The video gaming industry is the biggest dog and pony show around. Every few years another console generation comes around, and the 'retro' genre grows.
At this point, you cannot even buy a full AAA game outright on launch-day. You are instead offered a framework of minimal features, and are expected to pay again a few more times for 'expansions' and 'DLC', which are just code for 'the rest of the game'. Let's not forget loot-boxes, micro-transactions, GB scale day 1 updates, data harvesting stores, always online requirements, and the death of the second-hand market.
All of this despite the truly massive library of 'retro' games with no such shenanigans for pennies on the dollar. The big players have to make big PR noise every few years before the next generation develops an interest in what the older gamers are playing, and to keep the older gamers from realizing they already have more than they can play in a single lifetime.
I used to spend a sizable portion of my income on gaming, and it used to be worth it. Before that, my childhood was fixing and playing the rich kids broken consoles and computers. I grew into a respectable engineer on the skills I earned doing that, but now I buy maybe 1-2 games a year.
Had I played my Fender instead, I'd be fucking a rockstar. Today they learn those fucking obnoxious dance moves, and how to talk shit like a racist-sailor-criminal.
We've handed 100% of our children's k-12 performance data over to google, and 100% of our children's web surfing habits to various surveillance companies.
The real rub being that in an effort to appease the think of the children crowd Google has promised not to advertise to the students 'on this device'. The between the lines on this being that the student's profile follows him to any other computer system he signs in on.
Everything about the arrangement of chromebooks (or i-books, or whatever the local flavor may be) in the classroom is a life-long privacy nightmare for an entire generation of Americans, and nobody even seems to care.
One of the biggest most powerful data brokers the world has ever known will now know exactly how well an entire generation scored on every academic test/project/assignment they ever took. This is the tradeoff our public school system has made in our names, in a bid for convenience on the teachers part.
Last year, I tried as hard as I could to gain an exemption for my student against use the school issued chromebooks, we are happy to use our own device, and the entire student facing suite of tools is a web-portal that can be accessed by any device. Nobody had even considered a parent would not want their student to use them, and eventually I was told I can revoke my permission to use the device, which will doom my child to not being able to use IT systems in class at all. It was clear to me in the 3 months I worked this that none of the school officials had even read the user agreement or privacy policy that comes along with these devices.
This year I already knew how unorganized and uninformed my local school was regarding this technology, so I just told my student to tell them he had an exemption on the first day. It stuck. He still carries and charges the chromebook for specific test and such, but he is now in charge of his own device, and is learning the value of his personal data, how to be responsible and safe online, and how to take steps to limit the baked-in surveillance of the modern web. He knows this is a privilege, and he knows any abuse of this arrangement will end it. We got lucky, but my point is that it's still possible to take back control.
At a minimum, these devices should come with mandatory privacy training, and it needs to be clear to the student what data is being archived by what companies.
IANAL, but my limited understanding is that when officially contracted by the US Govt, private companies are acting as 'agents' of the USA, and are indeed bound by all of the same things Uncle Sam is.
Waste more time on shit that will never really matter. Uncle Sam has no reason to poke at any of these companies. American people can choose not to use them. I hate all forms of censorship, but at the end of the day, I'll kick you outta my house for using offensive hate speech. You're welcome to go spout bullshit anywhere else, but not in my place. It's MINE.
If the LPR company is storing the data long-term, they should be shut down and their CEO convicted for stalking. Stalking is no more legal for a corporation than a private individual following you around and recording your every move.
While I agree that it's not good, this is the world we live in. Everything harvests and records information in public, as well as places of business. It will take data protection laws to change this, and even then, I doubt the wholesale collection of your shopping habits and location will be affected. We can expect this to continually reach deeper and deeper into our personal lives as long there is a few bucks to be made. It is our duty as private citizens to express displeasure, and work within our system to affect change every time we feel a line is crossed.
All that being said, it's important that we keep issues in focus, and only raise concerns regarding clear violations of our personal privacy. It takes more than simply following and recording a person in public to qualify as stalking. (AANAL)
Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another personand who makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear for his or her safety, or the safety of his or her immediate family.
And it's a shame I have to resort to unauthorized distribution channels to access certain research.
In the age of information, is there any reason to create the sort of roadblocks and barriers in front of valuable research? (aside from the obvious profit motive) What value is gained?
Lots of "real" scientists here. This is a serious question, and I'm pointing it at you.
Also, does your publicly funded work also get the current authors life + 70 years of copyright protection?
I would wander around blockbuster with my buddies while holding a laptop while it burned the DVD we had just rented. Sometimes we would copy up to 10 DVD in a day.
Actually, we DO have a right to what is supposed to be ALL PEOPLES content.
