You know the scary thing? As I pointed out above, if the TPP is ratified, then the copyright cartel will have even more clout to do this.
ISPs and pretty much every piece of technology on the planet would be made subservient to the demands of the copyright lobby.
It won't "work" in the sense of actually stopping anything, but it would suddenly carry much harsher legal penalties, and both ISPs and governments would be responsible to police this on behalf of the copyright holders.
The TPP is written in such a way that pretty much everybody works on behalf of the IP groups... which probably means they're feeling quite emboldened these days.
Because if it comes into law, they'll pretty much hold all of the cards.
Reason number 9,862 why that TPP is a terrible idea, and will only help multinational corporations instead of the actual citizens.
And, once again broadcasters and copyright assholes want veto power over technology, and the evil bit of "thou shall not record" has reared its head.
Every new piece of technology immediately gets co-opted as corporations tell us what we're allowed to do because they apparently feel the world exists to serve their fucking business model.
Oh, and of course if ratified the TPP will make this entrenched in law -- so you could spend life in prison for recording a show to watch later.
Yeah, not sure what the fuss is. I have 'delete cookies when I close firefox' as default action, then I can allow sites to specifically keep their cookies.
I keep Firefox open for weeks... I also keep Chrome and Opera open for weeks. I use them for different things,
The problem is the internet has become a cesspool of marketing, analytics, and other tracking bullshit.
If I log into my gmail, I need to set a cookie. If I visit some random website in Firefox, my NoScript and ask to set cookies means it set can't set cookies or run scripts... because I don't choose to let some random website set cookies/run scripts so some asshole can track where I go on the internet.
I don't want to accept those cookies, I want to say "this site can set cookies, this site can fuck off"... that has been a standard feature of Firefox for at least a decade.
Changing that feature to "sure, go ahead, set cookies because we've sold out to the advertising industry" says that Mozilla has jumped the shark and lost track of why people started using it in the first place.
But for the last few years they've focused on removing the features we want, and adding features we need to figure out how the hell to disable.
Firefox has been in decline as they focus on garbage and take out the good. It's quite disappointing.
Further, users who had enabled the "Ask before accept" feature have had that preference silently changed to, "Accept normally." The proffered excuse for the removal was that the feature was unmaintained, and that its users were, "probably crashing multiple times a day as a result" (although no evidence was presented to support this assertion).
So, basically Firefox has decided to permanently become a steaming pile of shit, and they focus on interface designs and features nobody cares about, while ignoring the features which made us use it in the first place?
You know, a lean standard compliant browser which allowed us control over our privacy and security? The things we actually want out of it.
Removing that feature is fucking moronic, because it allowed us to say "yes, I trust this site and they can set cookies, but all these sites can piss off, never ask me again".
Basically Firefox is now suffering from the Open Source feature rot... if nobody is maintaining it, it's because it's not a shiny feature, which means it gets neglected.
I've used this feature for years, and it has NEVER caused a browser crash, not once. Silently saying "sure, go ahead, set all the cookies you want, we don't care" is a bullshit outcome from an organization which has become far too focused on shiny baubles instead of maintaining the good pieces in there.
Over the last bunch of years I'm more or less forced to conclude that the Mozilla foundation has lost the plot of what we wanted out of that browser in the first place.
OK, folks, so what's the best cookie manager plugin for Firefox? Because for those of us who run multiple browsers for multiple purposes with different levels of security and the like, the options seem to keep dwindling.
I have to say, it seems like Mozilla is just running themselves into the ground, and are jumping from one thing to another... apparently now it's killing off Firefox OS and jumping into IoT.
Sorry Mozilla, you act like you're driven by marketing idiots with ADHD these days. Pathetic.
You cannot lawsuit your way out of a shitty product.
Have you not being paying attention for the last bunch of years? Because that's exactly what happens.
Tone of places have started suing for bad reviews... they go all "wah wah" and out come the lawyers.
Bad reviews on yelp cause many businesses to sue.
What should happen is the courts say "OK, if you prove it was done with malicious intent, we will consider it, but otherwise STFU or we're going to impose stiff penalties".
But don't think you can't lawsuit yourself out of a shitty product/bad service. I definitely happens, and the lawyers go all crazy over semantics the average person can't quite grasp.
