Couldn't this also be applied to anytime one has passengers in a car that one might be paying attention to?
Maybe the driving test should include the ability to text while driving -- the ability (or inability) of people to pass such a test might give people a more real life sense of how much they are distracted (or not) when driving...
If they don't pass, they get a more limited license that disallows driving while texting with a hefty fine. Not ideal, but the extra test would educate people. Maybe add in spin-out control on water and/or ice, for added fun^h^h^htraining/education...
You'd have a better analogy if your 2nd example was to allow the device to be compatible with a PS3-game that didn't work due only because of the licensing lock. That would be a *compatibility* issue. In your example, you have repurposed the device into something else entirely, something it would be hard to argue is a compatibility issue. You could just as easily argue that you hacked your 'X' because it wasn't compatible with the kitchen sink. Don't think that would be bought as a compatibility issue.
I rarely have to tweak more than the main page for most stuff. If I'm actually using the site to post or buy or interact, I sometimes have to enable a static and a script site in addition to the main -- usually a total of 3, _tops_ for full use of most sites -- and those are ones that are not on my white list. I spend far less time on NoScript config/week than I do waiting on the internet in a single day: the same would be true of anyone who knows what they are doing. So your statement doesn't begin to hold water under any circumstance.
I've been infection free since before the internet went public in the early 80's, so I'm not too concerned about doom-sayers, no matter how misinformed they are.
NoScript blocks 'flash' and other payloads -- even fonts (which I know of no exploits for). As for graphical vectors -- I can count the number of those on 1 hand in the past 10-15 years, actually, 1 finger now that I think about it. But you can block those if that's where your tolerance is.
You have to draw lines somewhere. Technologies that allow some program, written by someone else to run on your machine, just by visiting a website, are where I get uncomfortable. I permit them on reasonable sites and don't worry about them again. I can't see anyone complaining about such -- you can even default to permitting the main site by default which would protect most people from 3rd-party website-hosted scripts -- at least then you just have to trust the websites you visit and not all the websites they or someone else might include.
You are very naive or stupid if you think that 'imperfect protection' == no protection, since no protection is perfect and all protection is 'imperfect', save complete isolation, but then you wouldn't be reading this. This isn't to say that NoScript is a solution to everything, but it would be to the original problem -- a drive-by script load from a noname site. Problem solved. Next?
That's baloney -- as it *requires* that he DO something whenever some date comes up and says "time for you to hop to their tune!". What about a bank that hops to your tune? Are you a customer or a puppet?
Admittedly, a good turnkey solution to download the material automatically to the customer's computer might be good, but what happens when the customer's computer crashes? Functional, complete and tested home backups are rare for home users of any sort, let alone non-tech types.
I don't see why they shouldn't be able to allow downloading of complete account history *these days*, or for as long as such information is required to be kept by federal or local law, which is probably a long time these days -- alot more than three months, that's for certain.
I've yet to see this. I don't see Google ads on every email sent from a google account, nor do I see lots of confusing non-answers on a search. The ones that are ads are clearly marked and are, _sometimes_, actually helpful. When they aren't, they aren't sufficiently distracting to keep me from finding what I need quickly and efficiently.
So from my perspective as a user of their search and a receiver of email sent from google accounts, I'd have to disagree. I don't send or read mail using a google account, so I'm not talking from that perspective.
Just because they target you with ads appropriate to your search or query doesn't make them bad. They have to make money the same as anyone else. Would would be annoying is making the ads sufficiently distracting as to interfere with me getting the search results I need. But I don't mind ads relevant to my search -- especially if they occasionally help me get my job (whatever my 'search job' is) done.
You might like to think that. I might think that a warrior, who has to learn or die, learns at a quicker pace than most people, and is more adept at problem solving.
But you'd be wrong. Learning under pressure helps learning? Ask anyone how much actual 'learning' comes from cramming before your "life or death" exam, vs. being able to perform 'rote' under pressure. One involves actual learning that can be applied the multiple situations other than the specific one at hand, while the other involves reproducing the same output to the same stimulus.
The 2nd is what you do with 'dog'. Training != Learning.
When I tried to talk to a support person in India about a problem Microsoft's email software, that was demonstrable by inspecting the protocol, they had no clue about how to interpret or understand my problem because they hadn't been 'trained' on protocol or 'the protocol'. I sympathized with her situation -- she really had no clue about how to even begin to understand what I was talking about, as she had no basis in computer science or how computer programs actually exchanged information over the internet and wasn't about to get such an education working at a call center for MS. Yet that's what it would have taken to understand the problem and why it was broken. It wasn't that I needed to reinstall the program, or the OS, or whatever, it was a deadlock bug in the protocol.
