I think we need the right not to look at advertising.
Am I alone in thinking that advertising should be restricted to certain public spaces designated as 'commercial', and should otherwise not be permitted? I strongly feel that I should be able to move around the world freely without having to look at KFC ads. We pay quite a lot of attention to our environment in a chemistry/biology context, but very little to it in terms of what kind of mental environment we are inhabiting.
I am generally relatively libertarian, believe it or not. I hate laws that interfere unneccessarily with people's right to do whatever they want. But the day I can't go anywhere on this planet without seeing an orbiting billboard is the day I become a serial killer. I guess I consider that a billboard or whatever isn't really 'over there' on someone else's property, because I feel its effects wherever I have the misfortune to observe it.
Put it this way - would we tolerate sound advertising that was audible from anywhere on earth? No. So why is visual advertising any different?
We are in danger of becoming a civilisation so enamoured with commerce that we have no independent culture or sense of aesthetics. I mean, we're branding the fucking PLANET now? It's sick. Commerce is a means to an end: we have made it an end in itself. As the first comment on the blog says, "this makes me want to kill myself".
One thing is certain, the repetitive jokes will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new "I for one welcome..."-joke-setting-up overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted Slashdotter I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground repetitive-joke-comment caves (as if they need it).
Indeed, I think he said that it was preferable to train a ruling elite, selected based on merit at an early age, to govern society. Not exactly what most of us would associate with democracy, though it could hardly work worse than the current US system - at least the selection process would be transparent, and the selection would be based on merit rather than financial power.
Most digicams are plastic, plastic, and more plastic. They feel flimsy and they're not all that hard to break. DSLRs are built to much higher standards
then you can tell that it is not particularly helpful at all. A great many 'digicams' are very nicely constructed. For example, the rather lovely Lumix range from Panasonic/Leica, one of which I am lucky enough to own, are extremely well constructed and are largely made from metals and special composites which do not feel 'plastic' in the least. They also have excellent ergonomics and performance. Many smaller cameras are also very nicely constructed, often from metal - the Canon Ixus range comes to mind.
I agree that DSLRs are nice, and I plan to acquire one myself. But it is not helpful to publish a list of 'reasons' which are little more than vague assertions that A is better than B, without taking into account either reality, or the very valid reasons why B might be preferable for many people.
...mostly due to historical and geographical inconvenience (i.e. we're not US citizens) when I ask, beg, urge, beseech, implore, plead, and demand that every single one of you Slashdotters who CAN vote gets out and does. Do NOT look on in disgust and refuse to participate. Do NOT stay at home playing World of Warcraft or coding your latest piece of hobby software. Do NOT spend the afternoon surfing for hentai and humorous pictures while your country continues to degenerate (in other ways).
I don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian. Please, please, just get yourself out of the house, down to a polling station, and vote.
Do it. Now. It is the only way to save your democracy.
Why the hell do we have to act like a bunch of music snobs who sit around discussing what music/band/sound/bs is better instead of just going out and enjoying every bit of it that we like, why do we have to shove our opinions about what game is the "ultimate" experience.
Um.... because the guy in TFA was the one who said that Halo was the first FPS he's played with 'substance', and this is a place to discuss the content and merits of the article? And because personally, I strongly dislike the whole 'consoles will replace PCs' movement, of which Halo fanboyism is one of the most significant afflictions, and so it's worth making the point that Halo isn't a patch on many great PC shooters.
As for Goldeneye, you're talking about my religious beliefs there. I have never enjoyed multiplayer gaming more than 4 player license to kill deathmatches, and that includes plenty of moderately hardcore Quake III and CS:Source playing.
And I'm sorry, if you think the depth of Halo is in the same league as Deus Ex or Half Life then you're just plain crazy. Remember, he said 'substance', not 'fun' or whatever other adjectives you want to toss in there.
Interestingly I can remember thinking the exact opposite when I first sat down and played Halo - "where's the depth to this?" The actual combat seemed relatively repetitive and the at-times impressive graphics didn't seem to have much effect on the gameplay.
This guy needs to get a Ninty and play some Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, then perhaps an old PC and really get into some serious Half Life, Unreal Tournament, BF1942 and Quake II action if he wants to legitmately use the word 'substance.'
My experience of Google's non-search applications so far suggests that they are far from mediocre. It's inevitable that it will take them longer to really come to the fore in fields which are more mature that the search engine market was when they first rose to prominence.
In addition, they have an excellent ability to fill niches in the market that are not being filled adequately (e.g. Picasa, Maps, News), and their products are differentiated by being ad-supported but otherwise free, which is a devastating approach for any competitor relying on a micropayment or subscription model. They seem to have the leverage to do things no other company could do at the moment, such as the book search system they are building and the Scholar academic journal search engine. This means that even if the implementation is 'indifferent' the sheer usefulness of the actual data being delivered still sets them apart.
In other news, why do we really need more Google news? Wake me up when something new actually happens. Some guy writing some vague opinions about some company is not 'news' in any sense.
Thank you for ably demonstrating another aspect of Australian life - a frighteningly anti-democratic attitude to dissent.
And, frankly, we would rather have a pom who loves the country than the whinger who rekons life here is soooooo bad.
Who is this 'we' you speak of? Am I part of 'we'? I thought I was. I guess not.
Come to Australia, we have plenty of land; though we could stand some more water.
Actually, we have an absolutely chronic water problem and can't sustain our current population. We have 'plenty of land' in the same sense that northern Africa has 'plenty of land', i.e. it's mostly uninhabitable desert and the rest is fast approaching its natural limits in terms of water use.
But, please, only if you dont plan to sit around on your fat arse and whinge about everything. Cant stand bloody whingers. We all have to vote here, so any problem you have with your own reality is entirely your problem.