Give me a break. Only 2% of Android users know this setting exists. And Google knows it. That isnt in the Open Source spirit and you know it.
But you know what? Likely only 2% give a fuck about "The Open Source Spirit", have no interest in that, and don't want some screeching yowling loon telling them it's not open source enough.
So, before you keep going all RMS and howling about how it's not pure enough for you... do kindly remember almost nobody else cares.
The rest of the world just rolls their eyes, tunes this shit out, and reaches for Candy Crush and Facebook.
Neither Google nor Apple are in the business of making phones to appease the rabid open source people. You may have to live with that fact.
It's time people started to accept this very important fact: being sellouts who want to sign away your rights is not a party issue.
They're all pretty much acting like it's better to live in fear in a surveillance state than it is to remember you can't "defend" freedoms by eliminating them.
Aren't these clowns all supposed to take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution? Instead they're all deciding it doesn't apply.
Republicans, Democrats... they're all happy to spy on everybody and act like it's normal.
Yep. I've never had a FB account, never been to a FB page, yet i get in my personal email invitations from FB saying these people i know all use it, and they are correct, i always know at least half of the people they think i know!
It can actually get worse... they have a feature which allows you to find contacts... basically you (like a trusting idiot) upload your contacts to Facebook, who then scour through it to link you to anybody they can identify. So your friends can all get harassed and have their contact information provided to the assholes at Facebook without their knowledge or consent.
It'll even go one further, and let you just enter your email address and password, and then Facebook will log into it and scour it directly. That people would provide Facebook with their email address and password defies comprehension.
If you know such a person, Facebook has your email address because one of your idiot friends gave it to them... which is how they know who you probably know, and what your email is.
And then once they can associate you with your browser, likely due to crap embedded in the email... they can track you all over the web.
Or this, which is Jim Balsillie (one of the BlackBerry co-founder who is a billionaire) spelling out why this treaty is a terrible idea (for Canada at least).
The TPP is selling the fucking farm for some magic beans. It's basically the US allowing corporations to set international policy for their own benefit.
This is only beneficial to the corporations who paid for it, and the politicians and lobbyists on the payroll to fucking deliver it. It offers pretty much no benefit to the citizens of those countries.
no part of it has anything to do with 'trade', and all of it having to do with corporations ensuring their profits, at the cost of those countries' citizens
That's what "trade" means these days, didn't you get the memo?
This whole TPP is basically the foundation of an international corporate bill of rights, which places the demands of corporations into law around the world.
Pushed by the US government, who are conveniently on the payroll and dedicated to advancing those corporate interests.
This "treaty" is pretty much the global oligarchy tightening the noose. Entrenching copyright, imaginary property, and making sure to be able to fight governments ability to pass laws is the entire fucking point.
Citizens? This isn't to benefit us... unless you mean corporate citizens.
As long as you understand that unless you've actively blocked them at the firewall or in your browser an alarming number of sites you visit will still cause Facebook to generate data about you... because, well, between the Facebook button and embedded scripts, you might be surprised just how much they're already tracking you.
Well, them and the 15 other tracking sites embedded in most pages that people don't notice is happening.
Oh, and we've done plenty of sealed ecosystem research on Earth
Which we can set up at our leisure under ideal circumstances. Now prove we can do it on another planet under less ideal conditions.
but unless the lower gravity causes serious problems, it's proven technology
Which means, it's not yet proven technology for where it needs to be used.
We still need to develop a reliable Mars-crete formula
Based on what technology and empirical data? Just make shit up and hope it works?
Or, to start out, just bury your landing module in a couple meters of sand.
Not once have we dug a hole on another planet/moon of any consequence. If your first dry run is on Mars itself, you're probably going find out you have missed something.
You list these things so glibly, as if they're small challenges easily overcome.
Until such time as someone has done any of these things on the Moon, assuming you can do them successfully on Mars would be utterly moronic.
Any small failure in a plan which assumes perfect success under conditions you've never actually tested in is going to have catastrophic outcomes. Instead of doing that, prove you can do any of those things on the Moon, where you have a chance to get back alive if things don't go perfectly.
The engineering required to survive on Mars will be epic... the testing and refinement of that technology needs to happen FAR closer to home, and under as realistic circumstances as possible. Most notably where you don't take off your helmet and go to the debriefing to figure out what went wrong.