I don't know if they ever fixed the bug. I switched to Thunderbird 1.x (this was several years ago).
Training is what the military gives their soldiers. Not education (not counting outside-of-military, reimbursed civilian education).
The original article compares males to females, not younger males to older males.
It might be the case that higher estrogen give better results in how mergers and acquisitions are handled, but higher testosterone resulting in more defensive or offensive behaviors would make sense given it's affect on aggression.
And here thought that fraud and false advertising was illegal in this country. If the Feds go for this then they're not doing their jobs.
It is? Under what law? Of course, you can prove that they are false advertising something, right? Near as I can tell, they have enough paid scientists on their staff to back up their claims of 'non-harm'. Can you prove they've done harm to you and that their scientists shouldn't be believed in a court to a Jury and/or a Judge? If not, then you have no case.
So far, I've not heard of any study that hasn't been refuted by the Corn-lobby's experts.
Also, it was common in the Reagan and Bush(both) era's for them to appoint industry leaders into the watchdog agencies that were to monitor any given industry -- who would then be re-employed (or newly employed) in the industry they gave favor to while in office.
Very nice little revolving door between regulators and industry under the GOP. The 'mission statement' of many monitoring agencies went from being watchdogs of industry to being supportive or supporters of industry. Complete corruption by destroying the government watchdog agencies by re-creating them as "reward posts" for "inside flunkies" -- this way government could be made to be seen as ineffectual, expensive and wasteful -- thus supporting the original GOP line of pushing for smaller and less government.
I.e. they couldn't get rid of watchdog agencies, as it would have been political suicide, so they just 'peopled' them with pro-industry lackeys that would turn the watchdog agencies into industry service agencies.
"As I explained to GP above, that is simply not true. The essential issue behind ALL of these lawsuits is the contents of those data packets. "
No -- that's not it. The court decided that the mapping of NUMBER (IP or phone) to the subscriber, wasn't private information. That's all.
But the court isn't giving access to *contents*. The prosecutors claim to already have access to contents. Going back to my BBS analogy -- this is a BBS where there is 1 phone number / item of content. So by dialing a specific number, you've already chosen what you are downloading. There is no anonymity, because you are passing out checksummed hashes of files who's identity is known to be illegal. You've exchanged checksummed material with the prosecutors already, so they KNOW what you have -- it wasn't the court that told them the contents, it was you dealing with a recognizable data stream. Now they just ask who's attached to the data stream @ 7:42pm on Sunday May 12th.
They can assert that a specific account was engaged in illegal file sharing and then they can look up who owns that account (ip or telephone #). They aren't saying that the IP==a person, any more than a telephone# == a person.
At that point, the owner can present information to explain how their number could have been misused, i.e. I serve an open WiFi link, or, my number was hacked, or, my dog knows how to get on the internet -- whatever that a judge or jury would accept as some level of 'doubt'. But so far, there's no violation of privacy beyond what you'd expect by dialing into a BBS. In fact the exact same technique was used to nab child-pornsters by busting a BBS that contained only child porn then watching who dialed in -- so the content was known through other means -- they didn't ask for the subpoena until they had "ip's or phone numbers' that had accessed the 'infringing' material.
I agree it's a crappy situation, but I don't think they did violated any privacy expectations that were already violated some time ago -- now whether or not privacy was violated in allowing phone numbers to be mapped to individuals -- that's another discussion. It's a bit hard to argue against that one because it is so widely done and accepted. With that precedent, it's hard to argue that the computer equivalent should be granted greater privacy protections.
Since ISPs are basically Common Carriers (in every sense except the legal one), a good analogy would be "by giving your personal information to your phone company, you agree to allow others to listen in on your phone conversations".
This is a false analogy. If you use a correct analogy with the phone system, then you'll see that the same standards were applied.
Phone analogy: You can call a number and connect with a modem to a movie-trade Bulletin Board System. Movie company finds out about number and is able to get a call log of every number that has dialed into the BBS -- that allows you to trade movies. Movie company finds the number allowing free movie trading and gets a call log of the numbers that dialed into it and were connected for more than 5 minutes. Now they ask the phone company for who owns the numbers.
That's it -- asking for who own's an 'ip' is equivalent to asking who owns a telephone number.
It is not the same as allowing monitoring of the calls.
Given the correction, do you think it is unreasonable for 3rd parties to be able to do reverse number lookups?