We had a deal, and for a long time both sides walked away happy. Then in 1976, the deal changed, and many works of culture that had been earmarked for public domain instead remained locked behind a price tag. Then in 1998, the same thing happened, and another 20 years of works was STOLEN from the public.
(STOLEN, as in we don't have it anymore)
Did you know that this year is the first year that any works have fallen into the public domain since the 20s?
Fuck you right back you greedy prick. I'm owed 50 years of content.
Once I've purchased your item or service, I'm more than happy to license certain "unlimited"* rights back to you, for a "reasonable fee"** Just head on over to my website, create and account***, and apply for your new access to my decision making processes!
*using the new meaning of the word, popularized by American ISPs and data service providers.
**using the new meaning of the term, popularized by american shareholders, and banking institutions.
***All data presented in account creation process belongs to ME, and may be shared or sold to other interested parties at my sole discretion, in an effort to better patronize your company and/or services.
You certify that all information provided during the application process is true, and you understand I may revoke your access to my decision making process at any time, without notice, and I may change the terms of this agreement at any time without notice. By entering into a sales contract for goods or services with ME, you have explicitly agreed to these terms. This agreement supersedes all other agreements you may, or may not have made with ME in the past. You also agree that any disagreements arising from acceptance of this agreement are to be resolved via arbitration, by an arbiter of my choosing, at a time of my choosing, at your expense.
Slashdot Mirror
The video gaming industry is the biggest dog and pony show around. Every few years another console generation comes around, and the 'retro' genre grows.
At this point, you cannot even buy a full AAA game outright on launch-day. You are instead offered a framework of minimal features, and are expected to pay again a few more times for 'expansions' and 'DLC', which are just code for 'the rest of the game'. Let's not forget loot-boxes, micro-transactions, GB scale day 1 updates, data harvesting stores, always online requirements, and the death of the second-hand market.
All of this despite the truly massive library of 'retro' games with no such shenanigans for pennies on the dollar. The big players have to make big PR noise every few years before the next generation develops an interest in what the older gamers are playing, and to keep the older gamers from realizing they already have more than they can play in a single lifetime.
I used to spend a sizable portion of my income on gaming, and it used to be worth it. Before that, my childhood was fixing and playing the rich kids broken consoles and computers. I grew into a respectable engineer on the skills I earned doing that, but now I buy maybe 1-2 games a year.
Had I played my Fender instead, I'd be fucking a rockstar. Today they learn those fucking obnoxious dance moves, and how to talk shit like a racist-sailor-criminal.
The magic words are "DRUGS" and "GUNS" That's what motivates our for profit police, things they can seize. Anything else is just incidental.
City living busybodies make that a reality.
Rural areas not so much.
Try to make time to get out of the city while you're here. It really is a night and day difference.
We've handed 100% of our children's k-12 performance data over to google, and 100% of our children's web surfing habits to various surveillance companies.
The real rub being that in an effort to appease the think of the children crowd Google has promised not to advertise to the students 'on this device'. The between the lines on this being that the student's profile follows him to any other computer system he signs in on.
Everything about the arrangement of chromebooks (or i-books, or whatever the local flavor may be) in the classroom is a life-long privacy nightmare for an entire generation of Americans, and nobody even seems to care.
One of the biggest most powerful data brokers the world has ever known will now know exactly how well an entire generation scored on every academic test/project/assignment they ever took. This is the tradeoff our public school system has made in our names, in a bid for convenience on the teachers part.
Last year, I tried as hard as I could to gain an exemption for my student against use the school issued chromebooks, we are happy to use our own device, and the entire student facing suite of tools is a web-portal that can be accessed by any device. Nobody had even considered a parent would not want their student to use them, and eventually I was told I can revoke my permission to use the device, which will doom my child to not being able to use IT systems in class at all. It was clear to me in the 3 months I worked this that none of the school officials had even read the user agreement or privacy policy that comes along with these devices.
This year I already knew how unorganized and uninformed my local school was regarding this technology, so I just told my student to tell them he had an exemption on the first day. It stuck. He still carries and charges the chromebook for specific test and such, but he is now in charge of his own device, and is learning the value of his personal data, how to be responsible and safe online, and how to take steps to limit the baked-in surveillance of the modern web. He knows this is a privilege, and he knows any abuse of this arrangement will end it. We got lucky, but my point is that it's still possible to take back control.
At a minimum, these devices should come with mandatory privacy training, and it needs to be clear to the student what data is being archived by what companies.
https://www.eff.org/wp/school-...
https://www.eff.org/document/f...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://appleinsider.com/artic...
The situation is all the way bananas, and nobody seems to care.
IANAL, but my limited understanding is that when officially contracted by the US Govt, private companies are acting as 'agents' of the USA, and are indeed bound by all of the same things Uncle Sam is.