Saying "oh, well, you just bury your module" is kind of understating what all has to happen to get there.
The goal should be to become self sufficient on Mars
Assemble a building the astronauts can remove their helmet in, and sleep overnight in, prepare meals, have a place to shit and shower.
Come back a while later and do that again.
If you can't do that on the Moon, you have no hope in hell of doing it on Mars the first time.
There is no much foundation technology required it isn't funny. Trying it out for the first time on Mars would be reckless and stupid.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for NASA to say "screw you random internet skeptics, we'll prove you wrong". They just better not shoot to prove me (and everyone else saying this) right.
I'm saying unless they build some of this technology on a smaller scale (ie the Moon), doing it with real live humans on a trip of that scale would be moronic.
You don't go from not possessing the current technology to put someone into low Earth orbit to landing them on Mars and keeping them alive both in transit and once they arrive in one step.
Of course it's fucking hard, and they should be working towards it. But they're sure as hell not going to do it successfully in one step.
Unless they plan on just killing off some astronauts until they get it right, they need to be solving some of these problems long before they try to send people to Mars.
You mean other than having the technology to get them there alive, build any settlements, feed them once they're there, and keep them alive long enough to get them back?
Sorry, but there is a stunning lack of proven technology which would be required to pull this off.
Acting like this is just a trivial extension of stuff people are already doing is pretty much wishful thinking.
Does it matter? Someone failed to, or didn't bother doing some aspect of this... we should be surprised at this why?
At this point, I pretty much expect products are taking shortcuts and being pushed to market in a half assed way.
Because that's how products are done these days; everything is apparently a continuous beta intended to be fixed later (if at all) but sold now. And as often as not, once they have the money, they immediately stop caring about any issues with it.
Slashdot Mirror
You know the scary thing? As I pointed out above, if the TPP is ratified, then the copyright cartel will have even more clout to do this.
ISPs and pretty much every piece of technology on the planet would be made subservient to the demands of the copyright lobby.
It won't "work" in the sense of actually stopping anything, but it would suddenly carry much harsher legal penalties, and both ISPs and governments would be responsible to police this on behalf of the copyright holders.
The TPP is written in such a way that pretty much everybody works on behalf of the IP groups ... which probably means they're feeling quite emboldened these days.
Because if it comes into law, they'll pretty much hold all of the cards.
Reason number 9,862 why that TPP is a terrible idea, and will only help multinational corporations instead of the actual citizens.
And, once again broadcasters and copyright assholes want veto power over technology, and the evil bit of "thou shall not record" has reared its head.
Every new piece of technology immediately gets co-opted as corporations tell us what we're allowed to do because they apparently feel the world exists to serve their fucking business model.
Oh, and of course if ratified the TPP will make this entrenched in law -- so you could spend life in prison for recording a show to watch later.
I keep Firefox open for weeks ... I also keep Chrome and Opera open for weeks. I use them for different things,
The problem is the internet has become a cesspool of marketing, analytics, and other tracking bullshit.
If I log into my gmail, I need to set a cookie. If I visit some random website in Firefox, my NoScript and ask to set cookies means it set can't set cookies or run scripts ... because I don't choose to let some random website set cookies/run scripts so some asshole can track where I go on the internet.
I don't want to accept those cookies, I want to say "this site can set cookies, this site can fuck off" ... that has been a standard feature of Firefox for at least a decade.
Changing that feature to "sure, go ahead, set cookies because we've sold out to the advertising industry" says that Mozilla has jumped the shark and lost track of why people started using it in the first place.
But for the last few years they've focused on removing the features we want, and adding features we need to figure out how the hell to disable.
Firefox has been in decline as they focus on garbage and take out the good. It's quite disappointing.
So, basically Firefox has decided to permanently become a steaming pile of shit, and they focus on interface designs and features nobody cares about, while ignoring the features which made us use it in the first place?
You know, a lean standard compliant browser which allowed us control over our privacy and security? The things we actually want out of it.
Removing that feature is fucking moronic, because it allowed us to say "yes, I trust this site and they can set cookies, but all these sites can piss off, never ask me again".
