What good does it do you? What problem does it solve and does it solve the problem in an economically advantageous manner?
As far as I can see, it doesn't. Would it be nice to have my fridge tell me everything in it? Certainly. Would it be nice if it printed out a list of everything it is now missing? Again, yes. But so what? That saves me all of five minutes. Because I am certainly not going to leave the next part, the shopping, to some third party like Amazon or Google or WalMart. This isn't me being a luddite. This is me just being practical.
The fridge isn't going to know my bank account status and I'm sure as hell not letting anyone else in there to check that I can afford groceries this week. Not while computer security is where it is. All of that is just begging to be attacked and broken and fixed and attacked and broken and fixed and so forth. I've had my debit card replaced five times in the last three years thanks to various hacks. It's a goddam headache is what it is. And now these geniuses want me to network _everything_ in my house? To what purpose?
...However, if a manufacturer wishes to pre-install Google proprietary apps, including Google Play Store and Google Search, on any of its devices, Google requires it to enter into an "Anti-Fragmentation Agreement" that commits it not to sell devices running on Android forks.
Which makes sooooo much sense from a software shop perspective as well as a historical one as well. You want there to be as singular as an install base as possible. Same goes for the Linux kernel. Is the commission going to go after that next?
A second section:
As a result, rival search engines are not able to become the default search service on the significant majority of devices sold in the EEA.
Defaults can be pretty powerful, just go ask Microsoft and IE. But that doesn't stop people from installing something that works better for them. See Chrome and Firefox, both of which were able to overcome IE's default market position by offering a product that people liked better. The same can and should happen here.
I think there should be a space between the search results and the advertisement side of Alphabet. However, that's an entirely separate issue from Android. The same goes for privacy. Both are important enough to break out on their own, so this? This is nuts.
We can't take that chance. Won't you think of all of the children!
On a more serious note, all it takes is for one person to screw up for them to be caught. Something like this could potentially catch such a mistake but that chance is so small as to make no difference. So what we end up with are hidden rules to catch the improbable butting up against the inevitable joke that will occur. It catches the innocent, the profane, and those who are attempt to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Punishing them all in the same way as if they had done something violently wrong and doing so without trial or appeal.
For their internet offerings, this makes some sense. Here is a company that has some (however you may feel about that) experience being a hub for the internet. Now it's your hub. It has a web advertisement arm, it has a lot of emails and tracking data to be mined and spit back up into your larger marketing apparatus, and you can use it to capture an audience through momentum (I don't want to move my email account. it's too much trouble!) as well as exclusive offerings (join now and get the first six episodes of SitCom online for free!).
As for the rest, that can just be part of the slash and burn portion of the purchase. Wrote down, wrote off, and eventually turned off. No muss, no fuss, and who cares if some artists have been using it to promote their work for the better part of a decade? Not us! They were getting something for free that the rest of us pay for. Those dirty, socialist loving, teat-sucking, freeloaders. What did they ever do to make our lives better?
Why are there laws and regulations preventing certain people form seeking employment based on past convictions?
For the most part, prosecutors can't even bring that stuff up as part of a argument in a court.
I get that we want to feel safe, but two things occur to me. First is that these people have "paid" for their crime. How is this not continuing a sentence after it's supposed to be over? Second, how do we expect people to make a better life after prison if we make it even harder for them to get gainful employment?
But "unsecure"? Seriously? Was this writer not aware of the commonly available "insecure" which, I'm guessing since that's a new word to me, means almost the exact same thing??!
I could get down with "unsecurable", a device that goes out of it's way to keep me from making it more secure than it started out as. There's nothing "insecurable", unless you're some sort of monster trying to spread insecurities to the general populace.
Com'on editors, you've got one job to do. Why not do it well?
I really do wonder how many games got past the team responsible for the curation of the Greenlight games. Could this explain the pure crap that has been published over the course of the past few years?
Don't get me wrong, I feel like Greenlight has been a net positive for the indie game community. I just wonder if Valve had started with stronger guidance and participation we wouldn't be having these sorts of questions happening.
