I having DNT by default seems to me to be the intelligent choice, The default should always err on the side of a users privacy. Why the fuck are people suddenly supporting the right to be tracked???
You sound really shocked. Maybe that should have been a clue that you were lacking some rudimentary understanding of the situation? You could have... perhaps, done a little bit of reading before hitting the Post button and whipping out a knee-jerk response, just maybe?
You should require explicit permissions from the person in order to track them.
Unfortunately, advertisers don't share this belief and we have neither the technical capability nor the legislative willpower to force them. DNT is an attempt to ask them nicely. It's a social approach, and it requires their cooperation to work... it's not like it's some magic switch that cuts off their ability to track us (in fact, at a technical level, it allows them to track you easier than before via browser thumbprinting).
If you're going to enable DNT by default everywhere, why don't you just write a letter to all internet tracking firms asking them to please go out of business? It would be easier to implement and more likely to get results (e.g,. still not a chance in hell).
I still use Emacs, run adblock/noscript, and have no Facebook or Google+ account, but man... even I know that world is long gone. The web used to be a bone-simple platform for hypertext documents, but now it's all grown up into a presentation and delivery layer for distributed apps.
Somehow the idea that because I accept free-market principles instead of central planning indicates that I am anti-science is total bullshit.
I don't think they are suggesting a causative relation b/t free-market principles and rejection of science. Just skimming the paper, it seems like they are saying "conservative think-tanks have driven most of the public doubt around AGW, and this correlative study supports that hypothesis". E.g., maybe your passion for free-market principles (valid or not in their own right) has led you to favor news sources with an anti-AGW agenda.
Of course since this is a peer-reviewed paper I could be labeled as anti-science for not accepting this paper, but that is something I am willing to risk.
You might be labeled as anti-science for rejecting a scientific consensus on the basis of narrative (as opposed to technical analysis). Of course, pretty much all of are working off of one narrative or another unless we've gone out and done a lot of honest intellectual investigation at a technical level. But criticizing papers is central to scientific endeavors... it helps to read and understand exactly what they're saying though.
Perhaps Mr. Bezos will have a change of heart and become a users'-rights fanatic. Perhaps then he'll feel sorry, and risk his company by not complying with a C&D notice.
Yeah... not holding my breath on that one.:-)
The law is only supposed to represent a consensus (ideally) of baseline morals. If someone's personal ethics raise the bar higher, that's perfectly fine.
No... law and morality are quite different. That was my point... you feel sorry for something based on your morals, not based on whether you are in the right legally or not.
In any connected system, one misbehaving device could compromise the integrity of the entire network. What I'd like to see eventually is... Defined standards that the provider must expose, and any standards-compliant device must be allowed.
I don't think this a big concern for vendors. Or rather, it's such an intrinsic concern of exposing content over the internet that it's taken for granted that security is something you have to do whether you have control over endpoint devices or not. Keep in mind that Amazon delivers ebooks to Kindle, Android, IPad, and PC (and so does Barnes & Noble, Google, Netflix, etc.). The real reason to control the device (aside from simpler support and better DRM) is to set yourself up as the sole service conduit and create "an optimal branding experience" (gag).
Actually putting openness into a legal framework is an exceedingly difficult task. Where does the open requirement end?
Interesting question, but I think the original poster was boycotting instead of demanding a legislative solution. Now your original point to him that Amazon can meaningfully surrender control of purchased content (without also surrendering servicing of the device) is quite valid and quite pertinent. You've got to wonder though if laws covering ownership/sales don't also apply to digital sales (unless countermanded by an EULA)... a consumer-friendly legislative approach might be found in our existing laws.
They don't even have a reason to be sorry for altering "your" property. There's a nice "terms of service" contract that you agreed to by using the product, and those terms let Amazon do whatever they want. They had your permission to do what they did, so why should they apologize for it now that somebody regrets that contract?
I have never felt sorry for breaking a law per se, only for the harm that I have caused others and the gracelessness of my own behaviors... regardless of whether I was acting within or outside of my legal rights.
The moment your untrusted device starts dealing with their network, though, you become a threat. So go ahead, and use your offline reader. The companies that offer connected devices don't want to deal with your need for "control", anyway.
