Having one company knowing that much about a person is somewhat scary, even if the company has a "Do no evil" motto. What Google has on me, it has legitimately through my consent. And contrary to your fears, they don't have "complete control over most the information that flows over the net". They don't have ANY control over what flows over the net. If there were two companies that could claim that it'd be MS and AT&T.
Fears over what is out there on you are pointless, not because what is out there isn't dangerous. But because Google is not alone in having it, and is far more responsible in handling what they have than anyone else. Google isn't Equifax, the NSA, or even AT&T. They don't have your life in a file. At best, the know where you've been, and what you've told them explicitly about yourself. And frankly, I have NO clue why you are even bringing that up in the context of a monopoly on ads.
And as far as "it would have been much worse with Microsoft", there is no PERHAPS about it. Microsoft has proven time and again their inability to act ethically in the bounds of the law when it comes to their monopoly powers. There is absolutely NO reason to expect their behavior to be any differnt this time.
As far as 'prevent them all from getting their hand on Doubleclick'... Yeah that would have been nice. But there is a reason why Doubleclick had a line of people bidding on them, and that isn't going to go away until they go under or are bought up. And guess what, that'll be happening soon one way or another. So my preference is the company that hasn't had a track record of screwing over their customers (and hint, it isn't MS, AT&T, or Yahoo) gets their chance to prove themselves as opposed to the three that already have proven something about their willingness to play dirty to us.
A monopoly is still a monopoly, whether or not you choose to call it a "natural monopoly" or not. Monopolies are not illegal. Abusing the powers being one gives you, is. MS has, I've yet to see Google do so. So while it doesn't matter what the type of monopoly is, it does matter who it is.
Would it really be better if Google wiped Yahoo, MS et al off the online ads map?
Having seen MS and Yahoo's business practices, in a word, YES.
You can say "yes, but MS would do this and that", which would probably turn out to be true, but we have to face the fact that it's hypocrisy to cry foul whenever MS does something and just say "phew, at least it's not Microsoft" when Google does something almost just as bad. Name one company Google has snuffed out of business using their current position as dominate leader in the search engine business. Name one competitor they've screwed over by pulling dirty tricks like MS has. I've seen none of this, have you?
Before Microsoft became the god of the OS world, they pulled every trick in the book to try to kill people in the markets they wanted to be in. They killed the DOS market by tying sales of Windows 3.1 to MSDOS. When that was blocked, they released Win95 under the lie that MSDOS was integrated into it and not actually a separate component (which was later proven a lie when people found out how to replace MSDOS with other versions.) Almost the same thing happened in the IE/Netscape war for dominance.
And when Microsoft entered the system utilities world, they killed of their competitors by outright stealing. Can you honestly say you've seen something like the STAC/Doublespace issue pop up with Google?
There is a very legitimate excuse to say "at least it's not Microsoft", whatever Google's 'evil' has been, it's been outside their business practices towards their competitors. Their mistakes have been working with people the Western world frowns upon. Not trying to channel the spirits of every robber baron that's ever lived. There is no reason to currently think they would turn into the next Microsoft.
And Microsoft have been duly punished.
Should we give another company the chance to do damage the market by abusing monopoly powers?
Since it isn't illegal to be a monopoly, just illegal to abuse the position. And since Google hasn't acted like Microsoft by ever using it's position to wipe out competitors. Yes, lets.
Those who act responsibly should be allowed positions of responsibility. Those who act selfishly, should be barred from those positions.
Microsoft complaining that another company will have a monopoly in an area, or Microsoft expecting AT&T to join in the party.
I mean really, couldn't they at least rely on a more classy monopoly like DeBeers? Or am I missing it and they want their complaint to be made by companies that have been sanctioned themselves for violations of the anti-trust laws?
Perhaps I simply haven't wandered into nirvana, but the typical store bought external drive enclosure around here is a real POS.
I've had more drives fail in external enclosures with cruddy power/controller issues than I even want to remember. While I haven't switched to premade external drives (instead I'm moving towards mini-file servers stuffed with drives), most of the ones I've bumped into at least give the impression of not being cheap plastic cases.
If I weren't drooling over the idea of having a rack of servers which could do more than their primary task of running drive farms, I certainly would go pre-made vs homemade after my experiences.