But I do wonder where our obsession with "freshness" comes from. Is it because we're so divorced from the places where our food comes from?
To be honest, I'm happy not seeing the entire process of growth through harvest. I have other things I'd rather do with my time than tend to crops and livestock. And when it comes to processing, I have a preference that livestock be treated well in their life since it's fueling mine...but I have absolutely no desire to be part of the slaughtering process. None. Again, I'd rather pay someone else to do that for me.
Is it because of "contributions" to state politicians to craft loopholes?
I'd happily give more to the EFF as this seems like something they'd take to court or lobby against, but they can't be the only ones doing it. Especially given the long and cozy relationship the major telcom companies have had in capitals. Who else can we get in contact with to voice concerns that doesn't end up labeling us as "Chicken Littles" or Boy who cried wolf"?
On the one hand they're trying to protect some of the users from that crap. There's even a pilot program supposedly. However that program has largely gone quiet.
And on the other hand they're bound by agreements struck with the likes of television producers and music labels. And who knows what's in those things? I suspect that there's more than one directive for YouTube to follow.
Given all of this, I'm thinking that there's a contingent in YT that wants to be sued by one of the bigger channels for some of this stupidity. If it was my business, I would want something to happen so we could have a 21st century version of the Sony decision. That way I could get out from under all of this policing of copyright and get back to developing the platform.
It's not that they don't want to sell it. It's that they only want to sell so much of it.
Don't forget that all cable providers are getting charged by the content providers based on the number households that are subscribed to those channels. In fact, there are probably tiers of cost in the agreements. So it makes sense that they want to cut off at a certain point to preserve as much profit as possible. We already know that telecommunication companies are notoriously cost adverse they'd rather let infrastructure rot and stagnate to the point of it not being usable than to pay to maintain and upgrade.
2) If intelligence agencies are watching Twitter accounts for covert intelligence, that is idiotic. Twitter posts are public, easy to find, and unencrypted (I suppose you could hide a secret message in a Twitter post, but anyway...). It seems to me that the Rickrolling is perfect for disrupting ISIS sponsored Twitter recruitment accounts. When it comes to actually planning attacks, I imagine this makes no difference whatsoever--that is more likely done by ISIS on encrypted non-public channels that the intelligence agencies are trying to find and decrypt.
Except that they're not using encrypted channels to do the planning and execution. That's been made abundantly clear in the last week with multiple articles in the papers telling us as much. All of their chatter was done over phone texting. That's it. Nothing fancy. Nothing requiring any government to intrude on or break otherwise normal encrypted messaging. Maybe that's the problem. We've built up a boogieman in our minds that is this incredible supervillian-esque monster that's going to be doing everything on side channels with embedded encryption protocols and stenographic images.
I mean, that's what they're doing, right? It's what the old Soviet regimes were thought to do. Who knows, maybe these guys are just stuck in the world the way it was thirty or forty years ago.
To my mind it goes back to the OP's point. They're not using intelligence to stop these people. The question is it incompetence, malfeasance, apathy, or some combination of all three?
They didn't need to create the ContentID system and allow it work the way it does. But they did.
By law they needed a way to respond to DMCA notices but they didn't need to automate it. And now those chickens have come home to roost.
All in all, Google stepping up to start sorting out this mess they made all by themselves is a good thing. I am hopeful they see it through by changing the way their system works and maybe taking out some of the automation that is one of the biggest problems with it. May they also push some sane legislation that will make it possible to do away with the worst abuses of the Notice system.
I don't understand why, as a commercial, professional developer you didn't take the time to find or demand a copy of the code from a third party plug-in. And if you couldn't do that, why you'd still go and use it. That seems like a huge amount of built-in trouble.
Can it be cheaper to not do your homework? Certainly! But look at what it costs you. You now have an app that's getting rejected by the publisher. You've now gone and tarnished your brand and reputation. And you've likely opened up your users to all kinds of possible trouble, not to mention any future ramifications of the if/when their data is stolen.
Why not just do the homework and be safe from the start?
