Anybody who wants to understand how truly fucking pathetic the "interweb of stuff" is, how horribly broken it is, and how corporations are completely inept at security.
I'd almost call it a case study in showing why the "intertubes of things" is nothing more than marketing hype, overblown claims, and shoddy products.
Because, really, it is marketing hype, overblown claims, and shoddy products.
I'm betting 80% of all consumer products which want to have network connectivity are probably trivially exploitable, with the remaining 20% still being easily exploitable. Which is why I won't buy and of this shit, and why I do my best Nelson "Ha ha!" when I hear about how insecure they are.
I might have to seek this out... it sounds like a catalog of incompetence, greed, and hubris.
You know what, if Microsoft wants telemetry... make it fucking well opt in.
It is none of your business how we use our computer son a day to basis. Adding telemetry to our computers without asking and enabling it by default screams tha Microsoft is still managed by a bunch of self entitled assholes who think they can do anything they want to.
I don't give a rats ass how much you'd like telemetry... the only fucking telemetry Microsoft can have from me is "fuck the hell off, and stop acting like my data is your property, and stop assuming that I have any interest in sending this shit to you"
Telemetry which isn't explicitly chosen by the user is completely indistinguishable from malware. Not chosen by default, not turned on without you looking, not installed without telling you... explicitly "boy, I'd love to install the pieces for that Customer Experience Improvement Program" which seems to run even if you've opted out of it.
Maybe if Microsoft would stop fucking writing software which assumes they're entitled to this stuff and then making the user have to find it and disable it, people would be so damned pissed off.
Telemetry without my explicit consent and conscious decision to provide it to you is pretty much malware, and is a strategy chosen by assholes.
Our data doesn't exist to make you clowns be able to forcibly take data we haven't been told you're collecting.
Only reason not to upgrade is in case some apps that worked under 7 or 8.1 misbehave under Windows 10
Horseshit.
Among the many reasons to not upgrade:
1) Tracking and analytics embedded in Windows 10 2) Microsoft removing choices about when/if you apply updates and moving to a model of them doing anything they choose 3) No interest in an OS which thinks the world is a tablet 4) No interest in Microsoft's new app ecosystem 5) Don't wish to be part of what is essentially a public beta they want to force everybody into running 6) Want to control what you do with your own computer 7) Don't want all of the privacy-wrecking bullshit Microsoft is trying to implement (like sharing wifi passwords)
Everything Microsoft is doing with this rollout smacks of doing it do users instead of for users.
When Microsoft starts concealing that they're sneaking in things like telemetry to track how well the upgrade is going, have decided users don't get a vote in how updates are applied, and are generally acting like it's their computer... there is no damned reason to upgrade if Microsoft is going to act like "we're upgrading this whether you like it or not", because it says the long-term plan is to wrest even more control of both your computer and privacy.
Fuck that. There is as yet a defensible reason why I'd upgrade to Windows 10. It sure isn't there to benefit me. And I sure as hell don't trust them or how they're doing this.
I don't want some $500 tablet, I want a relatively cheaper tablet which has enough specs to do what I need without trying to be bleeding edge.
For some of us, the $200 price point is the sweet spot, it's not a super low end piece of garbage, but it's not a super high end thing we don't need with features we don't want.
That was pretty much how I ended up with my Nexus 7. It was right in the $199-$219 price range when I bought it, was a 'vanilla' Android, and covered what I needed it for.
Contrast that with, say, an unlocked Nexus phone these days.. which is, what, a $600 unit? Sorry, don't need one of those. An iPad mini 4 looks like it starts at over $400 where I am, and then goes up from there. That's a lot of money for what I want it for.
The affordable end of the market is probably larger than the "latest and greatest" end.
My mother in law has a Nexus 7 which she uses for everything she needs a computer for -- and she'd never spend $500 or so on a device. Never in a million years. And for a tablet, neither would I.
When tablets first came out they threw away all the baggage, ans started fresh with a smaller and leaner platform. This gave us battery life, and finally gave us apps which were small, functional, and didn't take gigs of space.
I worry that everybody is going to try to turn these damned things back into x86 based dinosaurs, and start spec'ing out the damned things like desktops, and then we're back to the damned bloatware of old.
