Free Speech took a shot to the head. Political Correctness bullshit seems to trump it, every damn time.
Frankly NOW I'm thinking of totally dumping Firefox.
Bullshit. Political correctness is referring to a gay man as "a person of alternate sexual proclivities". Political correctness is passing policies that mandate one fourth of your female workforce must be lesbians because one in four women have had a girl-girl experience.
This is a man who took a high-profile job and was outed as a bigot. A man who thinks that it's worth paying money to impose his opinions one where someone else sticks their dick. A man who doesn't believe that gay people are people. That's not rhetoric, that's the way it is. Being against gay marriage is almost always on the grounds that "marriage is a sacred bond between man and woman", directly indicating that any other coupling is wrong and bad, and that those who engage in such practices should be penalized by being denied the same rights hetero-married enjoy.
Modern, enlightened society caught up with this guy when he took a job with visibility. Sorry, but him and his cro-magnan-thinker buddies just aren't right for this kind of a job because they taint the brand they represent.
This is all about political correctness. It's lynching someone because his beliefs don't match those of the hive mind. What is the point of having the right to free speech if you are condemned for exercising it?
The same thing happened with depression. In the old days, depression was virtually unheard of, aside from extreme cases of people constantly trying to take their own lives. Nowadays, everybody and their dog gets depressed at some point during the year, and prescribed medicine.
How does this get modded as insightful? People feeling depressed and clinical depression are two very different things. Its easy to laugh off and make glib comments. It doesn't make them true though.
When were these old days of which you speak? Winston Churchill, yes that one, suffered from depression which he called his "Black Dog". Greater access to healthcare, and better trained physicians, will always increased apparent incidence of mental conditions. Is it right that in previous times these people would suffer in silence?
I wear glasses to read, I'm wearing them now. I don't need to wear glasses for anything else yet. Casting my eyes around the office, over the glasses because they are distant, I can see a fair few people in glasses. So perhaps there is a market for glasses after all. Google Glass I can't see a use for though.
As we all know, apple is mainly a marketing wonder
Speak a lie often enough and its accepted as the truth.
Apple is not, and never has been, mainly a marketing wonder. They have made good use of marketing but the success they've had is based on quality and usability rather than simply marketing. Check out the user satisfaction surveys of Apple users.
Yes phones in Japan were more feature rich than phones elsewhere when the iPhone was released but that was largely due to carrier limitations. I had a number of Nokia 'smartphones' whose facilities were crippled by my local carrier. Apple changed things partly by refusing to give the carriers the ability to cripple the iPhone.
Assange strikes me as someone that's lost in his own self importance. He's become more important than Wikileaks. This often happens to people placed in the spotlight. The reports of his actions in Sweden don't paint him in a very good light.
All that said is doesn't make any sense, other than flexing of muscles, for the Swedish Prosecutor not to call his bluff and interrogate him in the UK (or Ecuador as he is at the moment). Its just posturing and dick waving on behalf of the Prosecutor not to do it. If they have the interrogation in the Ecuadorian Embassy and then press charges the grounds for his asylum become more shaky. Just play out the scenario and let him hang himself.
Hmmmm... most legal systems have appeal processes, and the ability to lodge counter appeals with a higher court. I understand it happens in the US all the time. Why should there be a problem with the Italian justice system because following the conviction one court overturns it on appeal, but later another higher court rules that it shouldn't have been overturned? Isn't that the way the law should work, it gets tested in court until a final judgement is found?
If Knox was innocent then she would have nothing to fear from Italian justice. Unless, like most USians seem to, she doesn't trust any country outside of the US.
There are still signs around the all of the pumps here banning use of a cell phone in a filling station. The current reasons is because they could cause a spark. Is there any evidence of this, or is it another feeling that's become true by repetition?
The problem about not believing this sort of report is that there will always be some pseudo scientific journalism piece that will highlight a leukaemia cluster, or similar, near a phone mast. The fact that it doesn't happen around all, or a significant number, of phone masts won't make the piece. The conclusions will be incorrectly drawn that there is no smoke without fire and that the cause must be the phone mast, regardless of the fact there there are many other factors influencing these people and its likely to be something else.
A lot of the anti-vax in the UK was linked to a single, now discredited, study that was latched onto by a journalist eager to make a name for themselves with a scoop. The measles outbreak, and potential deaths, that it has led to are as much on their hands as they are on Andrew Wakefield who faked the evidence of the link.
Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you. "Look at me. I have a lower number than you." Your point? I've been reading for many years and I like this site. If you don't like the new format, there are other news outlets for you to peruse. You sound like a Foxnews kinda gal.
Ooh, can I play?
I've been reading for years too and I don't like the new site. Specifically I don't like the commenting system.
I keep coming to Slashdot because its a website, it doesn't try to foist some pseudo print layout on me. It scales nicely, wraps nicely if I resize windows, etc.. The beta doesn't. Instead it controls how I should view the site rather than leaving things up to me.
The other thing that it seems to miss is what provides the content of the site. Here's a clue, its not the stories. The stories can all be found elsewhere, often earlier than they appear on Slashdot. The real content is the informed comments and insight. The beta seems to make the comments an add-on rather than the thing that makes the site what it is. I'd start again with the redesign putting comments as the main purpose rather than an after-thought that interferes with the magazine layout.
You can do a lot more with the PC, however (that said, you can also get infected with a virus and suffer a good deal more frustration).
Still, I can play multiplayer without paying for a subscription, and have plenty of affordable games via Steam/GoG.
You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console. Seems that you've missed the point of the games console completely.
Count on having to upgrade your games PC over the years though to keep games running at a decent level. You need to factor those costs in as well. The console will keep going, and games will probably get better as the toolsets mature. In the PC world the developers can assume that their users will upgrade to maintain relative performance.
Firstly, it's not a government filter. The only government involvement was the Prime Minister pressuring the ISPs to offer it.
Really? Given that Scotland Yard have been taking an active interest what is available on the Internet for a long time, including sending letters to ISPs in 1996 asking them to remove certain groups from their Usenet feeds, I think that you're being a little naive. I would like to bet that there is some department, either of government or the police, that are supplying lists of sites that should be added to the ISPs filters.
The Usenet filtering comes from personal knowledge. I was working for an ISP in 1996 and we were in the position of providing 64Kb leased-lines to various customers. We also provided a Usenet service. During this period the bandwidth for a full Usenet feed went from below the 64Kb/s to around 70Kb/s as such customer's feeds were backing up. We contacted one such customer and asked them what they wanted trimming from the feed. The reply was,"Just send us the alt.sex and alt.binaries.pictures hierarchies".
We thought this was a bit of a laugh at the time. Someone was pulling porn down their company's leased line. A few months later the legal time got a letter from Scotland Yard demanding the removal of 30+ groups containing material that they had determined was illegal in the UK. My ISP followed the instructions. Not all UK ISPs did the same, Demon in particular ignored it.
but that would be the end of her political meddling, if not the monarchy itself.
The sheeple don't care about politics as it stands, what makes you think they would care that the Queen suddenly is vetoing laws, especially unpopular ones?
I think you're being a wee bit too optimistic there.
It wouldn't be the people that removed her but the government, probably with the support of the opposition. The power of the Queen in law making is grossly over-estimated. You can have a hereditary ruler overruling the wishes of a democratically elected government.
In both cases there is way too much alleged indiscriminate collateral damage to hide behind the whistle blower defense.
Fixed it for you.
Without disclosure then their is no proof of collateral damage, instead you have to believe the word of the agencies who were suppressing the information leaked in the first place.
What was proven by Manning's leaks was that the US Military were covering up war crimes. Nothing new there, its standard practice, the last thing the US wants its their soldiers being held to account for their actions.
The Snowden leaks have proven that the NSA is, in all probability, in breach of the US Constitution. Which I think is illegal.
True. And given the average lifecycle of a Apple device (2 years) and compared it to PC (4-10 years), the amount of devices in use should be really different than in the headline.
Is that really the average life of an Apple device? Where are you getting your information from, or are you extrapolating based on contract length? Apple devices seem to last quite well and I know of many that are still running fine despite being 4 years old.
Looking at the Apple update release page there hasn't been a Security Update since Mavericks was released so there is no evidence to support the assertion from Sophos.
The last Security Update from Apple was 2013-004 and included updates for Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion. Until Apple releases a security update that *only* targets Mavericks this is just Sophos FUD.
Creators of 3DMark do not have a clue how to test modern multicore smartphones, but they do not care and release their product.
The real problem? People use this shitty benchmark and judge product basing on the meaningless score it produces.
Why should Samsung LOSE customers because 3DMark lied to them? It's better to 'cheat' this crappy software into being at least a bit more FAIR in judging their products.
Sigh... if a phone identifies that its running a benchmark application and changes its behaviour then the benchmark is of the maximum hardware performance rather than that available to a normal application. In doing so its not giving a real world measurement of the performance of the device.