Gracious... this sounds like the ma bell mentality back in the day when you could only hook up AT&T-authorized equipment to the phone network. Your statement has an accuracy of sorts, but it's an old world command-and-control mentality, and the tech support burden [imposed by user control] is getting less all the time as new OS'es have smarter app isolation.
Do you support gun rights, just out of curiosity? Do you believe the rhetoric about people have an intrinsic human right to defend themselves? Some of these gun people sound a little paranoid (with their "need for control"), but they have some good arguments, and maybe someday Microsoft/Amazon/Google/someone else will push out an update so egregious that people will realize they have a fundamental need for control over their own computational technology as well.
The real answer is a new standard that is designed for application presentation and deliver, that does not have so much in-band signaling. We need to get it right the first time by building security into the system.
And to help folks bridge the gap, we could deliver this app over HTTP to a browser plugin. Great idea!! Now we just need a fancy name that will make it resonate with programmers like, um.... "Java" (cause it's a type of coffee, get it?) or "Silverlight" (cause we code while the moon's up!).
Outside of biology, evolution has informed our understanding of chemistry, psychology, cognitive science, computer science (especially artificial intelligence), linguistics, economics, math (especially game theory), and doubtless many others. As an example, the principles of natural selection inspired the creation of genetic algorithms, which have been widely used to tackle hard optimization problems.
When he chose Paul Ryan as his running mate he sent the middle-of-the-road independent voters running away as they want nothing to do with the extreme conservatism that he represents. He gained only the far-right voters of his own party, but they would have eventually voted for him anyways because they hate Obama.
Paul Ryan == turnout. GOP grassroots repeatedly tried to hand the nomination to someone else (Trump, Bachman, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, and *oh gawd* Santorum) before the establishment candidate was finally shoved down their throats. Ryan is a golden child they can salivate over (even if they feel lukewarm towards Romney), and nothing between now and November is going to change that for the Republican base. On the other hand, many Independents (whom, you know, have lives and don't follow politics as closely over the long term) will be much more manipulable even at the late stage of the game. A focus on Romney and a media-blitz to counter Ryan's negative connotations will soften the damage done with Independents. The Republican leadership is banking on increased Republican turnout surpassing the losses from Independents and increased Democratic turnout.
The only way Romney can win this is if the GOP makes an even more epic voter suppression effort than they did in Ohio in 2004.
Yes, but it's Obama's election to lose. Anything that happens between now and then that gets blame/reward heaped on the Oval Office could swing the election suddenly. (For instance, you can bet that, outside of New Orleans, nobody is more worried about the levies than Obama's election manager.)
It wasn't done very well however. Every other shot the hobbits look like their different heights. Sometimes they look waist high, sometimes chest high. And the height conveyed in most perspective shots is very different than the height when they used the body double stand-ins (i.e. any shot where you can't see the actor's face). It's quite jarring once you notice it, and it gets worse every time.
I will have to look for that. However, they already got my ticket money.:O
Release a hack that shows ANY personal info should be a felony.
It is a well-established principle of computer security that software firms will not fix security holes unless there is the imminent threat of public disclosure. As the saying goes, "sunlight is the best disinfectant", and it's going to work a whole last faster than the prosecutor's office will. (And face it--do you really think the Washington AG will prioritize the security of your machine over the political ramifications of chasing the 3rd largest employer in his state?)
This is extremely naive: even within a particular faith-practicing group, the rules and norms shift with the times. Even seemingly simple rules like "Thou shall not kill" have been subject to extremely different interpretations. By all means, discipline yourself to your imagined set of eternal, unchanging laws if that's what you think your duty is, but if you keep your eyes open (and perhaps get some foreign travel in) you will see that much of our reality--much of what it means to be a person--is created by society alone.
There is no real religious freedom here in the USA only what the governments allow.
Ridiculous: there are practicing faith groups in the US for all major world religions plus thousands of cults, and over 80% of the population identifies with at least one of them. There is no official state church, no religious tests for holding public office, and no imprisonment/deportation/enslavement of people based on their religious beliefs. And, of course, the First Amendment legally bars the government from either favoring or prohibiting a religion. Read a little history to develop some perspective.
Given your lack of perspective, I have to wonder whether you are...
An evangelical who's pissed that we can't privilege Christianity in government functions?
