No, it fucking wasn't. Are you fucking retarded? Information only comes on cell phones now? Really? idiot.
Look, asshole.
Think about this. The average person in India has very little access to things like the internet. They have cheap ass cell phone plans which give them free access to Wikipedia, and not much else. What the fuck do you think "Wikipedia Zero" is? It costs them nothing to access it, whereas a data plan might be a months pay. Which they might want to spend on food and housing.
There are only so many places to try to glean information, and places to apply effort.
So you can sit in your comfortable first world life and be a smug douchebag, or you can try to accept that people in poor third world countries have access to FAR less sources of information without it costing them dearly. Which means they place far more reliance on the sources they have.
So go shove your attitude up your punk ass, and save me your bullshit.
This notion that people have perfect access to information to make perfect choices is completely bullshit when the only sources they have available to them are dishonest, or would cost far more than they'd be able to afford without a better job like they were trying to find.
Don't me such a smug little prick. Mostly it makes you sound like an idiot who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
India is one of the countries where tens of millions of Internet users have free access to Wikipedia Zero, but cannot afford the data charges to access the rest of the Internet, making Wikipedia a potential gatekeeper
A bunch of poor people, with limited access to the internet, turn to one of the only sources of information they have.
And it turns out that source isn't trustworthy.
How is the consumer supposed to know otherwise when they have no access to better information?
Yes, we all know that wikipedia isn't always an authoritative source. But for people who only can get to wikipedia through their basic cell phone plans.... that was the only source of information.
Given the available sources of information, I'd like to see you arrive at a better conclusion.
Which is pathetic, because this seems to be a genuine attempt to rein in an out of control spying apparatus.
But, apparently far too many people are still thinking "well, I don't care what they have to do as long as we're safe" -- in fact, I've been told that by people.
Unfortunately, these people just think that this crap is actually keeping them safe, and utterly fail to understand the ways in which it undermines their rights.
I find it worrying that a lot of people are willing to give carte blanche to something they haven't stopped to consider what it actually means.
The world seems to be filled with too much stupid to realize what we've done, and why it needs to be undone.
Flash has been in a perpetual state of vulnerable for, what, almost years now?
Every 2-3 months for that entire time, Flash has had yet another security hole in it.
So, I'll continue to leave it disabled in my browsers. About 3 time per year I cave and fire up an IE which has it enabled because someone in HR still insists on something I must use it for.
But, seriously, Flash should be killed off. It's terrible. It's always been terrible. And it's not showing any signs of not being terrible.
It serves ads, and sites with terrible navigation. I'm sure there are sites I don't use which use it for other stuff, or possibly even use it well.
But many of us have gone many many years with it disabled and not missing a damned thing.
Anybody who says they didn't see this coming is a complete fool.
This kind of crap was the goal all along.
They're a non-taxi taxi company who has non-employee employees who aren't covered by any rules, who has to justify a billion plus in valuation, and want to sell you data.
Everything about this company has been sleazy from the get go. Suddenly becoming a big-data company was entirely predictable.
Just another greedy technology company, claiming to be innovative, mostly skirting around the rules they claim don't apply to them, and wanting to use their access to your cell phone to sell data about you... because that's where the real money is.
These guys have always sounded like a sleazy player. Maybe their "customers" will wise up. And maybe their drivers will too. The product has always been data.
I'm saying I don't trust any of them, and people pretending like "this kind of spying is good and this kind is bad" or that it's "OK when we do it but not when they do"... well, I think those people are full of shit.
Countries can, will, and do spy for any benefit they can find for themselves. They'll also barter that information for even more benefit to themselves.
The rules are there are no rules. All of the countries have admitted they do it, and will continue to do it.
Stop pretending that it's somehow shocking when China does this crap. It's no more shocking that the crap we hear about America tapping the phone system of entire countries.
Oh, well, if it's commerce it's magically exempt and everybody will know it's divine and protected by god, right?
Sorry, but do you expect us to use the US wouldn't use spying for commercial advantage if they had a chance? Or that they don't? Or that they restrict how they spy on everybody else int he world?
The difference between the US government saying "We can break into any system we want" and the Chinese government saying "We can break into system we want" is the self entitled nature of the person who says they're different.
