They already index the whole world, read everyone's e-mail, and watch you from roving surveillance vans. Connecting you with your friends and letting you share pics shouldn't tax them too much.
"Welcome to Google+. Would you like to connect your account with your friends and family? Just kidding. We already know who your friends and family are. By the way, here is a satellite photo of your daughter, whom you forgot at soccer practice."
Unfortunately, most people who are running a modern version of Windows are doing so because it came on the computer they bought it on. I say unfortunately, because I have yet to see a computer ship with anything but those damned useless "restore" DVD's. It can't fix your system, or perform routine maintenance tasks, or anything useful. And if you've make any alterations to your hardware setup, you can forget it.
Shipping without an install disk for a paid for pre-installed OS that bundles lots of routine OS functionality on its install disk should be illegal. Or, rather, it should be legal to pass around copies of the install disk to everyone who has the OS.
Judging by some of my clients, a low-level HDD format is just a short-term solution to virus problems. It will be back.
Of course, my system has caught bugs in the past too, from god-only-knows-where. Quite frankly, I've had enough random slowdowns on this machine that I wouldn't mind a way of securely scanning the MBR for rootkits. Also, why can any application alter the MBR without explicit, highly-manual interaction? You should have to open up a cover on your computer and hold down a small red button to enable MBR writes.
The thing newspapers keep missing is that there is already a voluntary rating system out there, which all game retailers adhere to. Console makers have already banned Adults Only games from their consoles, and violent M games are kept away from kids by retailers already. By most tests, the system is more effective than the Movie rating system at keeping kids away from M (R) rated content.
So really, the court didn't rule that you can't have a ban. The court ruled that to overcome the first amendment challenge, California had to prove significant interest in a government-enforced ban above and beyond the already in-place industry ban. Since the California law was only going to add legal confusion to an already working voluntary system, the supremes ruled against them.
Actually, all video game retailers in California are part of the voluntary ratings system that enforces the industry's ratings as if they had the force of law. Manufacturers and distributors make this as a condition in their contracts. Independent tests have found that selling M rated games to children happens less often than allowing children into R rated movies (also a voluntary system).
In practical means, the law was entirely symbolic... except, of course, for the vague usage of the terms in the bill which would have made knowing if one were in violation of the law a complete nightmare.
Change the system from inside. Nothing changes without a decision from someone inside, and the easiest way to get that is to get a man inside.
Interpretation 2:
Facebook pretty much allows friends to communicate with eachother. It's mundane, and looks pointless outside of a particular circle of friends. But it is the democratazation of communication, man.
More likely problems would be old systems which have never been replaced because they've never needed to be; traffic light controllers are a reasonable example.
As a person who has long considered traffic light controllers to be only slightly better at turning lights on and off than one of those water-drinking thermometer birds from science museums, what would happen if the light controllers drifted off of the main time?
Or maybe they walk into the gym, notice that the floors need cleaning up, send someone after one of the bleacher supports that has collapsed, and make a mental note to take down and dry clean the banners once the school year is over.
When you're responsible for everything, sometimes it is helpful to have people who are only responsible for specific things. Otherwise they slip through the cracks.
Desktop towers have razor thin margins, but mainly because everyone is making them.
Netbooks pretty much by category definition are competing on price. And because everyone is competing on price, nobody makes much money. But everyone is still competing.
By the same token, there are huge female audiences that are attracted to specific gameplays.
"Women" is not really an audience you can target. "25 - 40 year old housewives who need more romance" is a target. "14 - 20 year old slightly rebellious but mostly mainstream girls" is a target. "18 - 24 college females who need acceptance from their peers" is a target.
You can't target "women" in general. That doesn't give you any more to go on than targeting "redheads" or "people who eat breakfast."
most sports games only have competitive multi-player modes
Actually, team based sports games were some of the first co-op multiplayer games out there. Madden has rocked co-op since, I believe, 1990. Online co-op is a different thing which has been coming online more slowly. But local co-op has been core to most sports franchises since the 80's.
Music based games are popular with girls, but not many of them have co-op modes.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there, too. All *band and guitar hero games are co-op. Singstar and Karaoke Revolution are inherently co-op. DJ Hero had some co-op ness about it. The dance subgenre are technically competitive, though they're not usually played that way. Making music is an inherently co-op activity. You have to really go out of your way to make it feel competitive.
I've spoken to quite a few other developers about the mythical "attracting the female audience." And on a pragmatic level, it seems like there really are only about two things one can do:
1. Avoid sexist jokes or other red flags turn female game players away. 2. Make a great game.
That's pretty much it. Any other stereotypes that get thrown into there degrade quickly into generalizations into which most people don't fit. And quite frankly, it's hard enough to make a game worth playing without trying to target a demographic so broad that you might as well just say "people." If you avoid male monoculture by in your office by finding a few talented female developers, #1 winds up greatly reduced.