What I want to know is what these companies will do once they have the data. AFAICT it's like the underwear gnomes.
1) Get the data 2) ???? 3) Profit!
So you sell the data to an aggregator. What if they've already have the data? What then? What happens when our lives are so well integrated into these feedback systems that no one wants the data anymore? Or that the data is so close to worthless it doesn't matter?
We don't teach how to fail in any segment of our schooling, which is somewhat necessary in addressing ignorance. Failure is taught to be avoided at all costs. Failure is mocked, ridiculed as a personal flaw instead of something that everyone experiences. We don't teach that failure is something that happens even when we've put our best effort into the work. That failure happens when you've done everything right and according to the rules. And in neither of those cases is failure something bad. It's just something that happens in life.
The entertainment industry has a long history of ignoring their customers and trying to dictate what is popular.
For a short time, relatively speaking, they've been able to figure out how to do that and reaping a huge profit while it was happening. The amount of money was so big it blinded them to how the world and their markets were changing. Instead, these industries focused and focused again on how to industrialize (for lack of a better term) popularity of a few things. That is to say the popularity of "Boy Bands" in the '90s wasn't a complete accident and that yes, if you thought there was a formula for them there is indeed is.
At this point, much of the upper brass in these companies are so entrenched into these methods of profit that they can't see how to get out and maintain their power structures. It's not just the profits that they've become used to. It's also their position. Which is only human. They perceive that they've worked hard to become VP or Pres of their current company and their actions aren't going to disrupt that even if it means long term their industry will survive.
For what it's worth, these companies will continue to discount the success of Netflix and others simply because to do otherwise would likely imperil their current position. Change, will only occur when the companies are facing complete ruin, if it happens at all. Until such time that we see TW or Sony winding up their studio arms, I don't think we'll see them adapting.
Look, I get that these guys are trying to do something new. And for that I applaud them and their efforts. However until there are new laws supporting the sort of things they're trying to do they need to follow the current laws especially regarding employment.
Just because you came up with a new way to run things doesn't mean that the rest of it like it or agree that's the way the world should work. Especially when it seems like all you're doing is trying to dodge current legal frameworks without any good reason for doing so.
I think they meant that there's no longer an option to think that society is just them and their immediate family & friends, that they could no longer ignore the plight of other people who are so much more than what you see on the surface, and all that mucking about with taxation, a subject much like society itself, is a complex thing that is full of nuances and consists of more that what you had for breakfast yesterday.
But that's just what I think about people who choose to jump right away on the if the government does it, it's bad bandwagon.
If nothing else, she needs to be taught that she is self-possessed. That this is her life, her body, her decisions. That what other people may want of her can be considered, even negotiated around, but that in the end it is what she wants that should count the most.
She is going to be pulled in many directions, face many things that you and your wife have already passed through and have only the fleetest memories of. To navigate those and other unforeseeable difficulties the best thing that can be bequeathed her is an unshakable sense of self. It will help her through doubts and tribulations. It will be assailed by everything and everyone around her, tempting her to be things she is not. Which is why it is so very important that she has it, holds on it, and knows when to reinvent it.
It could have been easy to get along and keep doing what they were doing, but no, Verizon has to go and sue in court. They had to challenge the weaker rules, force Wheeler's hand and cause this to happen.
It's their own fault here.
They brought it on themselves in a very real, legally binding way.
I couldn't be gloating any harder than I am right now.
So how about that? A programming language that'll download and store a program for later use just in case the network connection isn't stable or available. Sounds good to me. Having more than one way to get a program is a great thing to do.
Seems to me that if I can't rely on my network I'd want some sort of storage media that'll let me back up or reinstall the base program. It should also be light and easy to transport with plenty of additional storage space, just in case of anything.
Seriously, the older I get the more I find out that everything old is new again.
Slashdot Mirror
What good does it do you? What problem does it solve and does it solve the problem in an economically advantageous manner?
As far as I can see, it doesn't. Would it be nice to have my fridge tell me everything in it? Certainly. Would it be nice if it printed out a list of everything it is now missing? Again, yes. But so what? That saves me all of five minutes. Because I am certainly not going to leave the next part, the shopping, to some third party like Amazon or Google or WalMart. This isn't me being a luddite. This is me just being practical.