That information is publicly available (possible for a fee) for listed numbers. For unlisted numbers, I doubt the police would even need a warrant to obtain a reverse listing, nor, I suspect, would a company suing the owner of that number for illegal activity.
How long has it been since we've had the expectation that our identity was completely private when making a phone call from our own phones?
"but they should NOT be able to charge more for a user to use 'XXX' than to use 'YYY', or more for torrents than streaming video"
In one sense, they already do charge differentially for 'XXX' and 'YYY' based on how much XXX or YYY pays them. XXX pays more, and gets a bigger pipe. They have faster response. Therefore accessing 'XXX' costs you less time (all other things being equal) than accessing/using 'YYY'.
As for torrents v. streaming video -- as near as I can tell, cable companies have attempted to put a lid on both via artificial caps on download quantity, whereas when they sold(sell) you the service, they are selling you 6Mbits or 20Mbits or whatever -- they are selling you the speed (which is how, ostensibly, its sold to you when you buy bandwidth on the other end, as well). But once they've sold you capacity, then they want to charge you *more*, for quantity (because you are using the capacity they sold you!)....
That's a practice that has to halt. They should advertise caps along with speeds if they going to really be selling caps on top of speed, but I suppose truth in advertising would 'infringe' on their free speech rights to misdirect customers.:-(
How many times have you been in some planning or brainstorming session, and come from that with the idea that now the 'group' is going to move forward with 'the plan'?
And how many times is it usually the case that once 'the plan' has been decided upon, then everyone is supposed to 'buy' into it and support it 100%, as "part of the team" (woe be unto those are are marked 'not a team player').
It's a real pain being the only dissenting voice after some vocal majority claims to have 'consensus'.
Even recently, after a recent vote on bakabt regarding whether or not people watched English-dubbed Anime. Some took the fact that only 1/3rd of the responders said they sometimes watched them, as some lame mandate that the majority has spoken therefore, no more dubbed Anime would be accepted: only original language and 'subbed', because the democracy ruled, and that's the way all should go.
If ever I needed reminding of how democracies can easily be another form of tyranny, that would be a prime example in it's theater. Almost always, Americans (maybe elsewhere, too) see dissent as a 'negative' thing and consequently, see dissenters negatively. They don't understand that their freedom of thought is being protected by the dissent even as the dissent maybe be challenging their thoughts and opinions.
So often it's expected that we all 'stop thinking' while we go along with the majority -- even in a free society. This is pressure to just 'go along with the majority' is far more insidious and dangerous, IMO, than the comparatively farcical examples when extremists make their demands.
And other people are free to respond like those at Columbine.
Is that the freedom American worship? The freedom to cause hurt to the level that people go off and kill 20-30 people in revenge?
Free speech for violence....
I would tend to like to see some limits, but understand why not having any is better than having someone else decide what those limits might be, though we do have limits, on people viewing or showing *legal* things like having sex, but have no limits on showing people doing illegal things....
So, why in all this talk about freedoms are there so many limits on sexual content in the media in the US?
Are americans really free to show their own porn movie on their front porch where anyone can watch? I don't think so.... How about putting on a free show? Nope...lewd and lascivious behavior! So much for that freedom of expression thing -- if it doesn't involve violent fighting words, it's fair game for censorship. OR if you are 'a student' (on public school grounds)...how you aren't really allowed freedoms of everyone else (where does it say you only get constitutional rights when you are 18?)
The US is pretty twisted -- not that I'm saying it's any worse than any place else, though.
But real freedom of expression? In the US? That's a laugh. Free to insult & criticize isn't the same thing as freedom of expression.
Besides the fact that I consider calling something a Jedi mind trick to be akin to calling something slight-of-hand, (those with stronger minds wouldn't be so easily fooled), has anyone considered that the lawsuit might be someone's way of getting free publicity for products I've never heard of?
I don't see any law saying I can't tazer someone who is threatening me with bodily harm. To such a law, I'd say baloney!
Tazering someone, involuntarily, under other circumstances, would likely be battery.
The same standards _should_ be applicable to police. They may be cowards and use it in cases where there was no real threat, but those might also be exemplary cases to push for the officer's assignment to long-term desk duty or early retirement, since if they were guilty of such, it would be a sign of an overly nervous or problematic personality problem that would be pretty easily be shown to be be also hazardous for someone assigned to deal with the public.
Anyone besides me wanting to know if the length of the original post had anything to do with whether or not there was a collage-hidden message in it?
