Where's the sense in offering an open platform and then sending out cease-and-desist letters to people who modify it?
And that, my lost-carrier friend, is the existential question. Why would Google do that?
Consensus is that Google has a slightly different meaning for the word "open". They support AOSP, which means that the Android core OS is open in the more-or-less conventional sense. AOSP is, after all the beginning of awesome mod roms like Cyanogenmod. But Google's sense of openness ends where their own service software (like Maps, or Market) starts. Those are almost as closed as Office for Microsoft. That's what the C&D was about: distributing Google Apps with the Cyanogenmod package. So GApps have been unbundled from the mod rom and you download those as a separate rom from heaven-only-knows-where. But it works. Certainly having a tool like ROM Manager helps locate and install all the pieces.
I would never have spent my money and mindshare on an Android phone if the architecture and most of the culture weren't modding-friendly. I don't need a mobile phone, but if I'm buying an ultraportable computer I'm buying one I can hack around on.
Signed, idontgno, a happy CM-7.1.0RC1-BravoC user.
Yeah. As I mentioned in another comment, the primary tactical use of these abandoned cars is as cover in a firefight... which is a bad idea, since the nuclear powerplants explode with the force of a mini-nuke warhead when the car is damaged enough.
In fact, when trapped in a firefight in a roadway or junkyard full of wrecked cars, the correct impulse is to haul ass out of the way, not stand and fight; you might survive getting shot in the back a few times (it is a game, after all), but when the cars around you start cooking off in atomic mushroom clouds, you will die.
Of course, these thorium-powered cars would never do that...
especially the amazing (and potentially deadly) nuclear explosion caused when you breach the containment on a 200-year-old nuclear engine in a derelict car.
I have no idea how late-21st-century society in the Fallout reality could have gotten by with car accidents with nuclear detonations instead of gasoline fires.
I learned very early on no to take cover near a car with an engine during a firefight. I swear some of the NPCs choose to shoot up the car to kill you with the explosion.
OTOH, starting a chain reaction in a highway crowded bumper-to-bumper with abandoned cars is awesome.
Ow. My eyes water at the thought. If the BOM of that clone was anything like that of the original 5150 (and they usually were), the motherboard had as many as 100 DIP ICs.
That's a metric butt-ton of solder wick. I'd be crosseyed and incoherent after desoldering and resoldering over 1600 through-hole pads. And with my luck, I'd damage at least one of the ICs in the process, probably one of the harder-to-come by chips (like the 8288 bus controller), and maybe one or more of the solder pads too.
Good work on that, even if it wound up being completely unneeded.
I'm just waiting for some clever thing at the Yard to see pictures of rioters in Guy Fawkes masks and uncover the sinister conspiracy between the rioters and Anonymous.
It'll turn out that hundreds of shops and homes were looted and burnt out for the lulz.
I might be mistaken, but thsi is still in the beta phase...
This is Google, the legendary home of the eternal beta. I suspect there's no internal motivation to fix this. The only thing that seems to work is shame. Thank God for that.
.and needs to tie into real government offices where they can backup your claims of using drivers license
I think tying G+ bureaucracy to honest-to-Satan government bureaucracy is the worst possible idea. At a minimum, it completely disregards the fact that G+ is international, and there's absolutely no chance Google's going to negotiate verification access to personally identifiable information with every government in the world, at every conceivable level of bureaucratic granularity responsible for every conceivable kind of personal identification.
More importantly, and a distinction lost in most of these discussions, this is solving the wrong problem. The problem is not "how do I prove my identity to G+". The problem is "why do I even have to use a government-mediated identity for an on-line avatar?" And the answer is "You don't."
The "real identity" mania in the social web is pointless for any purpose that serves the actual needs and desires of the users.
Acknowledging that I read that story 25 years ago, I'll admit I didn't see the point of my original question and the logical conclusion you arrive at: The only real power in that world was the UN-analogue that enforced the treaty. The rest of it was, to not quite coin a phrase, "sovereignty theater".
What can I say? I was a teenager. I hadn't realized yet to look for the real state of things behind the visible ones.
"A Short History of World War LXXVIII" by Roy Prosterman: Wars among nations are simple deathmatches between unmanned robotic war machines fought on the moon, broadcast world-wide. The combatant whose warbot is the last one standing is the party (nation, coalition, etc) that wins. Outcomes are binding; the treaty empowering this is enforced by a neutral standing army capable of quickly defeating any nation that defies this and charged with personally (and capitally) punishing the leadership of any party that violates the treaty.
