Why the hell are talking about linux? While DirectX is windows only, OpenGL runs on pretty much every platform in common use. Before accusing others of fallacious logic, look to your own strawman.
Betamax wasn't superior - JVC thought that the fact that it was owned by Sony opened them up to too much liability. Its economic weaknesses outweighed its technical strengths. There's plenty of aspects that go into defining "superior" - and technical specs are only a few of them. Things like price point, marketing, compatibility all factor in to that.
I love my old Amiga, but it was out-competed in the marketplace despite a number of technical leads. I'm actually glad it died away peacefully instead of extending its life a few years by lashing out with lawsuits that accomplished nothing but the retardation of progress as a whole.
If you're making a superior product, then there's no reason to do the other - your product will out-compete the inferior one naturally, without recourse to lawyers.
For example, if your trademark is for a video game called "Elder Scrolls," and you allow a game called "Scrolls," to be published unchecked, then you've effectively stated that the word "Scrolls," and titles including that word, are all acceptable, and cannot be challenged by trademark.
Which is already the case - Bethseda has a trademark on "Elder Scrolls", not "all games with Scroll in the tite". They cannot legally veto other game titles simply because they have a word in common. All they can do is bluster and send threatening letters that would be blown away in court. "Scrolls" is not their trademark, they have no obligation to attack it, and it doesn't weaken "Elder Scrolls" in the slightest. Now, if they were threatening a game called "Eldest Scrolls", or "Ancient Scrolls" they might have a case - the similarity is such that there's a much greater chance of one being confused with the other.
Firstly, this isn't copyright; it's a trademark. They're two entirely different things.
Secondly, you can't trademark common words in the industry in which they're common usage. For instance, "Apple" as the name of a greengrocer probably wouldn't fly, but "Apple" as the name of a computer company, or a music label obviously does. Also, trademarks only apply to things within the same domain - which is why Apple music and Apple computers could co-exist, until Apple started making inroads into the music industry.
If you're looking to target ethnicity, surname is a lousy way of doing it. I've got McDonald friends who've never heard the bagpipes, and Russos who've never cooked lasagne. Much easier in that case to target people who've joined Spanish groups, who list Spanish as a language they speak, or identify themselves as Spanish - all of which is also generally a part of profiles on sites like Facebook.
Zip code? Read my comment - I said that zip code is useful for advertising. But street? Not so much. Even if a new restaurant or whatever is to launch in a given street, targeting just that street for advertising is usually too narrow. But zip code isn't much use for all those people the OP fears - door-knocking a zipcode trying to track down the target is likely to lead to very tired and frustrated would-be stalker.
If you want to locate a specific person in the USA you'd better use his SSN, and even that is not a guarantee of anything. If you want to locate a specific person in the world... you can't do that.
Funny, because millions seem to do it all the time on Facebook. Search results are ordered by "connectedness", so if you and Rob have any friends in common, he's going to float to the top of your list. Not only that, but profile pictures (generally) accompany the search - it's pretty easy to spot the real Rob. I doubt you'd get hundreds of Rob Millers. The most common name on Facebook is "John Smith"*, and it's so disproportionately large (five times the next most common) that most of the are probably fraudulent. Dropping down to the next most common nets a total of 14,000 or so worldwide - you're local city is unlikely to have hundreds of Rob Millers unless its quite a large statistical anomaly.
Only the provider of the social network benefits from knowing the real name (and address, etc.) of a participant.
No, they don't - as you say, it's too vague for someone like Google to use it as a database key, and they have other, better ways of doing that anyway (you're single sign-on Google account, for instance). It's also not particularly sellable - neither is your address, really, just the general locality - I've never heard of an advertiser wanting to target only people with a surname of Rodriguez, or who live in 89th street; city or zip code is as much as they really care about.
There is no third group among the members of the social network that would need to know that an account bmiller_0x8832E017 is really associated with Robert A. Miller, Ph.D., Esq., M.D. living at 123 Main St., Paradise, AZ, USA.
Sure there is. There's friends of Rob who don't have his most recent postal address, but want to send him a Christmas card, or wedding invitation. There's people who don't know which email address he changed to after he switched ISPs the last time, but want to get in touch.
Stalking is the most likely answer, or physical threats after some heated cyberspace discussion.
I guess if you're paranoid it is. Remember, the premise is that we're adding people we already know socially. I guess it could help the absent-minded stalker, who keeps forgetting if it's number 17 or number 19's windows he should be peeking in.
Aside from that reasoning, we already have examples of social networks (Twitter) where the number of followers of certain authors is huge. That may be temporary if the author is at the center of some event, or permanent if the author is a public figure. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect that the author "personally knows" all the followers
Do you think Obama personally knows 9.4 million [twitter.com] people who follow him?