The x86 architecture is very old, full of stuff it probably doesn't need anymore, and is just going to encourage people to essentially treat tablets like they're desktops. And while I'm sure it's come a long way in terms of power, I just don't see why we can't keep tablets smaller and less tied to this damned architecture.
But, then again, I guess this allows everybody to be lazy and just reuse the same architecture they've had for decades and slowly turn the tablets back into low end desktops for no good reason.
If you want a Start button in Windows 8.1, install Classic Shell.
Do some googling, and figure out how you too can make Windows 8.1 look pretty much like previous versions of Windows. It's not that tough, but it makes it infinitely better.
On my desktop, I've disabled their store, their apps, the idiotic Metro screens, and what I see is a classic looking Windows desktop with a Start menu. Not a single bit of the crap Microsoft believes is the future. Because I want a damned desktop for working on, not some damned romper room thing which thinks the world is now a tablet.
The problem is that Microsoft doesn't seem willing to acknowledge your right to say "I don't want your Windows 10 crap", and are making it damned near impossible to identify which updates are the crap adding telemetry and other shit intended to force Windows 10 on you.
So much of their updates are sneaking in telemetry, user experience tracking, and other shit entirely designed to benefit Microsoft.. it actually takes a lot of effort to keep that shit away or have any trust that Microsoft isn't installing stuff you don't want, or a ticking time bomb which is going to give you Windows 10 no matter what you think.
Disabling Windows updates entirely might be something I have to start considering.
You give them a lot of benefit of the doubt.. much more than I do.
They knew they had no legal basis to pursue this. They had no legal basis to demand it or fight for it. Because it's not illegal.
This is the soft approach by which they insinuate all of the bad things which could happen, and hope the current climate leads to the library board saying "holy crap, look at this".
This is fairly scary, as it means that the spy agencies and law enforcement are working to subvert legal rights in a fairly shadowy way. And my conclusion is to trust them less and less with every passing week.
Because the shit they're willing to do in order to make an end run around Constitutionally protected rights is reaching the point where you have to start asking if these guys aren't the real enemies of the state... not 5 years ago it would be easy to dismiss that as crazy talk.
You know the scary thing... in just how many cities would the board have bought into the FUD, decreed that they can't do something which supports terrorists, and then get duped into saying it should be left off?
They really did want the outcome of making them all too scared to leave it.
I'm betting the fucking DHS has come powerpoint slide decks to teach law enforcement how to make these sound scary in order to suppress them... because the DHS et al have decided it will just be easier if they can make those pesky freedoms go away. Just like they have slide decks explaining how to commit perjury with parallel construction.
Make no mistake, this is part of a deliberate campaign to use FUD to do what they can't do legally. Defend and uphold the Constitution my ass... these people are fully into suppress, distort, and lie mode.
You can't protect someone's rights be eliminating them, no matter how delusional you are about why you're doing it.
If you enjoy having your civil liberties and access to uncensored information.. thank a damned Librarian.
For literally decades they've found themselves on the forefront defending your rights saying "hell no we won't do that" against people who want to burn books, or outlaw various things which shouldn't still be up for debate.
That DHS felt the need to sew a little FUD and bring in the local cops to stir up the bullshit and lies is pathetic. That the library board has sent a big "fuck you" is awesome -- because someone needs to stand up to the fascists and assholes who are constantly trying to say that certain freedoms are just too dangerous to have.
It is literally true that without Librarians fighting to defend these things we might no longer have them. Either from moralizing old bitties, or assholes in government, these rights are often under attack.
Neurons work in two ways, they are either "excitatory" in which case they tend to create further firing, or "inhibitory" in which case they tend to suppress further firing.
Well, then allow me to try to be among the first to ask the stupid question:
If it can be excitatory, and inhibitory... shouldn't there be a corresponding "not doing a damned thing" state?
Researchers looked at several hundred nearby galaxies that emitted a high amount of mid-infrared radiation (abstract), which could possibly be produced as the waste heat from civilizations using energy on galactic scales.
So, we're defining "advanced" societies according to the ability to put out more heat than their parent galaxies?
Well, that's a pretty high bar, and I'm also not sure the assumption these societies will exist is based on, well, anything.
From what I can see, maybe if you're talking about energy on that scale you might have better technology which doesn't generate vast amounts of waste heat. Like, maybe, superconductors.
To me this sounds like it's ruled out a dubious conclusion based on unfounded assumptions.