Hitler was democratically elected. A society should be judged on how it treats its worst and weakest, not on whether a bare majority can dictate terms to a bare minority. As it so happens, I can't stand arrogant fools who attempt to stifle legitimate discussion of socio-political issues, so please don't come if you're one of those either.
If you dont like it, fix it, if you cant fix it, deal with it, if you cant deal with it, piss off:)
Funny, I thought discussing the issues was the way to 'fix it'. Apparently I should just stop 'whinging' though. What is intriguing about your ranting is the assumption that you are the one entitled to make these decisions - what gives you any more right than the 'whingers' who 'can't deal with it' to decide who should remain in the country? And do you, by implication, believe that there is no place for dissent in Australia?
The last time a member of the ruling Coalition -- and not the opposition parties, which vote against Coalition legislation frequently -- crossed the floor was about a year ago, but internal dissent scuppered some immigration laws this year. Anyway, since when was the measure of a democracy the lack of discipline of the ruling party? What's undemocratic about an elected ruling party voting for its own legislation? On the contrary, if, after being elected with a majority in both houses, the government were unable to make new laws, that would be a failure of democracy.
What an absolute load of nonsense. If it is a 'failure of democracy' for members of the ruling party to vote against the government from time to time, then why have members of parliament at all? Why not just count the votes, and if one party has an absolute majority, let them pass whatever they want until the next election? At least it would save us some money. And yes, there was one very unusual instance of crossing the floor recently. But perhaps you should educate yourself about other democratic nations and the way their parliaments work - in the UK and US, which have somewhat similar parliaments, crossing the floor is not only common, it's actually expected, and as such has a constant moderating effect on legislation. Others, such as Germany and New Zealand, are proportional and thus actual consensus is required most of the time to get laws passed. In other words, these countries all have systems where 51% of the population are rarely, if ever, going to be able to pass laws to the detriment of the other 49%. We do not.
Our constitution may suck, but Australia is still a free country. Freedom House rated us a 1 1, meaning we have an excellent record on both civil liberties and political rights.
ASIO agents could come to your door right now and take you away for detention and interrogation, without ever identifying themselves or accusing or even suspecting you of a crime. You would be unable to tell anyone where you were, and might not even be allowed a lawyer in some circumstances. Afterwards you would face severe penalties, including lengthy jail terms, if you spoke to any other person about your experience. Anyone else reporting on your experience, such as the media, would be similarly exposed. It may also interest you that there is a criminal offence in Australia of 'possession of a thing' which is or may be used in relation to a terrorist attack, and the burden of proof is reversed - you must prove that you don't possess the 'thing' in question. All of this is real. It's all in the ASIO Act and related legislation right now. If that's your idea of a free country then you don't know what freedom is.
Our GDP per capita is higher than the major European countries'
Our per capita GDP is within a whisker of almost every country in western europe, and substantially behind the scandinavian countries. In any case, what exactly does this prove?
We do everything America does, only we do a worse job, less efficiently, and with none of the individual rights in our Constitution* that you enjoy in the United States which allow the courts to pull the executive and congress back into line every now and then.** Although we have no president or equivalent, our parliament is a virtual dictatorship at present and crossing the floor on the basis of principle is almost entirely unheard of and considered to be little better than treason. We lack media diversity, and general awareness of political and human rights issues is virtually non-existent in the wider populace even by US standards.
In addition we are extremely poorly placed in relation to the most likely theatre of any future world war, and we have large quantities of uranium and natural gas which makes us an important strategic target.
* disclaimer, before someone who knows about Australian law attacks - we arguably have freedom of religion and a right to vote, and a limited right to freedom of 'political' speech, but all can be infringed on by federal laws with a legitimate other purpose
** yeah yeah, I know how politicised the courts are, but every now and then you DO get a decision like Hamdan in which the Supreme Court clobbers the executive for overstepping the line
Each and every time this type of discussion takes place on./ I am struck by the apparent fact that a great many people have strong views about Windows XP, but very few of them reflect any serious time being spent to learn the OS and optimise the user experience.
Granted, it would be best if Windows 'just worked' out of the box like OSX (allegedly) does.
Nevertheless, if you sit down with Windows and seriously dig around for a while you may be surprised to discover that XP is highly configurable and can be tweaked and optimised to the point where it really is very slick and usable, and is absolutely lightning fast. Combined with the right hardware, it is also extremely stable - since upgrading to XP not long after its release, I have had perhaps 5-10 crashes on a PC that runs most of the time. This compares very favourably with the Apples I have used, including recent model iMacs.
Seriously, try it before you decide that OSX is 'better' for your needs. Some suggestions:
- read up on services and turn off everything you don't need
- turn off absolutely everything that loads at startup other than the essentials, and for god's sake learn how to use MSCONFIG and other undocumented but powerful MS tools
- learn how to PROPERLY use (file) explorer, windows networking, device manager, and the numerous other system tools
- be disciplined in the way you allow software to modify the system, and where you install it. You would do the same in Linux, presumably.