The Show is responsible for me getting an iPod.
on
Ze End of The Show
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I was lucky enough to be introduced to the Show near its start, it was actually the show that convinced me to get a video iPod as an emergency distraction for a two week family vacation.
Ze's brand of humor really has a way of getting me to smile and the 'projects' that he he came up for the sports racers were often touching in a way. I think my favorites were the ones tied to the whole sagaofRay and not just cause it produced laughs.
I'm going to miss having a daily dose of Ze humor to cap the day with, but since the ORG will still be around, I think I'll be able to manage.
I mean really, a man with Lake Michigan sized armpit sweat stains on his shirt running around and screaming "Developers, Developers, Developers!" and " AHHHHHH!!! I love this company" isn't exactly what most people would consider appetizing.
Which is why Steam is actually superior to just purchasing a physical CD.
I purchased HL1 so long ago I can't even count the number of years. My CD has survived five moves and much abuse. But even if it ever died, I still have a backup of the most current version of it saved to a thumb drive and another copy on a CD. Both of these were made using Steam's built-in backup utility, I don't have to worry about if Valve were suddenly to disappear.
You are avocating wearing just a belt because you think the suspenders will fail. But in reality, Steam gives you the option to wear a belt AND suspenders.
"And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."
Yeah, sweet spots tend to mean going under or over will mean less than optimal performance. I'm not exactly sure you can call it a sweet spot if you are just turning the dial to 11.
Calm down and take your own advice. Using half an iota of thought should have caused you to realize that I obviously missed typing aren't instead of are.
If you weren't so fucking eager to dish out abuse to shore up your personality, you'd have gotten there too.
Don't bother replying back, you've pretty much defined your own willingness to 'play at the big boy table'.
My point is if you want to remain private you have to do private things. Walking about in public, with your face totally exposed is not how you keep private
I think you mistake what the government allows you as privacy as the actual article. Granted, you may be perfectly willing to have your every action tracked when you are in the artificial sanctuary of your own home. But most of us aren't. Furthermore, most of us have enjoyed a certain amount of privacy in public, due to our relative anonymity, which we consider standard.
Certainly, we may voluntarily step out of that anonymity from time to time, but that is our individual choice at that time. The point is, one shouldn't have to be trapped in their home simply to avoid having their actions tracked, recorded, and archived just because someone, somewhere might find that information useful later.
Under the theroy I put forward, he showed up before because we needed his presence to be able to get to the level where we no longer needed it directly.
When I watch parents with children learning to walk, they often are there to help the child stand by holding their arms and giving them the support they need to balance on legs that aren't used to supporting weight. However this stops once the child has learned to walk on their own. Then the parent actively encourages the child to walk on their own, and only intervenes when the child too tired to walk.
Lastly, the parent lets the child deal with it all on their own.
The question then becomes, when you see mankind embroiled in a battle over what you did or didn't say, why not drop by again and clear up a few things?
Devil's Advocate: (irony intended)
What if, the point of it all isn't what happens down here. If this is just elementary school for exsistance, preparing us for all that will come later.
In that case, you don't drop by because you want to force them all to work this stuff out themselves and start to be able to do it because they have finially reached that 'level' as opposed to having to be led around by a burning bush every time.
And while you care about the suffering that occurs, you realize that with an infinity to play with, whatever suffering occurs is trivial to the potential rewards/punishments.
When will you people learn that the ability to wave a stick around offers endless gameplay possibilities?!? You can pretend it's a sword or a bat or a racket or a longer stick or some bat/sword hybrid. A bword, if you will.
While I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, please don't fall into the fallacy of assuming that just because you can hear the droning of morons with loud opinions, we still have Free Speech. Unfortunately, many of the morons are droning on because they want to drown out those who actually need it.
A room full of monkeys is not Shakespeare, no matter how big the room.
Looks like he lost his temper (and his sense) again. His personality's a lot like Ballmer's, he just can't fling chairs as far.
What many people do not realize is that Ballmer is actually a costume for Gates, who wears it when he feels he is exceptionally out of control. Any time you see the two of them together, Ballmer or Gates is actually a puppet designed by the Henson Co.
Jim Henson actually was assassinated when he threatened to reveal these secrets. True story.
I think that is the point. At spots in the game you are pitched against opponents who are either simply insanely ramped up compared to everything you've been fighting so far. While the remainder of the game is filled by folk who are too busy looking at their navel to fight.
