The main market for Imageos' photographs would be insurance appraisals, but the Boulder, Colo., startup is also touting the pictures for ``homeland security'' applications, law enforcement and emergency services.
With US journalism (see yesterday's New York Times mea culpa) slowly coming round to admitting that it was duped in the rush to war, we're at a point where that institution's filters can't really be trusted to portray reality. Why not simply put a few of these on the road and let them transmit images back from Iraq?
The American people might be surprised to see the images readily available to the rest of the world of this "liberation."
And I see no evidence they were informed; further, how were they informed, if it did happen? Was it a "dude, your browser sucks! I can totally 0wnZ j00!" email sent to steve@apple.com? Or was it a well-written report sent through the proper channels? Or was it somewhere in between? I won't assume Apple was notified, or that it was done properly, just because someone says so.
Really? So independent researchers uncovering security flaws are now to be held up to a higher burden of proof than the corporate authors of those flaws?
Ultimately, you have to believe one or the other. The former has showed us the flaw, while as the multiplication of the exploits demonstrates, the latter has yet to fulfill its commitments to users of the OS. Under these circumstances, it's odd to heap skepticism verging on contempt upon the former; that makes you look like an errand boy for the latter.
It's all fairly typical of the excuse making by Apple followers who otherwise masquerade as FOSS zealots in other threads.
Were Apple miraculously able to beat Microsoft and assume its monopoly control of the market, you can be sure that we'd be singing a different, er, iTune.
That's because the chicken-and-egg problem would become clear to people: it's MS's illegally-achieved market dominance that allows it to make bad products and treat consumers terribly with relative impunity. Market forces bounce off the teflon of a monopolist. Market forces are for the monopolist's victims, and hence why they have to make better products. Everyone else still has to compete for scraps when capitalism produces, as it naturally does in the absence of civilizing regulation, its overfed hogs.
Apple could easily become just as "evil" as MS. Give it bullying freedom to dictate standards; wipe the slate free of competitive pressures; allow it to jeopardize data safety the world round; forge cozy relationships between it and whichever political party controls the White House; and soon enough, the taste of Apple would sour as it ceased trying to please customers and adopted an ethos of perpetual shakedown. Steve Jobs would morph into Bill Gates rather quickly.
For the time being, though, we have to deal with the evildoers we have, and it's no sin to back the underdog that tries harder and achieves better. Nor is it a stretch, ethically or intellectually, to wish short and long-term advantages for the underdog for as long as it is up against a rotten goliath.
Leave it to the extremists in charge of our nation to have their wettest dreams confirmed by...a Sega game. And a subpar game at that.
People without moral or practical imagination--the types who have gutted our liberties with the Patriot Act, and led us to invade and torture Iraqis--exemplify the kind of simpleminded sorts who shouldn't be allowed to play M-rated video games.
Sure the ad system isn't the best but it's functional and beats having to wait in line for 45 minutes to buy a pack of $20 ciggarettes in a Socialist/Communist society.
You can't have your cake and eat it too I'm afraid.
Cake, eh?
In our system, most businesses fail. Most wealth is horded by the top few percentiles. For the majority, most real incomes have been stagnant since the 1960s. Our communities and workforces have been devastated by two decades of rapacious mergers, corporate accounting scams, and stock inflation. Millions upon millions of Americans have no health care. Millions are so overextended in debt that they're only a couple of paychecks away from the street, even as home foreclosures have hit a 30-year high. Our middle class is contracting while our masters export our jobs overseas. Our armies are bogged down losing an imperial war being fought by economic conscripts. As conspicuous consumption driven by advertising has brought our environment to the brink of calamity, our labor force has been reduced to peeing in cups to keep their Wal-Mart jobs.
But, yes, cigs are $6 a pack in New York. Eat your heart out, socialists!
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne has been recognized by many people with their heads screwed on straight as a benchmark in video-game storytelling.
Yegads! I had fun playing the game, but a collection of tired old pulp cliches will never do as a benchmark in storytelling. The art direction of the comics panels was nice, but personally, I couldn't wait for Max to shut up so that I could play. And the link between all my bullet timing and some thin excuse for a story? Not to bash your favorite game, but a Slim Jim ain't filet mignon.