By your argument all of the single threaded apps that run slowly on the S4 are at fault for slow performance because the programmer hasn't optimised their application for the S4 instead preferring to be compatible with all Android phones out there.
So, whilst the rigged S4 may be faster in raw power, its not what the end user is going to see. Which is cheating?
This. Not only that, this is a clear case where he SHOULD be, if not arrested, at least fined heavily. This is clear cut reckless driving; speed limits are posted to keep the public safe. Stunts like this should not be pulled at the potential expense of other drivers on the road. We're all beholden to the same laws, whether you're trying to break a record or not.
The danger of speed varies dependent on the road conditions and traffic. There are ways to break limits safely, and it sounds like he took precautions with having spotters for him on the route. The greatest danger was to himself should he lose control at that speed.
Could it be because, say, it's too big to fit in your pocket? If so then don't you think that means there's kind of a place for phones as well as laptops? If people want a PC in their living room then why is it only a handful of people that have PCs in their living room? Why is it even those that do mostly just use it to replicate the features of existing entertainment focussed consoles like watching media or playing games? Most people want their living room for what it has always been there for - a place to relax and entertain.
Oh dear. I really hope that you aren't in charge of anything involving strategic decisions. It takes time for ideas to mature and their time to come.
All of your arguments could be made against tablets. Who wants an expensive device that you can really only consume content on? Apparently now that a usable interface has been designed millions of people.
Consoles since the PS2/XBox haven't been primarily about playing games but rather being an entertainment hub in the living room. The XBox-360 and PS3 advanced that, the XBox One and PS4 will continue the trend. Computing is ubiquitous but computers are becoming less necessary for the majority of people.
It's not self-importance. It's the exact opposite. We might know more and understand the issue better, but I seriously doubt that there are enough of us, or that we are close enough to the public eye, to make a difference.
I don't think so. I think its self importance. Because we understand the issues we place ourselves above those that don't. We make decisions on their behalf because we know better than they do. The issues around DRM on streamed content take on an almost religious aspect with those that opposed without reservation. They believe that all DRM is wrong and nothing will convince them otherwise. The ordinary user doesn't really care as long as they can view the content.
The point I was trying to make are that there are people that regardless will view anything that enables DRM as being wrong and will oppose it. They pursue this with an almost religious fervour and are out of step with the real world.
My post was in response to one such post where the real world was being dismissed because it didn't fit with the world view of the poster. In an ideal world we wouldn't need DRM, we also wouldn't need locks on our doors, passwords on our accounts, etc etc. However we don't live in such a world and need to face up to that. As technologists we should strive to deliver the best we can, to push the boundaries, but we shouldn't dismiss those that don't understand the technology as being somehow less than we are. In short we shouldn't get lost in our own self importance.
Tech-savvy people will use those browsers and sites. The vast majority of people on the internet have no idea that this issue even exists or why it's important.
Ah, the self-important views of the Technorati. Sadly its this sort of attitude that makes the Technorati look like myopic fools. "The data must be free!".
The whole Internet as a commune thing was something of the 1990s, the Internet has moved on sadly there are lot of supposedly intelligent people that haven't. We already have DRM protecting video content (Widevine, Playready etc). They work with custom plugins which restricts the platforms they are available to. There is the potential here to have a standard decoding mechanism that will be easy to port and allow content to be more widely available.
I always wondered why SSH made just a fuzz about storing a site's certificate and warn of changes, but didn't put such a great emphasis on verifying host names or certification chains, but almost every other channel will just happily and silently accept a modified certificate.
Replacing that "This certificate is self-signed!" pop-up with a "This certificate is new or changed, please verify this MD5 hash on a trusted website: XX-YY-ZZ!" would probably increase security by an order of magnitude.
Also do this for background operations, like operating system fixes, virus scanner updates and may even MD5 downloads.
Given that certificates expire, often yearly, do you really think that this would be a useful thing to do? Think about it for a minute...
The majority of people don't know much about certificates other than the nice little GUI change to show that a site is validated ok. If you start popping up dialog boxes telling them that a certificate has updated at fairly regular intervals what are they going to do? Check the certificate to make sure its valid, or just click the box away? If people get used to getting a message about certificates that basically says everything is ok there is more chance that they'll accept a true certificate warning message and end up compromised.
Slashdot Mirror
Free Speech took a shot to the head. Political Correctness bullshit seems to trump it, every damn time.