No. But then I doubt Obama has added 9.4 million as friends on Facebook, or to his "best buds" circle on Google+. "Following" (unlike "Friending" on Facebook) doesn't require any confirmation by the person being followed, and consequently doesn't grant access to any extra information.
None of that really matters. If you want to interact with other pseudonymous users, there are thousands, probably millions of places on the internet where you can do just that. It's been the default mode of operation on the internet since shortly after it's conception. Having one venue that doesn't allow anonymity doesn't suddenly spell the death of anonymity on the internet. If you want to preserve anonymity, use slashdot, or IRC, or a discussion board, or any of a million other places; if you'd rather not experience the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory first-hand, then use Google+ or Facebook.
our particular absence won't be missed, apart from maybe by a few of your friends, who now find it harder to connect with you. But then, that's no different from in reality:
That's why you are using your full real name on Slashdot (which is a sort of a social network.)
Then again, it sort of isn't, too. Slashdot is a guided discussion forum; it's generally about technology/geek issues, we get a certain number of stories on particular topics, and discuss it amongst ourselves. It's predicated on the fact that we all have a common interest.
"Social Networks" are predicated on the fact that the participants in a given sub-network (ie: not the whole site itself, but all those individuals connected to a particular node) are interested in each other already. Yes, there are things like Facebook's "Fan" pages, where you can have discussions among like-minded people, but they're on the periphery. The primary focus of a social network is to replicate the existing meat-space social connections in cyber-space. That's why it's a "social" network, and not just a network.
Given that, it's easy to see why real names are preferred on a social network; it makes it easier for you to connect with people you know, and you're expected to only really share stuff with people who already know your name anyway.
Loosen the definitions enough, and sure, you could call Slashdot a "social network". But then the term would lose all meaning - it would be equally valid to say any online forum, or IRC chat, or online game is a "social network".
I wonder what the proportions are on tweets that are deliberately intending to be misleading. Getting a 65% hit rate on people who are attempting to deceive is much more impressive than 65% who aren't making any attempt to obfuscate their gender.
This looks to be embedded in the glasses - so as long as they're relatively secure on your head, moving your head shouldn't move your eyes relative to the sensors much at all. Also, it would have no reason to track your head.
It depends. If you own other mobile devices for functions the smartphone can also perform (playing media, handheld games, etc), it's probably worth consolidating into one device, especially when one of them breaks. If you don't ever feel the need to watch video, listen to music, read ebooks or play games on the move, then not. In either case, it's probably worthwhile keeping your old rugged phone as a backup, or if your doing any activity where its ruggedness is likely to be useful. It probably also has a longer battery life than a smartphone.
The main people PayPal screws over are merchants; as someone who just uses it to send, not receive, payment, there's little problem. My PayPal account is essentially just a proxy to my Credit Card and Bank Account - any transactions against it are made against one of them. I keep no money in my PayPal account, so if they freeze it, nothing of any importance is lost.
That's what the judges said - if you want a conviction, present evidence there was a reasonable expectation that it was a command, and would be carried out as such.
How does releasing email addresses and passwords aid the fight for good and thwart evildoers?
Maybe next time, they won't hire contractors relying on porous security, able to be penetrated by any script kiddy with a modem, increasing the security of the US Defense Force in the process. But more likely, they'll just send goons after script kiddies - goon security is easier than real security.
Apart from a throwaway line at the end of the article, this has absolutely nothing to do with cloud computing, or distributed computing - at least not any more than current-gen consoles are "Cloud Computing". It's not even eliminating the commodity PC - it's wondering if it can eventually be miniaturized enough to fit it in your pocket instead of on your desk.
Personally, I think iOS and Android are going to eat the DS' lunch. All they're missing is the interface, and things like this show they're working on it. After that it gets harder. The small form-factor means that it's going to be hard to compete against games designed for large screens, but it could be done eventually - possibly as the article suggests, by having a mobile device act as a game server, to which other mobile devices and a smart TV could connect.
Slashdot Mirror
Why the hell are talking about linux? While DirectX is windows only, OpenGL runs on pretty much every platform in common use. Before accusing others of fallacious logic, look to your own strawman.
It's called a pronoun, moron.
Betamax wasn't superior - JVC thought that the fact that it was owned by Sony opened them up to too much liability. Its economic weaknesses outweighed its technical strengths. There's plenty of aspects that go into defining "superior" - and technical specs are only a few of them. Things like price point, marketing, compatibility all factor in to that.
