How much 'computational power' (or storage) does it take to write a book (even "War and Peace":-)?
Well, if you want to use your system as an electric typewriter, obviously not that much. But if you want to keep track of your plotlines, characters and locations as you work, check spelling in real time, or run a Skype call while you're reviewing the latest chapters, it's going to take a bit more. And if you're working on the cover art for that soon-to-be-bestselling novel, or typesetting a 500 page science textbook complete with diagrams and tables and indexing and cross-references and bibliography, or comparing four different original sources at once, it's going to take a lot more.
There certainly are creative endeavors [...] that do require a fair amount of computation, but a lot of that computation can be done with special purpose hardware (e.g. GPUs.) Those might require general purpose desktops, or special purpose desktops, or mobile devices with specialized hardware, or a combination of mobile device plus cloud services.
Sure, but apart from shoving everything up into the cloud, we already have that sort of possibility today, and it's far cheaper than mobile devices that are trying to cram everything into the smallest possible size and weight, and where there is a limited amount of power available between charges.
By the time you've taken your tablet or smartphone, plugged it into a dock so you can connect it to multiple large screens and a constant power supply that's enough to drive them, plugged in a good keyboard and mouse, added a few TB of external storage for all that multimedia content you've downloaded via the wired broadband connection you now have access to, fitted a standalone web cam that can see you in your chair and attached a headset for your conference calls, and plugged in enough custom graphics hardware to drive those screens as you connect the video on that call, you've got... a PC.
I've done -a lot of software development- on a 24x80 screen running EMACS, including code and documentation.
So have I, but today I use multiple monitors, and the main one can easily tile four areas all significantly bigger than that in an IDE. In the background, that IDE is analysing many thousands of lines of code in real time in order to present me with relevant information as I navigate through the code, and checking for the kinds of dumb mistakes we used to make all the time. Of course, I'm also working in programming languages where some of those dumb mistakes aren't even possible any more, which is achievable precisely because my modern computer can analyse higher level languages so fast that I don't need a tea break while I'm compiling any more. On another screen, I can flick through 30 different pages of documentation in a web browser with a slight movement of my hand, downloaded in moments from a server thousands of miles away at a connection speed measured in megabytes per second. On a third screen I'm running my native application, or a browser and a bunch of shells on my web server if I'm working on a web app. Since I'm connecting to the rest of my local network at 1Gbps, I can interact with graphical applications running on that server as easily as my local desktop. Somewhere in there, my system is also monitoring things like e-mail and IM, via hardware links that go through security equipment that analyses every connection in real time. And so it goes on.
24x80 green or amber consoles are good for reminiscing about how we used to code adventure games in 32K of RAM.
Smart phones and tablets are good for reading Facebook, catching up on TV, and playing puzzle games.
For real work, I'll stick with the highest spec PC that a sane amount of money can buy, the most effective professional software I can find to run on it, and my nice, ergonomic office furniture. It will be several generations of hardware development before there are better tools for these kinds of jobs. Even then, I'm betting the hardwarae won't look like an iPhone or a Galaxy Tab, and the software won't work anything like a typical iOS or Android app.
Also, are you under the impression that tablets/phones wont be able to dock up to a real 'workstation' with a screen that is > 10 inches???
Sure they will. And what you'll get is an expensive, absurdly underpowered, restrictive computer that specialises in running the kind of software you get if you spend $2 in an app store.
The current generation of mobile devices is doing very well because they serve a vast and previously bizarrely undersupported market: people who want a portable device for easy information consumption. If you're not doing any sort of content creation, significant computation, or catering to more than one user at once, you can get by with the kind of processing power you find in an iPad or a Galaxy S3. If you're not expecting much in the way of interaction, you can get by with a touchscreen and very simple user interface concepts. For the market where they are wildly successful, the current crop of smartphones and tablets are excellent devices, balancing low power consumption, ease of use, portability, and "wow factor" against a bunch of downsides that their users simply don't care about.
On the other hand, as soon as you do need to do anything creative, or do any real computation, or scale up to multiple users, or support non-trivial interactions, the current crop of mobile devices suck. All those downsides that didn't matter before are now dominant, and the high price, low power and almost zero flexibility are fatal liabilities. And no matter how much window dressing you lay out, they always will be, because it's not the job these devices were designed for.
how about completely ignoring what a person is doing, and only punish them if they are driving recklessly, regardless of the cause. We have laws against reckless driving already.
I've often wondered about this. Why don't we just have basic, universal laws against things like dangerous or inconsiderate driving?
After a while, I realised it's because these laws invariably leave a gray area right around the point that the people who we're trying to discourage from doing dumb things are actually doing those dumb things. Worse, those people are often in denial about their problem. Just look at the number of past Slashdot discussions where numerous people claim they can phone/text/whatever and drive, despite overwhelming evidence that only a tiny subset of the population are actually supertaskers. They don't think they're guilty of dangerous driving, so having a generic dangerous driving offence isn't going to affect them.
On the other hand, an objective standard, while inevitably imposing some limitation on the few people who really are good drivers and capable of doing more, leaves no room for the potentially dangerous people to escape. Text and drive, get caught, we crush your car. Simple. You didn't accidentally text, if you've got a driving licence you should know very well if the law says texting is illegal, and there are exactly zero emergency situations where a text would be more appropriate than, say, calling 911 (or whatever your local version is) unless you start getting into conspiracy theories that belong more in Hollywood movies than legislative debates. In short, there is no excuse, and having a black-and-white technical offence on the books makes prosecution an open and shut case.
