"... equal opportunity to our fellows at each set of choices in life, and let them make of it both what they may, and what they are capable of. "
equal opportunity is bullshit, everyone gets stuck in the places their potential puts them. Economic equality where everyone has economic security for basics (food, water, electricity, housing) is the only way out of a hellish society, anything luxurious they can go ahead and compete for, but if we want a peaceful world we have to stop using free market principles the divide between rich and poor will get so great something will snap eventually.
It's not "all about the plot", there are only a finite amount of *interesting* plots and conflicts in movies. If you watch movies you know that the more you've watch the more predictable movies because there are only so many interesting plots that people will go to pay and see.
Some movies are about the plots, others are the furthest thing from it. Look at thenew star wars episodes 1,2 and 3. All those movies I thought sucked compared to the originals (except maybe starwars "episode 4", they still dont hold a candle to Empire strikes back and return of the jedi).
A good movie is when all the pieces of you vision come together in a cohesive way and you have a good editor and know what to cut and how to make a movie flow emotionally frome one frame to the next. I think the best movies that have done this 1) A beautiful mind 2) Braveheart, 3) Gladiator. These movies were well directed and had a good sense of emotional flow from one scene to the next.
Most movies are about making people feel something when they are watching it and you have to speak to some aspect of them to get them interested enough to pay. I mean think about gladiator for instance, a movie about a roman general who's betrayed, has his wife and child killed and he wants to exact revenge. It's all in the execution, someone could have fucked that plot by not getting the right actors, the right sets, the right editors, etc. It's all in the execution of an idea ultimately, sometimes things are about the ideas but overall its more about the execution of what works and what doesn't.
... Microsoft gets over their stupid anti-piracy tactics in regards to service packs. Ever since XP1 Ms has made it more time consuming and really not worth it for anyone who's pirated XP to upgrade to XP2. Ever since "genuine advantage" and the other bs that tries to check to see if your windows is "authentic".
"There are a few other in-game usability annoyances, but on the whole, civ 4 is much more playable on release then civ 3 ever was, even after all of its patches and expansion packs."
What are you talking about? I played Civ 3 all the time from the very first release, it mostly had minor bugs, I never had any problems with it even with 1.0. It never crashed, I've had Civ 4 crash to desktop once a game almost and it's always right when a wonder building goes up.
"If you use violence on the child, he relieves this by a process called overjustification, and ends up devaluing the consequences of his behavior, and will continue doing it once you walk away. If you stop the behavior mildly, then the child will be forced to reevaluate his own internal mindset, and behaviorally change will result. Some of you are already saying "That will not work on a 5 year old," but it does. Children learn these things incredibly early on."
I'm sorry but I have to call this person on this. This "one size fits all" is nonsense, every child is *unique* and I've seen enough kids to know that each and every one of them has a different "default" response to certain situations and in certain kids with very strong willed traits there is nothing you can do to turn it off. I've seen kids who would threaten their parents with destroying stuff in the house if they didn't get their way and with time and overtired parents many parents simply don't want their situation ti get worse then it already is, not to mention the time constraints, being tired from work, and having other children.
No amount of knowledge or your special tactics will stop a child with who most people would call stubborn. Every child has a unique set of traits which determines their basic fundamental nature in how they respond when their will and actions are 'infringed upon' by their parents.
"Explains the rational behind music and software downloads perfectly, doesn't it? Little chance of getting caught, you get something you want, and it's easy to do."
That it does but software and music are entirely different to physical products, there is no limit to the supply of digital product, it is limitless, it has a practically supernatural quality to it that it has effectively zero cost to reproduce, whereas physical products do not. They exist in two different worlds. You could even make the argument that charging each individual person for access to songs is in fact theft because of the fact that you have near zero reproduction cost and hence can price gouge the hell out of you customers, the only limit to your profits is population size of the market with mass market affordable stuff like music.
First of all you'll be lucky to survive on just games, you'd need to carry other products as well to draw in othe types of customers. Next is you'll be competing with wal-mart and past titles when after 3-6 months the prices drop on near used prices or below used prices (19-25 bucks from 50-60) for fairly new titles.