Now, making women feel welcome in gaming culture is a different thing. A big part of that is voice chat online, and that is a huge problem we're all trying to solve.
Chrome OS. The more that gets moved to the browser, the more functional their new machine will be.
Though I will say this: Traditional software was written to a particular processor. That got abstracted out to run on a processor family class. That was abstracted out further and further, behind BIOS calls, OS Kernels, dynamic linked libraries, etc. Time sensitive code doesn't need to be written in Assembly anymore, or even in a compiled language.
One more layer of abstraction, if it makes coding easier (yes) and more reliable (snicker), is not that surprising.
Or, more likely, they paid the 100,000 with the hopes that the hacker would be caught, then paid IBM 1 million dollars to secure their network.
IBM then pays an external contractor 200,000 to do it. They pay the hacker $100,000 to do it. Hacker walks away with 200k and a springboard to legitimate work.
We don't need a precedent, this is a matter for the Supreme Court to decide, and they can decide based on their own judgement, not precedent.
If the Supreme Court ruled against Obama, that would be a pretty iron-clad precedent. Any other court making a ruling on the president's power to engage in military operations over 60 days without congressional authorization would pretty much have to follow the precedent set by that ruling.
this is still probably a concern for foodstuffs since radioactive material is a lot more dangerous inside the body than outside. Same applies for clothing too probably.
Radioactive clothing is definitely more dangerous inside the body than outside.
At some point we're going to get another irrationally warmongering hawk president. Can we get an iron-clad precedent set that in matters that matter the president isn't above the law, and can't just run around making stuff up?
It's too bad that would have to happen with this president and not the previous one, who happened to be Houdini of inventing BS from thin air. Free-speech zones. WMD. Blocking Scientific Papers. Etc. But we can't just agree to ignore the law for presidents we like.
Most of these houses lock the front door with a twist-tie and leave the windows open. I'm sorry, but if a simple directory traversal will get your web server to serve up your password file, we're not talking about breaking into Fort Knox here. Most of the security these companies had was security theater. Even more "advanced" tactics, like using holes in common software that was patched two years ago, should never happen.
Citi got hacked because you could plug anybody's account numbers into a website once you had logged in, and it would spit out valid information. That's just a complete lack of basic security. That's just bad initial design that wouldn't have cost any extra to secure if it had been developed by anyone with a clue.
And automated tools have existed for years. I'd say that the big difference is that it used to be very few people knew how to move 200k freshly stolen credit card numbers. Sellers and buyers had to know specific IRC channels or dial-up BBS's to log into. Now, thanks to social networking and the explosion of 0-configuration bulletin boards, anyone with a use for a million credit card numbers can hop onto Google and find a place where sellers hang out. People can make a good living renting out botnets or selling identities in a way that had been very difficult.
Mozilla / Firefox was pushed by Google for a very long time. If I'm remembering my history correctly, Google was their largest funding source up until Chrome.
Actually, Ubuntu has a very easy little store interface that anyone can install browsers from.
But the point is that you're trying to bring in users who are barely aware that there are keys to the left and right of the spacebar. "Oh look, would you like KDE or Gnome or XFCE or Afterstep or Sawfish or Blackbox or CDE or..." Most of those the average person can't pronounce, let alone remember the name of or have any clue about. And quite frankly, the only difference I can tell between KDE and Gnome is that they massively screw up the simplest of tasks in slightly different ways.
I couldn't tell you if my car had electronic or mechanical fuel injection. I bet my mechanic couldn't off the top of his head tell the difference between Firefox and Chrome. While I'm mildly curious about fuel injection, I haven't looked it up. And my mechanic hasn't been bothered to find out about the different browsers. And you know what? He shouldn't have to. It's a browser. It's a piece of software fundamentally there to get out of the damned way so that browsing can happen. Anyone who *really* needs the particular type of ad-block available on Firefox above the ad-block available on Chrome can install firefox. They didn't ask me when I bought my car to set my suspension stiffness, tune the relative braking force, adjust shift timings, and configure an optional NOX system.
It's just a means to an end. Ubuntu gets that. That's why they're currently #1. That's why people are buying iPads. It's not that they're dumb. It's that what matters to us doesn't matter to them. And when it does start mattering to them, they can figure out how to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's from Google, it could grind newborn infants and puppies into a slurry and tech bloggers would shower it with love and geek adoration.
It recycles!
They already index the whole world, read everyone's e-mail, and watch you from roving surveillance vans. Connecting you with your friends and letting you share pics shouldn't tax them too much.