That is a valid complaint, I don't mind difficulty or challenging scenarios where I have to play over and over again before winning, but the leadup to these events should give some sort of 'training' in regards to a solution to the problem.
Additionally, it's fairly frustrating when the only challenge something provides isn't due to the actual difficulty of the task but the fact that the game cheats to prevent what would normally be success from occuring.
There are very, very, few people on this Earth who prefer to think of themselves or their actions as 'evil'. And thus, most 'evil' is done under the belief that the action is either justified, or right.
Anyone with even a basic introduction will have bumped into the idea of "cognitive dissonance", or that our subconscious will manipulate our view of the world, ourselves, and our actions in order to reduce or minimize any internal conflict over them. It is fairly simple to understand therefore, that most 'evil' actions are committed by people who themselves believe they are doing 'good'.
I don't think there is any question that many of the actions Microsoft has taken in the past have been questionable to people on the outside. However those on the inside of the company guided those same actions to come to pass because they believed the actions were justified, necessary, and right.
This is the largest, and most scary, problem with corporations, or any other large organization, in general. The ability of people to 'group think' themselves into what seem to be horribly misguided lines of thought. And the tendency to continue down that slope till something outside of the group forces them to stop and re-evaluate the situation.
The reason people hate Microsoft is because even when these actions are rubbed it's face, when governments themselves come up and say "This is not acceptable, do not do this.", Microsoft seems completely unphased. Microsoft has become a company that, to those who follow it's actions, seems no longer to be simply 'blundering' into misconduct but actively looking for it.
A. It assumes that the key will be the last possible one in the key space. B. It assumes that the only method used will be 'pure' brute force.
A. is almost certainly not true. And while it might be optimistic, it's quite possible that it'll be discovered that due to some brain dead maneuver the keys themselves have been generated weakly in a fashion where all 128 bits don't really come into play.
B. might be true for now, but I refuse to believe that there aren't already people out there working on more elegant methods of brute forcing the keys which would allow the space to be narrowed down to specific areas 'quickly'. I also refuse to believe there isn't one.
Sure, but the whole point is that you can't access the keys the "trusted" mainboard manufacturers encode into the hardware. You can program the emulator with any key you want, but it won't be one of the "trusted" keys. The keys are stored and used entirely within a single IC; the only way to extract one would be, in theory, to examine the IC directly (with an STM, for example), or somehow gain access to the master copy held by the manufacturer (and risk violating trade-secret laws).
You forget the third, possibly not completely possible right now, but certainly concievable in the near future, option of obtaining the key. Brute force.
It wasn't that long ago (in the timeframe of video formats) that RC5-56 was considered 'secure' enough. It might not be around the corner, but there is certainly the possibility that CPU power could continue to ramp up quickly enough that the keys themselves can be brute forced through a botnet version of distributed.net. And once that cat is out of the bag, it'll be out forever.
Slashdot Mirror
Fears over what is out there on you are pointless, not because what is out there isn't dangerous. But because Google is not alone in having it, and is far more responsible in handling what they have than anyone else. Google isn't Equifax, the NSA, or even AT&T. They don't have your life in a file. At best, the know where you've been, and what you've told them explicitly about yourself. And frankly, I have NO clue why you are even bringing that up in the context of a monopoly on ads.
And as far as "it would have been much worse with Microsoft", there is no PERHAPS about it. Microsoft has proven time and again their inability to act ethically in the bounds of the law when it comes to their monopoly powers. There is absolutely NO reason to expect their behavior to be any differnt this time.
As far as 'prevent them all from getting their hand on Doubleclick'... Yeah that would have been nice. But there is a reason why Doubleclick had a line of people bidding on them, and that isn't going to go away until they go under or are bought up. And guess what, that'll be happening soon one way or another. So my preference is the company that hasn't had a track record of screwing over their customers (and hint, it isn't MS, AT&T, or Yahoo) gets their chance to prove themselves as opposed to the three that already have proven something about their willingness to play dirty to us.
Having seen MS and Yahoo's business practices, in a word, YES. You can say "yes, but MS would do this and that", which would probably turn out to be true, but we have to face the fact that it's hypocrisy to cry foul whenever MS does something and just say "phew, at least it's not Microsoft" when Google does something almost just as bad. Name one company Google has snuffed out of business using their current position as dominate leader in the search engine business. Name one competitor they've screwed over by pulling dirty tricks like MS has. I've seen none of this, have you?