Then to have the post end with no mention....very disappointing, but I suppose the author wouldn't be able to maintain perfect deniability if they admitted to the message they just sent to their comrades...
I don't consider buying a game unless it can make use of my graphics.
I want an aesthetic experience in my games as well as configurability and good game play.
Games aren't that important for me that I'll buy them at all, if they don't interest me. That includes something that will interest my eyes and my mind and my sense of control. It also is a big "MINUS" score, for me, if the primary character can't be an attractive and strong female. Ugly, weak or secondary...major detraction -- makes it hard for me to get into (I just don't identify as well with male-gendered characters, but that might have something to do with the rather rigid sex-role social upbringing I grew up with in the US as well as my biological sex).
I'm may not be a typical consumer though, but I'd love to find a game that would interest me and challenge my current graphics/'physics' setup, with dual-Nividia 295 cards that, themselves, are dual GPU cards (so, basically 4 GPU's). I needed the 2nd card for another screen, but I only game (or only want to be gaming) on my primary, 2560x1600 Dell30WFP (_Excellent_ Color rendition & stability, BTW), monitor. My other monitors are for other things (tablet, video).
I even asked if NVIDIA if they had anything that would demonstrate the abilities of my SLI-card setup when I got the 2nd monitor. They had Nada. Zilch. Pretty pathetic marketing if you ask me.
At least the Fry's game-rep was able to turn me on to Oblivion when I asked him for something to exercise my video card from 5 years ago or so. Since then haven't had a game as satisfactory as that on game play and user-customization. I still think of going back and trying it again with my current system, but the idea of rebuilding characters (I don't think I have the old save files), is awfully daunting.
I really wish they'd do a graphics update for that game...I'd pay $30 bucks for that alone, even with no new story content -- just to replay it in a High Def-mode with 3D graphics (not 3D needing glasses, bug something better than the 'fairly good' "image-map-on-3d-surface" tech that they used -- which was a good simulation of 3D at the time. The more 'immersive' the graphics are, the better -- the more like a real-life movie they are, the better, I don't have an issue of an artificial life-form looked 'too real' (an excuse I've heard for why some designers have fallen short of realism -- because it looks too 'eerie': if it looks real, why would it be eerie? LAME!)
Graphics were good with both versions of "Mass Effect", Game play was fine, though I resented the sexism of the 2nd game that excluded the similar-sex relationship that the first one offered, but took solace in the arms of various 'opposite-sexed' aliens as limited as those options were. Still thought it a cop-out for MS to not allow more variations consistent with reality).
Some games like the latest Star Wars offering (SW Unleashed - ultimate small sith edition) wouldn't work on my main monitor, so are a fail from the start: 1920x1200 ?!? Give me a break, obviously an up-scaled console version (I so, generally, hate those, _especially_ ones that are obvious upscales but don't even work with an XBOX controller (Tomb Raider) ?!? That's a big FAIL). Sure, if it was NEVER on a console, then not working with a game controller is understandable.. keyboard needed, but for those that were developed first on consoles -- to not have *some* mode where a controller can be used is just plain laziness).
Other games that looked interesting (Assassin's Creed II, FAIL'd due to DRM requirements). Note that Mass Effect II and even Dragon Age (which, was weak, graphics and story wise, for me so though I tried it, I never really got into it) had online requirements for extra features and such, which I *eventually* got to work, through my, then, byzantine triple firewall (on 3 separate machine/3 different architectures), through which nothing worked except well-mannered proxied applications. However, AC-II would have r
Main reason publishers shy away from PC platform is that PC games tend to be a bit more sophisticated. It's common knowledge that interfaces and game complexity are dumbed down for console versions. Face -- developing games for intelligent people is just harder!
So why not aim for the Lower common denominators? Wieee--paystation-X
Find other people to find bugs in your stuff, you find bugs in their stuff.
Go fix, repeat.
Testing your own software is a bit like trying to tickle yourself.... doesn't work so well.
Sure, I can test all the places where I know something might go wrong (but have already coded for), where I will miss testing are the places I never thought to look or write code for...
You can't know how much you don't know (and usually, the more people think they know is only representative of how much they don't begin to grasp the whole picture).
I don't think AC bothered to click through to the article at all.
Photo by-line says 30% more power than ethanol -- so if they are doing that with ethanol, doesn't that imply (through recursion) a new source of infinite energy?
Slashdot Mirror
What hairyfeet said!
Couldn't this also be applied to anytime one has passengers in a car that one might be paying attention to?