These two are exactly the same. Claiming otherwise is just exceptionalism. It's just one government hacking security for their own ends.
To everyone who is neither American nor Chinese, you're both convinced magical unicorns give you the right to do as you please.
Then it will make a pretty useless damned radiator, won't it?
If you are trying to use this thing as central heating, then I'm betting all of the possible benefits pretty much go away.
If you want central heating, use central heating. If you want a radiator in a room to give spot heating, do that.
But putting a giant toaster in your basement to then circulate the heat around? I'm pretty much certain the laws of thermodynamics would say that's a terrible way of doing it.
For central heating, the existing solutions would work far better than inefficient electrical appliances generating hear.
Can't pretty much any high enough level certificate authority issue any damned certificate it wants?
You think America or any other country can't do this stuff? You think they don't?
Sorry, but when every other damned nation is spying and lying, WTF difference is it when China does it? You don't get to pretend it's OK for one country but not another.
Until we start designing stuff which is inherently more secure, and which doesn't have back doors for government.. this is the state of security. You may or may not have it, you have no control over that fact.
America doesn't want people to bypass their spy apparatus any more than China does. Let's not pretend this is any different.
Sadly, almost all new "innovations" on the web are almost immediately co-opted by advertising, which more or less renders the technology as crap to be blocked.
It's all about monetizing, and nothing to do with an improved experience.
The internet has more or less been ruined by marketing.
And if web pages where every other word is a hyperlink of dubious value, then I'm afraid "semantic publishing" is a buzzword for "annoying and intrusive".
Some of us still prefer to read a single, coherent article by someone who can write in English. You want to put foot notes at the bottom, go ahead.
But, please, don't give me the blinking and whirling semantic web whereby every move of the mouse updates your AHDH-laden site.
You also need to read up on stuxnet, it' seems you are confused as to what it is.
Or, you're an idiot.
Stuxnet didn't magically cross the airgap, and I never said it did. What it did was find ways to cross that used the humans involved, and the fact they needed to get data onto those systems at some point.
Which means it is a solved problem to cross the air gap by coming at the problem from a different direction.
So saying this won't work because it requires the secure system to be compromised is crap... because there are already examples of how people do this.
Yes, you have to get the stuff onto the machine in the first place. But it's not like that's never been accomplished.
Why not the far simpler and more beneficial Grid tie syncing systems?
Because the companies who run the grids don't want to play the game. Certainly not unless the terms favor them.
The batteries means you can say "fuck you", and save power for when it's dark. You no longer have to worry about what time of day you generate power, just how much you can store.
I think little pockets being off the grid with their own battery storage is far more disruptive than you seem to. Because suddenly they aren't at the mercy of selling it back to the power companies when they can't use it.
Take the profitability of the power company out of the equation.
The applications for small islands or secret evil lairs are pretty cool.
So did Stuxnet... it relied on exploiting removable media in the airgapped machine.
People who want to spy on you can be patient.
It may not have much in the way of bandwidth, but it has the potential to bridge an airgap.
Yes, it's far from perfect, and relies on getting installed in the first place. That doesn't mean it won't cause people in secure facilities a few more ulcers.
I tried 3 times Windows 8.1 on a new build I did last summer. I am typing this on Windows 7. I agree Windows 8.1 is crap.
Actually, that's not what I was saying. I think Metro is complete crap.
Once you remove the romper-room interface, make it run with a classic Windows look, and generally disregard what Microsoft thinks was "innovative", the OS itself is just fine.
But the entirety of that start screen, the second set of apps which do the same job as the desktop apps (but badly)... that I think is complete garbage. Especially for a desktop machine.
I think the lesson here is that, to me, Microsoft is too focused on the eye candy and the glossy crap which doesn't add to my experience. Trying to foist a touch interface onto me is annoying and useless, especially since I don't run it on a touchscreen.
The rest of the OS seems just fine to me.
The stuff I hate is little more than a re-worked version of the useless "Active Desktop" crap they have been trying to push out for years... and keep having to disable because it's a security risk. They had it in '98, they had it in XP, they had it in Vista. It's a cute gimmick for about 10 minutes.