Facebook was using people's posts and likes as unauthorized advertising, which really annoyed people. Suddenly you're doing product endorsements instead of just clicking "Like" on a posting by Coke.
Secondly, "like" conveys.. well, "like", not "follow" or "acknowledge" or "important but awful".
Really, if you see a story which says "school shooting, 30 dead"... "like" just isn't the appropriate verb. People want to acknowledge the story without saying "gee, I'm really in favor of school shootings".
In the context of Facebook, "like" means "I wish to receive updates on this", but they've always treated it like "I endorse this", which has always demonstrated a certain cluelessness about how people were actually using it.
So the problem with how the feature was "intended" to be used was that it was incomplete. Well, the second problem is once you write the feature how you intended it is pretty much meaningless.. nobody gives a damn about how you wanted it to be used.
Oh, come on.. pretty much all tech "news" reporting is of the breathless variety these days.
I bet Wall Street analysts are trying to figure out the direction the stock will swing with this, and by how much. Every tech reporter is swooning and soiling their knickers over a new feature in Facebook, which they will dutifully report. Police departments are busy planning free speech zones to contain the excited crowds. Universities are preparing to study the global socio-economic impact of this new button.
Of course we have our priorities screwed up.
Because people stupidly believe what Facebook does will influence future generations, cause fortunes to be made and lost, and cottage industries to spring up around the existence of this damned button.
We live in a vacuous culture, obsessed with pointless shit. More people will think they're more immediately impacted by this button than will any other news story this year.
The issue is that the police and school don't know whether to believe him.
Tell you what, when the police start arresting every white guy with a gun collection because they don't know if he's going to go on a shooting spree, I might believe that. But when you start charging people with things they could have done you've pretty much jumped the shark.
You can't make up a bunch of hypothetical bullshit and use that to file charges... hypothetically the police could be incompetent or utterly corrupt. Hypothetically the school could be staffed with fucking morons.
On the plus side this gives him a reputation with the students as a rebel.
I'm pretty sure if it associates him with the possibility of making bombs, and being the little brown guy with a funny name who could have blown up the school... that's the last thing he wants.
His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb â" though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that itâ(TM)s a clock.
So, he might be charged... for not making a bomb... and for telling everybody it's not a bomb?
What the actual fuck? He didn't create a bomb, he didn't create a hoax bomb. Morons incorrectly concluded he made a bomb, he told them repeatedly it wasn't a bomb, but these morons now wish to charge him for the non-making of a non-bomb in a non-hoaxing kind of way?
These police are fucking morons, who if left in public could be accidentally confused with competent law enforcement officers. They should be charged with creating a hoax police department.
Apparently being a nerdy brown kid is now illegal in America. If this was a white Christian kid, he'd be a national fucking hero.
Well if we can use the internet to teach all that you listed and allow them to learn coding why wouldn't we.
Except it sounds like they have no internet, no computers, no resources in their own language.
Your being closed minded here.
Or, perhaps, you're being hopelessly naive?
We already see things about how technology doesn't magically solve education in North America and the like. People make these claims about how giving every kid an iPad or teaching them to code will do miraculous things.
And the reality is there isn't really any evidence showing it's working.
So when a bunch of people without backgrounds in education are hawking a bunch of technology solutions, with a distinct lack of evidence it will actually work... my skepticism is well founded as all of these things smack of a bunch of amateurs saying "OMG, teh iPad will solve everything". They have no evidence or proof, and no expertise in teaching.
The reality is, even in North America, this shit just diverts resources from things which actually work, and it really is vanity projects of tech people who make the claims that education will be revolutionized with technology.
I'm not being closed minded... I'm saying if they have no internet, no tech resources, the inability to get resources in their own language... then I'm saying maybe it's better to look for things which can help and be useful, instead of just deciding that this will work and doing it even if it won't.
As far as teaching them to code? I'm no more convinced a bunch of poor kids in rural India benefit from that any more than a bunch of poor kids in urban America. Because it utterly fails to address their most pressing educational needs.
From reading the OP it is clear there were already plans for a computer learning lab, which exists to some degree.
Oh, really?
Key constraints: The kids don't know much English and speak a local language called Odiya. There aren't any technical publications/resources in Odiya. Poor internet connectivity. No computer experts on the school staff. Any other advice/help would also be appreciated.