Maybe the driving test should include the ability to text while driving -- the ability (or inability) of people to pass such a test might give people a more real life sense of how much they are distracted (or not) when driving...
If they don't pass, they get a more limited license that disallows driving while texting with a hefty fine. Not ideal, but the extra test would educate people. Maybe add in spin-out control on water and/or ice, for added fun^h^h^htraining/education...
You'd have a better analogy if your 2nd example was to allow the device to be compatible with a PS3-game that didn't work due only because of the licensing lock. That would be a *compatibility* issue. In your example, you have repurposed the device into something else entirely, something it would be hard to argue is a compatibility issue. You could just as easily argue that you hacked your 'X' because it wasn't compatible with the kitchen sink. Don't think that would be bought as a compatibility issue.
What are you taking about?
I rarely have to tweak more than the main page for most stuff. If I'm actually using the site to post or buy or interact, I sometimes have to enable a static and a script site in addition to the main -- usually a total of 3, _tops_ for full use of most sites -- and those are ones that are not on my white list. I spend far less time on NoScript config/week than I do waiting on the internet in a single day: the same would be true of anyone who knows what they are doing. So your statement doesn't begin to hold water under any circumstance.
I've been infection free since before the internet went public in the early 80's, so I'm not too concerned about doom-sayers, no matter how misinformed they are.
NoScript blocks 'flash' and other payloads -- even fonts (which I know of no exploits for). As for graphical vectors -- I can count the number of those on 1 hand in the past 10-15 years, actually, 1 finger now that I think about it. But you can block
those if that's where your tolerance is.
You have to draw lines somewhere. Technologies that allow some program, written by someone else to run on your machine, just by visiting a website, are where I get uncomfortable. I permit them on reasonable sites and don't worry about them again. I can't see anyone complaining about such -- you can even default to permitting the main site by default which would protect most people from 3rd-party website-hosted scripts -- at least then you just have to trust the websites you visit and not all the websites they or someone else might include.
You are very naive or stupid if you think that 'imperfect protection' == no protection, since no protection is perfect and all protection is 'imperfect', save complete isolation, but then you wouldn't be reading this. This isn't to say that NoScript is a solution to everything, but it would be to the original problem -- a drive-by script load from a noname site. Problem solved. Next?
That's baloney -- as it *requires* that he DO something whenever some date comes up and says "time for you to hop to their tune!". What about a bank that hops to your tune? Are you a customer or a puppet?
Admittedly, a good turnkey solution to download the material automatically to the customer's computer might be good, but what happens when the customer's computer crashes? Functional, complete and tested home backups are rare for home users of any sort, let alone non-tech types.
I don't see why they shouldn't be able to allow downloading of complete account history *these days*, or for as long as such information is required to be kept by federal or local law, which is probably a long time these days -- alot more than three months, that's for certain.
I've yet to see this. I don't see Google ads on every email sent from a google account, nor do I see lots of confusing non-answers on a search. The ones that are ads are clearly marked and are, _sometimes_, actually helpful. When they aren't, they aren't sufficiently distracting to keep me from finding what I need quickly and efficiently.
So from my perspective as a user of their search and a receiver of email sent from google accounts, I'd have to disagree. I don't send or read mail using a google account, so I'm not talking from that perspective.
Just because they target you with ads appropriate to your search or query doesn't make them bad. They have to make money the same as anyone else. Would would be annoying is making the ads sufficiently distracting as to interfere with me getting the search results I need. But I don't mind ads relevant to my search -- especially if they occasionally help me get my job (whatever my 'search job' is) done.
But you'd be wrong. Learning under pressure helps learning? Ask anyone how much actual 'learning' comes from cramming before your "life or death" exam, vs. being able to perform 'rote' under pressure. One involves actual learning that can be applied the multiple situations other than the specific one at hand, while the other involves reproducing the same output to the same stimulus.
The 2nd is what you do with 'dog'. Training != Learning.
When I tried to talk to a support person in India about a problem Microsoft's email software, that was demonstrable by inspecting the protocol, they had no clue about how to interpret or understand my problem because they hadn't been 'trained' on protocol or 'the protocol'.
I sympathized with her situation -- she really had no clue about how to even begin to understand what I was talking about, as she had no basis in computer science or how computer programs actually exchanged information over the internet and wasn't about to get such an education working at a call center for MS. Yet that's what it would have taken to understand the problem and why it was broken. It wasn't that I needed to reinstall the program, or the OS, or whatever, it was a deadlock bug in the protocol.