Am I wrong??
The trick to motivating the police here in America is using the 2 magic words.
"Officer, they stole my doorbell, my DRUGS, and my GUNS!"
Cops will be crawling all over the place looking for things to seize.
And they just scream STEAL ME. Meshes well with the battery operated wireless security cameras.
The entire thing just looks like thief bait to me.
Just not using facebook?
Homegrow = Replace the old 5 gallon bucket in the back yard with a computer and a bunch of pumps and sensors to go shit-house.
Commercial grow = Replace your infrastructure with a extra few thousand/plant worth of computers and a bunch of pumps and sensors to go shit-house.
I'm working on some A/I enhanced toilet paper to go along with all of todays latest A/I shit
Waste more time on shit that will never really matter. Uncle Sam has no reason to poke at any of these companies. American people can choose not to use them. I hate all forms of censorship, but at the end of the day, I'll kick you outta my house for using offensive hate speech. You're welcome to go spout bullshit anywhere else, but not in my place. It's MINE.
How is this different?
If the LPR company is storing the data long-term, they should be shut down and their CEO convicted for stalking. Stalking is no more legal for a corporation than a private individual following you around and recording your every move.
While I agree that it's not good, this is the world we live in. Everything harvests and records information in public, as well as places of business. It will take data protection laws to change this, and even then, I doubt the wholesale collection of your shopping habits and location will be affected. We can expect this to continually reach deeper and deeper into our personal lives as long there is a few bucks to be made. It is our duty as private citizens to express displeasure, and work within our system to affect change every time we feel a line is crossed.
All that being said, it's important that we keep issues in focus, and only raise concerns regarding clear violations of our personal privacy. It takes more than simply following and recording a person in public to qualify as stalking. (AANAL)
Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another person and who makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear for his or her safety, or the safety of his or her immediate family.
For I am KING, and you live only to serve.
And it's a shame I have to resort to unauthorized distribution channels to access certain research.
In the age of information, is there any reason to create the sort of roadblocks and barriers in front of valuable research? (aside from the obvious profit motive) What value is gained?
Lots of "real" scientists here. This is a serious question, and I'm pointing it at you.
Also, does your publicly funded work also get the current authors life + 70 years of copyright protection?
I would wander around blockbuster with my buddies while holding a laptop while it burned the DVD we had just rented. Sometimes we would copy up to 10 DVD in a day.
Mount that expensive and unpopular tech where all of these low income people can see it. Let me know how that works out for you.
Actually, we DO have a right to what is supposed to be ALL PEOPLES content.
We had a deal, and for a long time both sides walked away happy. Then in 1976, the deal changed, and many works of culture that had been earmarked for public domain instead remained locked behind a price tag. Then in 1998, the same thing happened, and another 20 years of works was STOLEN from the public.
(STOLEN, as in we don't have it anymore)
Did you know that this year is the first year that any works have fallen into the public domain since the 20s?
Fuck you right back you greedy prick. I'm owed 50 years of content.
Worlds biggest democracy arrests children for playing games.
The deck is stacked and every hand is aces. Whole thing is rotten.
The movies gonna suck too.
Once I've purchased your item or service, I'm more than happy to license certain "unlimited"* rights back to you, for a "reasonable fee"** Just head on over to my website, create and account***, and apply for your new access to my decision making processes!
*using the new meaning of the word, popularized by American ISPs and data service providers.
**using the new meaning of the term, popularized by american shareholders, and banking institutions.
***All data presented in account creation process belongs to ME, and may be shared or sold to other interested parties at my sole discretion, in an effort to better patronize your company and/or services.
You certify that all information provided during the application process is true, and you understand I may revoke your access to my decision making process at any time, without notice, and I may change the terms of this agreement at any time without notice. By entering into a sales contract for goods or services with ME, you have explicitly agreed to these terms. This agreement supersedes all other agreements you may, or may not have made with ME in the past. You also agree that any disagreements arising from acceptance of this agreement are to be resolved via arbitration, by an arbiter of my choosing, at a time of my choosing, at your expense.
Stone cold capitalism. We're talking about the USA.
Amazon's market power are overblown, despite the company capturing 52.4 percent of all online spending in the U.S. this year
Now say it again without laughing.
Your forgetting the only 2 rules that actually matter. They are present in every edition. Usually on the first page.
1. Have fun
2. The DM is always right.
You're an elitist. I bet your real proud of the cassette tapes and VHS library too.
I've been playing since 1st edition, and I've always been cooler than you.
You know what I don't play? Fkn sports.
Finally, Uncle Sam will be getting in on all that unreported allowance action.
The real successor to Sim-City.
Secret police, wiretaps, and rigged elections! Art imitates life, eh Presidente?