The problem is that emojis are now purely grahics... and generally things people expect you're going to download to your phone.
So when someone wants to have "Christmas tree, Christmas tree, Budweiser, Pizza, rabid weasel, rabid weasel, rabid weasel"... the expectation is you've downloaded these from somewhere, and if you send this crap to your friends, they'll also download it.
It now has nothing to do with the smileys it started from, and has turned into something which seems quite different.
If someone texts me with a bunch of random emojis, I'm going to get blanks, because I don't give a crap enough to download all of your stupid little emojis.
I'm afraid I simply don't see the point of them other than appealing to a bunch of teenagers who think they're cute.
Not seeing the problem here. Are you saying that people have to right the commit crimes or adultery without getting caught?
No, I'm saying we can rapidly find ourselves in an oppressive surveillance society in which links which could never have been made will suddenly be made automatically.
So, that family vacationing from Hoboken? Their teenage daughter takes a selfie by the pool, uploads to Facebook over the hotel wifi... and suddenly something posts to your Facebook status which says "Bob was in Mexico with Maria Consuela, child prostitute". All in under 5 minutes.
I'm not sure that level of seamless integration of suddenly having no privacy is a good thing.
PS There are no pictures of me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
So, you can 100% guarantee you have never been in the background of someone else's photo, tagged by someone as being in that photo... or cross referenced with a photo from a different source which did identify you and make it easy to correlate a picture in which you are a random stranger to "Bob Smith in the blue hat lives in Chicago"?
If I go full tinfoil-hat, I see a world in which the number of sources of data are so utterly huge, and eventually interconnected that you might not have any control over this. A random picture of a random crowd would get processed and identified.
Hell, the government just needs to demand this data, cross reference it with things like drivers licenses, passports, and whatever else they can get... and suddenly you have a very different world to live in.
Unfortunately, the real world keeps blurring the lines between what I used to think of as utterly crazy with what I now think is utterly plausible if not already happening.
You know, we're fast reaching a point where you need to get over that sentiment of nobody caring.
Nobody individually cares, but in the aggregate you should be scared.
So, picture this: You share some vacation photos to Facebook or somesuch. Facebook does facial recognition on it. IBM also comes along and does facial recognition on it, and interprets what was happening. The analytics associated with that (who already know loads about you) identify you've tagged a destination -- there's dozens of those. Facebook also knows several of your friends had status updates in the same place -- oh, and of course, the facial recognition sees them in your photos and tags you.
Now, imagine a world in which secretive government agencies can demand your data from all of these entities and insist that fact be kept private.
So, combine this and you can suddenly paint a very complete picture that you, your friends, a couple of women who are not your wives... all flew into Mexico on United airlines, spent a week at a given hotel, were seen kissing the women who aren't your wives (in the background of some other tourist and auto-tagged). Oh, and did we mention the women in the photos were also picked up in facial recognition and identified as underage prostitutes with ties to a Mexican gang?
Your insurance now says you're ineligible because you didn't get vaccinated. Your wife now sees a picture of you in Mexico kissing someone else (even though you know nothing about this picture). The government can realize you were in the company of someone with know criminal ties. And, through parallel construction can commit perjury and hide how they came to know this.
My scenario is intended to be crazy over the top. Ridiculous even.
But the scary thing is that when you can start connecting all of these sources of information via 'big data', this is exactly the kind of thing which is rapidly going from absurd fiction to utterly real technology. The sheer scale of this data, and the sheer number of ways in which it can be automatically cross referenced should be scaring the crap out of people.
Acting like this kind of stuff can't have impacts on our lives is naive.
Acting like this stuff is the domain of tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists and bad Hollywood movies is now a thing of the past.
We're actively building all the tools we need for the dystopian future.
Our study yielded more than scientific insights: It also provided actionable intelligence. As the algorithm sorted through the 2,200 rodent species, it provided a list of new suspects. Some species that had previously been given a "0" for unknown reservoir status fit more neatly in the "1" category of known disease carriers. We didn't have to wait long for validation. While we were getting our results to press, two of those suspect species were indeed recognized as novel reservoirs for human diseases.