Before Microsoft became the god of the OS world, they pulled every trick in the book to try to kill people in the markets they wanted to be in. They killed the DOS market by tying sales of Windows 3.1 to MSDOS. When that was blocked, they released Win95 under the lie that MSDOS was integrated into it and not actually a separate component (which was later proven a lie when people found out how to replace MSDOS with other versions.) Almost the same thing happened in the IE/Netscape war for dominance.
And when Microsoft entered the system utilities world, they killed of their competitors by outright stealing. Can you honestly say you've seen something like the STAC/Doublespace issue pop up with Google?
There is a very legitimate excuse to say "at least it's not Microsoft", whatever Google's 'evil' has been, it's been outside their business practices towards their competitors. Their mistakes have been working with people the Western world frowns upon. Not trying to channel the spirits of every robber baron that's ever lived. There is no reason to currently think they would turn into the next Microsoft.
Since it isn't illegal to be a monopoly, just illegal to abuse the position. And since Google hasn't acted like Microsoft by ever using it's position to wipe out competitors. Yes, lets.
Those who act responsibly should be allowed positions of responsibility. Those who act selfishly, should be barred from those positions.
Microsoft complaining that another company will have a monopoly in an area, or Microsoft expecting AT&T to join in the party.
I mean really, couldn't they at least rely on a more classy monopoly like DeBeers? Or am I missing it and they want their complaint to be made by companies that have been sanctioned themselves for violations of the anti-trust laws?
Perhaps I simply haven't wandered into nirvana, but the typical store bought external drive enclosure around here is a real POS.
I've had more drives fail in external enclosures with cruddy power/controller issues than I even want to remember. While I haven't switched to premade external drives (instead I'm moving towards mini-file servers stuffed with drives), most of the ones I've bumped into at least give the impression of not being cheap plastic cases.
If I weren't drooling over the idea of having a rack of servers which could do more than their primary task of running drive farms, I certainly would go pre-made vs homemade after my experiences.
I was lucky enough to be introduced to the Show near its start, it was actually the show that convinced me to get a video iPod as an emergency distraction for a two week family vacation.
Ze's brand of humor really has a way of getting me to smile and the 'projects' that he he came up for the sports racers were often touching in a way. I think my favorites were the ones tied to the whole saga of Ray and not just cause it produced laughs.
I'm going to miss having a daily dose of Ze humor to cap the day with, but since the ORG will still be around, I think I'll be able to manage.
This guy was the winner, Soybuddha. Not sure which links you were refering to, but most of the info is in the Wiki pages rather than the front page.
I mean really, a man with Lake Michigan sized armpit sweat stains on his shirt running around and screaming "Developers, Developers, Developers!" and " AHHHHHH!!! I love this company" isn't exactly what most people would consider appetizing.
Which is why Steam is actually superior to just purchasing a physical CD.
I purchased HL1 so long ago I can't even count the number of years. My CD has survived five moves and much abuse. But even if it ever died, I still have a backup of the most current version of it saved to a thumb drive and another copy on a CD. Both of these were made using Steam's built-in backup utility, I don't have to worry about if Valve were suddenly to disappear.
You are avocating wearing just a belt because you think the suspenders will fail. But in reality, Steam gives you the option to wear a belt AND suspenders.
... or we read up about it on Wikipedia.
Yeah, sweet spots tend to mean going under or over will mean less than optimal performance. I'm not exactly sure you can call it a sweet spot if you are just turning the dial to 11.
Calm down and take your own advice. Using half an iota of thought should have caused you to realize that I obviously missed typing aren't instead of are.
If you weren't so fucking eager to dish out abuse to shore up your personality, you'd have gotten there too.
Don't bother replying back, you've pretty much defined your own willingness to 'play at the big boy table'.
I think you mistake what the government allows you as privacy as the actual article. Granted, you may be perfectly willing to have your every action tracked when you are in the artificial sanctuary of your own home. But most of us aren't. Furthermore, most of us have enjoyed a certain amount of privacy in public, due to our relative anonymity, which we consider standard.
Certainly, we may voluntarily step out of that anonymity from time to time, but that is our individual choice at that time. The point is, one shouldn't have to be trapped in their home simply to avoid having their actions tracked, recorded, and archived just because someone, somewhere might find that information useful later.