I love my old Amiga, but it was out-competed in the marketplace despite a number of technical leads. I'm actually glad it died away peacefully instead of extending its life a few years by lashing out with lawsuits that accomplished nothing but the retardation of progress as a whole.
If you're making a superior product, then there's no reason to do the other - your product will out-compete the inferior one naturally, without recourse to lawyers.
I think he's sitting next to a feminist who's kicking him in the balls every two hours.
developing thorough specifications before coding
Believe me, if I could get anyone to approve, sign-off or even read a spec before it had to be developed, I'd write them a lot more often.
For example, if your trademark is for a video game called "Elder Scrolls," and you allow a game called "Scrolls," to be published unchecked, then you've effectively stated that the word "Scrolls," and titles including that word, are all acceptable, and cannot be challenged by trademark.
Which is already the case - Bethseda has a trademark on "Elder Scrolls", not "all games with Scroll in the tite". They cannot legally veto other game titles simply because they have a word in common. All they can do is bluster and send threatening letters that would be blown away in court. "Scrolls" is not their trademark, they have no obligation to attack it, and it doesn't weaken "Elder Scrolls" in the slightest. Now, if they were threatening a game called "Eldest Scrolls", or "Ancient Scrolls" they might have a case - the similarity is such that there's a much greater chance of one being confused with the other.
Firstly, this isn't copyright; it's a trademark. They're two entirely different things.
Secondly, you can't trademark common words in the industry in which they're common usage. For instance, "Apple" as the name of a greengrocer probably wouldn't fly, but "Apple" as the name of a computer company, or a music label obviously does. Also, trademarks only apply to things within the same domain - which is why Apple music and Apple computers could co-exist, until Apple started making inroads into the music industry.
Gee, it's almost like slashdot is composed of individuals with different opinions isn't it?
If you're looking to target ethnicity, surname is a lousy way of doing it. I've got McDonald friends who've never heard the bagpipes, and Russos who've never cooked lasagne. Much easier in that case to target people who've joined Spanish groups, who list Spanish as a language they speak, or identify themselves as Spanish - all of which is also generally a part of profiles on sites like Facebook.
Zip code? Read my comment - I said that zip code is useful for advertising. But street? Not so much. Even if a new restaurant or whatever is to launch in a given street, targeting just that street for advertising is usually too narrow. But zip code isn't much use for all those people the OP fears - door-knocking a zipcode trying to track down the target is likely to lead to very tired and frustrated would-be stalker.
If you want to locate a specific person in the USA you'd better use his SSN, and even that is not a guarantee of anything. If you want to locate a specific person in the world ... you can't do that.
Funny, because millions seem to do it all the time on Facebook. Search results are ordered by "connectedness", so if you and Rob have any friends in common, he's going to float to the top of your list. Not only that, but profile pictures (generally) accompany the search - it's pretty easy to spot the real Rob. I doubt you'd get hundreds of Rob Millers. The most common name on Facebook is "John Smith"*, and it's so disproportionately large (five times the next most common) that most of the are probably fraudulent. Dropping down to the next most common nets a total of 14,000 or so worldwide - you're local city is unlikely to have hundreds of Rob Millers unless its quite a large statistical anomaly.
Only the provider of the social network benefits from knowing the real name (and address, etc.) of a participant.
No, they don't - as you say, it's too vague for someone like Google to use it as a database key, and they have other, better ways of doing that anyway (you're single sign-on Google account, for instance). It's also not particularly sellable - neither is your address, really, just the general locality - I've never heard of an advertiser wanting to target only people with a surname of Rodriguez, or who live in 89th street; city or zip code is as much as they really care about.
There is no third group among the members of the social network that would need to know that an account bmiller_0x8832E017 is really associated with Robert A. Miller, Ph.D., Esq., M.D. living at 123 Main St., Paradise, AZ, USA.
Sure there is. There's friends of Rob who don't have his most recent postal address, but want to send him a Christmas card, or wedding invitation. There's people who don't know which email address he changed to after he switched ISPs the last time, but want to get in touch.
Stalking is the most likely answer, or physical threats after some heated cyberspace discussion.
I guess if you're paranoid it is. Remember, the premise is that we're adding people we already know socially. I guess it could help the absent-minded stalker, who keeps forgetting if it's number 17 or number 19's windows he should be peeking in.
Aside from that reasoning, we already have examples of social networks (Twitter) where the number of followers of certain authors is huge. That may be temporary if the author is at the center of some event, or permanent if the author is a public figure. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect that the author "personally knows" all the followers
Do you think Obama personally knows 9.4 million [twitter.com] people who follow him?