No, storytelling is such a complex art that cut scenes sandwiched between action shoot-outs can only begin to approach doing it well. Compared to, say, a Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore comic, the average video or computer game is pathetically half-baked: it's the sketch or the crudest outline of a possible idea for a part of a story. Populated by cardboard. Running on a very narrow and linear rail. And more often an annoying gesture used for branding rather than for crafting a world that engages and compels.
But the brilliant exception to this action game dullness is any great RPG. The alchemy that occurs between avatar and player is already a much deeper thing than ever can happen in a shooter. Take Morrowind or Gothic II: here are games teeming with many small interesting narratives whose pieces form a huge, satisfying whole *around* your avatar, which is already invested with so much of your enjoyable developmental sweat.
First of all, let's equip police to do their jobs. There's no good reason why police shouldn't have instant access to all criminal data. They should (and already largely do). But that isn't what's at issue here.
The presumption in Manalapan is that everyone passing through the rare ethers of this wealthy preserve is a criminal. That is why it is outfitting its police with the technology of presumptive guilt: until you come up clear on the scope, you're just another creep to Manalapan's finest.
This is the M.O. of the Stasi or KGB. That it's happening in America in 2004 isn't terribly surprising, even if it's depressing. Fattened on freedom they imagine will last forever, Americans in recent years have become absurdly lax about their rights--not to mention stupidly ignorant of how they were obtained. We scarcely had any significant applications of privacy in our case law until the major 20th century expansion of civil liberties by the courts in the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to this era, the cops did damn well what they pleased. It's no secret that powerfule forces want to turn back the clock, or that you can turn on talk radio and hear some fool damning "activist judges" for elaborating the Bill of Rights.
Since the 1980s, Americans have learned to do as we are told. We have been trained to pee in a cup as a condition of employment. We have made nary a noise as our health records have been divulged to corporations. We have meekly submitted to increasing searches of our persons and cars (and, in a hideous irony, have even been sold back these humiliations on TV in shows like "COPS"). We have sheepishly allowed the weed of the Patriot Act to take root and spread. And we have even eagerly, in the thousands, volunteered to help John Ashcroft spy on our neighbors. Poll after poll in the past twenty years has shown a majority willing to give up its rights for the latest crusade, whether the "war on drugs" or lately, against terrorism. But what does it profit a nation to win these "wars" when its society ends up resembling the miserable failures of totalitarianism?
As demonstrated by its abusive new surveillance, Manalapan holds passersby in rich contempt. Maybe they're right.
I find it disappointing that you appear to understand the methodology of racism, yet go out of your way to trivialize attempts at redress. It's not hard to dislike Jesse Jackson. But in fact apart from its rare celebrity exceptions, civil rights law is a thankless battle--removing barriers, granting access, and reversing discriminatory patterns of employment and policing--waged always against a hostile majority and its institutions.
If, as you suggest, the great white fathers of Manalapan wish to drive off minorities, then we can hardly feel sorry if the city becomes a target of litigation. Quite the opposite.
Thanks to McCartney and Yoko's greed. Not that I want their music anyways... thanks to reading an interview with one of the non-dead ones who stated half the songs were stolen during their drug-induced orgy's.
Yep. It's a well-known fact that Lennon and McCartney could only write a quarter of a song each. (Things got even worse when Ringo or George wanted to pitch in. Lots of dealing with fractions...) At the end of their frustrated labors, only half a song sat on the table before them. That's when they broke out the LSD and called in the groupies! And now you know why it's called a "hummer."
...the rule of law not being made to kneel before the rule of corporations, but here it is: Europe has demonstrated how antitrust can and should work.
Americans of the late 19th century would have understood. Having been beaten into economic submission by the railroad and oil trusts, they howled for reform. That's how we got the laws that occasionally have been used to protect us: citizen action. Unfortunately, the sorry history of US antitrust law since is one of big money obstructing progress and undoing results at nearly every step.
If we're ever to get out from under the yoke of our Microsofts and Wal-Marts, which depress innovation, cripple competition, batter markets and saddle society with a host of costs and social ills, we'll need to resurrect that lost spirit of the engaged American--the citizen who knows his interests and how to fight for them.