My happy karma glasses see it this way. I know that I probably am safer on the road than the average driver, based on objective measures and peer review/training, and that I probably could handle my car at speeds some way above a lot of limits without compromising safety. However, I would surely complete my journeys even faster and in greater safety if the drivers at the extreme other end of the spectrum were consistently discouraged from doing dumb things or totally removed from the road. The impact they have through bad driving and the consequences of accidents surely causes a far greater delay on average than me driving say 20% slower than I'd ideally choose to do so that I stay within a legal limit.
It's always important to be wary of arguments that limiting someone's freedom is OK because it's also limiting the freedoms of hypothetical Bad People. However, in this case, the risk from bad drivers is not so much hypothetical as measured in thousands of human lives lost every year. On the other hand, the limitations on freedom for the rest of us are almost zero since no responsible driver would ever be texting and driving anyway, and obviously there is scope for making exceptions if, for example, a doctor certifies that a patient should be exempt because of a legitimate medical condition that means restricting their phone would affect them in unintended ways when they're not driving.
So after reflecting on this subject for a long time, I've concluded that technical road laws like banning texting while driving are a net win, as long as they are enforced impartially and regularly enough to actually be a deterrent.
Well, failing that, you could try a potion of wisdom for them and a ring of charisma for you. Or a bit of Domination. You know, if they're into that kind of thing.;-)
(But yes, if you're with a non-gamer then sometimes it's hard for them to see the attraction, even though they might consider things like acting in a play or reading fiction entirely normal. There's no frame of reference there.)
Overtime seems relatively rare, though I've heard of some good employers offering it, particularly when it's a significant amount above the normal workload.
On the other hand, for freelance/contract work, billed on an hourly time and materials basis, extra time is almost always chargeable. I find this very effective at keeping clients focussed on useful work and keeping the amount of tedious overhead to a minimum.:-) (Others will disagree and argue that for contract work with a daily or weekly rate you can often charge a higher effective rate to begin with, which is also a valid consideration.)
I don't agree with all of your characterisations there, but in any case, we're getting bogged down in details now and losing the main argument.
Fundamentally, either you can say anything you want without adverse consequences, or you can't. That is the very essence of freedom of speech. If there can be adverse consequences purely because you said something, however hurtful or unpleasant, then you don't really have freedom of speech at all. You can say what you want without fear, except when you can't.
My contention is that no country in the world today actually recognises such a sweeping freedom in law, and moreover that this is reasonable because there are far too many very damaging things one can say that should be penalised because of the harm they cause to others.
You have argued that the US does have absolute freedom of speech, citing the First Amendment. And yet, you have also described in great detail numerous ways in which that freedom is effectively constrained, where while the speech itself is "protected" the person speaking may be penalised despite taking no other action themselves as a consequence of what they said.
Your position is inconsistent and untenable. Absolute freedoms are fundamentally a black and white proposition. This is why recognising and protecting them is generally a bad idea in legal systems, because sooner or later one person's absolute freedom to do something runs into another person's absolute freedom to do something else and you have left no legally sound way to resolve the conflict.
All of which brings us back to the case at hand, where someone was doing something that appears to have been rather blatantly helping other people to break the law, someone on Slashdot defended this on the basis of free speech, and I challenged that argument. All these examples you've been giving about penalising someone who only said something, because of the consequences of what they said, are just making my point.
The fact that the First Amendment is often ignored by the legislature and the courts does not change the fact that it guarantees the legal right to free speech without specifying any exceptions whatsoever.
And yet, for example, the Copyright Clause explicitly allows for reserving certain rights to authors. So even the Constitution itself doesn't support your position.
No, you cannot legally be penalized for saying certain things. You can legally be penalized for doing certain things: for acting violently against others, as you expressed your credible intent to do by making threats
Ah, now I see. You have absolute freedom of speech, and you are penalised only for your actions, except in cases of thoughtcrime, in which case you can be punished for crimes you have not committed based only on something you said. I still haven't worked out what your definition of "freedom" is, but I'm still fairly sure it's not the same as mine.
By your argument, is hiring a hitman against the law? After all, you're not expressing any intent to commit any illegal act yourself even in the future.
What about giving bad advice to someone on, say, medical, financial or legal matters? If speech is protected absolutely, there's not much room left to prohibit fraud, so can just anyone declare themselves qualified to offer such advice (whether or not they actually are) and then charge for doing so? For that matter, what if they make no claim to being qualified and simply charge for giving advice when they have no idea what they're talking about?
I'm amazed that you somehow managed to skip the U.S.A. in your research:
Would that be the same U.S.A. that is arguably the world's strongest proponent of intellectual property laws? And where there are no defamation lawsuits, except for all the ones there have been, and there are no explicit defamation laws, because the one third or so of the states where it's actually a criminal matter just misunderstood? Next time you go through airport security, you should tell the security guys a joke about having a bomb, too, because I hear they have a great sense of humour about that kind of thing.
All the legitimate damages attributed to speech are actually caused by other actions which, unlike speech, are capable of violating another person's rights of self-ownership. Such damages can be countered without abridging the freedom of speech.
So you have freedom of speech except that you can be penalised if you say certain things and there are negative consequences? I think you and I have different understandings of the word "freedom".
As far as I'm aware, nowhere in the world actually has an absolute right to free speech codified in law. In fact, that would be pretty crazy, because speech is powerful and absolute protection of free speech would give people the power to do immense damage to other people without penalty.
Your strawman arguments are not the same as what this guy did. He was quite blatantly and knowingly running a system to help other people break the law. Why would you think any reasonable legal system should condone such behaviour?