Frankly NOW I'm thinking of totally dumping Firefox.
Bullshit. Political correctness is referring to a gay man as "a person of alternate sexual proclivities". Political correctness is passing policies that mandate one fourth of your female workforce must be lesbians because one in four women have had a girl-girl experience.
This is a man who took a high-profile job and was outed as a bigot. A man who thinks that it's worth paying money to impose his opinions one where someone else sticks their dick. A man who doesn't believe that gay people are people. That's not rhetoric, that's the way it is. Being against gay marriage is almost always on the grounds that "marriage is a sacred bond between man and woman", directly indicating that any other coupling is wrong and bad, and that those who engage in such practices should be penalized by being denied the same rights hetero-married enjoy.
Modern, enlightened society caught up with this guy when he took a job with visibility. Sorry, but him and his cro-magnan-thinker buddies just aren't right for this kind of a job because they taint the brand they represent.
This is all about political correctness. It's lynching someone because his beliefs don't match those of the hive mind. What is the point of having the right to free speech if you are condemned for exercising it?
The same thing happened with depression. In the old days, depression was virtually unheard of, aside from extreme cases of people constantly trying to take their own lives. Nowadays, everybody and their dog gets depressed at some point during the year, and prescribed medicine.
How does this get modded as insightful? People feeling depressed and clinical depression are two very different things. Its easy to laugh off and make glib comments. It doesn't make them true though.
When were these old days of which you speak? Winston Churchill, yes that one, suffered from depression which he called his "Black Dog". Greater access to healthcare, and better trained physicians, will always increased apparent incidence of mental conditions. Is it right that in previous times these people would suffer in silence?
I wear glasses to read, I'm wearing them now. I don't need to wear glasses for anything else yet. Casting my eyes around the office, over the glasses because they are distant, I can see a fair few people in glasses. So perhaps there is a market for glasses after all. Google Glass I can't see a use for though.
As we all know, apple is mainly a marketing wonder
Speak a lie often enough and its accepted as the truth.
Apple is not, and never has been, mainly a marketing wonder. They have made good use of marketing but the success they've had is based on quality and usability rather than simply marketing. Check out the user satisfaction surveys of Apple users.
Yes phones in Japan were more feature rich than phones elsewhere when the iPhone was released but that was largely due to carrier limitations. I had a number of Nokia 'smartphones' whose facilities were crippled by my local carrier. Apple changed things partly by refusing to give the carriers the ability to cripple the iPhone.
Assange strikes me as someone that's lost in his own self importance. He's become more important than Wikileaks. This often happens to people placed in the spotlight. The reports of his actions in Sweden don't paint him in a very good light.
All that said is doesn't make any sense, other than flexing of muscles, for the Swedish Prosecutor not to call his bluff and interrogate him in the UK (or Ecuador as he is at the moment). Its just posturing and dick waving on behalf of the Prosecutor not to do it. If they have the interrogation in the Ecuadorian Embassy and then press charges the grounds for his asylum become more shaky. Just play out the scenario and let him hang himself.
Hmmmm ... most legal systems have appeal processes, and the ability to lodge counter appeals with a higher court. I understand it happens in the US all the time. Why should there be a problem with the Italian justice system because following the conviction one court overturns it on appeal, but later another higher court rules that it shouldn't have been overturned? Isn't that the way the law should work, it gets tested in court until a final judgement is found?
If Knox was innocent then she would have nothing to fear from Italian justice. Unless, like most USians seem to, she doesn't trust any country outside of the US.
There are still signs around the all of the pumps here banning use of a cell phone in a filling station. The current reasons is because they could cause a spark. Is there any evidence of this, or is it another feeling that's become true by repetition?
The problem about not believing this sort of report is that there will always be some pseudo scientific journalism piece that will highlight a leukaemia cluster, or similar, near a phone mast. The fact that it doesn't happen around all, or a significant number, of phone masts won't make the piece. The conclusions will be incorrectly drawn that there is no smoke without fire and that the cause must be the phone mast, regardless of the fact there there are many other factors influencing these people and its likely to be something else.
A lot of the anti-vax in the UK was linked to a single, now discredited, study that was latched onto by a journalist eager to make a name for themselves with a scoop. The measles outbreak, and potential deaths, that it has led to are as much on their hands as they are on Andrew Wakefield who faked the evidence of the link.
Sheesh ... its the $9,223,372,036,854,775,807 question, we're all 64 bit these days right?
Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you. "Look at me. I have a lower number than you." Your point? I've been reading for many years and I like this site. If you don't like the new format, there are other news outlets for you to peruse. You sound like a Foxnews kinda gal.
Ooh, can I play?
I've been reading for years too and I don't like the new site. Specifically I don't like the commenting system.
The new site seems very Foxnews...
I keep coming to Slashdot because its a website, it doesn't try to foist some pseudo print layout on me. It scales nicely, wraps nicely if I resize windows, etc.. The beta doesn't. Instead it controls how I should view the site rather than leaving things up to me.
The other thing that it seems to miss is what provides the content of the site. Here's a clue, its not the stories. The stories can all be found elsewhere, often earlier than they appear on Slashdot. The real content is the informed comments and insight. The beta seems to make the comments an add-on rather than the thing that makes the site what it is. I'd start again with the redesign putting comments as the main purpose rather than an after-thought that interferes with the magazine layout.
You can do a lot more with the PC, however (that said, you can also get infected with a virus and suffer a good deal more frustration).
Still, I can play multiplayer without paying for a subscription, and have plenty of affordable games via Steam/GoG.
You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console. Seems that you've missed the point of the games console completely.
Count on having to upgrade your games PC over the years though to keep games running at a decent level. You need to factor those costs in as well. The console will keep going, and games will probably get better as the toolsets mature. In the PC world the developers can assume that their users will upgrade to maintain relative performance.
Firstly, it's not a government filter. The only government involvement was the Prime Minister pressuring the ISPs to offer it.
Really? Given that Scotland Yard have been taking an active interest what is available on the Internet for a long time, including sending letters to ISPs in 1996 asking them to remove certain groups from their Usenet feeds, I think that you're being a little naive. I would like to bet that there is some department, either of government or the police, that are supplying lists of sites that should be added to the ISPs filters.
The Usenet filtering comes from personal knowledge. I was working for an ISP in 1996 and we were in the position of providing 64Kb leased-lines to various customers. We also provided a Usenet service. During this period the bandwidth for a full Usenet feed went from below the 64Kb/s to around 70Kb/s as such customer's feeds were backing up. We contacted one such customer and asked them what they wanted trimming from the feed. The reply was,"Just send us the alt.sex and alt.binaries.pictures hierarchies".
We thought this was a bit of a laugh at the time. Someone was pulling porn down their company's leased line. A few months later the legal time got a letter from Scotland Yard demanding the removal of 30+ groups containing material that they had determined was illegal in the UK. My ISP followed the instructions. Not all UK ISPs did the same, Demon in particular ignored it.
but that would be the end of her political meddling, if not the monarchy itself.
The sheeple don't care about politics as it stands, what makes you think they would care that the Queen suddenly is vetoing laws, especially unpopular ones?
I think you're being a wee bit too optimistic there.
It wouldn't be the people that removed her but the government, probably with the support of the opposition. The power of the Queen in law making is grossly over-estimated. You can have a hereditary ruler overruling the wishes of a democratically elected government.
In both cases there is way too much alleged indiscriminate collateral damage to hide behind the whistle blower defense.
Fixed it for you.
Without disclosure then their is no proof of collateral damage, instead you have to believe the word of the agencies who were suppressing the information leaked in the first place.
What was proven by Manning's leaks was that the US Military were covering up war crimes. Nothing new there, its standard practice, the last thing the US wants its their soldiers being held to account for their actions.
The Snowden leaks have proven that the NSA is, in all probability, in breach of the US Constitution. Which I think is illegal.
True. And given the average lifecycle of a Apple device (2 years) and compared it to PC (4-10 years), the amount of devices in use should be really different than in the headline.
Is that really the average life of an Apple device? Where are you getting your information from, or are you extrapolating based on contract length? Apple devices seem to last quite well and I know of many that are still running fine despite being 4 years old.
Looking at the Apple update release page there hasn't been a Security Update since Mavericks was released so there is no evidence to support the assertion from Sophos.
The last Security Update from Apple was 2013-004 and included updates for Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion. Until Apple releases a security update that *only* targets Mavericks this is just Sophos FUD.
There's a big difference between grabbing a drone and a truck.
Creators of 3DMark do not have a clue how to test modern multicore smartphones, but they do not care and release their product.
The real problem? People use this shitty benchmark and judge product basing on the meaningless score it produces.
Why should Samsung LOSE customers because 3DMark lied to them?
It's better to 'cheat' this crappy software into being at least a bit more FAIR in judging their products.