Under the theroy I put forward, he showed up before because we needed his presence to be able to get to the level where we no longer needed it directly. When I watch parents with children learning to walk, they often are there to help the child stand by holding their arms and giving them the support they need to balance on legs that aren't used to supporting weight. However this stops once the child has learned to walk on their own. Then the parent actively encourages the child to walk on their own, and only intervenes when the child too tired to walk. Lastly, the parent lets the child deal with it all on their own.
Devil's Advocate: (irony intended)
What if, the point of it all isn't what happens down here. If this is just elementary school for exsistance, preparing us for all that will come later.
In that case, you don't drop by because you want to force them all to work this stuff out themselves and start to be able to do it because they have finially reached that 'level' as opposed to having to be led around by a burning bush every time.
And while you care about the suffering that occurs, you realize that with an infinity to play with, whatever suffering occurs is trivial to the potential rewards/punishments.
Sword-chucks!
Just saying...
While I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, please don't fall into the fallacy of assuming that just because you can hear the droning of morons with loud opinions, we still have Free Speech. Unfortunately, many of the morons are droning on because they want to drown out those who actually need it.
A room full of monkeys is not Shakespeare, no matter how big the room.
Dude, I'm in your water cooler, stealing your secrets!
and so the world of TRON was born...
What many people do not realize is that Ballmer is actually a costume for Gates, who wears it when he feels he is exceptionally out of control. Any time you see the two of them together, Ballmer or Gates is actually a puppet designed by the Henson Co.
Jim Henson actually was assassinated when he threatened to reveal these secrets. True story.
I think that is the point. At spots in the game you are pitched against opponents who are either simply insanely ramped up compared to everything you've been fighting so far. While the remainder of the game is filled by folk who are too busy looking at their navel to fight.
That is a valid complaint, I don't mind difficulty or challenging scenarios where I have to play over and over again before winning, but the leadup to these events should give some sort of 'training' in regards to a solution to the problem.
Additionally, it's fairly frustrating when the only challenge something provides isn't due to the actual difficulty of the task but the fact that the game cheats to prevent what would normally be success from occuring.
There are very, very, few people on this Earth who prefer to think of themselves or their actions as 'evil'. And thus, most 'evil' is done under the belief that the action is either justified, or right.
Anyone with even a basic introduction will have bumped into the idea of "cognitive dissonance", or that our subconscious will manipulate our view of the world, ourselves, and our actions in order to reduce or minimize any internal conflict over them. It is fairly simple to understand therefore, that most 'evil' actions are committed by people who themselves believe they are doing 'good'.
I don't think there is any question that many of the actions Microsoft has taken in the past have been questionable to people on the outside. However those on the inside of the company guided those same actions to come to pass because they believed the actions were justified, necessary, and right.
This is the largest, and most scary, problem with corporations, or any other large organization, in general. The ability of people to 'group think' themselves into what seem to be horribly misguided lines of thought. And the tendency to continue down that slope till something outside of the group forces them to stop and re-evaluate the situation.
The reason people hate Microsoft is because even when these actions are rubbed it's face, when governments themselves come up and say "This is not acceptable, do not do this.", Microsoft seems completely unphased. Microsoft has become a company that, to those who follow it's actions, seems no longer to be simply 'blundering' into misconduct but actively looking for it.
With a chair embedded in the torso.
The problem with this assumption is twofold.
A. It assumes that the key will be the last possible one in the key space.
B. It assumes that the only method used will be 'pure' brute force.
A. is almost certainly not true. And while it might be optimistic, it's quite possible that it'll be discovered that due to some brain dead maneuver the keys themselves have been generated weakly in a fashion where all 128 bits don't really come into play.
B. might be true for now, but I refuse to believe that there aren't already people out there working on more elegant methods of brute forcing the keys which would allow the space to be narrowed down to specific areas 'quickly'. I also refuse to believe there isn't one.
You forget the third, possibly not completely possible right now, but certainly concievable in the near future, option of obtaining the key. Brute force.
It wasn't that long ago (in the timeframe of video formats) that RC5-56 was considered 'secure' enough. It might not be around the corner, but there is certainly the possibility that CPU power could continue to ramp up quickly enough that the keys themselves can be brute forced through a botnet version of distributed.net. And once that cat is out of the bag, it'll be out forever.