There are certainly valid concerns today about limiting speech inappropriately, but defending people like this is a distraction from those concerns, and ultimately unhelpful. People do need to take responsibility for their own behaviour if we're going to maintain a civilised society.
Thanks for the link, but some of us have been watching this one for literally years now and have actually spoken to real lawyers about it in the course of doing business. These rules do affect all cookies, and any other similar technologies as well, by default. There just happens to be a special case for those cookies that are strictly necessary, in a very tightly worded sense.
You've just attempted to quietly redirect the entire discussion from cookies in general (which have many valid uses) onto third party cookies (which have rather fewer valid uses and some obviously sinister ones).
You are acting as if the WWW will collapse if you have to ask users for consent to track them.
You're still using that word "track" in a way that no-one else in the world does. You aren't going to win any debating points like that.
Also, the WWW wouldn't collapse, but it would become significantly harder for those running web sites -- which you apparently value enough to visit them if any of this is a problem for you in the first place. It would be more difficult to optimise sites according to what users were actually looking for and how they were really using them. That would inevitably mean site operators couldn't convert as many visitors either, which in turn would inevitably mean that some good sites that were only borderline financially viable in the early days would fail unnecessarily, leaving no site to benefit anyone.
Have you no decency, or are you trying to hide what you want to do with my info?
What info do you think I am magically getting? It's not as if these things are giving up your name, DoB and home phone number. Your average analytics cookie is just a random number, and is completely anonymous. And even if I did collect personal information from you, which for example you might volunteer when signing up for an account, I would be constrained by exactly the same data protection laws as anyone else handling any other kind of personal data in my country, including filing (at my own cost) details of what I'm collecting and how it is used with my government's data protection officials, who will then make it available to the public so that anyone, including you, can read it.
So just to be clear, your proposed alternatives to cookies are:
1. sending exactly the same kind of state information (session ID etc.) but in places like hidden POST fields instead of cookies
2. using covert browser fingerprinting on the server side.
Exactly how is either of those approaches not at least as capable of covert tracking of your visitors? Not to mention being more than a little creepy, particularly in the latter case since even a user who has explicitly chosen to disable cookies and send Do Not Track is still probably going to wind up in your system. And of course being far more work to implement and test, because instead of using the tool designed for the job you insist on trying to force another tool designed for a different job to do the work instead.
Number 3 is covered once you asked for permission, which you can do using number 1.
Only if you force users to create an account just to keep your site's media player size the same or some other trivial but convenient detail.
That leaves 'analytics', which is usually PR-speak for 'tracking user browsing and selling it to the highest bidder'.
Nonsense. Every business I've worked with in recent years has used analytics to see how visitors are using their own site and ultimately provide a better experience for those visitors. Every single one. And for the record, exactly none of them sold any of that analytics data to anyone.
You want to track me? You need my permission, and you don't get it by default.
Then turn off cookies in your browser. It's not hard, and if you don't know how, a quick Google search will surely tell you.
However, I'm afraid I'm not going to compromise on the experience I can offer the other 99.997% of visitors to my sites because you want to make a fuss. No-one's forcing you to visit those sites, our policies are clearly stated and always have been, we're not doing anything even remotely shady in the eyes of just about everyone (except you, apparently) and just about everyone including us and many other visitors benefits if we pay attention to our analytics reports.
You might like to consider that if you really feel strongly about Internet privacy, you aren't doing anyone any favours either by scaremongering or by attempting to redefine commonly understood terms like "tracking" to mean something convenient for your argument but different to what everyone else means by them. When those of us who want to improve the privacy situation without throwing the baby out with the bathwater come to write to our politicians or send money to privacy groups, all it takes to counteract our reasoned arguments is one PR guy for a commercial ad network and someone hysterical like you, and the politicians who aren't experts are convinced that the advertisers are the only ones being calm and sensible, and therefore nothing needs to be done at all.
What actual technical purposes for cookies are there?
Some obvious ones are:
1. Maintaining an authenticated user session (logging in and out securely)
2. Storing the current state of the user's session (shopping carts and the like)
3. Remembering user preferences from one visit to the next
4. Analytics within your own site
I wish you apologists for the privacy-violators had a better grasp of the technology; the whole point of cookies is to track the user, that's what they were invented for.
That simply isn't true. There are plenty of valid concerns regarding using cookies, particularly third party ones, but if they were only meant for tracking then why bother inventing things like session cookies?
Now, some kind of tracking, like session tracking, may be necessary for the functionality of your site, but if you'd done your homework, you know that the makers of the directive considered that, and gave a specific exemption.
And that specific exemption is so tightly worded that it doesn't even cover all of the examples above, which is why we then wound up with the formal opinion of the EU data protection authorities a couple of months ago covering things like first party analytics cookies.
I'm a strong advocate of privacy, but I don't see any serious privacy problem with any of the usages mentioned above, there are obvious potential benefits to the user in each case. Regardless, how are all these "This web site uses cookies, and we know that no-one is enforcing the rules so we've put this token irritating box up even though we're relying on implied consent and we already set them all anyway" boxes doing anything useful whatsoever?
It's hard to imagine being found at-fault when you are stopped and rear-ended.
People seem very quick to assign blame elsewhere in this case. Sure, if the guy behind you is crazy, there's only so much you can do. But many rear shunt accidents happen when the following driver misjudges the stop and there is a low speed impact. These can cause minor injuries or slight damage, yet are often entirely avoidable.
For example, if you're coming up on queueing traffic, hang back a little instead of moving up to the car in front right away. If you see a vehicle behind that is approaching a little too fast and is going to have trouble stopping, you can move forward a little into the space you left to create some extra room.