"Welcome to Google+. Would you like to connect your account with your friends and family?
Just kidding. We already know who your friends and family are. By the way, here is a satellite photo of your daughter, whom you forgot at soccer practice."
Unfortunately, most people who are running a modern version of Windows are doing so because it came on the computer they bought it on. I say unfortunately, because I have yet to see a computer ship with anything but those damned useless "restore" DVD's. It can't fix your system, or perform routine maintenance tasks, or anything useful. And if you've make any alterations to your hardware setup, you can forget it.
Shipping without an install disk for a paid for pre-installed OS that bundles lots of routine OS functionality on its install disk should be illegal. Or, rather, it should be legal to pass around copies of the install disk to everyone who has the OS.
Judging by some of my clients, a low-level HDD format is just a short-term solution to virus problems. It will be back.
Of course, my system has caught bugs in the past too, from god-only-knows-where. Quite frankly, I've had enough random slowdowns on this machine that I wouldn't mind a way of securely scanning the MBR for rootkits. Also, why can any application alter the MBR without explicit, highly-manual interaction? You should have to open up a cover on your computer and hold down a small red button to enable MBR writes.
The thing newspapers keep missing is that there is already a voluntary rating system out there, which all game retailers adhere to. Console makers have already banned Adults Only games from their consoles, and violent M games are kept away from kids by retailers already. By most tests, the system is more effective than the Movie rating system at keeping kids away from M (R) rated content.
So really, the court didn't rule that you can't have a ban. The court ruled that to overcome the first amendment challenge, California had to prove significant interest in a government-enforced ban above and beyond the already in-place industry ban. Since the California law was only going to add legal confusion to an already working voluntary system, the supremes ruled against them.
Actually, all video game retailers in California are part of the voluntary ratings system that enforces the industry's ratings as if they had the force of law. Manufacturers and distributors make this as a condition in their contracts. Independent tests have found that selling M rated games to children happens less often than allowing children into R rated movies (also a voluntary system).
In practical means, the law was entirely symbolic... except, of course, for the vague usage of the terms in the bill which would have made knowing if one were in violation of the law a complete nightmare.
The problem is that during the nuclear accident in Japan, the Japanese authorities were saying the same thing.
It's nice to see a little skepticism out of our media for once.
Interpretation 1:
Change the system from inside. Nothing changes without a decision from someone inside, and the easiest way to get that is to get a man inside.
Interpretation 2:
Facebook pretty much allows friends to communicate with eachother. It's mundane, and looks pointless outside of a particular circle of friends. But it is the democratazation of communication, man.
Interpretation 3:
"Boy that's a big bag of cash."
More likely problems would be old systems which have never been replaced because they've never needed to be; traffic light controllers are a reasonable example.
As a person who has long considered traffic light controllers to be only slightly better at turning lights on and off than one of those water-drinking thermometer birds from science museums, what would happen if the light controllers drifted off of the main time?
Or maybe they walk into the gym, notice that the floors need cleaning up, send someone after one of the bleacher supports that has collapsed, and make a mental note to take down and dry clean the banners once the school year is over.
When you're responsible for everything, sometimes it is helpful to have people who are only responsible for specific things. Otherwise they slip through the cracks.
Desktop towers have razor thin margins, but mainly because everyone is making them.
Netbooks pretty much by category definition are competing on price. And because everyone is competing on price, nobody makes much money. But everyone is still competing.
By the same token, there are huge female audiences that are attracted to specific gameplays.
"Women" is not really an audience you can target. "25 - 40 year old housewives who need more romance" is a target. "14 - 20 year old slightly rebellious but mostly mainstream girls" is a target. "18 - 24 college females who need acceptance from their peers" is a target.
You can't target "women" in general. That doesn't give you any more to go on than targeting "redheads" or "people who eat breakfast."
most sports games only have competitive multi-player modes
Actually, team based sports games were some of the first co-op multiplayer games out there. Madden has rocked co-op since, I believe, 1990. Online co-op is a different thing which has been coming online more slowly. But local co-op has been core to most sports franchises since the 80's.
Music based games are popular with girls, but not many of them have co-op modes.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there, too. All *band and guitar hero games are co-op. Singstar and Karaoke Revolution are inherently co-op. DJ Hero had some co-op ness about it. The dance subgenre are technically competitive, though they're not usually played that way. Making music is an inherently co-op activity. You have to really go out of your way to make it feel competitive.
I've spoken to quite a few other developers about the mythical "attracting the female audience." And on a pragmatic level, it seems like there really are only about two things one can do:
1. Avoid sexist jokes or other red flags turn female game players away.
2. Make a great game.
That's pretty much it. Any other stereotypes that get thrown into there degrade quickly into generalizations into which most people don't fit. And quite frankly, it's hard enough to make a game worth playing without trying to target a demographic so broad that you might as well just say "people." If you avoid male monoculture by in your office by finding a few talented female developers, #1 winds up greatly reduced.