- check out TweakUI and similar software which can get you around most of Microsoft's more annoying 'assistance' and add a few cool features to boot, such as visual task switching (yes, like in OSX)
- spend what you would spend on Apple hardware on your (preferably custom-built) PC and appreciate that the increased performance and stability is a reflection of better hardware quality, not just a reflection of the OS
- learn how to adjust the GUI to look much prettier and be much more user friendly: play with icon sizing, fonts and typeface rendering, the taskbar and quicklaunch bar and their size and position - you can even achieve a 'dashboard' type arrangement with a clean install of Windows XP if you think about it creatively
- if you're really adventurous, look into some of the alternative shells you can use with Windows - some are virtually indistinguishable from those that come with current Linux distros and are extraordinarily customizable
- work out what your software needs are and get your system loaded up with the best open source or freely distributed solutions, such as the Mozilla suite, Winamp or VLC, and so on
- pick up the free software that will keep things running nice and smoothly, such as AdAware, AVG and so on
- learn the shortcuts used in Windows - you can do a lot more than you might think with the Windows key, control, alt and tab
I will happily agree that it would be much preferable not to have to do all this stuff just to get your system running nicely, and that non-IT types would struggle with most of the above. I am just a little tired of people rambling on about how 'bad' Windows is when they've never really applied themselves to getting it running sweetly and experienced the results. Considering that a large proportion of the people on this site would presumably spend as long as neccessary frigging around with a Linux install to get it working with their hardware and customised to their liking, the criticism of Windows is generally pretty rich.
I'd prefer to think along the lines of "why you can't get anybody at Apple to care." It doesn't affect Macs, after all.
True enough. They should care though, they like to pitch themselves as the 'good' computer company and this little effort is hardly better than the Sony rootkit debacle writ small.
I am just wondering how things would go around here if the situation were reversed - like if a Microsoft product came preinstalled with some software that caused damage to OSX systems. Something tells me that the mob with torches, pitchforks and turtlenecks wouldn't be storming Apple's headquarters...
I am no expert in this area, but a thought occurs.
Why isn't it possible to simply identify the exploit being used to spread a particular botnet, and write software that uses the same exploit to travel throughout the net before activating (perhaps at some specific time) to both wipe out the botnet software and seal off the exploit?
It seems that as soon as you have the original botnet software, re-engineering it for this purpose would be relatively trivial. Plus there would be the immense satisfaction of fighting fire with fire. The software could even remove itself as its final act, saying "I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do" (although someone else might have to press the button to lower it into molten metal - "I cannot self-terminate").
The only reason I can think that this wouldn't work is that the 'antidote' software would be breaching computer security all over the place - basically doing the precise thing we are trying to stop. However, surely some sort of 'good samaritan' clause could be worked into the law - or the government could adopt responsibility for this process, or at least for pushing the button that sets each counter-botnet loose in the wild.
Of course this may already be the approach taken - I don't know much about the field, as I say.
This comment is clearly not 'insightful'. I run Windows XP, and I DO object to multiple services running at all times in relation to a piece of software I use rarely, if ever. My system, like any respectable Windows user, is tight as a drum in terms of what services I have running - I have no services or applications running that I don't specifically choose to run or need as part of the underlying OS functionality. Why, then, should I accept Apple's bloatware?
Face it, iTunes is a bad citizen when it comes to the Windows platform:
- complete and utter refusal to integrate with the Windows UI
- far slower to load than comparable media players including Winamp, WMP or various open source players
- requires Quicktime (which suffers from the above problems too) to be installed as a separate piece of executable software rather than installing a codec like every other piece of media related software known to mankind
- aforementioned Quicktime installation hijacks your web browser and sets itself as the default plugin for various types of media whether you like it or not, and removing it from your browser without uninstalling it entirely is a nightmare
- and, as the GP mentioned, iTunes runs multiple unneccessary services with no option to turn them off within iTunes, including the iPod service whether you have an iPod or not
Personally I have also found iTunes to be more likely to crash and less likely to work properly with my iPod than Winamp running the excellent ml_ipod plugin.
I *really* hate it that Apple/open source users can never accept a perfectly legitimate complaint from a Windows user about an Apple or open source piece of software without getting on their high horse about how it's all somehow Microsoft's fault or that we shouldn't complain because 'Windoze suxxors anyways'. The vast majority of mainstream publishers of software for Windows would not take the above liberties - why should Apple be an exception?
1 - Where did I say I was talking about the US exclusively? I referred to 'liberal democracy', of which the US is but one example.
2 - I love how Americans trot out this 'we're not a democracy, we're a republic' line. 'Republic' means you have no monarch. 'Democracy' means that the government is popularly elected, be it directly or indirectly. You are a democracy.
3 - How many extra-judicial murders of US citizens occurred inside the United States at the hands of the United States government in 2005-2006? How many US citizens were executed after show trials completely lacking in procedural fairness? How many had their organs harvested by the US government shortly after their execution? How many buddhist monks did the US government exterminate? To suggest that "we appear just as autocratic to China to outsiders" is patently ridiculous. There are many, many problems in the United States, but they are within a system which is fundamentally less autocratic than the Chinese system.
4 - "I honestly think the 2 top issues of any Chinese government is insuring that government system will still be incharge for the next generation or two and that they don't have a peasant uprising or atleast have the ability to quickly put one down." Yes, that's what you'd expect from a totalitarian government. You'll find that in the west the government typically doesn't have to worry about the system itself being brought down, only about a particular political party losing a democratic contest.
5 - "The more that I think about it the more that I'm kinda of neutral to the whole thing. I really would like to see how the US transforms in the next 50 years or so. Will we look back on our current republican forms of government as the good ole days or the bad ole days? Well we have some IT based police state or some IT based direct democracy?" If you're 'kinda neutral' about the whole thing then I guarantee you will get the former not the latter. Enjoy.
Your post is superficially insightful. Your underlying assumption appears to be that there is no absolute 'right' or 'wrong' way to organise a society, and therefore we cannot say that liberal democracy is 'better' than China's current approach (which I would describe as 'fascist' in the classical sense - a topic for another post, perhaps - and undoubtedly totalitarian).
However, this type of relativism is not particularly helpful. For one thing, what do you say to Nazi Germany? Or Stalinist Russia? Or Pol Pot's Cambodia? Were these societies merely 'different' from liberal democracy, and therefore above criticism? Is it impossible to make a valid assessment of which is 'better'? Was the western world merely 'different' when we had the Spanish Inquisition and witch burnings?