A Catholic who's pissed that presidents are elected by the people instead of being appointed by the pope?
A radical Islamist who wants to impose Sharia law?
A moderate Islamist who's legitimately?) pissed about the ground-zero "mosque" thingy?
A FOX-news viewer who's heard too many one-sided screeds about the ACLU?
A Sikh who's pissed about not being able to bring a knife on airplanes?
Actually, they could tell the difference; they all said Pepsi tasted better.
Parent was marked troll, but Pepsi actually did taste better to participants of the Pepsi Challenge marketing campaign, which was responsible for triggering the New Coke fiasco.
The "rest of the story" (as described by Malcom Gladwell in Blink) is that sip-testing (where participants just sip the two samples) gave misleading results: when enjoyed over longer periods of time, Pepsi's sweetness becomes cloying.
Whether that shows that he's just weary of being persecuted or he realised he can't win, or whether it's a tacit admission of guilt, will probably be debated for years to come.
Or maybe going what he went through to fight cancer has made him realize that life is too short to worry about the USADA's shit.
Or maybe we should view Lance as an "heroic cheat" who overcame cancer, built his body/team into a better cheating machine than all the other cheaters in the Tour, beat them "fairly" in this larger pharma/athletics game, and donated tons of money and time to cancer research to benefit all humankind.
Maybe USADA/WADA are an obsolete organization that--while started with noble intentions--are now just trying to whitewash a field that has moved onto a place that the world isn't quite ready to accept yet.
[And since I don't have time to write more, I'll give you the Cliff's note version of my own conclusion: science should guide our understanding of the natural world, compassion (or maybe "listening") should guide our understanding of others.]
Also in my Cliff notes: religion/spirituality are sometimes helpful avenues for understanding the self; ideologies are fountains of human cruelty.
If you want to know what Christians actually believe, you should hear them.
I went to a relatively large evangelical church as a kid. Each year, they would hold an apologetics conference to inform people about threats to the face: the new age movement, various cults, and (the #1 topic) evolution. One year, they abruptly switched from young-earth creationism to old-earth creationism. There were no apologies, no explanations of how they had go wrong, no intellectual review that said "gee, this is how we will avoid making similar mistakes is the future". The Eternal Unchanging Truth of God as Revealed Thru His Word(TM) had changed overnight to match the best scientifically-established evidence (in the narrow regard of planetary age, at least).
I share this story to point out... you can't really pin Christianity down. It is as much a product of the current cultural moment as it is of the established creeds, canons, institutions, and theologies. And it's politically savvy enough to not be too backwards (usually). This... flexibility... invalidates many attempts (by atheist, for instance) to paint Christianity as inherently cruel, and it also invalidates defenses of Christianity based on its current behavior or based on some definition of "real" Christianity. To answer (or heck, even to ask) the relevant questions, we need a deeper understanding of how humans behave w.r.t. to supernatural and rational beliefs.
[And since I don't have time to write more, I'll give you the Cliff's note version of my own conclusion: science should guide our understanding of the natural world, compassion (or maybe "listening") should guide our understanding of others.]
One man's easter egg can easily be another man's malware. This sounds kind of cool, until you realise there could be any number of malicious "easter eggs".
Um, no. Easter eggs and malware are completely separate camps. By the time you hit upon an easter egg, you've already committed to trusting a progammer's intentions and work quality. Discovering he or she has a sense of humor too does not cause injury to you. By the same token, a virus is a virus, even if it plays a cute animation.
While you imply that we should regard easter eggs with a certain suspicion, I gather what's really making you uncomfortable is the fact that there's hidden functionality in that binary you're running. Guess what... easter eggs or not, most software is loaded with hidden functionality: easter eggs, diagnostic functions, test code, old screens, unused modules, compatibility modes, experimental features, platform-specific and customer-specific hacks, and, yes, sometimes malware. Easter eggs have merely made you reexamine some false assumptions you had.
Re:Would you read a cartoon version of Slashdot?
on
And Now, the Cartoon News
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
When will people seriously get it into their think marketer heads that although cartoons or videos may be more initially eye-catching, they have low information density and are worse at getting actual information across than plain old text?
First, density != effectiveness in human-to-human communications.
Second, text has medium density... it's more dense than a comic but less dense than a well-designed graph.