Basically Firefox is now suffering from the Open Source feature rot ... if nobody is maintaining it, it's because it's not a shiny feature, which means it gets neglected.
I've used this feature for years, and it has NEVER caused a browser crash, not once. Silently saying "sure, go ahead, set all the cookies you want, we don't care" is a bullshit outcome from an organization which has become far too focused on shiny baubles instead of maintaining the good pieces in there.
Over the last bunch of years I'm more or less forced to conclude that the Mozilla foundation has lost the plot of what we wanted out of that browser in the first place.
OK, folks, so what's the best cookie manager plugin for Firefox? Because for those of us who run multiple browsers for multiple purposes with different levels of security and the like, the options seem to keep dwindling.
I have to say, it seems like Mozilla is just running themselves into the ground, and are jumping from one thing to another ... apparently now it's killing off Firefox OS and jumping into IoT.
Sorry Mozilla, you act like you're driven by marketing idiots with ADHD these days. Pathetic.
Hackproof, unsinkable, indestructible ... at a certain point the superlatives just become meaningless.
The be truly hack proof it needs no inputs and no outputs. It would be useless, but it would be hackproof.
Have you not being paying attention for the last bunch of years? Because that's exactly what happens.
Tone of places have started suing for bad reviews ... they go all "wah wah" and out come the lawyers.
Bad reviews on yelp cause many businesses to sue.
What should happen is the courts say "OK, if you prove it was done with malicious intent, we will consider it, but otherwise STFU or we're going to impose stiff penalties".
But don't think you can't lawsuit yourself out of a shitty product/bad service. I definitely happens, and the lawyers go all crazy over semantics the average person can't quite grasp.
Haven't you heard? Failure to champion any and all new technologies as being cool and useful makes you a luddite these days.
That or the poster is a childish ass who felt a random need to inject a stupid opinion in the title, and Timothy went along with it.
Tough call.
But you know what? Likely only 2% give a fuck about "The Open Source Spirit", have no interest in that, and don't want some screeching yowling loon telling them it's not open source enough.
So, before you keep going all RMS and howling about how it's not pure enough for you ... do kindly remember almost nobody else cares.
The rest of the world just rolls their eyes, tunes this shit out, and reaches for Candy Crush and Facebook.
Neither Google nor Apple are in the business of making phones to appease the rabid open source people. You may have to live with that fact.
It's time people started to accept this very important fact: being sellouts who want to sign away your rights is not a party issue.
They're all pretty much acting like it's better to live in fear in a surveillance state than it is to remember you can't "defend" freedoms by eliminating them.
Aren't these clowns all supposed to take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution? Instead they're all deciding it doesn't apply.
Republicans, Democrats ... they're all happy to spy on everybody and act like it's normal.
It can actually get worse ... they have a feature which allows you to find contacts ... basically you (like a trusting idiot) upload your contacts to Facebook, who then scour through it to link you to anybody they can identify. So your friends can all get harassed and have their contact information provided to the assholes at Facebook without their knowledge or consent.
It'll even go one further, and let you just enter your email address and password, and then Facebook will log into it and scour it directly. That people would provide Facebook with their email address and password defies comprehension.
If you know such a person, Facebook has your email address because one of your idiot friends gave it to them ... which is how they know who you probably know, and what your email is.
And then once they can associate you with your browser, likely due to crap embedded in the email ... they can track you all over the web.
Isn't it fucking awesome?
Or this, which is Jim Balsillie (one of the BlackBerry co-founder who is a billionaire) spelling out why this treaty is a terrible idea (for Canada at least).
The TPP is selling the fucking farm for some magic beans. It's basically the US allowing corporations to set international policy for their own benefit.
This is only beneficial to the corporations who paid for it, and the politicians and lobbyists on the payroll to fucking deliver it. It offers pretty much no benefit to the citizens of those countries.
That's what "trade" means these days, didn't you get the memo?
This whole TPP is basically the foundation of an international corporate bill of rights, which places the demands of corporations into law around the world.
Pushed by the US government, who are conveniently on the payroll and dedicated to advancing those corporate interests.
This "treaty" is pretty much the global oligarchy tightening the noose. Entrenching copyright, imaginary property, and making sure to be able to fight governments ability to pass laws is the entire fucking point.
Citizens? This isn't to benefit us ... unless you mean corporate citizens.