Sigh ... if a phone identifies that its running a benchmark application and changes its behaviour then the benchmark is of the maximum hardware performance rather than that available to a normal application. In doing so its not giving a real world measurement of the performance of the device.
By your argument all of the single threaded apps that run slowly on the S4 are at fault for slow performance because the programmer hasn't optimised their application for the S4 instead preferring to be compatible with all Android phones out there.
So, whilst the rigged S4 may be faster in raw power, its not what the end user is going to see. Which is cheating?
This. Not only that, this is a clear case where he SHOULD be, if not arrested, at least fined heavily. This is clear cut reckless driving; speed limits are posted to keep the public safe. Stunts like this should not be pulled at the potential expense of other drivers on the road. We're all beholden to the same laws, whether you're trying to break a record or not.
The danger of speed varies dependent on the road conditions and traffic. There are ways to break limits safely, and it sounds like he took precautions with having spotters for him on the route. The greatest danger was to himself should he lose control at that speed.
Could it be because, say, it's too big to fit in your pocket? If so then don't you think that means there's kind of a place for phones as well as laptops? If people want a PC in their living room then why is it only a handful of people that have PCs in their living room? Why is it even those that do mostly just use it to replicate the features of existing entertainment focussed consoles like watching media or playing games? Most people want their living room for what it has always been there for - a place to relax and entertain.
Oh dear. I really hope that you aren't in charge of anything involving strategic decisions. It takes time for ideas to mature and their time to come.
All of your arguments could be made against tablets. Who wants an expensive device that you can really only consume content on? Apparently now that a usable interface has been designed millions of people.
Consoles since the PS2/XBox haven't been primarily about playing games but rather being an entertainment hub in the living room. The XBox-360 and PS3 advanced that, the XBox One and PS4 will continue the trend. Computing is ubiquitous but computers are becoming less necessary for the majority of people.
It's not self-importance. It's the exact opposite. We might know more and understand the issue better, but I seriously doubt that there are enough of us, or that we are close enough to the public eye, to make a difference.
I don't think so. I think its self importance. Because we understand the issues we place ourselves above those that don't. We make decisions on their behalf because we know better than they do. The issues around DRM on streamed content take on an almost religious aspect with those that opposed without reservation. They believe that all DRM is wrong and nothing will convince them otherwise. The ordinary user doesn't really care as long as they can view the content.
The point I was trying to make are that there are people that regardless will view anything that enables DRM as being wrong and will oppose it. They pursue this with an almost religious fervour and are out of step with the real world.
My post was in response to one such post where the real world was being dismissed because it didn't fit with the world view of the poster. In an ideal world we wouldn't need DRM, we also wouldn't need locks on our doors, passwords on our accounts, etc etc. However we don't live in such a world and need to face up to that. As technologists we should strive to deliver the best we can, to push the boundaries, but we shouldn't dismiss those that don't understand the technology as being somehow less than we are. In short we shouldn't get lost in our own self importance.
Tech-savvy people will use those browsers and sites. The vast majority of people on the internet have no idea that this issue even exists or why it's important.
Ah, the self-important views of the Technorati. Sadly its this sort of attitude that makes the Technorati look like myopic fools. "The data must be free!".
The whole Internet as a commune thing was something of the 1990s, the Internet has moved on sadly there are lot of supposedly intelligent people that haven't. We already have DRM protecting video content (Widevine, Playready etc). They work with custom plugins which restricts the platforms they are available to. There is the potential here to have a standard decoding mechanism that will be easy to port and allow content to be more widely available.
I always wondered why SSH made just a fuzz about storing a site's certificate and warn of changes, but didn't put such a great emphasis on verifying host names or certification chains, but almost every other channel will just happily and silently accept a modified certificate.
Replacing that "This certificate is self-signed!" pop-up with a "This certificate is new or changed, please verify this MD5 hash on a trusted website: XX-YY-ZZ!" would probably increase security by an order of magnitude.
Also do this for background operations, like operating system fixes, virus scanner updates and may even MD5 downloads.
Given that certificates expire, often yearly, do you really think that this would be a useful thing to do? Think about it for a minute...
The majority of people don't know much about certificates other than the nice little GUI change to show that a site is validated ok. If you start popping up dialog boxes telling them that a certificate has updated at fairly regular intervals what are they going to do? Check the certificate to make sure its valid, or just click the box away? If people get used to getting a message about certificates that basically says everything is ok there is more chance that they'll accept a true certificate warning message and end up compromised.