I just think it's sad that all of the things they think are cool and innovative are the things people spend the most time removing. They seem to be actively trying to tell desktop users that their new way is so awesome, but all it does is piss people off.
The reality is, the underlying OS is pretty well done from what I can see. Especially now that it looks like something usable and familiar instead of the crap it looked like by default.
TSA is a place where money goes to be spent on the premise that spending money on things which do nothing is better than doing nothing, even if the outcomes are the same.
They have a blank check to spend money on stuff with no proof it has any value.
Other than harassing everybody, the TSA has accomplished very little. It's become a money pit which pretends to be keeping us safe.
The TSA can point to very few incidents where they've actually stopped anything related to terrorism. Mostly they just serve to annoy everybody else.
Meanwhile, the baggage handlers are the ones who keep getting caught smuggling stuff.
The TSA is a pathetic joke, beefed up by reactionary politicians, and which utterly has failed to make anybody "safer" by any objective measure. In fact, everything they do seems to be devoid of "objective measure".
Say you're tinkering about, and come up with something totally awesome which goes viral.
Now, you either need to rebuilt it all from scratch, or you're not allowed to make money off your work.
If they're putting the restriction on the outputs that you're not allowed to make money from it... you're better off starting with something which doesn't constrain you. Otherwise, you're mostly just wasting your time.
This just sounds like it's hobbling you for no good reason, and makes it impossible to break into the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, asshole.
Think about this. The average person in India has very little access to things like the internet. They have cheap ass cell phone plans which give them free access to Wikipedia, and not much else. What the fuck do you think "Wikipedia Zero" is? It costs them nothing to access it, whereas a data plan might be a months pay. Which they might want to spend on food and housing.
There are only so many places to try to glean information, and places to apply effort.
So you can sit in your comfortable first world life and be a smug douchebag, or you can try to accept that people in poor third world countries have access to FAR less sources of information without it costing them dearly. Which means they place far more reliance on the sources they have.
So go shove your attitude up your punk ass, and save me your bullshit.
This notion that people have perfect access to information to make perfect choices is completely bullshit when the only sources they have available to them are dishonest, or would cost far more than they'd be able to afford without a better job like they were trying to find.
Don't me such a smug little prick. Mostly it makes you sound like an idiot who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
One of the problems is this bit from TFS:
A bunch of poor people, with limited access to the internet, turn to one of the only sources of information they have.
And it turns out that source isn't trustworthy.
How is the consumer supposed to know otherwise when they have no access to better information?
Yes, we all know that wikipedia isn't always an authoritative source. But for people who only can get to wikipedia through their basic cell phone plans .... that was the only source of information.
Given the available sources of information, I'd like to see you arrive at a better conclusion.
Which is pathetic, because this seems to be a genuine attempt to rein in an out of control spying apparatus.
But, apparently far too many people are still thinking "well, I don't care what they have to do as long as we're safe" -- in fact, I've been told that by people.
Unfortunately, these people just think that this crap is actually keeping them safe, and utterly fail to understand the ways in which it undermines their rights.
I find it worrying that a lot of people are willing to give carte blanche to something they haven't stopped to consider what it actually means.
The world seems to be filled with too much stupid to realize what we've done, and why it needs to be undone.
Flash has been in a perpetual state of vulnerable for, what, almost years now?
Every 2-3 months for that entire time, Flash has had yet another security hole in it.
So, I'll continue to leave it disabled in my browsers. About 3 time per year I cave and fire up an IE which has it enabled because someone in HR still insists on something I must use it for.
But, seriously, Flash should be killed off. It's terrible. It's always been terrible. And it's not showing any signs of not being terrible.
It serves ads, and sites with terrible navigation. I'm sure there are sites I don't use which use it for other stuff, or possibly even use it well.
But many of us have gone many many years with it disabled and not missing a damned thing.
Anybody who says they didn't see this coming is a complete fool.
This kind of crap was the goal all along.
They're a non-taxi taxi company who has non-employee employees who aren't covered by any rules, who has to justify a billion plus in valuation, and want to sell you data.
Everything about this company has been sleazy from the get go. Suddenly becoming a big-data company was entirely predictable.