Finally, consider that your view of cartoons may not include everything the medium is capable of. Have you seen, for example, Scott McCloud's comic-book introduction to Google Chrome? Plain old text could have conveyed the same information, but it's doubtful the audience would have been as large or absorbed as much. Scott argues that cartoons can be more effective than pure text, and while I suspect he's only partially right, it is still worthwhile to try experiments like the one Polgreen is talking about.
Yeah, this is basically a cack-handed way of fixing malicious hosts redirects.
Every OS does this: starts out with a simple (possibly easy-to-understand) model and evolves to something with more and more layers of cruft. It's called technical debt, and the long-term consequences are that these systems become harder to learn and understand.
Linux is better than Windows in this regard, but open source is by no means immune to crud formation. The maintenance tools for Debian packaging and the GNU Build System come to mind.
Which brings me to my rant: in order to remain viable as a hobbyist OS, Linux should strive to simplify and remove "stupid complexity" that needlessly hinders technical understanding of its internals. I'm not speaking of user-friendliness per se (because that's a term that we use in reference to end users), I'm talking about removing complexity that isn't inherently necessary for the purpose of the system.
There's a lot of MySQL-specific code out there, esp. among PHP apps.
A lot of hosting providers that sprung up around the LAMP concept offer MySQL but not Postgresql
Those providers have a lot of their own in-house scripts for managing infrastructure involved with MySQL.
So the situation with Oracle has got to get worse before it can get better, but then you'll see a sudden shift where developers and hosting providers start migrating en masse to some alternative, be it Postgresql or MariaDB.
(And if I may add, "MariaDB" seems like a weak branding choice because the name doesn't give you any sort of hint that it's a replacement for MySQL. Maybe calling it "OurSQL" would have been more effective/suggestive.)
All he's done is made the news - again - after breaching US, Swedish and (now) UK law.
Just curious... what US law did he break? A country cannot meaningfully exert rule of law outside of its jurisdiction except in rare cases recognized by international law (war crimes, genocide, etc.).
Wrong. Read the whole article you linked to... this chart shows high-frequency quoting, not trading. There's also have a link to the people who created the chart, which is worth a read.
Slashdot Mirror
I having DNT by default seems to me to be the intelligent choice, The default should always err on the side of a users privacy. Why the fuck are people suddenly supporting the right to be tracked???
You sound really shocked. Maybe that should have been a clue that you were lacking some rudimentary understanding of the situation? You could have... perhaps, done a little bit of reading before hitting the Post button and whipping out a knee-jerk response, just maybe?
You should require explicit permissions from the person in order to track them.
Unfortunately, advertisers don't share this belief and we have neither the technical capability nor the legislative willpower to force them. DNT is an attempt to ask them nicely. It's a social approach, and it requires their cooperation to work... it's not like it's some magic switch that cuts off their ability to track us (in fact, at a technical level, it allows them to track you easier than before via browser thumbprinting).
If you're going to enable DNT by default everywhere, why don't you just write a letter to all internet tracking firms asking them to please go out of business? It would be easier to implement and more likely to get results (e.g,. still not a chance in hell).
HTTP is meant to be a stateless protocol.
I still use Emacs, run adblock/noscript, and have no Facebook or Google+ account, but man... even I know that world is long gone. The web used to be a bone-simple platform for hypertext documents, but now it's all grown up into a presentation and delivery layer for distributed apps.
Somehow the idea that because I accept free-market principles instead of central planning indicates that I am anti-science is total bullshit.
I don't think they are suggesting a causative relation b/t free-market principles and rejection of science. Just skimming the paper, it seems like they are saying "conservative think-tanks have driven most of the public doubt around AGW, and this correlative study supports that hypothesis". E.g., maybe your passion for free-market principles (valid or not in their own right) has led you to favor news sources with an anti-AGW agenda.
Of course since this is a peer-reviewed paper I could be labeled as anti-science for not accepting this paper, but that is something I am willing to risk.
You might be labeled as anti-science for rejecting a scientific consensus on the basis of narrative (as opposed to technical analysis). Of course, pretty much all of are working off of one narrative or another unless we've gone out and done a lot of honest intellectual investigation at a technical level. But criticizing papers is central to scientific endeavors... it helps to read and understand exactly what they're saying though.