I put it to you that rather than our high opinion of liberal democracy being a process of coming to "reflexively believe that these ideological precepts are somehow universally good", the reason that those ideological precents are supported and upheld is because they ARE good in some sense, or at least, better than the alternatives. I put it to you that if you could take an individual, strip away ethnicity, nationalism, religion, and upbringing, and allow a rational choice between a liberal democratic system and a totalitarian system, the vast, vast majority of sane humans would choose the former. "Good" may mean many things - in this context, perhaps measures of happiness, prosperity, and freedom of action are appropriate; if you prefer a collective perspective, then perhaps measures of per-capita productivity, artistic or scientific achievements would be a better test for you to apply; finally, you might also apply a 'moral' or religious test if that is part of your belief system.
Your theory also fails to explain why we have such a violently negative reaction to certain activities that we, as a society, undertake. If your principle that 'you love what you do' was right, why would there be such an uproar about Iraq, for instance? Or the modification of some of those "ideological precepts" in the 'war on terror'. These reactions also suggest that the basis for regarding liberal democracy as desirable and superior is more than mere historical rote learning.
Conversely, your theory fails to explain the continuing development of liberal democracies throughout the 20th century. If it was merely the success of various revolutions several hundred years ago, why did the 20th century (and indeed the 19th and 18th) feature a continued liberalisation of our society? How do you explain the sexual, cultural and racial revolutions, for instance? These are the product of a living and developing social system, not the result of an outline traced in the sand 500 years ago.
Relativism is an important tool in understanding the world. But if you let it get too out of control you will come to believe that black is white, and they are both grey. China's system of government is anti-humanist, corrupt, inefficient, brutal, militaristic, autocratic, and by almost any definition (other than the Chinese, which you seem to prefer) evil. It IS worse than our system on all but the most twisted 'better' to 'worse' scale, for the individual and for the society as a whole.
IAAL, and I can tell you with certainty that most of the people on this site will never accept your key point.
There are shady lawyers, just like there are dubious characters in nearly every industry. However, in my experience, good lawyers spend a large amount of their time trying to convince litigious clients NOT to sue anybody, and there are plenty of good lawyers. It may also interest some of you to know that the percentage of legal actions filed that actually make it to trial (i.e. that don't settle) is absolutely miniscule, usually because the lawyers are telling their clients to avoid court at all costs - it's expensive, and it leads to a win-lose situation rather than a compromise, so is inherently very risky.
And let's not forget the endless string of cases where those awful lawyers (yes, people with the same basic training as those representing the plaintiff in this case) protect your rights, take down the bad guys, hold the government accountable, allow the little guys to stand up to the huge corporate monoliths, and so on. I love how every time there's an article about a 'bad' judgment on./ we get the same tired old nonsense about it being "a field day for lawyers" - but when the EFF actually wins something, or the Supreme Court says torture is illegal, or any number of other 'good' judgments are discussed then nobody, nobody acknowledges that some *lawyer* (shock, horror) must have fought that case and won.
But don't worry. Every time some idiot sues some other idiot over something, and the laws made by the politicians YOU elect are enforced by a judge appointed by the same politicians, with the result that idiot A beats idiot B and is awarded a huge payout by a jury of your peers (and lawyers CAN'T be on juries, fyi) that causes you to just clench your little fists up in rage, lawyers will be there for you to blame. Hey, it's a lot easier than learning about tort law, developing your own political movement, pressuring politicians, raising awareness and actually *changing* the law if you think it's so terrible.
North Korea, unlike Iraq, has China and to a lesser extent Russia, backing them up. Both of whom have serious quantities of nukes.
Why the hell do you imagine the US, South Korea or Japan hasn't gone in and cleaned up North Korea long ago? Because the potential for a full scale regional war is frighteningly high, that's why.
"Unfortunately Bush is getting his nuts handed to him on a daily basis."
It's not unfortunate, it's what happens when you lie and go after enemies that are no threat whatsoever at the cost of tens of thousands (minimum) of lives and all of the international goodwill that September 11 created towards the United States.
It will be fortunate when the US has a president who can make intelligent, informed decisions to deal with genuine threats rather than impotent middle-eastern dictators. I suggest this might be John McCain or (gasp shock horror) Hillary Clinton, who is no dove herself.
Seems to me that you would create an exact duplicate of the original person, who would feel and believe that they were the same person. However, they would not be the same person - the original person would (presumably) be dead as their constituent particles are ripped apart from their spin etc changing.
If this thing works buy supplying extra force at the joints, as it appears, then doesn't it carry a serious risk of injuring the extremities? For example, the suit might give you enough power via your elbows to lift something very heavy, but all that power is also being transferred through your wrists and fingers, which as far as I can see are unsupported and unaugmented. The amount of stress it could potentially put on those joints is a little worrying.
I would think a system that covers the entire limb in questions would be far safer...
Perfect Dark had sims, which were cool, and better game modes, but Goldeneye had far better levels and weapons, and ran at a more acceptable framerate most of the time.
I found the levels in PD cluttered and hard to navigate by comparison.
Ah, those were the days, 4 player Goldeneye on license to kill with no-one able to move more than a few metres in the level without being exposed to grenades, rockets, or a hail of RPC-90 fire... and our games would end on scorelines like 20-19-19-19 with disturbing regularity.
Still my favourite FPS, and I have Half Life 2 on my PC.
Slashdot Mirror
I think we need the right not to look at advertising.
Am I alone in thinking that advertising should be restricted to certain public spaces designated as 'commercial', and should otherwise not be permitted? I strongly feel that I should be able to move around the world freely without having to look at KFC ads. We pay quite a lot of attention to our environment in a chemistry/biology context, but very little to it in terms of what kind of mental environment we are inhabiting.