Just another greedy technology company, claiming to be innovative, mostly skirting around the rules they claim don't apply to them, and wanting to use their access to your cell phone to sell data about you ... because that's where the real money is.
These guys have always sounded like a sleazy player. Maybe their "customers" will wise up. And maybe their drivers will too. The product has always been data.
Because it's a big-ass sky with lots of solar systems.
No, seriously. We used to think planets around stars would be rare. Now we know otherwise.
Think of it like a lava lamp ... it happens according to knowable rules. But it doesn't happen the same way every time.
What we keep seeing is a stunning diversity in how individual solar systems form. Not some uniform composition.
I'm no astronomer, but this is more about there simply being a huge amount of possible combinations, in a vast collection of instances.
I live in so such magical country.
I'm saying I don't trust any of them, and people pretending like "this kind of spying is good and this kind is bad" or that it's "OK when we do it but not when they do" ... well, I think those people are full of shit.
Countries can, will, and do spy for any benefit they can find for themselves. They'll also barter that information for even more benefit to themselves.
The rules are there are no rules. All of the countries have admitted they do it, and will continue to do it.
Stop pretending that it's somehow shocking when China does this crap. It's no more shocking that the crap we hear about America tapping the phone system of entire countries.
Oh, well, if it's commerce it's magically exempt and everybody will know it's divine and protected by god, right?
Sorry, but do you expect us to use the US wouldn't use spying for commercial advantage if they had a chance? Or that they don't? Or that they restrict how they spy on everybody else int he world?
The difference between the US government saying "We can break into any system we want" and the Chinese government saying "We can break into system we want" is the self entitled nature of the person who says they're different.
These two are exactly the same. Claiming otherwise is just exceptionalism. It's just one government hacking security for their own ends.
To everyone who is neither American nor Chinese, you're both convinced magical unicorns give you the right to do as you please.
Then it will make a pretty useless damned radiator, won't it?
If you are trying to use this thing as central heating, then I'm betting all of the possible benefits pretty much go away.
If you want central heating, use central heating. If you want a radiator in a room to give spot heating, do that.
But putting a giant toaster in your basement to then circulate the heat around? I'm pretty much certain the laws of thermodynamics would say that's a terrible way of doing it.
For central heating, the existing solutions would work far better than inefficient electrical appliances generating hear.
There is one set of rules for everyone: every government on the planet has decided it is legal for them to spy on anybody they want.
Sorry, but once the US and UK governments publicly said it was OK, how the hell can you expect it to be different when the Chinese do it?
Sorry, but the level of cognitive dissonance required for that isn't sustainable.
And, so what?
American spy agencies fuck with everybody else on the planet. Are you laboring under the belief you are special little flowers or something?
On behalf of the rest of the world, listening to Americans complain about what the Chinese are doing is pathetic.
Because you don't seem to give a shit about how we feel about you spying on us.
Can't pretty much any high enough level certificate authority issue any damned certificate it wants?
You think America or any other country can't do this stuff? You think they don't?
Sorry, but when every other damned nation is spying and lying, WTF difference is it when China does it? You don't get to pretend it's OK for one country but not another.
Until we start designing stuff which is inherently more secure, and which doesn't have back doors for government .. this is the state of security. You may or may not have it, you have no control over that fact.
America doesn't want people to bypass their spy apparatus any more than China does. Let's not pretend this is any different.
Sadly, almost all new "innovations" on the web are almost immediately co-opted by advertising, which more or less renders the technology as crap to be blocked.
It's all about monetizing, and nothing to do with an improved experience.
The internet has more or less been ruined by marketing.
People don't want "clever". They want "shiny".
And if web pages where every other word is a hyperlink of dubious value, then I'm afraid "semantic publishing" is a buzzword for "annoying and intrusive".
Some of us still prefer to read a single, coherent article by someone who can write in English. You want to put foot notes at the bottom, go ahead.
But, please, don't give me the blinking and whirling semantic web whereby every move of the mouse updates your AHDH-laden site.
Yeah, right "do this or you can't sell machines with our stuff".
That's not really a "choice".
Once again, Microsoft abuses it's position in the market, and everyone acts like it's the OEMs who chose to do this.