This doesn't sound like they have any infrastructure, expertise, technology, or a plan... just "hey, let's show these kids computers".
At which point, I seriously question if this serves any purpose or will improve these kids lives any.
Is this better than literacy? Sex ed? Things which they can use? Like even English or math?
Or is this the growing trend of "ZOMG... teh children must use teh computers"?
Coding? Games? Maybe your friend is missing the damned point and doing this as a vanity project?
Everyone is so damned excited to ensure every child on the planet is being taught "teh computers", and nobody seems to be stopping to ask if that's what they need most (or at all).
You know, since Galvani discovered you could make a dead frog twitch with electricity, people have been looking for the magical properties of electricity. The sheer amount of quackery involving electricity is mind boggling
Nerves and neurons are, essentially, little electrical connections.
So, yeah, I'm not sure why anybody would be surprised by that.
Or that there's actually some useful things which can come out of it too.
The companies are the ones who need to be checking to see if the content is actually infringing, or is fair use. The problem is in their eyes there is no such thing.
The court isn't saying parents taking a video of their dancing baby need to do some research to ensure they're not infringing.
They're saying a 29 second video of a dancing baby with 20 seconds of bad quality audio of a Prince song it's infringing.
Do you really think they're going to lose sales as people just decide to listen to the bad quality audio to avoid having to buy it? The problem is that the copyright clowns have more or less decided that there is no fair use, and that unless you licensed it in advance you can't use it.
And, I'm sorry, but that's idiotic on behalf of the copyright clowns.
I don't want every fucking thing I see to have even more damned analytics and ads embedded in it... click here to buy this hat, click here to buy this chair.
How about all the assholes who want to monetize every damned thing we do fuck off, stop acting like they are entitled to inject themselves into every moment of our lives, piss off and realize fair use is a legal right, and generally stop fucking up society.
I swear to god I feel like Reg the Fucking Blank with the blipverts which killed people.
In the physical world I'd be forced to punch people who acted like this. Why the hell we should have to put up with this shit online is baffling to me.
The world doesn't want every fucking stupid product shot to lead to an add, a link to buy, or some asshole add tracking company injecting themselves at every moment.
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody who wants to understand how truly fucking pathetic the "interweb of stuff" is, how horribly broken it is, and how corporations are completely inept at security.
I'd almost call it a case study in showing why the "intertubes of things" is nothing more than marketing hype, overblown claims, and shoddy products.
Because, really, it is marketing hype, overblown claims, and shoddy products.
I'm betting 80% of all consumer products which want to have network connectivity are probably trivially exploitable, with the remaining 20% still being easily exploitable. Which is why I won't buy and of this shit, and why I do my best Nelson "Ha ha!" when I hear about how insecure they are.
I might have to seek this out ... it sounds like a catalog of incompetence, greed, and hubris.
You expect us to believe you didn't?
Right. Sure.
You know what, if Microsoft wants telemetry ... make it fucking well opt in.
It is none of your business how we use our computer son a day to basis. Adding telemetry to our computers without asking and enabling it by default screams tha Microsoft is still managed by a bunch of self entitled assholes who think they can do anything they want to.
I don't give a rats ass how much you'd like telemetry ... the only fucking telemetry Microsoft can have from me is "fuck the hell off, and stop acting like my data is your property, and stop assuming that I have any interest in sending this shit to you"
Telemetry which isn't explicitly chosen by the user is completely indistinguishable from malware. Not chosen by default, not turned on without you looking, not installed without telling you ... explicitly "boy, I'd love to install the pieces for that Customer Experience Improvement Program" which seems to run even if you've opted out of it.
Maybe if Microsoft would stop fucking writing software which assumes they're entitled to this stuff and then making the user have to find it and disable it, people would be so damned pissed off.
Telemetry without my explicit consent and conscious decision to provide it to you is pretty much malware, and is a strategy chosen by assholes.
Our data doesn't exist to make you clowns be able to forcibly take data we haven't been told you're collecting.
Horseshit.
Among the many reasons to not upgrade:
1) Tracking and analytics embedded in Windows 10
2) Microsoft removing choices about when/if you apply updates and moving to a model of them doing anything they choose
3) No interest in an OS which thinks the world is a tablet
4) No interest in Microsoft's new app ecosystem
5) Don't wish to be part of what is essentially a public beta they want to force everybody into running
6) Want to control what you do with your own computer
7) Don't want all of the privacy-wrecking bullshit Microsoft is trying to implement (like sharing wifi passwords)
Everything Microsoft is doing with this rollout smacks of doing it do users instead of for users.