Your next problems is increasing consumer savvy and users who sell their old games on ebay or other such sites for maximum profit. I wouldn't think a game store is a good idea unless you have lots of money already and know how to extract profits.
I really think this is misdirected, kids will find interesting and pursue what the *genuinely find* interesting. I think "Targetting" things for kids is kinda stupid, they will have a natural inclination towards figuring something out that the think is interesting or they wont.
"Put it to you this way. Would you rather have an android with very little real-world experience or another human being fighting side-by-side with you? I'm sorry, but I don't want some software bug or glitch to slug me with a 50 cal round. To fucking risky IMHO."
If the android has the aim of a typical FPS bot and it can intelligently distinguish between friend and foe and can see much further then a human being then, sign me up! In this respect machines are much more accurate then a human being could possibly ever be. The only downside is EMP weaponry would knock bot friends out without suitable shielding and protective mechanisms.
"I read an interesting comment the other day - have you ever seen a review site that gives reviews lower than 6 out of 10? Not much of a scale if the mean is 7.5 and data never appears below that point!"
Yeah but the same thing happens in other "marking" or "rating" systems, take education system where I live in Canada for instance, for some reason they have a out of 100 percent system yet everyone who passes makes %50 or above, and the only meaningful marks are from between 60 and 100, the rest of the 60 marks out of the 100 are pretty much useless, things should be out of 5 / 50 rather then out of 10 because we seem to love to focus on the upper 5 (or 50) half of out of 10 (or 100 if out of 100) it seems pretty inconsistent to me as well and I have no idea why this is as it must be some psychological artifact for wanting to do things in sets or multiples of 10, but it makes little sense if only half of the score really means anything.
"WikiPedia is a great concept, but it needs to grow up before it can earn the place in society that so many ascribe to it now. Part of that growing up process will be accountability of its authors and responsibility to its readers."
While I agree the potential for abuse is there, the potential for abuse and censorship by the "official" maintainers of what is historically true and what is not is also subject to abuse, bias and outright lies. History is just as much lies and mythmaking as it is 'historical fact', history and facts about many things is not something you can easily pin down because of how abstracted history is from the individual mind. Some things are easy to record historically other things are not because of censorship by those that rule and own over those who do not.
I think this is wikipedia's most powerful thing, if somebody knows something factual abou someone it will be subject to scrutiny before it is censored and if it is censored there will be a record of it. People who buy 'official' history are just as worthy of scrutiny IMHO, in many things you're never told the whole story.
Oh please, you present a false dichotomy, one is science and the other isn't? When we design artificial intelligence in the future they will have a theory of ID, so by that measure ID is just as scientific as a non-id theory. It's only historical anti-religious bias that one cannot seperate the design from the religion, they both function as religious worldviews for their adherents irregardless of the evidence as no one was there at the beginning of the earth and watched the development of life on earth.
"Who says everything isn't to blame on genetics? "
Actually everything is the result of genetics, form determines function, unless you deny naturalism, how can anything that exists not be caused by genetics and their interactions with the environment? Makes sense. Sure there is some level of responsibility but people are globs of moving molecules nothing more. Everyones overall potential is fixed by genetics and the interaction with the environment, how can it not be?
"But of course, I'm an unambitious bright guy who hasn't really accomplished anything (but has used his smarts to enable his extraordinary laziness), so what do I know?"
You see the really smart people get other people to do the work for them or they live how they want to live at the pace they choose rather then what society wants. I think genius is over-rated, if you've been recognized as a genius that usually means you've accomplished something someone else thinks is important according to the cultural and idealogical standards of the time (good or not).
Next time someone calls someone a genius, ask them if they've conquered the problem of death yet, thats something I'd really like some genius to solve. Many genius's unfortunately show us how weak the individual human mind is, even in it's genius state that it takes many years if not generations to solve complex problems, even when you're a genius.
"where the lighting is just right, their outfit flatters them and they look pretty good."
That's why you ask for lots of regular pictures, or ask them if they have a webcam, it's this simple. If you dont find out she's not you type beforehand, it's your responsibility. I always ask for more pics from different angles or a webcam, I always ask for "the real shots" and tell them I prefer 'natural' girls and it works everytime.