Sorry, but no ... the position this was a choice of the OEM is crap.
Bah, you have a 50/50 chance ... send two mice.
Or, you're an idiot.
Stuxnet didn't magically cross the airgap, and I never said it did. What it did was find ways to cross that used the humans involved, and the fact they needed to get data onto those systems at some point.
Which means it is a solved problem to cross the air gap by coming at the problem from a different direction.
So saying this won't work because it requires the secure system to be compromised is crap ... because there are already examples of how people do this.
Yes, you have to get the stuff onto the machine in the first place. But it's not like that's never been accomplished.
Because the companies who run the grids don't want to play the game. Certainly not unless the terms favor them.
The batteries means you can say "fuck you", and save power for when it's dark. You no longer have to worry about what time of day you generate power, just how much you can store.
I think little pockets being off the grid with their own battery storage is far more disruptive than you seem to. Because suddenly they aren't at the mercy of selling it back to the power companies when they can't use it.
Take the profitability of the power company out of the equation.
The applications for small islands or secret evil lairs are pretty cool.
So did Stuxnet ... it relied on exploiting removable media in the airgapped machine.
People who want to spy on you can be patient.
It may not have much in the way of bandwidth, but it has the potential to bridge an airgap.
Yes, it's far from perfect, and relies on getting installed in the first place. That doesn't mean it won't cause people in secure facilities a few more ulcers.
And how did Stuxnet spread?
In some cases, by exploiting removable media.
If you think there's no precedent for getting the infection onto the machine, you're horribly mistaken.
Once you have the PoC ... the rest is just a little social engineering or covert attack.
Knowing it can be done opens a lot of opportunities, and defeats a lot of security.
Actually, that's not what I was saying. I think Metro is complete crap.
Once you remove the romper-room interface, make it run with a classic Windows look, and generally disregard what Microsoft thinks was "innovative", the OS itself is just fine.
But the entirety of that start screen, the second set of apps which do the same job as the desktop apps (but badly) ... that I think is complete garbage. Especially for a desktop machine.
I think the lesson here is that, to me, Microsoft is too focused on the eye candy and the glossy crap which doesn't add to my experience. Trying to foist a touch interface onto me is annoying and useless, especially since I don't run it on a touchscreen.
The rest of the OS seems just fine to me.
The stuff I hate is little more than a re-worked version of the useless "Active Desktop" crap they have been trying to push out for years ... and keep having to disable because it's a security risk. They had it in '98, they had it in XP, they had it in Vista. It's a cute gimmick for about 10 minutes.
I just think it's sad that all of the things they think are cool and innovative are the things people spend the most time removing. They seem to be actively trying to tell desktop users that their new way is so awesome, but all it does is piss people off.
The reality is, the underlying OS is pretty well done from what I can see. Especially now that it looks like something usable and familiar instead of the crap it looked like by default.
TSA is a place where money goes to be spent on the premise that spending money on things which do nothing is better than doing nothing, even if the outcomes are the same.
They have a blank check to spend money on stuff with no proof it has any value.
Other than harassing everybody, the TSA has accomplished very little. It's become a money pit which pretends to be keeping us safe.
The TSA can point to very few incidents where they've actually stopped anything related to terrorism. Mostly they just serve to annoy everybody else.
Meanwhile, the baggage handlers are the ones who keep getting caught smuggling stuff.
The TSA is a pathetic joke, beefed up by reactionary politicians, and which utterly has failed to make anybody "safer" by any objective measure. In fact, everything they do seems to be devoid of "objective measure".
You understand that Pixar is now Di$ney, right?
The rest of it then makes sense. These are the people who bought a copyright extension of practically forever.
Whatever Pixar (and Marvel) used to be, they're now part of the evil empire.
How so?
Say you're tinkering about, and come up with something totally awesome which goes viral.
Now, you either need to rebuilt it all from scratch, or you're not allowed to make money off your work.
If they're putting the restriction on the outputs that you're not allowed to make money from it ... you're better off starting with something which doesn't constrain you. Otherwise, you're mostly just wasting your time.
This just sounds like it's hobbling you for no good reason, and makes it impossible to break into the industry.
Sounds like a waste of time except for as a toy.