I am generally relatively libertarian, believe it or not. I hate laws that interfere unneccessarily with people's right to do whatever they want. But the day I can't go anywhere on this planet without seeing an orbiting billboard is the day I become a serial killer. I guess I consider that a billboard or whatever isn't really 'over there' on someone else's property, because I feel its effects wherever I have the misfortune to observe it.
Put it this way - would we tolerate sound advertising that was audible from anywhere on earth? No. So why is visual advertising any different?
We are in danger of becoming a civilisation so enamoured with commerce that we have no independent culture or sense of aesthetics. I mean, we're branding the fucking PLANET now? It's sick. Commerce is a means to an end: we have made it an end in itself. As the first comment on the blog says, "this makes me want to kill myself".
What about:
- inability of current computer vision and AI technology to make sufficiently informed decisions about threats
- massive moral issue of allowing an autonomous device to kill humans without specific targeting by a human operator
- probable violations of laws of war and humanitarian laws as a result of the above
- fact that military-industrial complex can waste money on shit like this when there are people starving on the same planet
I see these as slightly more problematic than whether it has enough frigging ammo.
One thing is certain, the repetitive jokes will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new "I for one welcome..."-joke-setting-up overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted Slashdotter I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground repetitive-joke-comment caves (as if they need it).
Plato had something to say about this.
Indeed, I think he said that it was preferable to train a ruling elite, selected based on merit at an early age, to govern society. Not exactly what most of us would associate with democracy, though it could hardly work worse than the current US system - at least the selection process would be transparent, and the selection would be based on merit rather than financial power.
When the article contains remarks like this:
Most digicams are plastic, plastic, and more plastic. They feel flimsy and they're not all that hard to break. DSLRs are built to much higher standards
then you can tell that it is not particularly helpful at all. A great many 'digicams' are very nicely constructed. For example, the rather lovely Lumix range from Panasonic/Leica, one of which I am lucky enough to own, are extremely well constructed and are largely made from metals and special composites which do not feel 'plastic' in the least. They also have excellent ergonomics and performance. Many smaller cameras are also very nicely constructed, often from metal - the Canon Ixus range comes to mind.
I agree that DSLRs are nice, and I plan to acquire one myself. But it is not helpful to publish a list of 'reasons' which are little more than vague assertions that A is better than B, without taking into account either reality, or the very valid reasons why B might be preferable for many people.
...mostly due to historical and geographical inconvenience (i.e. we're not US citizens) when I ask, beg, urge, beseech, implore, plead, and demand that every single one of you Slashdotters who CAN vote gets out and does. Do NOT look on in disgust and refuse to participate. Do NOT stay at home playing World of Warcraft or coding your latest piece of hobby software. Do NOT spend the afternoon surfing for hentai and humorous pictures while your country continues to degenerate (in other ways).
I don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian. Please, please, just get yourself out of the house, down to a polling station, and vote.
Do it. Now. It is the only way to save your democracy.
Why the hell do we have to act like a bunch of music snobs who sit around discussing what music/band/sound/bs is better instead of just going out and enjoying every bit of it that we like, why do we have to shove our opinions about what game is the "ultimate" experience.
Um.... because the guy in TFA was the one who said that Halo was the first FPS he's played with 'substance', and this is a place to discuss the content and merits of the article? And because personally, I strongly dislike the whole 'consoles will replace PCs' movement, of which Halo fanboyism is one of the most significant afflictions, and so it's worth making the point that Halo isn't a patch on many great PC shooters.
As for Goldeneye, you're talking about my religious beliefs there. I have never enjoyed multiplayer gaming more than 4 player license to kill deathmatches, and that includes plenty of moderately hardcore Quake III and CS:Source playing.
And I'm sorry, if you think the depth of Halo is in the same league as Deus Ex or Half Life then you're just plain crazy. Remember, he said 'substance', not 'fun' or whatever other adjectives you want to toss in there.
Interestingly I can remember thinking the exact opposite when I first sat down and played Halo - "where's the depth to this?" The actual combat seemed relatively repetitive and the at-times impressive graphics didn't seem to have much effect on the gameplay.
This guy needs to get a Ninty and play some Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, then perhaps an old PC and really get into some serious Half Life, Unreal Tournament, BF1942 and Quake II action if he wants to legitmately use the word 'substance.'
My experience of Google's non-search applications so far suggests that they are far from mediocre. It's inevitable that it will take them longer to really come to the fore in fields which are more mature that the search engine market was when they first rose to prominence.
In addition, they have an excellent ability to fill niches in the market that are not being filled adequately (e.g. Picasa, Maps, News), and their products are differentiated by being ad-supported but otherwise free, which is a devastating approach for any competitor relying on a micropayment or subscription model. They seem to have the leverage to do things no other company could do at the moment, such as the book search system they are building and the Scholar academic journal search engine. This means that even if the implementation is 'indifferent' the sheer usefulness of the actual data being delivered still sets them apart.
In other news, why do we really need more Google news? Wake me up when something new actually happens. Some guy writing some vague opinions about some company is not 'news' in any sense.
Thank you for ably demonstrating another aspect of Australian life - a frighteningly anti-democratic attitude to dissent.
:)
And, frankly, we would rather have a pom who loves the country than the whinger who rekons life here is soooooo bad.
Who is this 'we' you speak of? Am I part of 'we'? I thought I was. I guess not.
Come to Australia, we have plenty of land; though we could stand some more water.
Actually, we have an absolutely chronic water problem and can't sustain our current population. We have 'plenty of land' in the same sense that northern Africa has 'plenty of land', i.e. it's mostly uninhabitable desert and the rest is fast approaching its natural limits in terms of water use.