The fridge isn't going to know my bank account status and I'm sure as hell not letting anyone else in there to check that I can afford groceries this week. Not while computer security is where it is. All of that is just begging to be attacked and broken and fixed and attacked and broken and fixed and so forth. I've had my debit card replaced five times in the last three years thanks to various hacks. It's a goddam headache is what it is. And now these geniuses want me to network _everything_ in my house? To what purpose?
From the first link:
...However, if a manufacturer wishes to pre-install Google proprietary apps, including Google Play Store and Google Search, on any of its devices, Google requires it to enter into an "Anti-Fragmentation Agreement" that commits it not to sell devices running on Android forks.
Which makes sooooo much sense from a software shop perspective as well as a historical one as well. You want there to be as singular as an install base as possible. Same goes for the Linux kernel. Is the commission going to go after that next?
A second section:
As a result, rival search engines are not able to become the default search service on the significant majority of devices sold in the EEA.
Defaults can be pretty powerful, just go ask Microsoft and IE. But that doesn't stop people from installing something that works better for them. See Chrome and Firefox, both of which were able to overcome IE's default market position by offering a product that people liked better. The same can and should happen here.
I think there should be a space between the search results and the advertisement side of Alphabet. However, that's an entirely separate issue from Android. The same goes for privacy. Both are important enough to break out on their own, so this? This is nuts.
We can't take that chance. Won't you think of all of the children!
On a more serious note, all it takes is for one person to screw up for them to be caught. Something like this could potentially catch such a mistake but that chance is so small as to make no difference. So what we end up with are hidden rules to catch the improbable butting up against the inevitable joke that will occur. It catches the innocent, the profane, and those who are attempt to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Punishing them all in the same way as if they had done something violently wrong and doing so without trial or appeal.
Because marketing.
For their internet offerings, this makes some sense. Here is a company that has some (however you may feel about that) experience being a hub for the internet. Now it's your hub. It has a web advertisement arm, it has a lot of emails and tracking data to be mined and spit back up into your larger marketing apparatus, and you can use it to capture an audience through momentum (I don't want to move my email account. it's too much trouble!) as well as exclusive offerings (join now and get the first six episodes of SitCom online for free!).
As for the rest, that can just be part of the slash and burn portion of the purchase. Wrote down, wrote off, and eventually turned off. No muss, no fuss, and who cares if some artists have been using it to promote their work for the better part of a decade? Not us! They were getting something for free that the rest of us pay for. Those dirty, socialist loving, teat-sucking, freeloaders. What did they ever do to make our lives better?
Why are there laws and regulations preventing certain people form seeking employment based on past convictions?
For the most part, prosecutors can't even bring that stuff up as part of a argument in a court.
I get that we want to feel safe, but two things occur to me. First is that these people have "paid" for their crime. How is this not continuing a sentence after it's supposed to be over? Second, how do we expect people to make a better life after prison if we make it even harder for them to get gainful employment?
But "unsecure"? Seriously? Was this writer not aware of the commonly available "insecure" which, I'm guessing since that's a new word to me, means almost the exact same thing??!
I could get down with "unsecurable", a device that goes out of it's way to keep me from making it more secure than it started out as. There's nothing "insecurable", unless you're some sort of monster trying to spread insecurities to the general populace.
Com'on editors, you've got one job to do. Why not do it well?
I really do wonder how many games got past the team responsible for the curation of the Greenlight games. Could this explain the pure crap that has been published over the course of the past few years?
Don't get me wrong, I feel like Greenlight has been a net positive for the indie game community. I just wonder if Valve had started with stronger guidance and participation we wouldn't be having these sorts of questions happening.
But I do wonder where our obsession with "freshness" comes from. Is it because we're so divorced from the places where our food comes from?