I don't know if they ever fixed the bug. I switched to Thunderbird 1.x (this was several years ago).
Training is what the military gives their soldiers. Not education (not counting outside-of-military, reimbursed civilian education).
I have working RDS on my 4 year old US car on the AM band. Dunno about FM.
Only have used it once -- when trying to figure out what it was -- as I don't usually listen to the radio.
It displayed the Artist and Song title of the song that was playing on some Mexican music station.
The original article compares males to females, not younger males to older males.
It might be the case that higher estrogen give better results in how mergers and acquisitions are handled, but higher testosterone resulting in more defensive or offensive behaviors would make sense given it's affect on aggression.
It is? Under what law? Of course, you can prove that they are false advertising something, right? Near as I can tell, they have enough paid scientists on their staff to back up their claims of 'non-harm'. Can you prove they've done harm to you and that their scientists shouldn't be believed in a court to a Jury and/or a Judge? If not, then you have no case.
So far, I've not heard of any study that hasn't been refuted by the Corn-lobby's experts.
Also, it was common in the Reagan and Bush(both) era's for them to appoint industry leaders into the watchdog agencies that were to monitor any given industry -- who would then be re-employed (or newly employed) in the industry they gave favor to while in office.
Very nice little revolving door between regulators and industry under the GOP. The 'mission statement' of many monitoring agencies went from being watchdogs of industry to being supportive or supporters of industry. Complete corruption by destroying the government watchdog agencies by re-creating them as "reward posts" for "inside flunkies" -- this way government could be made to be seen as ineffectual, expensive and wasteful -- thus supporting the original GOP line of pushing for smaller and less government.
I.e. they couldn't get rid of watchdog agencies, as it would have been political suicide, so they just 'peopled' them with pro-industry lackeys that would turn the watchdog agencies into industry service agencies.
No -- that's not it. The court decided that the mapping of NUMBER (IP or phone) to the subscriber, wasn't private information. That's all.
But the court isn't giving access to *contents*. The prosecutors claim to already have access to contents. Going back to my BBS analogy -- this is a BBS where there is 1 phone number / item of content. So by dialing a specific number, you've already chosen what you are downloading. There is no anonymity, because you are passing out checksummed hashes of files who's identity is known to be illegal. You've exchanged checksummed material with the prosecutors already, so they KNOW what you have -- it wasn't the court that told them the contents, it was you dealing with a recognizable data stream. Now they just ask who's attached to the data stream @ 7:42pm on Sunday May 12th.
They can assert that a specific account was engaged in illegal file sharing and then they can look up who owns that account (ip or telephone #). They aren't saying that the IP==a person, any more than a telephone# == a person.
At that point, the owner can present information to explain how their number could have been misused, i.e. I serve an open WiFi link, or, my number was hacked, or, my dog knows how to get on the internet -- whatever that a judge or jury would accept as some level of 'doubt'. But so far, there's no violation of privacy beyond what you'd expect by dialing into a BBS. In fact the exact same technique was used to nab child-pornsters by busting a BBS that contained only child porn then watching who dialed in -- so the content was known through other means -- they didn't ask for the subpoena until they had "ip's or phone numbers' that had accessed the 'infringing' material.
I agree it's a crappy situation, but I don't think they did violated any privacy expectations that were already violated some time ago -- now whether or not privacy was violated in allowing phone numbers to be mapped to individuals -- that's another discussion. It's a bit hard to argue against that one because it is so widely done and accepted. With that precedent, it's hard to argue that the computer equivalent should be granted greater privacy protections.
You wrote:
This is a false analogy. If you use a correct analogy with the phone system, then you'll see that the same standards were applied.
Phone analogy: You can call a number and connect with a modem to a movie-trade Bulletin Board System. Movie company finds out about number and is able to get a call log of every number that has dialed into the BBS -- that allows you to trade movies. Movie company finds the number allowing free movie trading and gets a call log of the numbers that dialed into it and were connected for more than 5 minutes. Now they ask the phone company for who owns the numbers.
That's it -- asking for who own's an 'ip' is equivalent to asking who owns a telephone number.
It is not the same as allowing monitoring of the calls.
Given the correction, do you think it is unreasonable for 3rd parties to be able to do reverse number lookups?
That information is publicly available (possible for a fee) for listed numbers. For unlisted numbers, I doubt the police would even need a warrant to obtain a reverse listing, nor, I suspect, would a company suing the owner of that number for illegal activity.
How long has it been since we've had the expectation that our identity was completely private when making a phone call from our own phones?