Here's a hint in PR, Steve: act contrite and humble even as you crush your opponents. They won't realize what you're doing until it's too late. But if you are unapologetically domineering, you'll find you get three responses
The range of responses is neither so narrow nor so fully representative of your opinion.
For instance, you left out:
some people love a ruthless winner
I might call your attention to a gnomish New Yorker named Trump, whose "unapologetic domineering" hasn't stopped him from reaping riches or becoming a hit on TV.
Yeah, I hate my TV, too, but the remedy isn't turning it off completely. You leave it off until the right things come on:
HBO's Sopranos and Deadwood - Drama for grown ups. Both explore the dark side of the American myth with intelligence and wit.
HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm - Larry David is the funniest misanthrope alive. Reminiscent of, but better than, Seinfeld.
Comedy Central's Daily Show - The Onion on TV. The pinnacle of televised satire in the US. So good it could drive SNL's writers to suicide.
News World International - Sick of corporate US news produced by and for good little robots? For $5 extra per month, get your TV news from Europe and Canada instead; their journalists are allowed to think. (Hurry: this gem is up for sale thanks to the Vivendi meltdown. Expect it to be bought and ruined some time this year.)
PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers - Catch the remaining appearances by this cultural icon, who, better late than never, has developed a passionately critical outlook on society and government. Watch Moyers make up for lost time spent serving the establishment.
G4 - Guilty pleasure time: Rediscover your misspent youth watching video footage of arcade classics. Ah, you were going to be young forever, weren't you...;-)
I suppose I'll start to panic as soon as apple acknowledges it, rather than take the word of a company trying to sell me anti-virus software.
Huh? There's skepticism, and then there's blind faith. In computer security, events nearly always overtake corporate ability to respond. Better to be proactive, by using peer knowledge and review, than to wait upon Apple to acknowledge problems that will produce bad publicity for it.
Meanwhile, watch what mp3s you click on, my friend.;-)
Unfortunately a muscle condition requires that I use an ergonomic keyboard (or suffer in pain). I really wish this company, or Apple, would make a good, inexpensive ergonomic keyboard.
Same issue, same wish here.
FYI: While it's pretty far from an Apple product, the best ergo keyboard I've yet to try is the Logitech wireless. Beats the MS Natural Keyboard for comfort and key response.
Combine that with an original (late 90s) MS Intellimouse trackball and a Leap chair from Steelcase, and you have a recipe for pain-free computing.
Well put, Tygerfish: the iPod advertises more than one's faith in Apple products. It's a pricey status symbol, a digital pherenome that smells like moolah, affluence, sex.
Heh: there's just one problem about sending such messages in a volatile society, especially when you can't hear what's going on around you. The distance from preening signifier to damn easy pickings is much shorter than many realize.
Put these ingredients together--frontin' hipsters oblivious to their environment, the anger and hunger of the street, and the value of the iPod both as tech and music motherload--and it's probably poised to replace car stereos as the quickest score a thief can make.
We can't allow our public discourse to be beholden to puritan peabrains.
Whether it's John Milton in Areopagitica explaining that the good is only known by examination of the bad, or Justice Felix Frankfurter warning against "burning down the house to roast the pig," the wisest minds have always opposed the dullards' lust to censor.
The culture wars aren't going to abate. Bush and his theologically minded scolds will carry on as our freedoms are constantly curtailed to suit the tastes and limits of the Falwellian mind. Kerry does indeed suck in many ways; but we will not get this kind of reactionary government under him.
Next time you see him on CNN, he'll be atop a camel passing through the eye of a needle.;-)
But good for the old warhorse. Even if he has spent his career polishing corporate boots, it's encouraging to see him finally thinking of the common, rather than the elite, good. Would that he had done so sooner: it is, after all, partly through the efforts of professional apple-polishers like Dobbs that US capitalism has arrived at this rapacious low point, willing finally to sell out even its middle class for a few extra bucks for the top.
Who's the next convert? Ol' Tom "My Other God is a Lexus" Friedman?