Sure sounds to me that, for the North American populations they tested this one they actually did demonstrate it actually works.
I'm sure it's not perfect or complete, but it sure sounds like it actually created some testable results.
Think of it like a first person shooter... there's pivoting so you're actually turning the camera lens... there's also the one in which the lens points in the same direction but the whole camera moves side to side.
So, I suspect there is the ability to spin around a point, or move the lens left and right without changing the direction the lens points.
I have seen a 3D film exactly twice... both of them Avatar.
Both times I left with a massive headache which lasted several hours, and sore eyes which lasted a day or so.
Just not interested.
I know this is for things like VR goggles, but I'm suddenly thinking of the multi-angle feature of DVDs pretty much nobody ever used except porn.
And on the few occasions I ever saw porn with multi angle in it (purely for scientific purposes I assure you), it seemed like an utterly pointless feature.
I can see this having value for games and other forms of visualization. But for movies? I'm assuming they did this with Star Wars to get clicks, not because it would ever enhance a movie... though, being able to stare at Padma instead of looking at Jar Jar would have been a huge improvement.
Well, I know we've all been waiting with bated breath to have cat videos rendered in immersive VR.
No, wait, the other one... so, I can what, scroll around in the movie? I'm afraid I'm not getting the point of this. This sounds like one of those technologies which people want to create but nobody knows why they'd need it.
it's a ploy to sell night vision goggles from a specific provider.
I disagree.
It's yet another instance where the copyright cartel has made government and private industry responsible for policing copyright.
So basically huge multinational corporations have everyone else doing their bidding and wasting their time and resources to ensure the profits for those huge multinational corporations.
If those corporations want their copyright policed, they should be paying for it. This is just another example of how we've jumped the shark and are increasingly living in a world which has been coopted by large corporations.
If they want this, let them pay for their own staff to be standing around wearing night vision goggles.
You know, my fear is these people would be just as stupid without the camera.
I'm of the opinion that by the time you've, say, bought a selfie stick that you're sufficiently vain and vacuous that you really might not always be demonstrating any common sense.
Are the cellphones/cameras making people stupid? Or merely providing a way for existing stupid to manifest?
it will be at the center of the Agency's effort to inject digital solutions into every aspect of our work. It will be responsible for accelerating the integration of our digital and cyber capabilities across all our mission areas--human intelligence collection, all-source analysis, open source intelligence, and covert action
My god but that sounds like came out of a mission statement generator.
We seek to leverage synergies and holistically solve problems problems using agile methods and cutting edge technology while streamlining existing process via the generous application of "jazz hands".
Or, it just may be that "free markets" don't exist, have never existed and cannot exist, and this is just a snapshot of what late-stage capitalism looks like.
I live in a country with socialized medicine... I agree with you completely.
I think any system which allows some douchebag corporation to buy the rights to a drug and jack the price up by that much is inherently flawed.
And I believe a government in which industry can buy themselves laws which suit their own purposes is doomed to fail, and is likely in the middle of failing.
America has been coopted by corporate interests. And there are way too many politicians telling us this is the way forward.
Buying a drug so you can make it artificially scarce and jack up the prices by that much? That's not a "free market"... that's a system which is so utterly broken as to be scary.
The modern form of "capitalism" is pretty much a cancer on the world. It's nothing but greedy douchbags with politicians in their back pocket giving them laws which allow them to manipulate the system as they see fit.
In case you haven't noticed, American politicians are more than willing to entrench corporate profits into law.
When pharma buys a law, you can make damned sure it's only pharma who benefits. Likewise, when the copyright cartel buys a law, it's only a good thing for them.
Basically when corporations buy laws, they write it, give themselves exemptions and loopholes so they control the outcomes... it's a stacked deck, by a corrupt process which says the more money you have the more access to "democracy" you have.
Me, I think shit like this is pretty much demonstrating how the US has sold the farm for a couple of magic beans in the form of "intellectual property". Free markets? Who wants one of those when you can guarantee corporate profits and not have to work for it?