Did this go away with 9-11? I don't think so...
"but they should NOT be able to charge more for a user to use 'XXX' than to use 'YYY', or more for torrents than streaming video"
In one sense, they already do charge differentially for 'XXX' and 'YYY' based on how much XXX or YYY pays them. XXX pays more, and gets a bigger pipe. They have faster response. Therefore accessing 'XXX' costs you less time (all other things being equal) than accessing/using 'YYY'.
As for torrents v. streaming video -- as near as I can tell, cable companies have attempted to put a lid on both via artificial caps on download quantity, whereas when they sold(sell) you the service, they are selling you 6Mbits or 20Mbits or whatever -- they are selling you the speed (which is how, ostensibly, its sold to you when you buy bandwidth on the other end, as well). But once they've sold you capacity, then they want to charge you *more*, for quantity (because you are using the capacity they sold you!)....
That's a practice that has to halt. They should advertise caps along with speeds if they going to really be selling caps on top of speed, but I suppose truth in advertising would 'infringe' on their free speech rights to misdirect customers. :-(
It's pretty pervasive.
How many times have you been in some planning or brainstorming session, and come from that with the idea that now the 'group' is going to move forward with 'the plan'?
And how many times is it usually the case that once 'the plan' has been decided upon,
then everyone is supposed to 'buy' into it and support it 100%, as "part of the team"
(woe be unto those are are marked 'not a team player').
It's a real pain being the only dissenting voice after some vocal majority claims to
have 'consensus'.
Even recently, after a recent vote on bakabt regarding whether or not people watched English-dubbed Anime. Some took the fact that only 1/3rd of the responders said they sometimes watched them, as some lame mandate that the majority has spoken therefore, no more dubbed Anime would be accepted: only original language and 'subbed', because the democracy ruled, and that's the way all should go.
If ever I needed reminding of how democracies can easily be another form of tyranny, that would be a prime example in it's theater. Almost always, Americans (maybe elsewhere, too) see dissent as a 'negative' thing and consequently, see dissenters negatively. They don't understand that their freedom of thought is being protected by the dissent even as the dissent maybe be challenging their thoughts and opinions.
So often it's expected that we all 'stop thinking' while we go along with the majority -- even in a free society. This is pressure to just 'go along with the
majority' is far more insidious and dangerous, IMO, than the comparatively farcical examples when extremists make their demands.
-l
So people are free to say hateful things...
And other people are free to respond like those at Columbine.
Is that the freedom American worship? The freedom to cause hurt to the level that people go off and kill 20-30 people in revenge?
Free speech for violence....
I would tend to like to see some limits, but understand why not having any is better than having someone else decide what those limits might be, though we do have limits, on people viewing or showing *legal* things like having sex, but have no limits on showing people doing illegal things....
So, why in all this talk about freedoms are there so many limits on sexual content in the media in the US?
Are americans really free to show their own porn movie on their front porch where anyone can watch? I don't think so.... How about putting on a free show? Nope...lewd and lascivious behavior! So much for that freedom of expression thing -- if it doesn't involve violent fighting words, it's fair game for censorship. OR if you are 'a student' (on public school grounds)...how you aren't really allowed freedoms of everyone else (where does it say you only get constitutional rights when you are 18?)
The US is pretty twisted -- not that I'm saying it's any worse than any place else, though.
But real freedom of expression? In the US? That's a laugh. Free to insult & criticize isn't the same thing as freedom of expression.
Besides the fact that I consider calling something a Jedi mind trick to be akin to calling something slight-of-hand, (those with stronger minds wouldn't be so easily fooled), has anyone considered that the lawsuit might be someone's way of getting free publicity for products I've never heard of?
I don't see any law saying I can't tazer someone who is threatening me with bodily harm. To such a law, I'd say baloney!
Tazering someone, involuntarily, under other circumstances, would likely be battery.
The same standards _should_ be applicable to police. They may be cowards and use it in cases where there was no real threat, but those might also be exemplary cases to push for the officer's assignment to long-term desk duty or early retirement, since if they were guilty of such, it would be a sign of an overly nervous or problematic personality problem that would be pretty easily be shown to be be also hazardous for someone assigned to deal with the public.
Anyone besides me wanting to know if the length of the original post had anything to do with whether or not there was a collage-hidden message in it?
Then to have the post end with no mention....very disappointing, but I suppose the author wouldn't be able to maintain perfect deniability if they admitted to the message they just sent to their comrades...
I don't consider buying a game unless it can make use of my graphics.