Thanks to the economic benefits of imperial war, you can soon return to the jobs that major US corporations regrettably had to ship overseas to boost their CEOs' and shareholders' profits. Those profits simply were not high enough after a decade of record earnings! Now that our economy is unable to provide jobs, we will create jobs by fighting for, er, freedom!
Outsourcing was a painful lesson; we understand. But with our exciting new insourcing, you'll be right back doing what you're used to - writing software, patching Microsoft technology, and answering basic user questions (but politely this time, or we'll have to mercilessly beat you, ha ha!). Heck, we'll even throw in room and board. Can Starbucks give you that?
Now, you're asking: O Mighty and Glorious Leader Bush, what do I have to do to make myself more deserving? At ease, citizen. Remember: the Enemy is everywhere, and he has no respect for frequent backups or the single-OS monopoly that is the foundation of our free society. Keep your shoes shined and your trap shut, and we'll be in touch when the time comes to fight for the CEOs!
Slashdot Mirror
With US journalism (see yesterday's New York Times mea culpa) slowly coming round to admitting that it was duped in the rush to war, we're at a point where that institution's filters can't really be trusted to portray reality. Why not simply put a few of these on the road and let them transmit images back from Iraq?
The American people might be surprised to see the images readily available to the rest of the world of this "liberation."
Really? So independent researchers uncovering security flaws are now to be held up to a higher burden of proof than the corporate authors of those flaws?
Ultimately, you have to believe one or the other. The former has showed us the flaw, while as the multiplication of the exploits demonstrates, the latter has yet to fulfill its commitments to users of the OS. Under these circumstances, it's odd to heap skepticism verging on contempt upon the former; that makes you look like an errand boy for the latter.
For a demonstration, see this thread on MacCentral.
Since, according to Insecure.ws, Apple was notified of this back in February, it's fairly scandalous to be waiting for a solution in May.
Were Apple miraculously able to beat Microsoft and assume its monopoly control of the market, you can be sure that we'd be singing a different, er, iTune.
That's because the chicken-and-egg problem would become clear to people: it's MS's illegally-achieved market dominance that allows it to make bad products and treat consumers terribly with relative impunity. Market forces bounce off the teflon of a monopolist. Market forces are for the monopolist's victims, and hence why they have to make better products. Everyone else still has to compete for scraps when capitalism produces, as it naturally does in the absence of civilizing regulation, its overfed hogs.
Apple could easily become just as "evil" as MS. Give it bullying freedom to dictate standards; wipe the slate free of competitive pressures; allow it to jeopardize data safety the world round; forge cozy relationships between it and whichever political party controls the White House; and soon enough, the taste of Apple would sour as it ceased trying to please customers and adopted an ethos of perpetual shakedown. Steve Jobs would morph into Bill Gates rather quickly.
For the time being, though, we have to deal with the evildoers we have, and it's no sin to back the underdog that tries harder and achieves better. Nor is it a stretch, ethically or intellectually, to wish short and long-term advantages for the underdog for as long as it is up against a rotten goliath.
If $200 at Newegg.com on a Radeon 9800 Pro will do that to your finances, I'm glad we don't have a joint account.
People without moral or practical imagination--the types who have gutted our liberties with the Patriot Act, and led us to invade and torture Iraqis--exemplify the kind of simpleminded sorts who shouldn't be allowed to play M-rated video games.
Or run governments.
You can't have your cake and eat it too I'm afraid.
Cake, eh?
In our system, most businesses fail. Most wealth is horded by the top few percentiles. For the majority, most real incomes have been stagnant since the 1960s. Our communities and workforces have been devastated by two decades of rapacious mergers, corporate accounting scams, and stock inflation. Millions upon millions of Americans have no health care. Millions are so overextended in debt that they're only a couple of paychecks away from the street, even as home foreclosures have hit a 30-year high. Our middle class is contracting while our masters export our jobs overseas. Our armies are bogged down losing an imperial war being fought by economic conscripts. As conspicuous consumption driven by advertising has brought our environment to the brink of calamity, our labor force has been reduced to peeing in cups to keep their Wal-Mart jobs.