Also, make sure you're using your lights effectively. Depending on how you've stopped and what kind of vehicle you're driving, you might have no brake lights showing on the back of your car. If it's overcast, or there's bright sunshine, you can increase your visibility by making sure you have lights on. If someone is coming up fast behind you and you're not convinced they've noticed you, you can flash your brake lights to attract attention, too. Flashing lights are very good at attracting human attention..
There's also the question of when and how you stopped. Did you stop your car suddenly? Sure, the other guy ought to have enough distance, but we know not everyone does. If you know the guy behind is too close, you can leave more space yourself so you could slow down more gently than usual if necessary.
I would like to know whether Google's car was really doing as much as a skilled human driver would have done before assigning all the blame elsewhere just because it was stopped at the time of the collision.
I have a similar background, but I've also spent a fair chunk of my career working on mathematical modelling software of one kind or another.
My conclusion is very simple: a moderate level of background maths knowledge is often useful for context, but if you're working on a software project that is fundamentally about doing serious maths then you're probably going to need a lot more understanding of your particular field(s) than any undergraduate maths degree would cover anyway.
So for learning/training purposes, I think there's an argument for teaching a broad base of mathematics for context and to develop related reasoning skills that will be widely applicable in computing fields, but I don't see much merit in going beyond that unless you're going to take a particular field up to the level where it's useful for industrial practice, which is surely going to mean graduate study or professional training of one form or another.
They also get banned for credit card charge backs.
Really? Unless something dramatic has changed in the landscape recently, making any attempt to stop a credit card user doing a chargeback if they have legitimate grounds to do so is usually a good way to get your organisation banned by the ubergods of the credit card world for violating their own terms, which are about as fair and balanced for merchants as Valve's own heavily one-sided terms would be to users if they ever actually did what the lawyers have claimed they can in those terms. I don't for a moment believe that Valve are big enough to be an exception, so I suspect whatever prompted your comment was some sort of one-off oddity.
Yes, it all looks simple enough when you're posting anonymously on an Internet forum that doesn't really matter.
I've never been there, but I imagine it looks different when the consequence of shooting the cook is that the cook's friends will torture, rape or simply kill your family and friends.
That kind of resistance basically only works when most/all of the people are doing it, which is essentially civil war as we're seeing in places like Syria today.
I'm not sure I completely buy your idea about converting WINE-using Linux gamers into native Linux gamers. Obviously these people already have an alternative for their Linux gaming needs, so it might be a relatively hard sell to get them to take the last step when they're most of the way already. But more importantly, given reasonable assumptions about the total number of people running Linux on the desktop vs. the total size and value of the global computer game industry, these people are probably still a drop in the ocean, even if they might be a very enthusiastic and supportive drop.
On the other hand, I think your characterisation of GabeN is exactly why certain other companies should be scared. He's got enough resources and quite possibly enough determination and personal commitment to drive through major changes in the gaming industry that perhaps literally no-one else could today. He's obviously got a solid business track record and a savvy view of his industry, which is going to command a certain level of respect from other businesses if he puts his name to a major project and asks who is on board with it. And he's obviously very enthusiastic about the gaming industry, so he just might bet the farm on a new project if he thinks it's really worthwhile. What Microsoft or Sony exec would or even could compete with that kind of juggernaut?
Peruse steam and look at the games for Mac and that will give you at least an idea of what can be expected for Linux.
Was that supposed to be an argument that Carmack is right or wrong?
The number of AAA games available on Steam on Mac is tiny in comparison to either Steam on Windows or any of the major consoles.
If this is going to work, then when Steam on Linux launches, there needs to be a wave of gamers who have been itching to move away from Windows waiting to jump on all the new and improved Linux gaming goodness. If it's just a trickle of Linux fans and a couple of curious not-quite-geeks, this will go nowhere and probably kill gaming on Linux forever, because no other company is ever going to invest in a serious Linux port if there proves to be no profitable market there.
Getting the kind of orders-of-magnitude shift required is going to need either a sensible range of big name titles in each major gaming genre or at least a couple of killer titles that aren't available on any other platform that will get the ball rolling and sustain it long enough for momentum to build, or preferably both. If Valve aren't actively working with several other major studios to promote this idea and get serious games other than their own ready to launch on day one, they've totally lost the plot. Hopefully they're working on a huge joint marketing effort with at least one major Linux distro, too.
On the other hand, if Valve are not only working the back channels to get serious games in the pipeline but also planning to throw everything they've got behind launching a dedicated Linux-based gaming console to cut out all the middle men, then a few execs at places like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft ought to be worried. It might be a spectacular failure, but Valve are big and powerful enough that they might just pull it off, and introducing a fourth credible console whose games can also be played on geeks' Linux boxes would be a substantial threat, effectively making them the Apple of the gaming world.
Sorry, I'm not from the my knowledge of whichever legal system you are talking about is limited. Is this a criminal charge or a civil liability (or whatever your local equivalents are called in each case)?
It seems very odd to me that any legal system would impose arbitrary liability for any consequences on someone who gave away some information freely, regardless of who used that information and for what purpose. I know there are legal systems where in effect you can lose simply by not having the requisite amount of money and/or lawyers on speed dial, which to me is a recipe for abhorrent mockery of any sort of justice, but once again, I'd like to know which specific laws imply anything more than that.
Slashdot Mirror
How much 'computational power' (or storage) does it take to write a book (even "War and Peace" :-)?