As long as you understand that unless you've actively blocked them at the firewall or in your browser an alarming number of sites you visit will still cause Facebook to generate data about you ... because, well, between the Facebook button and embedded scripts, you might be surprised just how much they're already tracking you.
Well, them and the 15 other tracking sites embedded in most pages that people don't notice is happening.
Yeah, so are the 4th and 5th amendments, and habeas corpus, how's that working out for 'ya?
The 4th and 5th have been gutted or ignored, and you had an AG who famously said habeas corpus doesn't exist.
Why does everyone let the other Constitutional rights get shat upon, but act like that one damned thing is inviolate?
Why aren't all those people loudly braying about their 2nd amendment defending the other Constitutional rights?
It is unfortunate that they don't tell people this, but if you're not paying for it, you're the product.
Nobody is giving you something for free just to be nice.
And I'm sure the terms of service nobody ever reads it spells out what they're doing.
Where everybody surfs corn. ;-)
Which we can set up at our leisure under ideal circumstances. Now prove we can do it on another planet under less ideal conditions.
Which means, it's not yet proven technology for where it needs to be used.
Based on what technology and empirical data? Just make shit up and hope it works?
Not once have we dug a hole on another planet/moon of any consequence. If your first dry run is on Mars itself, you're probably going find out you have missed something.
You list these things so glibly, as if they're small challenges easily overcome.
Until such time as someone has done any of these things on the Moon, assuming you can do them successfully on Mars would be utterly moronic.
Any small failure in a plan which assumes perfect success under conditions you've never actually tested in is going to have catastrophic outcomes. Instead of doing that, prove you can do any of those things on the Moon, where you have a chance to get back alive if things don't go perfectly.
The engineering required to survive on Mars will be epic ... the testing and refinement of that technology needs to happen FAR closer to home, and under as realistic circumstances as possible. Most notably where you don't take off your helmet and go to the debriefing to figure out what went wrong.
Saying "oh, well, you just bury your module" is kind of understating what all has to happen to get there.
So, when they publish their findings will someone modify it to make an army of virtual hackers?
Because that would be awesome.
Because all people give a shit about these days is "ZOMG, I can get an app for my phone!!".
Things like security or having the device become obsolete at the whim of the company are meaningless.
Welcome to the world, now with 150% more cloud. This way you can keep paying for the same stuff over and over until we decide to take it away.
Assemble a building the astronauts can remove their helmet in, and sleep overnight in, prepare meals, have a place to shit and shower.
Come back a while later and do that again.
If you can't do that on the Moon, you have no hope in hell of doing it on Mars the first time.
There is no much foundation technology required it isn't funny. Trying it out for the first time on Mars would be reckless and stupid.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for NASA to say "screw you random internet skeptics, we'll prove you wrong". They just better not shoot to prove me (and everyone else saying this) right.
Epic fail is NOT the outcome we want to see.
No, now you're just being an idiot.
I'm saying unless they build some of this technology on a smaller scale (ie the Moon), doing it with real live humans on a trip of that scale would be moronic.
You don't go from not possessing the current technology to put someone into low Earth orbit to landing them on Mars and keeping them alive both in transit and once they arrive in one step.
Of course it's fucking hard, and they should be working towards it. But they're sure as hell not going to do it successfully in one step.
Unless they plan on just killing off some astronauts until they get it right, they need to be solving some of these problems long before they try to send people to Mars.
And if four of those hacks are successful, that $60K USD is probably worth it.
Hell, how many people in the US would consider that a decent income?
Hence, my original post. ;-)
You mean other than having the technology to get them there alive, build any settlements, feed them once they're there, and keep them alive long enough to get them back?
Sorry, but there is a stunning lack of proven technology which would be required to pull this off.
Acting like this is just a trivial extension of stuff people are already doing is pretty much wishful thinking.
Bigger rockets don't even begin to cover it.
Does it matter? Someone failed to, or didn't bother doing some aspect of this ... we should be surprised at this why?
At this point, I pretty much expect products are taking shortcuts and being pushed to market in a half assed way.
Because that's how products are done these days; everything is apparently a continuous beta intended to be fixed later (if at all) but sold now. And as often as not, once they have the money, they immediately stop caring about any issues with it.