But, yes, cigs are $6 a pack in New York. Eat your heart out, socialists!
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne has been recognized by many people with their heads screwed on straight as a benchmark in video-game storytelling.
Yegads! I had fun playing the game, but a collection of tired old pulp cliches will never do as a benchmark in storytelling. The art direction of the comics panels was nice, but personally, I couldn't wait for Max to shut up so that I could play. And the link between all my bullet timing and some thin excuse for a story? Not to bash your favorite game, but a Slim Jim ain't filet mignon.
No, storytelling is such a complex art that cut scenes sandwiched between action shoot-outs can only begin to approach doing it well. Compared to, say, a Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore comic, the average video or computer game is pathetically half-baked: it's the sketch or the crudest outline of a possible idea for a part of a story. Populated by cardboard. Running on a very narrow and linear rail. And more often an annoying gesture used for branding rather than for crafting a world that engages and compels.
But the brilliant exception to this action game dullness is any great RPG. The alchemy that occurs between avatar and player is already a much deeper thing than ever can happen in a shooter. Take Morrowind or Gothic II: here are games teeming with many small interesting narratives whose pieces form a huge, satisfying whole *around* your avatar, which is already invested with so much of your enjoyable developmental sweat.
The presumption in Manalapan is that everyone passing through the rare ethers of this wealthy preserve is a criminal. That is why it is outfitting its police with the technology of presumptive guilt: until you come up clear on the scope, you're just another creep to Manalapan's finest.
This is the M.O. of the Stasi or KGB. That it's happening in America in 2004 isn't terribly surprising, even if it's depressing. Fattened on freedom they imagine will last forever, Americans in recent years have become absurdly lax about their rights--not to mention stupidly ignorant of how they were obtained. We scarcely had any significant applications of privacy in our case law until the major 20th century expansion of civil liberties by the courts in the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to this era, the cops did damn well what they pleased. It's no secret that powerfule forces want to turn back the clock, or that you can turn on talk radio and hear some fool damning "activist judges" for elaborating the Bill of Rights.
Since the 1980s, Americans have learned to do as we are told. We have been trained to pee in a cup as a condition of employment. We have made nary a noise as our health records have been divulged to corporations. We have meekly submitted to increasing searches of our persons and cars (and, in a hideous irony, have even been sold back these humiliations on TV in shows like "COPS"). We have sheepishly allowed the weed of the Patriot Act to take root and spread. And we have even eagerly, in the thousands, volunteered to help John Ashcroft spy on our neighbors. Poll after poll in the past twenty years has shown a majority willing to give up its rights for the latest crusade, whether the "war on drugs" or lately, against terrorism. But what does it profit a nation to win these "wars" when its society ends up resembling the miserable failures of totalitarianism?
As demonstrated by its abusive new surveillance, Manalapan holds passersby in rich contempt. Maybe they're right.
Superb post.
If, as you suggest, the great white fathers of Manalapan wish to drive off minorities, then we can hardly feel sorry if the city becomes a target of litigation. Quite the opposite.
Yep. It's a well-known fact that Lennon and McCartney could only write a quarter of a song each. (Things got even worse when Ringo or George wanted to pitch in. Lots of dealing with fractions...) At the end of their frustrated labors, only half a song sat on the table before them. That's when they broke out the LSD and called in the groupies! And now you know why it's called a "hummer."
Americans of the late 19th century would have understood. Having been beaten into economic submission by the railroad and oil trusts, they howled for reform. That's how we got the laws that occasionally have been used to protect us: citizen action. Unfortunately, the sorry history of US antitrust law since is one of big money obstructing progress and undoing results at nearly every step.
If we're ever to get out from under the yoke of our Microsofts and Wal-Marts, which depress innovation, cripple competition, batter markets and saddle society with a host of costs and social ills, we'll need to resurrect that lost spirit of the engaged American--the citizen who knows his interests and how to fight for them.
The range of responses is neither so narrow nor so fully representative of your opinion.
For instance, you left out:
I might call your attention to a gnomish New Yorker named Trump, whose "unapologetic domineering" hasn't stopped him from reaping riches or becoming a hit on TV.