We're witnessing the final death of the desktop - right here.
Never gonna happen.
In the corporate world, physical desktop machines will stick around for a long time.
And as long as you pay a significant premium for a laptop which isn't as easily upgraded, a lot of home users will continue to buy a desktop.
With a desktop you can swap out pretty much any component, with a laptop not so much. You can pretty much have a desktop machine built to spec, whereas a laptop is always going to be a much more limited menu.
Yes, there will be tablets. Yes, a lot of people find a laptop covers their needs. But I don't see the desktop going away any time soon.
What if sorry ass humans are the Universe's best shot at an advanced life from?
Then the universe just might have to accept not having one.
There's really only two options: Either we're special little snowflakes and are the only life in the entire universe, or the universe is teeming with life... because once it happens twice it probably happens many times.
Thus far, the universe hasn't demonstrated any particular preference for things lasting forever. And it's pretty arrogant to claim we have a duty to the universe to ensure it has intelligent life.
Without laws enforcing it, even if you had a mechanism none of those corporations would follow it.
They seem to think it is their right to buy and sell our information.
Even if you had laws enforcing it, I bet half of them would lie and keep it anyway. The shady assholes feeding the "big data" industry have far too much money at stake to ever allow constraints on how they use "our" data.
They'd just pay off the politicians to pass laws clarifying it's their data, they're entitled to it, and we don't get a vote.
Which is why governments do stupid stuff like this they demonstrate they're clueless idiots who don't understand the technology -- essentially they don't understand, or don't care that such a backdoor undermines the entire thing.
As long as they get what they want, they simply don't give a damn.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that emojis are now purely grahics ... and generally things people expect you're going to download to your phone.
So when someone wants to have "Christmas tree, Christmas tree, Budweiser, Pizza, rabid weasel, rabid weasel, rabid weasel" ... the expectation is you've downloaded these from somewhere, and if you send this crap to your friends, they'll also download it.
It now has nothing to do with the smileys it started from, and has turned into something which seems quite different.
If someone texts me with a bunch of random emojis, I'm going to get blanks, because I don't give a crap enough to download all of your stupid little emojis.
I'm afraid I simply don't see the point of them other than appealing to a bunch of teenagers who think they're cute.
No, I'm saying we can rapidly find ourselves in an oppressive surveillance society in which links which could never have been made will suddenly be made automatically.
So, that family vacationing from Hoboken? Their teenage daughter takes a selfie by the pool, uploads to Facebook over the hotel wifi ... and suddenly something posts to your Facebook status which says "Bob was in Mexico with Maria Consuela, child prostitute". All in under 5 minutes.
I'm not sure that level of seamless integration of suddenly having no privacy is a good thing.
So, you can 100% guarantee you have never been in the background of someone else's photo, tagged by someone as being in that photo ... or cross referenced with a photo from a different source which did identify you and make it easy to correlate a picture in which you are a random stranger to "Bob Smith in the blue hat lives in Chicago"?
If I go full tinfoil-hat, I see a world in which the number of sources of data are so utterly huge, and eventually interconnected that you might not have any control over this. A random picture of a random crowd would get processed and identified.
Hell, the government just needs to demand this data, cross reference it with things like drivers licenses, passports, and whatever else they can get ... and suddenly you have a very different world to live in.
Unfortunately, the real world keeps blurring the lines between what I used to think of as utterly crazy with what I now think is utterly plausible if not already happening.
You know, we're fast reaching a point where you need to get over that sentiment of nobody caring.
Nobody individually cares, but in the aggregate you should be scared.
So, picture this: You share some vacation photos to Facebook or somesuch. Facebook does facial recognition on it. IBM also comes along and does facial recognition on it, and interprets what was happening. The analytics associated with that (who already know loads about you) identify you've tagged a destination -- there's dozens of those. Facebook also knows several of your friends had status updates in the same place -- oh, and of course, the facial recognition sees them in your photos and tags you.