An amusing and improbable little short story. I always wondered what would happen if you declared war on the supra-national organization enforcing the treaty.
this is good, bringing a little more green-ish stuff to the world
I really hope so, as opposed to being shipped off to some unfortunate third-world scrapper who'll slowly poison dozens of children in outdoor sweatshops.
For all the visibility this will have, I expect that Apple will try to be careful to avoid that. But in the past, many "computer recycling" offers have cut out the hard parts and passed the savings on to themselves.
Far, far too many of the android and Apple products are going for glitz and glamour and eschewing the basics of what a phone should be. That is to say, a phone. In addition, they get crap battery life.
Well, it kinda depends. For me, an android isn't a phone with crap battery life. It's an ultraportable computer with good battery life and telephony tossed in for free.
Telephony is almost useless to me, since all you can do with it is talk to people, and that's no fun. But computing on the go... oh yeah, that's where it's at.
But if you're in the place of "gotta have a phone, can't be cut off from the crowd", yeah, smartphones are neither smart nor phone.
BTW, in my case also, glitz is irrelevant. It's an HTC Desire, possibly the least glitzy android phone ever made with adequate capability. So, the glitz argument isn't universal either.
The lifespans of Walt Disney and Sonny Bono, multiplied together.
Plus infinity.
Actually, assuming this is a registered Community Design right, 25 years after registration. But that's effectively infinite in terms of design fashion.
they (Cooley) are also the ones who make the rating system in the first place. Thus, the issue, and why people are calling BS on cooley (and quite appropriately so).
From TFA:
Meanwhile, it appears that some others were similarly flabbergasted by Cooley Law presenting itself as the 2nd highest ranked law school
What sucks more than making up your own popularity contest? Losing it.
That's kind of sad. How bad must you suck if you can't self-delude your way into the top slot?
Maybe this "law school" is trying to get some "we try harder" marketing buzz.
BTW, please don't sue me, Cooley. I wouldn't want you to embarrass yourself further.
In the interests of complete clarity, yes, the putz in question was "in" Omaha... trying to catch a departing flight to his home city... in Kentucky.
If you want to fault Omaha, you can blame them for not catching and deporting idiots fast enough. But I suspect Omaha isn't alone in that. Just look at Washington!
Free speech is the ability for you state your beliefs without having to worry about the government jailing you for saying it. Nothing about doing it anonymously
Interesting perspective. Interesting, but wrong. Provably wrong in the context of anonymous political speech, under the authority of the Supreme Court of the United States:
Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. See generally J. S. Mill, On Liberty, in On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, 3-4 (R. McCallum ed. 1947). It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation--and their ideas from suppression--at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.
Wrong, really, on two levels: anonymity can be protected speech, and the First Amendment's effects can be beyond pure restraint of State Force ("to protect...unpopular ideas from suppression at the hand of an intolerant society").
I've noticed that to a degree with Fallout 3 GOTY. Never played it before, because I'm not a console gamer and don't generally buy PC games first-run either. My kids (adult/near-adult sons) played it a lot (regular FO3 + DLC and FO New Vegas) on their 360s, and it was always fun to watch, so I was jazzed to buy the GOTY package off of Steam.
I ran into a problem where the game would freeze. A lot. Seemed to be repeatably related to situation or scene content. There were places I could not go unless I left and approached at another time, or from a different angle, or without companions... or something.
Turns out that the PC version of FO3 doesn't like PCs with more than dual cores. My Phenom II quad was apparently too new for the way the game was written. Thankfully, there was a.INI file change you could make that would restrict the game to at most two cores, and it's been happy since.
The point? Bethesda's buggy software sometimes comes about because hardware technology advances beyond the game's original expectations.
Of course, this won't be the case for Skyrim. Those bugs will be genuine bugs. Let's hope they're not too bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Where's the sense in offering an open platform and then sending out cease-and-desist letters to people who modify it?
And that, my lost-carrier friend, is the existential question. Why would Google do that?
Consensus is that Google has a slightly different meaning for the word "open". They support AOSP, which means that the Android core OS is open in the more-or-less conventional sense. AOSP is, after all the beginning of awesome mod roms like Cyanogenmod. But Google's sense of openness ends where their own service software (like Maps, or Market) starts. Those are almost as closed as Office for Microsoft. That's what the C&D was about: distributing Google Apps with the Cyanogenmod package. So GApps have been unbundled from the mod rom and you download those as a separate rom from heaven-only-knows-where. But it works. Certainly having a tool like ROM Manager helps locate and install all the pieces.