There are only 2 ways to win an argument:
Third way: lead them to say something so unreasonable that even their supporters desert them.
Perhaps Mr. Bezos will have a change of heart and become a users'-rights fanatic. Perhaps then he'll feel sorry, and risk his company by not complying with a C&D notice.
Yeah... not holding my breath on that one. :-)
The law is only supposed to represent a consensus (ideally) of baseline morals. If someone's personal ethics raise the bar higher, that's perfectly fine.
No... law and morality are quite different. That was my point... you feel sorry for something based on your morals, not based on whether you are in the right legally or not.
In any connected system, one misbehaving device could compromise the integrity of the entire network. What I'd like to see eventually is ... Defined standards that the provider must expose, and any standards-compliant device must be allowed.
I don't think this a big concern for vendors. Or rather, it's such an intrinsic concern of exposing content over the internet that it's taken for granted that security is something you have to do whether you have control over endpoint devices or not. Keep in mind that Amazon delivers ebooks to Kindle, Android, IPad, and PC (and so does Barnes & Noble, Google, Netflix, etc.). The real reason to control the device (aside from simpler support and better DRM) is to set yourself up as the sole service conduit and create "an optimal branding experience" (gag).
Actually putting openness into a legal framework is an exceedingly difficult task. Where does the open requirement end?
Interesting question, but I think the original poster was boycotting instead of demanding a legislative solution. Now your original point to him that Amazon can meaningfully surrender control of purchased content (without also surrendering servicing of the device) is quite valid and quite pertinent. You've got to wonder though if laws covering ownership/sales don't also apply to digital sales (unless countermanded by an EULA)... a consumer-friendly legislative approach might be found in our existing laws.
They don't even have a reason to be sorry for altering "your" property. There's a nice "terms of service" contract that you agreed to by using the product, and those terms let Amazon do whatever they want. They had your permission to do what they did, so why should they apologize for it now that somebody regrets that contract?
I have never felt sorry for breaking a law per se, only for the harm that I have caused others and the gracelessness of my own behaviors... regardless of whether I was acting within or outside of my legal rights.
The moment your untrusted device starts dealing with their network, though, you become a threat. So go ahead, and use your offline reader. The companies that offer connected devices don't want to deal with your need for "control", anyway.
Gracious... this sounds like the ma bell mentality back in the day when you could only hook up AT&T-authorized equipment to the phone network. Your statement has an accuracy of sorts, but it's an old world command-and-control mentality, and the tech support burden [imposed by user control] is getting less all the time as new OS'es have smarter app isolation.
Do you support gun rights, just out of curiosity? Do you believe the rhetoric about people have an intrinsic human right to defend themselves? Some of these gun people sound a little paranoid (with their "need for control"), but they have some good arguments, and maybe someday Microsoft/Amazon/Google/someone else will push out an update so egregious that people will realize they have a fundamental need for control over their own computational technology as well.
Selecting the right ideas and integrating them into a single product/system so as to yield commercial/operational success is the tricky part.
Seriously, though, I think it's useful to have a word for "did not invent but turned into a practical and useful product".
commercialized
The real answer is a new standard that is designed for application presentation and deliver, that does not have so much in-band signaling. We need to get it right the first time by building security into the system.
And to help folks bridge the gap, we could deliver this app over HTTP to a browser plugin. Great idea!! Now we just need a fancy name that will make it resonate with programmers like, um.... "Java" (cause it's a type of coffee, get it?) or "Silverlight" (cause we code while the moon's up!).
uses the theory of evolution?
Outside of biology, evolution has informed our understanding of chemistry, psychology, cognitive science, computer science (especially artificial intelligence), linguistics, economics, math (especially game theory), and doubtless many others. As an example, the principles of natural selection inspired the creation of genetic algorithms, which have been widely used to tackle hard optimization problems.
When he chose Paul Ryan as his running mate he sent the middle-of-the-road independent voters running away as they want nothing to do with the extreme conservatism that he represents. He gained only the far-right voters of his own party, but they would have eventually voted for him anyways because they hate Obama.