Now, imagine a world in which secretive government agencies can demand your data from all of these entities and insist that fact be kept private.
So, combine this and you can suddenly paint a very complete picture that you, your friends, a couple of women who are not your wives ... all flew into Mexico on United airlines, spent a week at a given hotel, were seen kissing the women who aren't your wives (in the background of some other tourist and auto-tagged). Oh, and did we mention the women in the photos were also picked up in facial recognition and identified as underage prostitutes with ties to a Mexican gang?
Your insurance now says you're ineligible because you didn't get vaccinated. Your wife now sees a picture of you in Mexico kissing someone else (even though you know nothing about this picture). The government can realize you were in the company of someone with know criminal ties. And, through parallel construction can commit perjury and hide how they came to know this.
My scenario is intended to be crazy over the top. Ridiculous even.
But the scary thing is that when you can start connecting all of these sources of information via 'big data', this is exactly the kind of thing which is rapidly going from absurd fiction to utterly real technology. The sheer scale of this data, and the sheer number of ways in which it can be automatically cross referenced should be scaring the crap out of people.
Acting like this kind of stuff can't have impacts on our lives is naive.
Acting like this stuff is the domain of tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists and bad Hollywood movies is now a thing of the past.
We're actively building all the tools we need for the dystopian future.
Well, did you keep scrolling?
Sure sounds to me that, for the North American populations they tested this one they actually did demonstrate it actually works.
I'm sure it's not perfect or complete, but it sure sounds like it actually created some testable results.
I assume you can't have that ... me, I leave the VR to anybody who actually cares.
I strongly suspect immersive VR would make me vomit. I just don't see myself ever caring enough to find out.
Well, he may have proved it to you.
What he proved to me is I can't stand movies in 3D, and will never see another again. I'm not paying extra for something which gives me a headache.
Think of it like a first person shooter ... there's pivoting so you're actually turning the camera lens ... there's also the one in which the lens points in the same direction but the whole camera moves side to side.
So, I suspect there is the ability to spin around a point, or move the lens left and right without changing the direction the lens points.
I have seen a 3D film exactly twice ... both of them Avatar.
Both times I left with a massive headache which lasted several hours, and sore eyes which lasted a day or so.
Just not interested.
I know this is for things like VR goggles, but I'm suddenly thinking of the multi-angle feature of DVDs pretty much nobody ever used except porn.
And on the few occasions I ever saw porn with multi angle in it (purely for scientific purposes I assure you), it seemed like an utterly pointless feature.
I can see this having value for games and other forms of visualization. But for movies? I'm assuming they did this with Star Wars to get clicks, not because it would ever enhance a movie ... though, being able to stare at Padma instead of looking at Jar Jar would have been a huge improvement.
You mean we can finally look around at the living rooms of the houses they rent to film porn?
I've always thought those were beautiful houses, and wish I could see more of the decor.
Oh, baby, look at those curtains!! And that decorative urn!
I'll be in my bunk!
Well, I know we've all been waiting with bated breath to have cat videos rendered in immersive VR.
No, wait, the other one ... so, I can what, scroll around in the movie? I'm afraid I'm not getting the point of this. This sounds like one of those technologies which people want to create but nobody knows why they'd need it.
Maybe I don't watch enough cat videos.
In order to support the business model of the people on this panel, yes.
I disagree.
It's yet another instance where the copyright cartel has made government and private industry responsible for policing copyright.
So basically huge multinational corporations have everyone else doing their bidding and wasting their time and resources to ensure the profits for those huge multinational corporations.
If those corporations want their copyright policed, they should be paying for it. This is just another example of how we've jumped the shark and are increasingly living in a world which has been coopted by large corporations.
If they want this, let them pay for their own staff to be standing around wearing night vision goggles.
You know, my fear is these people would be just as stupid without the camera.
I'm of the opinion that by the time you've, say, bought a selfie stick that you're sufficiently vain and vacuous that you really might not always be demonstrating any common sense.
Are the cellphones/cameras making people stupid? Or merely providing a way for existing stupid to manifest?
