going on. So if one of their addresses goes down, the other one can still respond.
Third, just because they're only handing out two IP addresses doesn't mean there are literally two servers. I assume that they've got some kind of distributed cluster thing going on.
Just ask yourself one question, if you don't trust your internet provider enough to do DNS correctly, should you trust them at all?
My ISP does a crappy job of DNS. I'm not entirely sure what their problem is... Maybe the hardware is overworked, maybe the admins are incompetent, whatever. The end result is that their DNS servers are slow and flaky. I switched to OpenDNS a year or so ago in order to fix problems with my DNS.
That's not to mention the NXDOMAIN hijinks that some ISPs pull... Redirecting your NXDOMAIN results to a search or portal page of some sort to generate more revenue.
As for why I'd trust them at all if they can't handle DNS... Well, I guess trust is a fairly strong word. I don't trust them. I have no confidence that they're going to provide quality service or that they'll defend my privacy or that some admin somewhere isn't snooping on my traffic. But they're pretty much the only game available at my location. So, I put up with their problems.
..and the chance of them getting working A.I. to handle the suggested visual recognition task reasonably well is so small that it also boggles the mind.
Since when do you need AI?
There's already plenty of machine vision software out there... Hell, my crappy digital camera is able to recognize a face well enough to tell if somebody blinked. All it has to do is match the image you just took to another image in its database with some degree of accuracy.
Then it can use the tags on the similar image to look things up... Or the words surrounding that similar image on the web...
Buy a kindle 1, cheaper, replaceable battery, SD card, reads any real format file.
That being said, i bought a kindle 1 for that reason, and i have to admit that there is really no reason to have a SD card. All the books i can read in a reasonable amount of time fit into internal memory, and having then just sit on a SD card just drains battery life (indexing, searching, etc...). Maybe if I had a big kindle for PDF's i would need 4gb of books. . . but the technology just isn't there yet for that.
One of the major reasons I went with the nook, as opposed to the Kindle, was the combination of PDF support and an SD slot.
At work I'm constantly referencing documentation in PDF format. I have an SD card already that I use to shuffle documentation between the various computers I use throughout the day. I intend to simply slot that card into my nook and be able to read the documentation that way. It should be easier than printing everything out or hauling a laptop into the wiring closet with me.
I understand that the Kindle now has full-fledged PDF support, but it did not at the time I placed my order. And I'm still not terribly thrilled with the idea that you have to email your PDF to an address to be reformatted for the Kindle to read.
People keep complaining about the Kindle and DRM, and I don't think they realize that you can turn the wireless off and get your books from ANYWHERE and read them on the kindle with NO problem. Amazon has made it read several formats, and there are ton of converters out there, if you have something weird. My kindle does exactly what i want it to do, display books. I don't need it to be open source, i need it to work, and it has for the past year wonderfully.
Yeah, I'm not terribly worried about DRM or terribly excited about Android. The fact that it is technically an open-source platform is kind of neat... But it's been heavily modified to work with the e-ink display and doesn't have access to the Android app store - so I'm not sure that it really matters anymore. It could be pretty much any OS under there.
And, while I'm sure I'll purchase plenty of ebooks, I'm not terribly worried about DRM. I've got a ton of public domain ebooks already in various open formats that'll work just fine on it (and would also have worked just fine on a Kindle).
Would i buy a Nook? No. The Kindle has far surpassed my expectations, and i see nothing about the nook that makes it any better, just a product that is a year behind the polish of it's competitors.
I agree with the lack of polish. The nook is a brand new product that has just started shipping. The Kindle has had a couple years of tweaking and fixes. I'm sure it'll be rough around the edges.
But no amount of updating or patching can add an SD slot or a removable battery to an existing Kindle. Nor can it add Wi-Fi. Nor can it eliminate the keyboard down at the bottom.
So I went with the one that had nicer hardware... And I'm hoping that the software will catch up soon.
The problem is that PDFs are usually designed for A4 or A5 paper, not the small eBook reader screen. Scrolling around when screen updates take 3-4 seconds is painful.
When I read about the colour LCD I was hoping it would be overlaid on the eInk screen. That way it could give you a fast but less readable preview to help navigation, with the eInk screen kicking in a second or two later.
Yeah... That's what I'm a little worried about.
I know some devices are able to re-flow some PDFs... But I don't know how much of that is a function of the PDF, and how much is a function of the device, or whether the nook specifically is able to re-flow any PDFs at all... I guess I'll find out.
I like the idea, but I'm not going to buy any eBook reader until I can safely read it in the bathtub like a regular book. Crazy, maybe, but that's my criteria.
This is exactly what my wife asked me when I ordered my nook this year - can you use it in the bathtub.
I don't think I've ever read a book in the bathtub, and I'm really not sure that I'd want to. Paper isn't exactly water-safe. I once made the mistake of bringing a book to an amusement park with me, and it was absolutely ruined when we went on some white-water raft ride. Completely destroyed.
Do people actually do this? Do folks actually read in the bathtub?
Don't the pages get all weird from the humidity? What if you drop your book in the water? Don't your wet hands mess up the pages?
Could someone please explain the advantage of a dedicated e-book reader? I don't understand why I would buy either when I can get a netbook for $50 more (at worst) that can read both PDFs and Amazon e-books. Is it the battery life of these things, or is the hardware form factor really nice? I don't know.
The battery life is generally rated in days, as opposed to hours.
They are typically shaped more like a book or slate, and less like a laptop. A netbook is going to have the keyboard sticking out of the bottom and the screen is oriented horizontally rather than vertically.
The e-ink screen is more like a printed page, and easier to read under similar lighting conditions. LCDs typically have problems with bright light, and can cause eye strain after prolonged reading.
Both the Kindle and the nook offer free 3G to purchase ebooks, which your netbook probably wouldn't.
If you don't read much and you just want something that can display a PDF, obviously an ebook reader isn't going to be necessary. Just throw it at your computer.
But if you read for recreation, an ebook reader can be very nice. It allows you to condense a huge book into a very small and portable form factor. It allows you to carry a large selection of books with you. It allows you to quickly and easily purchase more books without having to locate the nearest bookstore. And it is designed to allow you to keep reading for hour after hour, day after day.
A book offers permanence. Books are created so the only infrastructure required to receive the information within is your brain. And how can you get rid of books authorities no longer like? Well, because of the light infrastructure requirements, you CAN'T. No book burning has ever deleted an entire work from the culture.
But if a corporation decides to "burn" an e-reader book, can they? They sure CAN! And the book will be gone with no chance of ever discovering an unburnt copy.
Sorry, no. The function I want is PERMANENCE. That cannot be built into an e-reader.
Actually... If you're worried about permanence... I'd go for an (open) electronic format over the printed page...
Much easier to throw a PDF on the interwebs and ensure that it lives forever. Or copy it to a couple dozen USB keys or SD cards and scatter them around. Or email it to hundreds of people. Or encrypt the thing so authorities can't touch it. Or print out a few dozen copies. Or burn it to a CD/DVD. Throw a copy on your iPod Touch, on your iPhone, on your Blackberry.
Yeah, DRM is bad. And Amazon has demonstrated just how bad it can be. But the nook supports both PDF and EPUB files and has an SD card reader - so I can put pretty much any written document on it and Barnes & Noble can't do much about it.
And as far as the light infrastructure requirements...
With a printed book you need more than just a brain - you need to be able to read. There have been many times in history when it was far easier to get your hands on a printed book than it was to learn how to read. And if you can't read, you're just trusting somebody else to tell you what it says. No need to burn the book then - just lie about the contents.