When Microsoft starts concealing that they're sneaking in things like telemetry to track how well the upgrade is going, have decided users don't get a vote in how updates are applied, and are generally acting like it's their computer ... there is no damned reason to upgrade if Microsoft is going to act like "we're upgrading this whether you like it or not", because it says the long-term plan is to wrest even more control of both your computer and privacy.
Fuck that. There is as yet a defensible reason why I'd upgrade to Windows 10. It sure isn't there to benefit me. And I sure as hell don't trust them or how they're doing this.
That was how I ended up with the Nexus.
It wasn't full of proprietary crap, and was likely to be supported the longest possible.
I expect to get a couple of years out of the device, and have no desire to chase the latest and greatest.
I also don't want the additional crap from whatever vendor has decided to reinvent the wheel/try to monetize my experience.
No, really. For some of us it's a factor.
I don't want some $500 tablet, I want a relatively cheaper tablet which has enough specs to do what I need without trying to be bleeding edge.
For some of us, the $200 price point is the sweet spot, it's not a super low end piece of garbage, but it's not a super high end thing we don't need with features we don't want.
That was pretty much how I ended up with my Nexus 7. It was right in the $199-$219 price range when I bought it, was a 'vanilla' Android, and covered what I needed it for.
Contrast that with, say, an unlocked Nexus phone these days .. which is, what, a $600 unit? Sorry, don't need one of those. An iPad mini 4 looks like it starts at over $400 where I am, and then goes up from there. That's a lot of money for what I want it for.
The affordable end of the market is probably larger than the "latest and greatest" end.
My mother in law has a Nexus 7 which she uses for everything she needs a computer for -- and she'd never spend $500 or so on a device. Never in a million years. And for a tablet, neither would I.
Why are we so slavishly stuck with x86?
When tablets first came out they threw away all the baggage, ans started fresh with a smaller and leaner platform. This gave us battery life, and finally gave us apps which were small, functional, and didn't take gigs of space.
I worry that everybody is going to try to turn these damned things back into x86 based dinosaurs, and start spec'ing out the damned things like desktops, and then we're back to the damned bloatware of old.
The x86 architecture is very old, full of stuff it probably doesn't need anymore, and is just going to encourage people to essentially treat tablets like they're desktops. And while I'm sure it's come a long way in terms of power, I just don't see why we can't keep tablets smaller and less tied to this damned architecture.
But, then again, I guess this allows everybody to be lazy and just reuse the same architecture they've had for decades and slowly turn the tablets back into low end desktops for no good reason.
If you want a Start button in Windows 8.1, install Classic Shell.
Do some googling, and figure out how you too can make Windows 8.1 look pretty much like previous versions of Windows. It's not that tough, but it makes it infinitely better.
On my desktop, I've disabled their store, their apps, the idiotic Metro screens, and what I see is a classic looking Windows desktop with a Start menu. Not a single bit of the crap Microsoft believes is the future. Because I want a damned desktop for working on, not some damned romper room thing which thinks the world is now a tablet.
The problem is that Microsoft doesn't seem willing to acknowledge your right to say "I don't want your Windows 10 crap", and are making it damned near impossible to identify which updates are the crap adding telemetry and other shit intended to force Windows 10 on you.
So much of their updates are sneaking in telemetry, user experience tracking, and other shit entirely designed to benefit Microsoft .. it actually takes a lot of effort to keep that shit away or have any trust that Microsoft isn't installing stuff you don't want, or a ticking time bomb which is going to give you Windows 10 no matter what you think.
Disabling Windows updates entirely might be something I have to start considering.
You give them a lot of benefit of the doubt .. much more than I do.
They knew they had no legal basis to pursue this. They had no legal basis to demand it or fight for it. Because it's not illegal.
This is the soft approach by which they insinuate all of the bad things which could happen, and hope the current climate leads to the library board saying "holy crap, look at this".
This is fairly scary, as it means that the spy agencies and law enforcement are working to subvert legal rights in a fairly shadowy way. And my conclusion is to trust them less and less with every passing week.