Well, if you want to use your system as an electric typewriter, obviously not that much. But if you want to keep track of your plotlines, characters and locations as you work, check spelling in real time, or run a Skype call while you're reviewing the latest chapters, it's going to take a bit more. And if you're working on the cover art for that soon-to-be-bestselling novel, or typesetting a 500 page science textbook complete with diagrams and tables and indexing and cross-references and bibliography, or comparing four different original sources at once, it's going to take a lot more.
There certainly are creative endeavors [...] that do require a fair amount of computation, but a lot of that computation can be done with special purpose hardware (e.g. GPUs.) Those might require general purpose desktops, or special purpose desktops, or mobile devices with specialized hardware, or a combination of mobile device plus cloud services.
Sure, but apart from shoving everything up into the cloud, we already have that sort of possibility today, and it's far cheaper than mobile devices that are trying to cram everything into the smallest possible size and weight, and where there is a limited amount of power available between charges.
By the time you've taken your tablet or smartphone, plugged it into a dock so you can connect it to multiple large screens and a constant power supply that's enough to drive them, plugged in a good keyboard and mouse, added a few TB of external storage for all that multimedia content you've downloaded via the wired broadband connection you now have access to, fitted a standalone web cam that can see you in your chair and attached a headset for your conference calls, and plugged in enough custom graphics hardware to drive those screens as you connect the video on that call, you've got... a PC.
I've done -a lot of software development- on a 24x80 screen running EMACS, including code and documentation.
So have I, but today I use multiple monitors, and the main one can easily tile four areas all significantly bigger than that in an IDE. In the background, that IDE is analysing many thousands of lines of code in real time in order to present me with relevant information as I navigate through the code, and checking for the kinds of dumb mistakes we used to make all the time. Of course, I'm also working in programming languages where some of those dumb mistakes aren't even possible any more, which is achievable precisely because my modern computer can analyse higher level languages so fast that I don't need a tea break while I'm compiling any more. On another screen, I can flick through 30 different pages of documentation in a web browser with a slight movement of my hand, downloaded in moments from a server thousands of miles away at a connection speed measured in megabytes per second. On a third screen I'm running my native application, or a browser and a bunch of shells on my web server if I'm working on a web app. Since I'm connecting to the rest of my local network at 1Gbps, I can interact with graphical applications running on that server as easily as my local desktop. Somewhere in there, my system is also monitoring things like e-mail and IM, via hardware links that go through security equipment that analyses every connection in real time. And so it goes on.
24x80 green or amber consoles are good for reminiscing about how we used to code adventure games in 32K of RAM.
Smart phones and tablets are good for reading Facebook, catching up on TV, and playing puzzle games.
For real work, I'll stick with the highest spec PC that a sane amount of money can buy, the most effective professional software I can find to run on it, and my nice, ergonomic office furniture. It will be several generations of hardware development before there are better tools for these kinds of jobs. Even then, I'm betting the hardwarae won't look like an iPhone or a Galaxy Tab, and the software won't work anything like a typical iOS or Android app.
Also, are you under the impression that tablets/phones wont be able to dock up to a real 'workstation' with a screen that is > 10 inches???
Sure they will. And what you'll get is an expensive, absurdly underpowered, restrictive computer that specialises in running the kind of software you get if you spend $2 in an app store.
The current generation of mobile devices is doing very well because they serve a vast and previously bizarrely undersupported market: people who want a portable device for easy information consumption. If you're not doing any sort of content creation, significant computation, or catering to more than one user at once, you can get by with the kind of processing power you find in an iPad or a Galaxy S3. If you're not expecting much in the way of interaction, you can get by with a touchscreen and very simple user interface concepts. For the market where they are wildly successful, the current crop of smartphones and tablets are excellent devices, balancing low power consumption, ease of use, portability, and "wow factor" against a bunch of downsides that their users simply don't care about.
On the other hand, as soon as you do need to do anything creative, or do any real computation, or scale up to multiple users, or support non-trivial interactions, the current crop of mobile devices suck. All those downsides that didn't matter before are now dominant, and the high price, low power and almost zero flexibility are fatal liabilities. And no matter how much window dressing you lay out, they always will be, because it's not the job these devices were designed for.
how about completely ignoring what a person is doing, and only punish them if they are driving recklessly, regardless of the cause. We have laws against reckless driving already.
I've often wondered about this. Why don't we just have basic, universal laws against things like dangerous or inconsiderate driving?
After a while, I realised it's because these laws invariably leave a gray area right around the point that the people who we're trying to discourage from doing dumb things are actually doing those dumb things. Worse, those people are often in denial about their problem. Just look at the number of past Slashdot discussions where numerous people claim they can phone/text/whatever and drive, despite overwhelming evidence that only a tiny subset of the population are actually supertaskers. They don't think they're guilty of dangerous driving, so having a generic dangerous driving offence isn't going to affect them.
On the other hand, an objective standard, while inevitably imposing some limitation on the few people who really are good drivers and capable of doing more, leaves no room for the potentially dangerous people to escape. Text and drive, get caught, we crush your car. Simple. You didn't accidentally text, if you've got a driving licence you should know very well if the law says texting is illegal, and there are exactly zero emergency situations where a text would be more appropriate than, say, calling 911 (or whatever your local version is) unless you start getting into conspiracy theories that belong more in Hollywood movies than legislative debates. In short, there is no excuse, and having a black-and-white technical offence on the books makes prosecution an open and shut case.