I want an aesthetic experience in my games as well as configurability and good game play.
Games aren't that important for me that I'll buy them at all, if they don't interest me. That includes something that will interest my eyes and my mind and my sense of control. It also is a big "MINUS" score, for me, if the primary character can't be an attractive and strong female. Ugly, weak or secondary...major detraction -- makes it hard for me to get into (I just don't identify as well with male-gendered characters, but that might have something to do with the rather rigid sex-role social upbringing I grew up with in the US as well as my biological sex).
I'm may not be a typical consumer though, but I'd love to find a game that would interest me and challenge my current graphics/'physics' setup, with dual-Nividia 295 cards that, themselves, are dual GPU cards (so, basically 4 GPU's). I needed the 2nd card for another screen, but I only
game (or only want to be gaming) on my primary, 2560x1600 Dell30WFP (_Excellent_ Color rendition & stability, BTW), monitor. My other monitors are for other things (tablet, video).
I even asked if NVIDIA if they had anything that would demonstrate the abilities of my SLI-card setup when I got the 2nd monitor. They had Nada. Zilch. Pretty pathetic marketing if you ask me.
At least the Fry's game-rep was able to turn me on to Oblivion when I asked him for something to exercise my video card from 5 years ago or so. Since then haven't had a game as satisfactory as that on game play and user-customization. I still think of going back and trying it again with my current system, but the idea of rebuilding characters (I don't think I have the old save files), is awfully daunting.
I really wish they'd do a graphics update for that game...I'd pay $30 bucks for that alone, even with no new story content -- just to replay it in a High Def-mode with 3D graphics (not 3D needing glasses, bug something better than the 'fairly good' "image-map-on-3d-surface" tech that they used -- which was a good simulation of 3D at the time. The more 'immersive' the graphics are, the better -- the more like a real-life movie they are, the better, I don't have an issue of an artificial life-form looked 'too real' (an excuse I've heard for why some designers have fallen short of realism -- because it looks too 'eerie': if it looks real, why would it be eerie? LAME!)
Graphics were good with both versions of "Mass Effect", Game play was fine, though I resented the sexism of the 2nd game that excluded the similar-sex relationship that the first one offered, but took solace in the arms of various 'opposite-sexed' aliens as limited as those options were. Still thought it a cop-out for MS to not allow more variations consistent with reality).
Some games like the latest Star Wars offering (SW Unleashed - ultimate small sith edition) wouldn't work on my main monitor, so are a fail from the start: 1920x1200 ?!? Give me a break, obviously an up-scaled console version (I so, generally, hate those, _especially_ ones that are obvious upscales but don't even work with an XBOX controller (Tomb Raider) ?!? That's a big FAIL). Sure, if it was NEVER on a console, then not working with a game controller is understandable .. keyboard needed, but for those that were developed first on consoles -- to not have *some* mode where a controller can be used is just plain laziness).
Other games that looked interesting (Assassin's Creed II, FAIL'd due to DRM requirements). Note that Mass Effect II and even Dragon Age (which, was weak, graphics and story wise, for me so though I tried it, I never really got into it) had online requirements for extra features and such, which I *eventually* got to work, through my, then, byzantine triple firewall (on 3 separate machine/3 different architectures), through which nothing worked except well-mannered proxied applications. However, AC-II would have r
Main reason publishers shy away from PC platform is that PC games tend to be a bit more sophisticated. It's common knowledge that interfaces and game complexity are dumbed down for console versions. Face -- developing games for intelligent people is just harder!
So why not aim for the Lower common denominators? Wieee--paystation-X
Find other people to find bugs in your stuff, you find bugs in their stuff.
Go fix,
repeat.
Testing your own software is a bit like trying to tickle yourself....
doesn't work so well.
Sure, I can test all the places where I know something might go wrong (but have already coded for), where I will miss testing are the places I never thought to look or write code for...
You can't know how much you don't know (and usually, the more people think they know is only representative of how much they don't begin to grasp the whole picture).
fair price?
um, the fact that you think $85 for a 600 page text book on calculus is worth it only shows that you either majored in humor or failed economics.
I don't think AC bothered to click through to the article at all.
Photo by-line says 30% more power than ethanol -- so if they are doing that with ethanol, doesn't that imply (through recursion) a new source of infinite energy?
Cool!
Comparing Mozilla resources to Chrome? Why not compare them to IE? Makes as much sense.
IE and Chrome are corporate browsers owned and developed by large corporations.
Konquerer, Firefox and Opera are not.