I would never have spent my money and mindshare on an Android phone if the architecture and most of the culture weren't modding-friendly. I don't need a mobile phone, but if I'm buying an ultraportable computer I'm buying one I can hack around on.
Signed,
idontgno, a happy CM-7.1.0RC1-BravoC user.
It's a mew point, you insensate Claud!
Some survivors of Nivida would like to speak to you...
Yeah. As I mentioned in another comment, the primary tactical use of these abandoned cars is as cover in a firefight... which is a bad idea, since the nuclear powerplants explode with the force of a mini-nuke warhead when the car is damaged enough.
In fact, when trapped in a firefight in a roadway or junkyard full of wrecked cars, the correct impulse is to haul ass out of the way, not stand and fight; you might survive getting shot in the back a few times (it is a game, after all), but when the cars around you start cooking off in atomic mushroom clouds, you will die.
Of course, these thorium-powered cars would never do that...
I managed to mis-parse that and visualized a primitive shark with shotgun on its head. Pre-laser frikkin' shark, if you will.
I just couldn't figure out why you'd work Microsoft into the situation.
especially the amazing (and potentially deadly) nuclear explosion caused when you breach the containment on a 200-year-old nuclear engine in a derelict car.
I have no idea how late-21st-century society in the Fallout reality could have gotten by with car accidents with nuclear detonations instead of gasoline fires.
I learned very early on no to take cover near a car with an engine during a firefight. I swear some of the NPCs choose to shoot up the car to kill you with the explosion.
OTOH, starting a chain reaction in a highway crowded bumper-to-bumper with abandoned cars is awesome.
Ow. My eyes water at the thought. If the BOM of that clone was anything like that of the original 5150 (and they usually were), the motherboard had as many as 100 DIP ICs.
That's a metric butt-ton of solder wick. I'd be crosseyed and incoherent after desoldering and resoldering over 1600 through-hole pads. And with my luck, I'd damage at least one of the ICs in the process, probably one of the harder-to-come by chips (like the 8288 bus controller), and maybe one or more of the solder pads too.
Good work on that, even if it wound up being completely unneeded.
I'm just waiting for some clever thing at the Yard to see pictures of rioters in Guy Fawkes masks and uncover the sinister conspiracy between the rioters and Anonymous.
It'll turn out that hundreds of shops and homes were looted and burnt out for the lulz.
We get it, GIMP makes you... a serial killer.
FTFY.
I might be mistaken, but thsi is still in the beta phase...
This is Google, the legendary home of the eternal beta. I suspect there's no internal motivation to fix this. The only thing that seems to work is shame. Thank God for that.
I think tying G+ bureaucracy to honest-to-Satan government bureaucracy is the worst possible idea. At a minimum, it completely disregards the fact that G+ is international, and there's absolutely no chance Google's going to negotiate verification access to personally identifiable information with every government in the world, at every conceivable level of bureaucratic granularity responsible for every conceivable kind of personal identification.
More importantly, and a distinction lost in most of these discussions, this is solving the wrong problem. The problem is not "how do I prove my identity to G+". The problem is "why do I even have to use a government-mediated identity for an on-line avatar?" And the answer is "You don't."
The "real identity" mania in the social web is pointless for any purpose that serves the actual needs and desires of the users.
Acknowledging that I read that story 25 years ago, I'll admit I didn't see the point of my original question and the logical conclusion you arrive at: The only real power in that world was the UN-analogue that enforced the treaty. The rest of it was, to not quite coin a phrase, "sovereignty theater".
What can I say? I was a teenager. I hadn't realized yet to look for the real state of things behind the visible ones.
"A Short History of World War LXXVIII" by Roy Prosterman: Wars among nations are simple deathmatches between unmanned robotic war machines fought on the moon, broadcast world-wide. The combatant whose warbot is the last one standing is the party (nation, coalition, etc) that wins. Outcomes are binding; the treaty empowering this is enforced by a neutral standing army capable of quickly defeating any nation that defies this and charged with personally (and capitally) punishing the leadership of any party that violates the treaty.
An amusing and improbable little short story. I always wondered what would happen if you declared war on the supra-national organization enforcing the treaty.