Paul Ryan == turnout. GOP grassroots repeatedly tried to hand the nomination to someone else (Trump, Bachman, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, and *oh gawd* Santorum) before the establishment candidate was finally shoved down their throats. Ryan is a golden child they can salivate over (even if they feel lukewarm towards Romney), and nothing between now and November is going to change that for the Republican base. On the other hand, many Independents (whom, you know, have lives and don't follow politics as closely over the long term) will be much more manipulable even at the late stage of the game. A focus on Romney and a media-blitz to counter Ryan's negative connotations will soften the damage done with Independents. The Republican leadership is banking on increased Republican turnout surpassing the losses from Independents and increased Democratic turnout.
The only way Romney can win this is if the GOP makes an even more epic voter suppression effort than they did in Ohio in 2004.
Yes, but it's Obama's election to lose. Anything that happens between now and then that gets blame/reward heaped on the Oval Office could swing the election suddenly. (For instance, you can bet that, outside of New Orleans, nobody is more worried about the levies than Obama's election manager.)
It wasn't done very well however. Every other shot the hobbits look like their different heights. Sometimes they look waist high, sometimes chest high. And the height conveyed in most perspective shots is very different than the height when they used the body double stand-ins (i.e. any shot where you can't see the actor's face). It's quite jarring once you notice it, and it gets worse every time.
I will have to look for that. However, they already got my ticket money. :O
Release a hack that shows ANY personal info should be a felony.
It is a well-established principle of computer security that software firms will not fix security holes unless there is the imminent threat of public disclosure. As the saying goes, "sunlight is the best disinfectant", and it's going to work a whole last faster than the prosecutor's office will. (And face it--do you really think the Washington AG will prioritize the security of your machine over the political ramifications of chasing the 3rd largest employer in his state?)
the laws of religion never change
This is extremely naive: even within a particular faith-practicing group, the rules and norms shift with the times. Even seemingly simple rules like "Thou shall not kill" have been subject to extremely different interpretations. By all means, discipline yourself to your imagined set of eternal, unchanging laws if that's what you think your duty is, but if you keep your eyes open (and perhaps get some foreign travel in) you will see that much of our reality--much of what it means to be a person--is created by society alone.
There is no real religious freedom here in the USA only what the governments allow.
Ridiculous: there are practicing faith groups in the US for all major world religions plus thousands of cults, and over 80% of the population identifies with at least one of them. There is no official state church, no religious tests for holding public office, and no imprisonment/deportation/enslavement of people based on their religious beliefs. And, of course, the First Amendment legally bars the government from either favoring or prohibiting a religion. Read a little history to develop some perspective.
Given your lack of perspective, I have to wonder whether you are...
Actually, they could tell the difference; they all said Pepsi tasted better.
Parent was marked troll, but Pepsi actually did taste better to participants of the Pepsi Challenge marketing campaign, which was responsible for triggering the New Coke fiasco.
The "rest of the story" (as described by Malcom Gladwell in Blink) is that sip-testing (where participants just sip the two samples) gave misleading results: when enjoyed over longer periods of time, Pepsi's sweetness becomes cloying.
Whether that shows that he's just weary of being persecuted or he realised he can't win, or whether it's a tacit admission of guilt, will probably be debated for years to come.
Or maybe going what he went through to fight cancer has made him realize that life is too short to worry about the USADA's shit.
Or maybe we should view Lance as an "heroic cheat" who overcame cancer, built his body/team into a better cheating machine than all the other cheaters in the Tour, beat them "fairly" in this larger pharma/athletics game, and donated tons of money and time to cancer research to benefit all humankind.
Maybe USADA/WADA are an obsolete organization that--while started with noble intentions--are now just trying to whitewash a field that has moved onto a place that the world isn't quite ready to accept yet.
[And since I don't have time to write more, I'll give you the Cliff's note version of my own conclusion: science should guide our understanding of the natural world, compassion (or maybe "listening") should guide our understanding of others.]
Also in my Cliff notes: religion/spirituality are sometimes helpful avenues for understanding the self; ideologies are fountains of human cruelty.
If you want to know what Christians actually believe, you should hear them.
I went to a relatively large evangelical church as a kid. Each year, they would hold an apologetics conference to inform people about threats to the face: the new age movement, various cults, and (the #1 topic) evolution. One year, they abruptly switched from young-earth creationism to old-earth creationism. There were no apologies, no explanations of how they had go wrong, no intellectual review that said "gee, this is how we will avoid making similar mistakes is the future". The Eternal Unchanging Truth of God as Revealed Thru His Word(TM) had changed overnight to match the best scientifically-established evidence (in the narrow regard of planetary age, at least).