My god but that sounds like came out of a mission statement generator.
The CIA just fucking got Uberered
We seek to leverage synergies and holistically solve problems problems using agile methods and cutting edge technology while streamlining existing process via the generous application of "jazz hands".
And one time, at Band Camp ...
Hmmm ... poo Binging monkeys ... up Bing Creek without a paddle ... Bing for brains ...
You may be onto something.
I live in a country with socialized medicine ... I agree with you completely.
I think any system which allows some douchebag corporation to buy the rights to a drug and jack the price up by that much is inherently flawed.
And I believe a government in which industry can buy themselves laws which suit their own purposes is doomed to fail, and is likely in the middle of failing.
America has been coopted by corporate interests. And there are way too many politicians telling us this is the way forward.
Buying a drug so you can make it artificially scarce and jack up the prices by that much? That's not a "free market" ... that's a system which is so utterly broken as to be scary.
The modern form of "capitalism" is pretty much a cancer on the world. It's nothing but greedy douchbags with politicians in their back pocket giving them laws which allow them to manipulate the system as they see fit.
Corporate profits.
In case you haven't noticed, American politicians are more than willing to entrench corporate profits into law.
When pharma buys a law, you can make damned sure it's only pharma who benefits. Likewise, when the copyright cartel buys a law, it's only a good thing for them.
Basically when corporations buy laws, they write it, give themselves exemptions and loopholes so they control the outcomes ... it's a stacked deck, by a corrupt process which says the more money you have the more access to "democracy" you have.
Me, I think shit like this is pretty much demonstrating how the US has sold the farm for a couple of magic beans in the form of "intellectual property". Free markets? Who wants one of those when you can guarantee corporate profits and not have to work for it?
I hope this CEO gets mauled by bears.
Well, it will have zero battery life, need to be thicker to hold the cooling gear and huge video card, and need an external monitor to save weight.
They'll also remove the keyboard and touchpad to prevent overheating.
Essentially it will ship as a big black box about 18"x18"x8". ;-)
Never gonna happen.
In the corporate world, physical desktop machines will stick around for a long time.
And as long as you pay a significant premium for a laptop which isn't as easily upgraded, a lot of home users will continue to buy a desktop.
With a desktop you can swap out pretty much any component, with a laptop not so much. You can pretty much have a desktop machine built to spec, whereas a laptop is always going to be a much more limited menu.
Yes, there will be tablets. Yes, a lot of people find a laptop covers their needs. But I don't see the desktop going away any time soon.
Then the universe just might have to accept not having one.
There's really only two options: Either we're special little snowflakes and are the only life in the entire universe, or the universe is teeming with life ... because once it happens twice it probably happens many times.
Thus far, the universe hasn't demonstrated any particular preference for things lasting forever. And it's pretty arrogant to claim we have a duty to the universe to ensure it has intelligent life.
Without laws enforcing it, even if you had a mechanism none of those corporations would follow it.
They seem to think it is their right to buy and sell our information.
Even if you had laws enforcing it, I bet half of them would lie and keep it anyway. The shady assholes feeding the "big data" industry have far too much money at stake to ever allow constraints on how they use "our" data.
They'd just pay off the politicians to pass laws clarifying it's their data, they're entitled to it, and we don't get a vote.
Just like always.
Which is why governments do stupid stuff like this they demonstrate they're clueless idiots who don't understand the technology -- essentially they don't understand, or don't care that such a backdoor undermines the entire thing.
As long as they get what they want, they simply don't give a damn.
You know, I guess I won't discount that someone knows it's a Ponzi scheme and figures that's OK as long as they cash out first.
So, either these people were clueless, or they were assholes? That doesn't reflect well on humans.
The parent is modded flamebait, but honestly .... "an annual rate of 3,641 percent".
If anybody is gullible enough to believe that, they really are clueless.
That's one of those things where if anybody suggests that you should run away, and realize you're being lied to.
That's an awful lot of people who apparently couldn't think through and ask "is this even possible?".