But, please, only if you dont plan to sit around on your fat arse and whinge about everything. Cant stand bloody whingers. We all have to vote here, so any problem you have with your own reality is entirely your problem.
Hitler was democratically elected. A society should be judged on how it treats its worst and weakest, not on whether a bare majority can dictate terms to a bare minority. As it so happens, I can't stand arrogant fools who attempt to stifle legitimate discussion of socio-political issues, so please don't come if you're one of those either.
If you dont like it, fix it, if you cant fix it, deal with it, if you cant deal with it, piss off
Funny, I thought discussing the issues was the way to 'fix it'. Apparently I should just stop 'whinging' though. What is intriguing about your ranting is the assumption that you are the one entitled to make these decisions - what gives you any more right than the 'whingers' who 'can't deal with it' to decide who should remain in the country? And do you, by implication, believe that there is no place for dissent in Australia?
The last time a member of the ruling Coalition -- and not the opposition parties, which vote against Coalition legislation frequently -- crossed the floor was about a year ago, but internal dissent scuppered some immigration laws this year. Anyway, since when was the measure of a democracy the lack of discipline of the ruling party? What's undemocratic about an elected ruling party voting for its own legislation? On the contrary, if, after being elected with a majority in both houses, the government were unable to make new laws, that would be a failure of democracy.
What an absolute load of nonsense. If it is a 'failure of democracy' for members of the ruling party to vote against the government from time to time, then why have members of parliament at all? Why not just count the votes, and if one party has an absolute majority, let them pass whatever they want until the next election? At least it would save us some money. And yes, there was one very unusual instance of crossing the floor recently. But perhaps you should educate yourself about other democratic nations and the way their parliaments work - in the UK and US, which have somewhat similar parliaments, crossing the floor is not only common, it's actually expected, and as such has a constant moderating effect on legislation. Others, such as Germany and New Zealand, are proportional and thus actual consensus is required most of the time to get laws passed. In other words, these countries all have systems where 51% of the population are rarely, if ever, going to be able to pass laws to the detriment of the other 49%. We do not.
Our constitution may suck, but Australia is still a free country. Freedom House rated us a 1 1, meaning we have an excellent record on both civil liberties and political rights.
ASIO agents could come to your door right now and take you away for detention and interrogation, without ever identifying themselves or accusing or even suspecting you of a crime. You would be unable to tell anyone where you were, and might not even be allowed a lawyer in some circumstances. Afterwards you would face severe penalties, including lengthy jail terms, if you spoke to any other person about your experience. Anyone else reporting on your experience, such as the media, would be similarly exposed. It may also interest you that there is a criminal offence in Australia of 'possession of a thing' which is or may be used in relation to a terrorist attack, and the burden of proof is reversed - you must prove that you don't possess the 'thing' in question. All of this is real. It's all in the ASIO Act and related legislation right now. If that's your idea of a free country then you don't know what freedom is.
Our GDP per capita is higher than the major European countries'
Our per capita GDP is within a whisker of almost every country in western europe, and substantially behind the scandinavian countries. In any case, what exactly does this prove?
We do everything America does, only we do a worse job, less efficiently, and with none of the individual rights in our Constitution* that you enjoy in the United States which allow the courts to pull the executive and congress back into line every now and then.** Although we have no president or equivalent, our parliament is a virtual dictatorship at present and crossing the floor on the basis of principle is almost entirely unheard of and considered to be little better than treason. We lack media diversity, and general awareness of political and human rights issues is virtually non-existent in the wider populace even by US standards.
In addition we are extremely poorly placed in relation to the most likely theatre of any future world war, and we have large quantities of uranium and natural gas which makes us an important strategic target.
* disclaimer, before someone who knows about Australian law attacks - we arguably have freedom of religion and a right to vote, and a limited right to freedom of 'political' speech, but all can be infringed on by federal laws with a legitimate other purpose
** yeah yeah, I know how politicised the courts are, but every now and then you DO get a decision like Hamdan in which the Supreme Court clobbers the executive for overstepping the line
Each and every time this type of discussion takes place on ./ I am struck by the apparent fact that a great many people have strong views about Windows XP, but very few of them reflect any serious time being spent to learn the OS and optimise the user experience.
Granted, it would be best if Windows 'just worked' out of the box like OSX (allegedly) does.
Nevertheless, if you sit down with Windows and seriously dig around for a while you may be surprised to discover that XP is highly configurable and can be tweaked and optimised to the point where it really is very slick and usable, and is absolutely lightning fast. Combined with the right hardware, it is also extremely stable - since upgrading to XP not long after its release, I have had perhaps 5-10 crashes on a PC that runs most of the time. This compares very favourably with the Apples I have used, including recent model iMacs.
Seriously, try it before you decide that OSX is 'better' for your needs. Some suggestions:
- read up on services and turn off everything you don't need
- turn off absolutely everything that loads at startup other than the essentials, and for god's sake learn how to use MSCONFIG and other undocumented but powerful MS tools
- learn how to PROPERLY use (file) explorer, windows networking, device manager, and the numerous other system tools
- be disciplined in the way you allow software to modify the system, and where you install it. You would do the same in Linux, presumably.