Because the shit they're willing to do in order to make an end run around Constitutionally protected rights is reaching the point where you have to start asking if these guys aren't the real enemies of the state ... not 5 years ago it would be easy to dismiss that as crazy talk.
These days? Suddenly it's not so crazy.
You know the scary thing ... in just how many cities would the board have bought into the FUD, decreed that they can't do something which supports terrorists, and then get duped into saying it should be left off?
They really did want the outcome of making them all too scared to leave it.
I'm betting the fucking DHS has come powerpoint slide decks to teach law enforcement how to make these sound scary in order to suppress them ... because the DHS et al have decided it will just be easier if they can make those pesky freedoms go away. Just like they have slide decks explaining how to commit perjury with parallel construction.
Make no mistake, this is part of a deliberate campaign to use FUD to do what they can't do legally. Defend and uphold the Constitution my ass ... these people are fully into suppress, distort, and lie mode.
You can't protect someone's rights be eliminating them, no matter how delusional you are about why you're doing it.
If you enjoy having your civil liberties and access to uncensored information .. thank a damned Librarian.
For literally decades they've found themselves on the forefront defending your rights saying "hell no we won't do that" against people who want to burn books, or outlaw various things which shouldn't still be up for debate.
That DHS felt the need to sew a little FUD and bring in the local cops to stir up the bullshit and lies is pathetic. That the library board has sent a big "fuck you" is awesome -- because someone needs to stand up to the fascists and assholes who are constantly trying to say that certain freedoms are just too dangerous to have.
It is literally true that without Librarians fighting to defend these things we might no longer have them. Either from moralizing old bitties, or assholes in government, these rights are often under attack.
Go Librarians, and thank you.
Sure, fine .... but presumably using energy on a scale which outshines its parent galaxy you're probably doing some things we don't understand.
I'm pretty skeptical that we'd be talking about a freaking wood-burning civilization.
At which point everything we say about that society is, at best, pulled out of someone's backside.
Well, then allow me to try to be among the first to ask the stupid question:
If it can be excitatory, and inhibitory ... shouldn't there be a corresponding "not doing a damned thing" state?
You know, like ... oh, I don't know ... off?
So, we're defining "advanced" societies according to the ability to put out more heat than their parent galaxies?
Well, that's a pretty high bar, and I'm also not sure the assumption these societies will exist is based on, well, anything.
From what I can see, maybe if you're talking about energy on that scale you might have better technology which doesn't generate vast amounts of waste heat. Like, maybe, superconductors.
To me this sounds like it's ruled out a dubious conclusion based on unfounded assumptions.
Oh, that's not an ad, it's a special offer.
Look, it's Dice, what did you expect? Giving a crap about the users?
Well, there's two things here:
Facebook was using people's posts and likes as unauthorized advertising, which really annoyed people. Suddenly you're doing product endorsements instead of just clicking "Like" on a posting by Coke.
Secondly, "like" conveys .. well, "like", not "follow" or "acknowledge" or "important but awful".
Really, if you see a story which says "school shooting, 30 dead" ... "like" just isn't the appropriate verb. People want to acknowledge the story without saying "gee, I'm really in favor of school shootings".
In the context of Facebook, "like" means "I wish to receive updates on this", but they've always treated it like "I endorse this", which has always demonstrated a certain cluelessness about how people were actually using it.
So the problem with how the feature was "intended" to be used was that it was incomplete. Well, the second problem is once you write the feature how you intended it is pretty much meaningless .. nobody gives a damn about how you wanted it to be used.
Oh, come on .. pretty much all tech "news" reporting is of the breathless variety these days.
I bet Wall Street analysts are trying to figure out the direction the stock will swing with this, and by how much. Every tech reporter is swooning and soiling their knickers over a new feature in Facebook, which they will dutifully report. Police departments are busy planning free speech zones to contain the excited crowds. Universities are preparing to study the global socio-economic impact of this new button.
Of course we have our priorities screwed up.
Because people stupidly believe what Facebook does will influence future generations, cause fortunes to be made and lost, and cottage industries to spring up around the existence of this damned button.
We live in a vacuous culture, obsessed with pointless shit. More people will think they're more immediately impacted by this button than will any other news story this year.
Which is fucking pathetic.
Tell you what, when the police start arresting every white guy with a gun collection because they don't know if he's going to go on a shooting spree, I might believe that. But when you start charging people with things they could have done you've pretty much jumped the shark.