No. But then I doubt Obama has added 9.4 million as friends on Facebook, or to his "best buds" circle on Google+. "Following" (unlike "Friending" on Facebook) doesn't require any confirmation by the person being followed, and consequently doesn't grant access to any extra information.
None of that really matters. If you want to interact with other pseudonymous users, there are thousands, probably millions of places on the internet where you can do just that. It's been the default mode of operation on the internet since shortly after it's conception. Having one venue that doesn't allow anonymity doesn't suddenly spell the death of anonymity on the internet. If you want to preserve anonymity, use slashdot, or IRC, or a discussion board, or any of a million other places; if you'd rather not experience the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory first-hand, then use Google+ or Facebook.
our particular absence won't be missed, apart from maybe by a few of your friends, who now find it harder to connect with you. But then, that's no different from in reality:
That's why you are using your full real name on Slashdot (which is a sort of a social network.)
Then again, it sort of isn't, too. Slashdot is a guided discussion forum; it's generally about technology/geek issues, we get a certain number of stories on particular topics, and discuss it amongst ourselves. It's predicated on the fact that we all have a common interest.
"Social Networks" are predicated on the fact that the participants in a given sub-network (ie: not the whole site itself, but all those individuals connected to a particular node) are interested in each other already. Yes, there are things like Facebook's "Fan" pages, where you can have discussions among like-minded people, but they're on the periphery. The primary focus of a social network is to replicate the existing meat-space social connections in cyber-space. That's why it's a "social" network, and not just a network.
Given that, it's easy to see why real names are preferred on a social network; it makes it easier for you to connect with people you know, and you're expected to only really share stuff with people who already know your name anyway.
Loosen the definitions enough, and sure, you could call Slashdot a "social network". But then the term would lose all meaning - it would be equally valid to say any online forum, or IRC chat, or online game is a "social network".
I wonder what the proportions are on tweets that are deliberately intending to be misleading. Getting a 65% hit rate on people who are attempting to deceive is much more impressive than 65% who aren't making any attempt to obfuscate their gender.
This looks to be embedded in the glasses - so as long as they're relatively secure on your head, moving your head shouldn't move your eyes relative to the sensors much at all. Also, it would have no reason to track your head.
RTFS - it's coming from 1987
Actually, yes I did. Perhaps you can point out where in the T&Cs it says that PayPal can remove funds from linked accounts at its own discretion?
https://cms.paypal.com/au/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/UserAgreement_full
Sorry, was that link supposed to provide some evidence to back up your assertion, or just spruik a book?
Nah, but labeling people you disagree with as deniers and shills seems to be
It depends. If you own other mobile devices for functions the smartphone can also perform (playing media, handheld games, etc), it's probably worth consolidating into one device, especially when one of them breaks. If you don't ever feel the need to watch video, listen to music, read ebooks or play games on the move, then not. In either case, it's probably worthwhile keeping your old rugged phone as a backup, or if your doing any activity where its ruggedness is likely to be useful. It probably also has a longer battery life than a smartphone.
The main people PayPal screws over are merchants; as someone who just uses it to send, not receive, payment, there's little problem. My PayPal account is essentially just a proxy to my Credit Card and Bank Account - any transactions against it are made against one of them. I keep no money in my PayPal account, so if they freeze it, nothing of any importance is lost.
That's what the judges said - if you want a conviction, present evidence there was a reasonable expectation that it was a command, and would be carried out as such.
How does releasing email addresses and passwords aid the fight for good and thwart evildoers?
Maybe next time, they won't hire contractors relying on porous security, able to be penetrated by any script kiddy with a modem, increasing the security of the US Defense Force in the process. But more likely, they'll just send goons after script kiddies - goon security is easier than real security.
The hosting server can. An arbitrary client can't hop on and grab a list of everyone else downloading it at the same time, though.
Who wants to look at some little 4" (or even 7-10") screen
Everyone who's ever played a GameBoy or Nintendo DS?
use wierdo controls
What wierdo controls?
Apart from a throwaway line at the end of the article, this has absolutely nothing to do with cloud computing, or distributed computing - at least not any more than current-gen consoles are "Cloud Computing". It's not even eliminating the commodity PC - it's wondering if it can eventually be miniaturized enough to fit it in your pocket instead of on your desk.
Personally, I think iOS and Android are going to eat the DS' lunch. All they're missing is the interface, and things like this show they're working on it. After that it gets harder. The small form-factor means that it's going to be hard to compete against games designed for large screens, but it could be done eventually - possibly as the article suggests, by having a mobile device act as a game server, to which other mobile devices and a smart TV could connect.