HBO's Sopranos and Deadwood - Drama for grown ups. Both explore the dark side of the American myth with intelligence and wit.
HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm - Larry David is the funniest misanthrope alive. Reminiscent of, but better than, Seinfeld.
Comedy Central's Daily Show - The Onion on TV. The pinnacle of televised satire in the US. So good it could drive SNL's writers to suicide.
News World International - Sick of corporate US news produced by and for good little robots? For $5 extra per month, get your TV news from Europe and Canada instead; their journalists are allowed to think. (Hurry: this gem is up for sale thanks to the Vivendi meltdown. Expect it to be bought and ruined some time this year.)
PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers - Catch the remaining appearances by this cultural icon, who, better late than never, has developed a passionately critical outlook on society and government. Watch Moyers make up for lost time spent serving the establishment.
G4 - Guilty pleasure time: Rediscover your misspent youth watching video footage of arcade classics. Ah, you were going to be young forever, weren't you... ;-)
...a wet t-shirt contest you can hold in Kansas.
Why not? After all, they'll buy a topheavy, rollover-prone SUV with reduced stopping distance in the belief that it makes them safer.
Huh? There's skepticism, and then there's blind faith. In computer security, events nearly always overtake corporate ability to respond. Better to be proactive, by using peer knowledge and review, than to wait upon Apple to acknowledge problems that will produce bad publicity for it.
Meanwhile, watch what mp3s you click on, my friend. ;-)
Jeez, what're you trying to do here, increase common sense? We don't need that kind of disruption, fella. ;-)
Same issue, same wish here.
FYI: While it's pretty far from an Apple product, the best ergo keyboard I've yet to try is the Logitech wireless. Beats the MS Natural Keyboard for comfort and key response.
Combine that with an original (late 90s) MS Intellimouse trackball and a Leap chair from Steelcase, and you have a recipe for pain-free computing.
Dude, Wal-Mart is to cool as Iraq is to WMDs.
Heh: there's just one problem about sending such messages in a volatile society, especially when you can't hear what's going on around you. The distance from preening signifier to damn easy pickings is much shorter than many realize.
Put these ingredients together--frontin' hipsters oblivious to their environment, the anger and hunger of the street, and the value of the iPod both as tech and music motherload--and it's probably poised to replace car stereos as the quickest score a thief can make.
Whether it's John Milton in Areopagitica explaining that the good is only known by examination of the bad, or Justice Felix Frankfurter warning against "burning down the house to roast the pig," the wisest minds have always opposed the dullards' lust to censor.
The culture wars aren't going to abate. Bush and his theologically minded scolds will carry on as our freedoms are constantly curtailed to suit the tastes and limits of the Falwellian mind. Kerry does indeed suck in many ways; but we will not get this kind of reactionary government under him.
But good for the old warhorse. Even if he has spent his career polishing corporate boots, it's encouraging to see him finally thinking of the common, rather than the elite, good. Would that he had done so sooner: it is, after all, partly through the efforts of professional apple-polishers like Dobbs that US capitalism has arrived at this rapacious low point, willing finally to sell out even its middle class for a few extra bucks for the top.
Who's the next convert? Ol' Tom "My Other God is a Lexus" Friedman?
Thanks to the economic benefits of imperial war, you can soon return to the jobs that major US corporations regrettably had to ship overseas to boost their CEOs' and shareholders' profits. Those profits simply were not high enough after a decade of record earnings! Now that our economy is unable to provide jobs, we will create jobs by fighting for, er, freedom!
Outsourcing was a painful lesson; we understand. But with our exciting new insourcing, you'll be right back doing what you're used to - writing software, patching Microsoft technology, and answering basic user questions (but politely this time, or we'll have to mercilessly beat you, ha ha!). Heck, we'll even throw in room and board. Can Starbucks give you that?
Now, you're asking: O Mighty and Glorious Leader Bush, what do I have to do to make myself more deserving? At ease, citizen. Remember: the Enemy is everywhere, and he has no respect for frequent backups or the single-OS monopoly that is the foundation of our free society. Keep your shoes shined and your trap shut, and we'll be in touch when the time comes to fight for the CEOs!