To be honest, I'm happy not seeing the entire process of growth through harvest. I have other things I'd rather do with my time than tend to crops and livestock. And when it comes to processing, I have a preference that livestock be treated well in their life since it's fueling mine...but I have absolutely no desire to be part of the slaughtering process. None. Again, I'd rather pay someone else to do that for me.
Is it because of their service "agreements"?
Is it because of "contributions" to state politicians to craft loopholes?
I'd happily give more to the EFF as this seems like something they'd take to court or lobby against, but they can't be the only ones doing it. Especially given the long and cozy relationship the major telcom companies have had in capitals. Who else can we get in contact with to voice concerns that doesn't end up labeling us as "Chicken Littles" or Boy who cried wolf"?
On the one hand they're trying to protect some of the users from that crap. There's even a pilot program supposedly. However that program has largely gone quiet.
And on the other hand they're bound by agreements struck with the likes of television producers and music labels. And who knows what's in those things? I suspect that there's more than one directive for YouTube to follow.
Given all of this, I'm thinking that there's a contingent in YT that wants to be sued by one of the bigger channels for some of this stupidity. If it was my business, I would want something to happen so we could have a 21st century version of the Sony decision. That way I could get out from under all of this policing of copyright and get back to developing the platform.
It's not that they don't want to sell it. It's that they only want to sell so much of it.
Don't forget that all cable providers are getting charged by the content providers based on the number households that are subscribed to those channels. In fact, there are probably tiers of cost in the agreements. So it makes sense that they want to cut off at a certain point to preserve as much profit as possible. We already know that telecommunication companies are notoriously cost adverse they'd rather let infrastructure rot and stagnate to the point of it not being usable than to pay to maintain and upgrade.
2) If intelligence agencies are watching Twitter accounts for covert intelligence, that is idiotic. Twitter posts are public, easy to find, and unencrypted (I suppose you could hide a secret message in a Twitter post, but anyway...). It seems to me that the Rickrolling is perfect for disrupting ISIS sponsored Twitter recruitment accounts. When it comes to actually planning attacks, I imagine this makes no difference whatsoever--that is more likely done by ISIS on encrypted non-public channels that the intelligence agencies are trying to find and decrypt.
Except that they're not using encrypted channels to do the planning and execution. That's been made abundantly clear in the last week with multiple articles in the papers telling us as much. All of their chatter was done over phone texting. That's it. Nothing fancy. Nothing requiring any government to intrude on or break otherwise normal encrypted messaging. Maybe that's the problem. We've built up a boogieman in our minds that is this incredible supervillian-esque monster that's going to be doing everything on side channels with embedded encryption protocols and stenographic images.
I mean, that's what they're doing, right? It's what the old Soviet regimes were thought to do. Who knows, maybe these guys are just stuck in the world the way it was thirty or forty years ago.
To my mind it goes back to the OP's point. They're not using intelligence to stop these people. The question is it incompetence, malfeasance, apathy, or some combination of all three?
That is entirely of their own making.
They didn't need to create the ContentID system and allow it work the way it does. But they did.
By law they needed a way to respond to DMCA notices but they didn't need to automate it. And now those chickens have come home to roost.
All in all, Google stepping up to start sorting out this mess they made all by themselves is a good thing. I am hopeful they see it through by changing the way their system works and maybe taking out some of the automation that is one of the biggest problems with it. May they also push some sane legislation that will make it possible to do away with the worst abuses of the Notice system.
I don't understand why, as a commercial, professional developer you didn't take the time to find or demand a copy of the code from a third party plug-in. And if you couldn't do that, why you'd still go and use it. That seems like a huge amount of built-in trouble.
Can it be cheaper to not do your homework? Certainly! But look at what it costs you. You now have an app that's getting rejected by the publisher. You've now gone and tarnished your brand and reputation. And you've likely opened up your users to all kinds of possible trouble, not to mention any future ramifications of the if/when their data is stolen.
Why not just do the homework and be safe from the start?
THANK YOU! That actually makes sense instead of the gibberish installed as the "article" above.
What I want to know is what these companies will do once they have the data. AFAICT it's like the underwear gnomes.
1) Get the data
2) ????
3) Profit!