My happy karma glasses see it this way. I know that I probably am safer on the road than the average driver, based on objective measures and peer review/training, and that I probably could handle my car at speeds some way above a lot of limits without compromising safety. However, I would surely complete my journeys even faster and in greater safety if the drivers at the extreme other end of the spectrum were consistently discouraged from doing dumb things or totally removed from the road. The impact they have through bad driving and the consequences of accidents surely causes a far greater delay on average than me driving say 20% slower than I'd ideally choose to do so that I stay within a legal limit.
It's always important to be wary of arguments that limiting someone's freedom is OK because it's also limiting the freedoms of hypothetical Bad People. However, in this case, the risk from bad drivers is not so much hypothetical as measured in thousands of human lives lost every year. On the other hand, the limitations on freedom for the rest of us are almost zero since no responsible driver would ever be texting and driving anyway, and obviously there is scope for making exceptions if, for example, a doctor certifies that a patient should be exempt because of a legitimate medical condition that means restricting their phone would affect them in unintended ways when they're not driving.
So after reflecting on this subject for a long time, I've concluded that technical road laws like banning texting while driving are a net win, as long as they are enforced impartially and regularly enough to actually be a deterrent.
Well, failing that, you could try a potion of wisdom for them and a ring of charisma for you. Or a bit of Domination. You know, if they're into that kind of thing. ;-)
(But yes, if you're with a non-gamer then sometimes it's hard for them to see the attraction, even though they might consider things like acting in a play or reading fiction entirely normal. There's no frame of reference there.)
Overtime seems relatively rare, though I've heard of some good employers offering it, particularly when it's a significant amount above the normal workload.
On the other hand, for freelance/contract work, billed on an hourly time and materials basis, extra time is almost always chargeable. I find this very effective at keeping clients focussed on useful work and keeping the amount of tedious overhead to a minimum. :-) (Others will disagree and argue that for contract work with a daily or weekly rate you can often charge a higher effective rate to begin with, which is also a valid consideration.)
I don't agree with all of your characterisations there, but in any case, we're getting bogged down in details now and losing the main argument.
Fundamentally, either you can say anything you want without adverse consequences, or you can't. That is the very essence of freedom of speech. If there can be adverse consequences purely because you said something, however hurtful or unpleasant, then you don't really have freedom of speech at all. You can say what you want without fear, except when you can't.
My contention is that no country in the world today actually recognises such a sweeping freedom in law, and moreover that this is reasonable because there are far too many very damaging things one can say that should be penalised because of the harm they cause to others.
You have argued that the US does have absolute freedom of speech, citing the First Amendment. And yet, you have also described in great detail numerous ways in which that freedom is effectively constrained, where while the speech itself is "protected" the person speaking may be penalised despite taking no other action themselves as a consequence of what they said.
Your position is inconsistent and untenable. Absolute freedoms are fundamentally a black and white proposition. This is why recognising and protecting them is generally a bad idea in legal systems, because sooner or later one person's absolute freedom to do something runs into another person's absolute freedom to do something else and you have left no legally sound way to resolve the conflict.
All of which brings us back to the case at hand, where someone was doing something that appears to have been rather blatantly helping other people to break the law, someone on Slashdot defended this on the basis of free speech, and I challenged that argument. All these examples you've been giving about penalising someone who only said something, because of the consequences of what they said, are just making my point.
The fact that the First Amendment is often ignored by the legislature and the courts does not change the fact that it guarantees the legal right to free speech without specifying any exceptions whatsoever.
And yet, for example, the Copyright Clause explicitly allows for reserving certain rights to authors. So even the Constitution itself doesn't support your position.
No, you cannot legally be penalized for saying certain things. You can legally be penalized for doing certain things: for acting violently against others, as you expressed your credible intent to do by making threats
Ah, now I see. You have absolute freedom of speech, and you are penalised only for your actions, except in cases of thoughtcrime, in which case you can be punished for crimes you have not committed based only on something you said. I still haven't worked out what your definition of "freedom" is, but I'm still fairly sure it's not the same as mine.
By your argument, is hiring a hitman against the law? After all, you're not expressing any intent to commit any illegal act yourself even in the future.
What about giving bad advice to someone on, say, medical, financial or legal matters? If speech is protected absolutely, there's not much room left to prohibit fraud, so can just anyone declare themselves qualified to offer such advice (whether or not they actually are) and then charge for doing so? For that matter, what if they make no claim to being qualified and simply charge for giving advice when they have no idea what they're talking about?
I'm amazed that you somehow managed to skip the U.S.A. in your research:
Would that be the same U.S.A. that is arguably the world's strongest proponent of intellectual property laws? And where there are no defamation lawsuits, except for all the ones there have been, and there are no explicit defamation laws, because the one third or so of the states where it's actually a criminal matter just misunderstood? Next time you go through airport security, you should tell the security guys a joke about having a bomb, too, because I hear they have a great sense of humour about that kind of thing.
All the legitimate damages attributed to speech are actually caused by other actions which, unlike speech, are capable of violating another person's rights of self-ownership. Such damages can be countered without abridging the freedom of speech.
So you have freedom of speech except that you can be penalised if you say certain things and there are negative consequences? I think you and I have different understandings of the word "freedom".
As far as I'm aware, nowhere in the world actually has an absolute right to free speech codified in law. In fact, that would be pretty crazy, because speech is powerful and absolute protection of free speech would give people the power to do immense damage to other people without penalty.
Your strawman arguments are not the same as what this guy did. He was quite blatantly and knowingly running a system to help other people break the law. Why would you think any reasonable legal system should condone such behaviour?
There are certainly valid concerns today about limiting speech inappropriately, but defending people like this is a distraction from those concerns, and ultimately unhelpful. People do need to take responsibility for their own behaviour if we're going to maintain a civilised society.