Now, making women feel welcome in gaming culture is a different thing. A big part of that is voice chat online, and that is a huge problem we're all trying to solve.
Chrome OS. The more that gets moved to the browser, the more functional their new machine will be.
Though I will say this: Traditional software was written to a particular processor. That got abstracted out to run on a processor family class. That was abstracted out further and further, behind BIOS calls, OS Kernels, dynamic linked libraries, etc. Time sensitive code doesn't need to be written in Assembly anymore, or even in a compiled language.
One more layer of abstraction, if it makes coding easier (yes) and more reliable (snicker), is not that surprising.
Yes. And a red light, used to scan depth.
Also, the Kinect calibrates by panning up and down. If you see your camera nodding at you, it's probably recording.
Or, more likely, they paid the 100,000 with the hopes that the hacker would be caught, then paid IBM 1 million dollars to secure their network.
IBM then pays an external contractor 200,000 to do it. They pay the hacker $100,000 to do it. Hacker walks away with 200k and a springboard to legitimate work.
We don't need a precedent, this is a matter for the Supreme Court to decide, and they can decide based on their own judgement, not precedent.
If the Supreme Court ruled against Obama, that would be a pretty iron-clad precedent. Any other court making a ruling on the president's power to engage in military operations over 60 days without congressional authorization would pretty much have to follow the precedent set by that ruling.
this is still probably a concern for foodstuffs since radioactive material is a lot more dangerous inside the body than outside. Same applies for clothing too probably.
Radioactive clothing is definitely more dangerous inside the body than outside.
At some point we're going to get another irrationally warmongering hawk president. Can we get an iron-clad precedent set that in matters that matter the president isn't above the law, and can't just run around making stuff up?
It's too bad that would have to happen with this president and not the previous one, who happened to be Houdini of inventing BS from thin air. Free-speech zones. WMD. Blocking Scientific Papers. Etc. But we can't just agree to ignore the law for presidents we like.
Most of these houses lock the front door with a twist-tie and leave the windows open. I'm sorry, but if a simple directory traversal will get your web server to serve up your password file, we're not talking about breaking into Fort Knox here. Most of the security these companies had was security theater. Even more "advanced" tactics, like using holes in common software that was patched two years ago, should never happen.
Citi got hacked because you could plug anybody's account numbers into a website once you had logged in, and it would spit out valid information. That's just a complete lack of basic security. That's just bad initial design that wouldn't have cost any extra to secure if it had been developed by anyone with a clue.
And automated tools have existed for years. I'd say that the big difference is that it used to be very few people knew how to move 200k freshly stolen credit card numbers. Sellers and buyers had to know specific IRC channels or dial-up BBS's to log into. Now, thanks to social networking and the explosion of 0-configuration bulletin boards, anyone with a use for a million credit card numbers can hop onto Google and find a place where sellers hang out. People can make a good living renting out botnets or selling identities in a way that had been very difficult.
Mozilla / Firefox was pushed by Google for a very long time. If I'm remembering my history correctly, Google was their largest funding source up until Chrome.
Chrome's interface and stability are what eventually won me over. It really does simplify the browser interface down to what is needed.
Actually, Ubuntu has a very easy little store interface that anyone can install browsers from.
But the point is that you're trying to bring in users who are barely aware that there are keys to the left and right of the spacebar. "Oh look, would you like KDE or Gnome or XFCE or Afterstep or Sawfish or Blackbox or CDE or..." Most of those the average person can't pronounce, let alone remember the name of or have any clue about. And quite frankly, the only difference I can tell between KDE and Gnome is that they massively screw up the simplest of tasks in slightly different ways.
I couldn't tell you if my car had electronic or mechanical fuel injection. I bet my mechanic couldn't off the top of his head tell the difference between Firefox and Chrome. While I'm mildly curious about fuel injection, I haven't looked it up. And my mechanic hasn't been bothered to find out about the different browsers. And you know what? He shouldn't have to. It's a browser. It's a piece of software fundamentally there to get out of the damned way so that browsing can happen. Anyone who *really* needs the particular type of ad-block available on Firefox above the ad-block available on Chrome can install firefox. They didn't ask me when I bought my car to set my suspension stiffness, tune the relative braking force, adjust shift timings, and configure an optional NOX system.
It's just a means to an end. Ubuntu gets that. That's why they're currently #1. That's why people are buying iPads. It's not that they're dumb. It's that what matters to us doesn't matter to them. And when it does start mattering to them, they can figure out how to do it.