- check out TweakUI and similar software which can get you around most of Microsoft's more annoying 'assistance' and add a few cool features to boot, such as visual task switching (yes, like in OSX)
- spend what you would spend on Apple hardware on your (preferably custom-built) PC and appreciate that the increased performance and stability is a reflection of better hardware quality, not just a reflection of the OS
- learn how to adjust the GUI to look much prettier and be much more user friendly: play with icon sizing, fonts and typeface rendering, the taskbar and quicklaunch bar and their size and position - you can even achieve a 'dashboard' type arrangement with a clean install of Windows XP if you think about it creatively
- if you're really adventurous, look into some of the alternative shells you can use with Windows - some are virtually indistinguishable from those that come with current Linux distros and are extraordinarily customizable
- work out what your software needs are and get your system loaded up with the best open source or freely distributed solutions, such as the Mozilla suite, Winamp or VLC, and so on
- pick up the free software that will keep things running nice and smoothly, such as AdAware, AVG and so on
- learn the shortcuts used in Windows - you can do a lot more than you might think with the Windows key, control, alt and tab
I will happily agree that it would be much preferable not to have to do all this stuff just to get your system running nicely, and that non-IT types would struggle with most of the above. I am just a little tired of people rambling on about how 'bad' Windows is when they've never really applied themselves to getting it running sweetly and experienced the results. Considering that a large proportion of the people on this site would presumably spend as long as neccessary frigging around with a Linux install to get it working with their hardware and customised to their liking, the criticism of Windows is generally pretty rich.
Well, it was installed by default when I installed iTunes with no option not to install it. Not what I usually think of as 'optional.'
I'd prefer to think along the lines of "why you can't get anybody at Apple to care." It doesn't affect Macs, after all.
True enough. They should care though, they like to pitch themselves as the 'good' computer company and this little effort is hardly better than the Sony rootkit debacle writ small.
I am just wondering how things would go around here if the situation were reversed - like if a Microsoft product came preinstalled with some software that caused damage to OSX systems. Something tells me that the mob with torches, pitchforks and turtlenecks wouldn't be storming Apple's headquarters...
I am no expert in this area, but a thought occurs.
Why isn't it possible to simply identify the exploit being used to spread a particular botnet, and write software that uses the same exploit to travel throughout the net before activating (perhaps at some specific time) to both wipe out the botnet software and seal off the exploit?
It seems that as soon as you have the original botnet software, re-engineering it for this purpose would be relatively trivial. Plus there would be the immense satisfaction of fighting fire with fire. The software could even remove itself as its final act, saying "I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do" (although someone else might have to press the button to lower it into molten metal - "I cannot self-terminate").
The only reason I can think that this wouldn't work is that the 'antidote' software would be breaching computer security all over the place - basically doing the precise thing we are trying to stop. However, surely some sort of 'good samaritan' clause could be worked into the law - or the government could adopt responsibility for this process, or at least for pushing the button that sets each counter-botnet loose in the wild.
Of course this may already be the approach taken - I don't know much about the field, as I say.
This comment is clearly not 'insightful'. I run Windows XP, and I DO object to multiple services running at all times in relation to a piece of software I use rarely, if ever. My system, like any respectable Windows user, is tight as a drum in terms of what services I have running - I have no services or applications running that I don't specifically choose to run or need as part of the underlying OS functionality. Why, then, should I accept Apple's bloatware?
Face it, iTunes is a bad citizen when it comes to the Windows platform:
- complete and utter refusal to integrate with the Windows UI
- far slower to load than comparable media players including Winamp, WMP or various open source players
- requires Quicktime (which suffers from the above problems too) to be installed as a separate piece of executable software rather than installing a codec like every other piece of media related software known to mankind
- aforementioned Quicktime installation hijacks your web browser and sets itself as the default plugin for various types of media whether you like it or not, and removing it from your browser without uninstalling it entirely is a nightmare
- and, as the GP mentioned, iTunes runs multiple unneccessary services with no option to turn them off within iTunes, including the iPod service whether you have an iPod or not
Personally I have also found iTunes to be more likely to crash and less likely to work properly with my iPod than Winamp running the excellent ml_ipod plugin.
I *really* hate it that Apple/open source users can never accept a perfectly legitimate complaint from a Windows user about an Apple or open source piece of software without getting on their high horse about how it's all somehow Microsoft's fault or that we shouldn't complain because 'Windoze suxxors anyways'. The vast majority of mainstream publishers of software for Windows would not take the above liberties - why should Apple be an exception?
Sounds like a John Grisham novel to me. :P
Sounds more like a movie about goatse to me...
A couple of points:
1 - Where did I say I was talking about the US exclusively? I referred to 'liberal democracy', of which the US is but one example.
2 - I love how Americans trot out this 'we're not a democracy, we're a republic' line. 'Republic' means you have no monarch. 'Democracy' means that the government is popularly elected, be it directly or indirectly. You are a democracy.
3 - How many extra-judicial murders of US citizens occurred inside the United States at the hands of the United States government in 2005-2006? How many US citizens were executed after show trials completely lacking in procedural fairness? How many had their organs harvested by the US government shortly after their execution? How many buddhist monks did the US government exterminate? To suggest that "we appear just as autocratic to China to outsiders" is patently ridiculous. There are many, many problems in the United States, but they are within a system which is fundamentally less autocratic than the Chinese system.
4 - "I honestly think the 2 top issues of any Chinese government is insuring that government system will still be incharge for the next generation or two and that they don't have a peasant uprising or atleast have the ability to quickly put one down." Yes, that's what you'd expect from a totalitarian government. You'll find that in the west the government typically doesn't have to worry about the system itself being brought down, only about a particular political party losing a democratic contest.
5 - "The more that I think about it the more that I'm kinda of neutral to the whole thing. I really would like to see how the US transforms in the next 50 years or so. Will we look back on our current republican forms of government as the good ole days or the bad ole days? Well we have some IT based police state or some IT based direct democracy?" If you're 'kinda neutral' about the whole thing then I guarantee you will get the former not the latter. Enjoy.
Your post is superficially insightful. Your underlying assumption appears to be that there is no absolute 'right' or 'wrong' way to organise a society, and therefore we cannot say that liberal democracy is 'better' than China's current approach (which I would describe as 'fascist' in the classical sense - a topic for another post, perhaps - and undoubtedly totalitarian).