Thanks for the link, but some of us have been watching this one for literally years now and have actually spoken to real lawyers about it in the course of doing business. These rules do affect all cookies, and any other similar technologies as well, by default. There just happens to be a special case for those cookies that are strictly necessary, in a very tightly worded sense.
You've just attempted to quietly redirect the entire discussion from cookies in general (which have many valid uses) onto third party cookies (which have rather fewer valid uses and some obviously sinister ones).
but online marketing use third party cookies mainly because of their persistence...
[Emphasis added]
You're moving the goalposts.
You are acting as if the WWW will collapse if you have to ask users for consent to track them.
You're still using that word "track" in a way that no-one else in the world does. You aren't going to win any debating points like that.
Also, the WWW wouldn't collapse, but it would become significantly harder for those running web sites -- which you apparently value enough to visit them if any of this is a problem for you in the first place. It would be more difficult to optimise sites according to what users were actually looking for and how they were really using them. That would inevitably mean site operators couldn't convert as many visitors either, which in turn would inevitably mean that some good sites that were only borderline financially viable in the early days would fail unnecessarily, leaving no site to benefit anyone.
Have you no decency, or are you trying to hide what you want to do with my info?
What info do you think I am magically getting? It's not as if these things are giving up your name, DoB and home phone number. Your average analytics cookie is just a random number, and is completely anonymous. And even if I did collect personal information from you, which for example you might volunteer when signing up for an account, I would be constrained by exactly the same data protection laws as anyone else handling any other kind of personal data in my country, including filing (at my own cost) details of what I'm collecting and how it is used with my government's data protection officials, who will then make it available to the public so that anyone, including you, can read it.
So just to be clear, your proposed alternatives to cookies are:
1. sending exactly the same kind of state information (session ID etc.) but in places like hidden POST fields instead of cookies
2. using covert browser fingerprinting on the server side.
Exactly how is either of those approaches not at least as capable of covert tracking of your visitors? Not to mention being more than a little creepy, particularly in the latter case since even a user who has explicitly chosen to disable cookies and send Do Not Track is still probably going to wind up in your system. And of course being far more work to implement and test, because instead of using the tool designed for the job you insist on trying to force another tool designed for a different job to do the work instead.
Number 3 is covered once you asked for permission, which you can do using number 1.
Only if you force users to create an account just to keep your site's media player size the same or some other trivial but convenient detail.
That leaves 'analytics', which is usually PR-speak for 'tracking user browsing and selling it to the highest bidder'.
Nonsense. Every business I've worked with in recent years has used analytics to see how visitors are using their own site and ultimately provide a better experience for those visitors. Every single one. And for the record, exactly none of them sold any of that analytics data to anyone.
You want to track me? You need my permission, and you don't get it by default.
Then turn off cookies in your browser. It's not hard, and if you don't know how, a quick Google search will surely tell you.
However, I'm afraid I'm not going to compromise on the experience I can offer the other 99.997% of visitors to my sites because you want to make a fuss. No-one's forcing you to visit those sites, our policies are clearly stated and always have been, we're not doing anything even remotely shady in the eyes of just about everyone (except you, apparently) and just about everyone including us and many other visitors benefits if we pay attention to our analytics reports.
You might like to consider that if you really feel strongly about Internet privacy, you aren't doing anyone any favours either by scaremongering or by attempting to redefine commonly understood terms like "tracking" to mean something convenient for your argument but different to what everyone else means by them. When those of us who want to improve the privacy situation without throwing the baby out with the bathwater come to write to our politicians or send money to privacy groups, all it takes to counteract our reasoned arguments is one PR guy for a commercial ad network and someone hysterical like you, and the politicians who aren't experts are convinced that the advertisers are the only ones being calm and sensible, and therefore nothing needs to be done at all.
The IETF disagrees. They know a thing or two about running the Internet, too, I hear.
What actual technical purposes for cookies are there?
Some obvious ones are:
1. Maintaining an authenticated user session (logging in and out securely)
2. Storing the current state of the user's session (shopping carts and the like)
3. Remembering user preferences from one visit to the next
4. Analytics within your own site
I wish you apologists for the privacy-violators had a better grasp of the technology; the whole point of cookies is to track the user, that's what they were invented for.
That simply isn't true. There are plenty of valid concerns regarding using cookies, particularly third party ones, but if they were only meant for tracking then why bother inventing things like session cookies?
Now, some kind of tracking, like session tracking, may be necessary for the functionality of your site, but if you'd done your homework, you know that the makers of the directive considered that, and gave a specific exemption.
And that specific exemption is so tightly worded that it doesn't even cover all of the examples above, which is why we then wound up with the formal opinion of the EU data protection authorities a couple of months ago covering things like first party analytics cookies.
I'm a strong advocate of privacy, but I don't see any serious privacy problem with any of the usages mentioned above, there are obvious potential benefits to the user in each case. Regardless, how are all these "This web site uses cookies, and we know that no-one is enforcing the rules so we've put this token irritating box up even though we're relying on implied consent and we already set them all anyway" boxes doing anything useful whatsoever?
It's hard to imagine being found at-fault when you are stopped and rear-ended.
People seem very quick to assign blame elsewhere in this case. Sure, if the guy behind you is crazy, there's only so much you can do. But many rear shunt accidents happen when the following driver misjudges the stop and there is a low speed impact. These can cause minor injuries or slight damage, yet are often entirely avoidable.