So you sell the data to an aggregator. What if they've already have the data? What then? What happens when our lives are so well integrated into these feedback systems that no one wants the data anymore? Or that the data is so close to worthless it doesn't matter?
It is not. In fact, it's not just gravity that would be an issue.
There is also the fact that it doesn't have a magnetic field like Earth's. This also keeps the solar wind from blasting away the atmosphere.
Just because they'd be released doesn't mean that's all that would be needed to terraform Mars.
We don't teach how to fail in any segment of our schooling, which is somewhat necessary in addressing ignorance. Failure is taught to be avoided at all costs. Failure is mocked, ridiculed as a personal flaw instead of something that everyone experiences. We don't teach that failure is something that happens even when we've put our best effort into the work. That failure happens when you've done everything right and according to the rules. And in neither of those cases is failure something bad. It's just something that happens in life.
The entertainment industry has a long history of ignoring their customers and trying to dictate what is popular.
For a short time, relatively speaking, they've been able to figure out how to do that and reaping a huge profit while it was happening. The amount of money was so big it blinded them to how the world and their markets were changing. Instead, these industries focused and focused again on how to industrialize (for lack of a better term) popularity of a few things. That is to say the popularity of "Boy Bands" in the '90s wasn't a complete accident and that yes, if you thought there was a formula for them there is indeed is.
At this point, much of the upper brass in these companies are so entrenched into these methods of profit that they can't see how to get out and maintain their power structures. It's not just the profits that they've become used to. It's also their position. Which is only human. They perceive that they've worked hard to become VP or Pres of their current company and their actions aren't going to disrupt that even if it means long term their industry will survive.
For what it's worth, these companies will continue to discount the success of Netflix and others simply because to do otherwise would likely imperil their current position. Change, will only occur when the companies are facing complete ruin, if it happens at all. Until such time that we see TW or Sony winding up their studio arms, I don't think we'll see them adapting.
Look, I get that these guys are trying to do something new. And for that I applaud them and their efforts. However until there are new laws supporting the sort of things they're trying to do they need to follow the current laws especially regarding employment.
Just because you came up with a new way to run things doesn't mean that the rest of it like it or agree that's the way the world should work. Especially when it seems like all you're doing is trying to dodge current legal frameworks without any good reason for doing so.
Furthermore, what about all of the decisions that have been handed down since that was written? How do they play into what those three words mean?
Meaning doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's so much more that goes into the law than just the words.
I think they meant that there's no longer an option to think that society is just them and their immediate family & friends, that they could no longer ignore the plight of other people who are so much more than what you see on the surface, and all that mucking about with taxation, a subject much like society itself, is a complex thing that is full of nuances and consists of more that what you had for breakfast yesterday.
But that's just what I think about people who choose to jump right away on the if the government does it, it's bad bandwagon.
If nothing else, she needs to be taught that she is self-possessed. That this is her life, her body, her decisions. That what other people may want of her can be considered, even negotiated around, but that in the end it is what she wants that should count the most.
She is going to be pulled in many directions, face many things that you and your wife have already passed through and have only the fleetest memories of. To navigate those and other unforeseeable difficulties the best thing that can be bequeathed her is an unshakable sense of self. It will help her through doubts and tribulations. It will be assailed by everything and everyone around her, tempting her to be things she is not. Which is why it is so very important that she has it, holds on it, and knows when to reinvent it.
It could have been easy to get along and keep doing what they were doing, but no, Verizon has to go and sue in court. They had to challenge the weaker rules, force Wheeler's hand and cause this to happen.
It's their own fault here.
They brought it on themselves in a very real, legally binding way.
I couldn't be gloating any harder than I am right now.
So how about that? A programming language that'll download and store a program for later use just in case the network connection isn't stable or available. Sounds good to me. Having more than one way to get a program is a great thing to do.
Seems to me that if I can't rely on my network I'd want some sort of storage media that'll let me back up or reinstall the base program. It should also be light and easy to transport with plenty of additional storage space, just in case of anything.
Seriously, the older I get the more I find out that everything old is new again.