However, this type of relativism is not particularly helpful. For one thing, what do you say to Nazi Germany? Or Stalinist Russia? Or Pol Pot's Cambodia? Were these societies merely 'different' from liberal democracy, and therefore above criticism? Is it impossible to make a valid assessment of which is 'better'? Was the western world merely 'different' when we had the Spanish Inquisition and witch burnings?
I put it to you that rather than our high opinion of liberal democracy being a process of coming to "reflexively believe that these ideological precepts are somehow universally good", the reason that those ideological precents are supported and upheld is because they ARE good in some sense, or at least, better than the alternatives. I put it to you that if you could take an individual, strip away ethnicity, nationalism, religion, and upbringing, and allow a rational choice between a liberal democratic system and a totalitarian system, the vast, vast majority of sane humans would choose the former. "Good" may mean many things - in this context, perhaps measures of happiness, prosperity, and freedom of action are appropriate; if you prefer a collective perspective, then perhaps measures of per-capita productivity, artistic or scientific achievements would be a better test for you to apply; finally, you might also apply a 'moral' or religious test if that is part of your belief system.
Your theory also fails to explain why we have such a violently negative reaction to certain activities that we, as a society, undertake. If your principle that 'you love what you do' was right, why would there be such an uproar about Iraq, for instance? Or the modification of some of those "ideological precepts" in the 'war on terror'. These reactions also suggest that the basis for regarding liberal democracy as desirable and superior is more than mere historical rote learning.
Conversely, your theory fails to explain the continuing development of liberal democracies throughout the 20th century. If it was merely the success of various revolutions several hundred years ago, why did the 20th century (and indeed the 19th and 18th) feature a continued liberalisation of our society? How do you explain the sexual, cultural and racial revolutions, for instance? These are the product of a living and developing social system, not the result of an outline traced in the sand 500 years ago.
Relativism is an important tool in understanding the world. But if you let it get too out of control you will come to believe that black is white, and they are both grey. China's system of government is anti-humanist, corrupt, inefficient, brutal, militaristic, autocratic, and by almost any definition (other than the Chinese, which you seem to prefer) evil. It IS worse than our system on all but the most twisted 'better' to 'worse' scale, for the individual and for the society as a whole.
IAAL, and I can tell you with certainty that most of the people on this site will never accept your key point.
./ we get the same tired old nonsense about it being "a field day for lawyers" - but when the EFF actually wins something, or the Supreme Court says torture is illegal, or any number of other 'good' judgments are discussed then nobody, nobody acknowledges that some *lawyer* (shock, horror) must have fought that case and won.
There are shady lawyers, just like there are dubious characters in nearly every industry. However, in my experience, good lawyers spend a large amount of their time trying to convince litigious clients NOT to sue anybody, and there are plenty of good lawyers. It may also interest some of you to know that the percentage of legal actions filed that actually make it to trial (i.e. that don't settle) is absolutely miniscule, usually because the lawyers are telling their clients to avoid court at all costs - it's expensive, and it leads to a win-lose situation rather than a compromise, so is inherently very risky.
And let's not forget the endless string of cases where those awful lawyers (yes, people with the same basic training as those representing the plaintiff in this case) protect your rights, take down the bad guys, hold the government accountable, allow the little guys to stand up to the huge corporate monoliths, and so on. I love how every time there's an article about a 'bad' judgment on
But don't worry. Every time some idiot sues some other idiot over something, and the laws made by the politicians YOU elect are enforced by a judge appointed by the same politicians, with the result that idiot A beats idiot B and is awarded a huge payout by a jury of your peers (and lawyers CAN'T be on juries, fyi) that causes you to just clench your little fists up in rage, lawyers will be there for you to blame. Hey, it's a lot easier than learning about tort law, developing your own political movement, pressuring politicians, raising awareness and actually *changing* the law if you think it's so terrible.
North Korea, unlike Iraq, has China and to a lesser extent Russia, backing them up. Both of whom have serious quantities of nukes.
Why the hell do you imagine the US, South Korea or Japan hasn't gone in and cleaned up North Korea long ago? Because the potential for a full scale regional war is frighteningly high, that's why.
"Unfortunately Bush is getting his nuts handed to him on a daily basis."
It's not unfortunate, it's what happens when you lie and go after enemies that are no threat whatsoever at the cost of tens of thousands (minimum) of lives and all of the international goodwill that September 11 created towards the United States.
It will be fortunate when the US has a president who can make intelligent, informed decisions to deal with genuine threats rather than impotent middle-eastern dictators. I suggest this might be John McCain or (gasp shock horror) Hillary Clinton, who is no dove herself.
Seems to me that you would create an exact duplicate of the original person, who would feel and believe that they were the same person. However, they would not be the same person - the original person would (presumably) be dead as their constituent particles are ripped apart from their spin etc changing.
If this thing works buy supplying extra force at the joints, as it appears, then doesn't it carry a serious risk of injuring the extremities? For example, the suit might give you enough power via your elbows to lift something very heavy, but all that power is also being transferred through your wrists and fingers, which as far as I can see are unsupported and unaugmented. The amount of stress it could potentially put on those joints is a little worrying.
I would think a system that covers the entire limb in questions would be far safer...
No question in my mind...
Perfect Dark had sims, which were cool, and better game modes, but Goldeneye had far better levels and weapons, and ran at a more acceptable framerate most of the time.
I found the levels in PD cluttered and hard to navigate by comparison.
Ah, those were the days, 4 player Goldeneye on license to kill with no-one able to move more than a few metres in the level without being exposed to grenades, rockets, or a hail of RPC-90 fire... and our games would end on scorelines like 20-19-19-19 with disturbing regularity.
Still my favourite FPS, and I have Half Life 2 on my PC.