For example, if you're coming up on queueing traffic, hang back a little instead of moving up to the car in front right away. If you see a vehicle behind that is approaching a little too fast and is going to have trouble stopping, you can move forward a little into the space you left to create some extra room.
Also, make sure you're using your lights effectively. Depending on how you've stopped and what kind of vehicle you're driving, you might have no brake lights showing on the back of your car. If it's overcast, or there's bright sunshine, you can increase your visibility by making sure you have lights on. If someone is coming up fast behind you and you're not convinced they've noticed you, you can flash your brake lights to attract attention, too. Flashing lights are very good at attracting human attention..
There's also the question of when and how you stopped. Did you stop your car suddenly? Sure, the other guy ought to have enough distance, but we know not everyone does. If you know the guy behind is too close, you can leave more space yourself so you could slow down more gently than usual if necessary.
I would like to know whether Google's car was really doing as much as a skilled human driver would have done before assigning all the blame elsewhere just because it was stopped at the time of the collision.
I have a similar background, but I've also spent a fair chunk of my career working on mathematical modelling software of one kind or another.
My conclusion is very simple: a moderate level of background maths knowledge is often useful for context, but if you're working on a software project that is fundamentally about doing serious maths then you're probably going to need a lot more understanding of your particular field(s) than any undergraduate maths degree would cover anyway.
So for learning/training purposes, I think there's an argument for teaching a broad base of mathematics for context and to develop related reasoning skills that will be widely applicable in computing fields, but I don't see much merit in going beyond that unless you're going to take a particular field up to the level where it's useful for industrial practice, which is surely going to mean graduate study or professional training of one form or another.
They also get banned for credit card charge backs.
Really? Unless something dramatic has changed in the landscape recently, making any attempt to stop a credit card user doing a chargeback if they have legitimate grounds to do so is usually a good way to get your organisation banned by the ubergods of the credit card world for violating their own terms, which are about as fair and balanced for merchants as Valve's own heavily one-sided terms would be to users if they ever actually did what the lawyers have claimed they can in those terms. I don't for a moment believe that Valve are big enough to be an exception, so I suspect whatever prompted your comment was some sort of one-off oddity.
Don't like the kitchen, then shoot the cook.
Yes, it all looks simple enough when you're posting anonymously on an Internet forum that doesn't really matter.
I've never been there, but I imagine it looks different when the consequence of shooting the cook is that the cook's friends will torture, rape or simply kill your family and friends.
That kind of resistance basically only works when most/all of the people are doing it, which is essentially civil war as we're seeing in places like Syria today.
I'm not sure I completely buy your idea about converting WINE-using Linux gamers into native Linux gamers. Obviously these people already have an alternative for their Linux gaming needs, so it might be a relatively hard sell to get them to take the last step when they're most of the way already. But more importantly, given reasonable assumptions about the total number of people running Linux on the desktop vs. the total size and value of the global computer game industry, these people are probably still a drop in the ocean, even if they might be a very enthusiastic and supportive drop.
On the other hand, I think your characterisation of GabeN is exactly why certain other companies should be scared. He's got enough resources and quite possibly enough determination and personal commitment to drive through major changes in the gaming industry that perhaps literally no-one else could today. He's obviously got a solid business track record and a savvy view of his industry, which is going to command a certain level of respect from other businesses if he puts his name to a major project and asks who is on board with it. And he's obviously very enthusiastic about the gaming industry, so he just might bet the farm on a new project if he thinks it's really worthwhile. What Microsoft or Sony exec would or even could compete with that kind of juggernaut?
Peruse steam and look at the games for Mac and that will give you at least an idea of what can be expected for Linux.
Was that supposed to be an argument that Carmack is right or wrong?
The number of AAA games available on Steam on Mac is tiny in comparison to either Steam on Windows or any of the major consoles.
If this is going to work, then when Steam on Linux launches, there needs to be a wave of gamers who have been itching to move away from Windows waiting to jump on all the new and improved Linux gaming goodness. If it's just a trickle of Linux fans and a couple of curious not-quite-geeks, this will go nowhere and probably kill gaming on Linux forever, because no other company is ever going to invest in a serious Linux port if there proves to be no profitable market there.
Getting the kind of orders-of-magnitude shift required is going to need either a sensible range of big name titles in each major gaming genre or at least a couple of killer titles that aren't available on any other platform that will get the ball rolling and sustain it long enough for momentum to build, or preferably both. If Valve aren't actively working with several other major studios to promote this idea and get serious games other than their own ready to launch on day one, they've totally lost the plot. Hopefully they're working on a huge joint marketing effort with at least one major Linux distro, too.
On the other hand, if Valve are not only working the back channels to get serious games in the pipeline but also planning to throw everything they've got behind launching a dedicated Linux-based gaming console to cut out all the middle men, then a few execs at places like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft ought to be worried. It might be a spectacular failure, but Valve are big and powerful enough that they might just pull it off, and introducing a fourth credible console whose games can also be played on geeks' Linux boxes would be a substantial threat, effectively making them the Apple of the gaming world.
Manslaughter through Gross Negligence.
Sorry, I'm not from the my knowledge of whichever legal system you are talking about is limited. Is this a criminal charge or a civil liability (or whatever your local equivalents are called in each case)?
It seems very odd to me that any legal system would impose arbitrary liability for any consequences on someone who gave away some information freely, regardless of who used that information and for what purpose. I know there are legal systems where in effect you can lose simply by not having the requisite amount of money and/or lawyers on speed dial, which to me is a recipe for abhorrent mockery of any sort of justice, but once again, I'd like to know which specific laws imply anything more than that.