Damn. I was hoping I could get some of those sweet, sweet mentats.
this is good, bringing a little more green-ish stuff to the world
I really hope so, as opposed to being shipped off to some unfortunate third-world scrapper who'll slowly poison dozens of children in outdoor sweatshops.
For all the visibility this will have, I expect that Apple will try to be careful to avoid that. But in the past, many "computer recycling" offers have cut out the hard parts and passed the savings on to themselves.
Far, far too many of the android and Apple products are going for glitz and glamour and eschewing the basics of what a phone should be. That is to say, a phone. In addition, they get crap battery life.
Well, it kinda depends. For me, an android isn't a phone with crap battery life. It's an ultraportable computer with good battery life and telephony tossed in for free.
Telephony is almost useless to me, since all you can do with it is talk to people, and that's no fun. But computing on the go... oh yeah, that's where it's at.
But if you're in the place of "gotta have a phone, can't be cut off from the crowd", yeah, smartphones are neither smart nor phone.
BTW, in my case also, glitz is irrelevant. It's an HTC Desire, possibly the least glitzy android phone ever made with adequate capability. So, the glitz argument isn't universal either.
Wait, what? Did Oracle install something outside? Damn you, Ellison, damn you to hell!
The lifespans of Walt Disney and Sonny Bono, multiplied together.
Plus infinity.
Actually, assuming this is a registered Community Design right, 25 years after registration. But that's effectively infinite in terms of design fashion.
From parent comment:
they (Cooley) are also the ones who make the rating system in the first place. Thus, the issue, and why people are calling BS on cooley (and quite appropriately so).
From TFA:
Meanwhile, it appears that some others were similarly flabbergasted by Cooley Law presenting itself as the 2nd highest ranked law school
What sucks more than making up your own popularity contest? Losing it.
That's kind of sad. How bad must you suck if you can't self-delude your way into the top slot?
Maybe this "law school" is trying to get some "we try harder" marketing buzz.
BTW, please don't sue me, Cooley. I wouldn't want you to embarrass yourself further.
Never, ever, EVER bet against Rush. Ever.
Steven Hawking, I'm looking at you.
In the interests of complete clarity, yes, the putz in question was "in" Omaha... trying to catch a departing flight to his home city... in Kentucky.
If you want to fault Omaha, you can blame them for not catching and deporting idiots fast enough. But I suspect Omaha isn't alone in that. Just look at Washington!
our GM friends was using her BB to try and scan QR codes
You have genetically-modified friends? That may explain the continued use of a Blackberry.
Since when did Slashdot become "news for nerds with room temperature IQs?"
I dunno, when did you join?
I kid, I kid.
Nice troll, "Styopa". If anonymity is an information age commodity, you must extend the definition of the information age into the 18th Century
Or are you really that ignorant of political history? It would be astounding if your obtuseness were genuine.
Free speech is the ability for you state your beliefs without having to worry about the government jailing you for saying it. Nothing about doing it anonymously
Interesting perspective. Interesting, but wrong. Provably wrong in the context of anonymous political speech, under the authority of the Supreme Court of the United States:
-- McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n (93-986), 514 U.S. 334 (1995).
Wrong, really, on two levels: anonymity can be protected speech, and the First Amendment's effects can be beyond pure restraint of State Force ("to protect...unpopular ideas from suppression at the hand of an intolerant society").
Bethesda also makes very buggy games.
I've noticed that to a degree with Fallout 3 GOTY. Never played it before, because I'm not a console gamer and don't generally buy PC games first-run either. My kids (adult/near-adult sons) played it a lot (regular FO3 + DLC and FO New Vegas) on their 360s, and it was always fun to watch, so I was jazzed to buy the GOTY package off of Steam.
I ran into a problem where the game would freeze. A lot. Seemed to be repeatably related to situation or scene content. There were places I could not go unless I left and approached at another time, or from a different angle, or without companions... or something.
Turns out that the PC version of FO3 doesn't like PCs with more than dual cores. My Phenom II quad was apparently too new for the way the game was written. Thankfully, there was a .INI file change you could make that would restrict the game to at most two cores, and it's been happy since.
The point? Bethesda's buggy software sometimes comes about because hardware technology advances beyond the game's original expectations.
Of course, this won't be the case for Skyrim. Those bugs will be genuine bugs. Let's hope they're not too bad.