You can't make up a bunch of hypothetical bullshit and use that to file charges ... hypothetically the police could be incompetent or utterly corrupt. Hypothetically the school could be staffed with fucking morons.
I'm pretty sure if it associates him with the possibility of making bombs, and being the little brown guy with a funny name who could have blown up the school ... that's the last thing he wants.
So, he might be charged ... for not making a bomb ... and for telling everybody it's not a bomb?
What the actual fuck? He didn't create a bomb, he didn't create a hoax bomb. Morons incorrectly concluded he made a bomb, he told them repeatedly it wasn't a bomb, but these morons now wish to charge him for the non-making of a non-bomb in a non-hoaxing kind of way?
These police are fucking morons, who if left in public could be accidentally confused with competent law enforcement officers. They should be charged with creating a hoax police department.
Apparently being a nerdy brown kid is now illegal in America. If this was a white Christian kid, he'd be a national fucking hero.
Except it sounds like they have no internet, no computers, no resources in their own language.
Or, perhaps, you're being hopelessly naive?
We already see things about how technology doesn't magically solve education in North America and the like. People make these claims about how giving every kid an iPad or teaching them to code will do miraculous things.
And the reality is there isn't really any evidence showing it's working.
So when a bunch of people without backgrounds in education are hawking a bunch of technology solutions, with a distinct lack of evidence it will actually work ... my skepticism is well founded as all of these things smack of a bunch of amateurs saying "OMG, teh iPad will solve everything". They have no evidence or proof, and no expertise in teaching.
The reality is, even in North America, this shit just diverts resources from things which actually work, and it really is vanity projects of tech people who make the claims that education will be revolutionized with technology.
I'm not being closed minded ... I'm saying if they have no internet, no tech resources, the inability to get resources in their own language ... then I'm saying maybe it's better to look for things which can help and be useful, instead of just deciding that this will work and doing it even if it won't.
As far as teaching them to code? I'm no more convinced a bunch of poor kids in rural India benefit from that any more than a bunch of poor kids in urban America. Because it utterly fails to address their most pressing educational needs.
Oh, really?
This doesn't sound like they have any infrastructure, expertise, technology, or a plan ... just "hey, let's show these kids computers".
At which point, I seriously question if this serves any purpose or will improve these kids lives any.
Is this better than literacy? Sex ed? Things which they can use? Like even English or math?
Or is this the growing trend of "ZOMG ... teh children must use teh computers"?
Coding? Games? Maybe your friend is missing the damned point and doing this as a vanity project?
Everyone is so damned excited to ensure every child on the planet is being taught "teh computers", and nobody seems to be stopping to ask if that's what they need most (or at all).
You know, since Galvani discovered you could make a dead frog twitch with electricity, people have been looking for the magical properties of electricity. The sheer amount of quackery involving electricity is mind boggling
Nerves and neurons are, essentially, little electrical connections.
So, yeah, I'm not sure why anybody would be surprised by that.
Or that there's actually some useful things which can come out of it too.
You're reading that backwards.
The companies are the ones who need to be checking to see if the content is actually infringing, or is fair use. The problem is in their eyes there is no such thing.
The court isn't saying parents taking a video of their dancing baby need to do some research to ensure they're not infringing.
They're saying a 29 second video of a dancing baby with 20 seconds of bad quality audio of a Prince song it's infringing.
Do you really think they're going to lose sales as people just decide to listen to the bad quality audio to avoid having to buy it? The problem is that the copyright clowns have more or less decided that there is no fair use, and that unless you licensed it in advance you can't use it.
And, I'm sorry, but that's idiotic on behalf of the copyright clowns.
I disagree, and I think that is moronic.
I don't want every fucking thing I see to have even more damned analytics and ads embedded in it ... click here to buy this hat, click here to buy this chair.
How about all the assholes who want to monetize every damned thing we do fuck off, stop acting like they are entitled to inject themselves into every moment of our lives, piss off and realize fair use is a legal right, and generally stop fucking up society.
I swear to god I feel like Reg the Fucking Blank with the blipverts which killed people.
In the physical world I'd be forced to punch people who acted like this. Why the hell we should have to put up with this shit online is baffling to me.
The world doesn't want every fucking stupid product shot to lead to an add, a link to buy, or some asshole add tracking company injecting themselves at every moment.