I share this story to point out... you can't really pin Christianity down. It is as much a product of the current cultural moment as it is of the established creeds, canons, institutions, and theologies. And it's politically savvy enough to not be too backwards (usually). This... flexibility... invalidates many attempts (by atheist, for instance) to paint Christianity as inherently cruel, and it also invalidates defenses of Christianity based on its current behavior or based on some definition of "real" Christianity. To answer (or heck, even to ask) the relevant questions, we need a deeper understanding of how humans behave w.r.t. to supernatural and rational beliefs.
[And since I don't have time to write more, I'll give you the Cliff's note version of my own conclusion: science should guide our understanding of the natural world, compassion (or maybe "listening") should guide our understanding of others.]
One man's easter egg can easily be another man's malware. This sounds kind of cool, until you realise there could be any number of malicious "easter eggs".
Um, no. Easter eggs and malware are completely separate camps. By the time you hit upon an easter egg, you've already committed to trusting a progammer's intentions and work quality. Discovering he or she has a sense of humor too does not cause injury to you. By the same token, a virus is a virus, even if it plays a cute animation.
While you imply that we should regard easter eggs with a certain suspicion, I gather what's really making you uncomfortable is the fact that there's hidden functionality in that binary you're running. Guess what... easter eggs or not, most software is loaded with hidden functionality: easter eggs, diagnostic functions, test code, old screens, unused modules, compatibility modes, experimental features, platform-specific and customer-specific hacks, and, yes, sometimes malware. Easter eggs have merely made you reexamine some false assumptions you had.
When will people seriously get it into their think marketer heads that although cartoons or videos may be more initially eye-catching, they have low information density and are worse at getting actual information across than plain old text?
First, density != effectiveness in human-to-human communications.
Second, text has medium density... it's more dense than a comic but less dense than a well-designed graph.
Finally, consider that your view of cartoons may not include everything the medium is capable of. Have you seen, for example, Scott McCloud's comic-book introduction to Google Chrome? Plain old text could have conveyed the same information, but it's doubtful the audience would have been as large or absorbed as much. Scott argues that cartoons can be more effective than pure text, and while I suspect he's only partially right, it is still worthwhile to try experiments like the one Polgreen is talking about.
Yeah, this is basically a cack-handed way of fixing malicious hosts redirects.
Every OS does this: starts out with a simple (possibly easy-to-understand) model and evolves to something with more and more layers of cruft. It's called technical debt, and the long-term consequences are that these systems become harder to learn and understand.
Linux is better than Windows in this regard, but open source is by no means immune to crud formation. The maintenance tools for Debian packaging and the GNU Build System come to mind.
Which brings me to my rant: in order to remain viable as a hobbyist OS, Linux should strive to simplify and remove "stupid complexity" that needlessly hinders technical understanding of its internals. I'm not speaking of user-friendliness per se (because that's a term that we use in reference to end users), I'm talking about removing complexity that isn't inherently necessary for the purpose of the system.
So the situation with Oracle has got to get worse before it can get better, but then you'll see a sudden shift where developers and hosting providers start migrating en masse to some alternative, be it Postgresql or MariaDB.
(And if I may add, "MariaDB" seems like a weak branding choice because the name doesn't give you any sort of hint that it's a replacement for MySQL. Maybe calling it "OurSQL" would have been more effective/suggestive.)
All he's done is made the news - again - after breaching US, Swedish and (now) UK law.
Just curious... what US law did he break? A country cannot meaningfully exert rule of law outside of its jurisdiction except in rare cases recognized by international law (war crimes, genocide, etc.).
The first time you will even hear from them they will be kicking in your front door, seize you and all your electronics.
And it's that sort of personalized attention that makes American law enforcement the best! :O
The Fool has a great article on this. You simply can't compete. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/10/the-terrifying-graphic-that-shows-stock-trading-r.aspx
Wrong. Read the whole article you linked to... this chart shows high-frequency quoting, not trading. There's also have a link to the people who created the chart, which is worth a read.