"This might be because of two definitions of the word geek. One is the socially bad one, of a some smart, but socially annoying guy hiding in his parents basement."
All nerds who live in their parents basements who have hot girlfriends disagree with you!
I know guys who still live with their parents simply because it makes no financial sense to live on their own, it's just North american cultures obsession with 'independence' that stigmatizes someone still living with their parents. Many people do simply because it is the most rational thing to do, not to mention many of those nerds may be *looking after their parents*. In japan and in other cultures living with your parents is considered very normal, not to mention the huge surplus of money you save and have to spend on what you want not giving it over to your profiteering landlord.
Sure it's nice to be independent. People go ahead and live on their own and fork out that money to their landlord, meanwhile the nerds are enjoying their new HDTV and Xbox 360, while the other guy is considering having to make the choice of one or the other. The basement nerd stigma is ridiculous, these people are still human beings (I can see the jokes coming).
Is it just me, or aren't targeted ads just another block in the wall on the way to an orwellian society? It is efficient yes, but you can't target ads properly without knowing absolutely who the person is, the demographic, how old he/she is and what his/her interests are. Google targets ads very well that I can't really believe anything about their privacy policy, there is simply no way because they correlate ads and their relevancy so well and it is only increasing in efficiency.
"Change your passwords regularly.
If that's too much trouble, rotate easy to remember (yet secure) passwords"
Better yet use Roboform's random password generator and save your passwords to encrypted key files, and back them up often, then you do not have to remember your passwords ever, just backup your keycards
"Fundamentally, computer games still look like computer games."
What is fundamentally wrong with games that do not look like real life? Why would I want Halo to be 'as real as possible'? Most gamers do not give a flying fuck about 'realism', it's about the art direction. Many games are extremely exagerated versions loosely based on reality, would many warcraft players want warcraft to look 'real'? I doubt it, they want the artists to use their imagination and take them places they've never been.
I'm not thinking while playing Halo "This would be so good if it all looked real!" I'm thinking "wow I wonder what kind of crazy shit those game developers and artists imaginations will come up with next!". Realism can only take you so far, I really would never want most of my games rendered real, only certain types of games could benefit from chasing realism to the extreme, and even then lots of real rendered shit looks absolutely boring. I'd never want to see burnout for instance try to be overly 'real', do you think anything in most modern games is real? i.e. the special effects, the crazy exagerated physics, etc? In my opinion, the quality of the art and animation matters more then how "real" it looks it just has to flow together and mesh nicely into an exciting believable world and experience, thats all it has to accomplish.
"I don't think gov't ownership of land is the greatest idea either (unless someone can explain a better way in which it'd work), but your comments are totally nonsensical."
Government ownership of land already takes place on a massive scale. i.e. what do you think nations are? The "united states" of america? Canada? etc? What about reserves and parks, Government owned corporations, the military bases, etc?
There are lots of BENEFITS to government / democratic ownership of public resources (i.e. lands that can be used for farming, food, geared to income housing, etc). Capitalism creates as many problems as it solves becasue of the anarchic valuations, and people who abuse the land (i.e. rich with excessive property ownership, huge gigantic mansions, etc, their ecological footprint is enormous), just like in your example with housing how the value of homes increased at such a rate to put many people in the economy in a pickle because their wages are stagnant, not to mention the displacement and rampant outsourcing as a result of capitalism royally screwing the middle class in the American economy where education is becoming more and more worthless because businesses can get many more educated and bright people for the price of one middle class white collar american.,
In Capitalism businesses want to do contradictory things and these always end up as social problems: Reduce costs, get the most out of their workers and yet pay the lowest wages. It's a fucked up system designed by backward and ignorant human beings, we inherited this system and there's got to be a better way.
I always thought that:
1) People should have a right to exist, have food, and a warm place to live so the economy could never displace food, clothing and housing of people need in the first place so they don't turn to crime, or worse start a revolution because they can't afford housing or to feed or cloth themselves (especially when there is NO scarcity in the amount of food, housing or clothing, it's just an illusion). The problem of scarcity is an illusion in modern society, I have many articles of massive amounts of food destroye by industry and government that could be GIVEN AWAY to the poorest in the nation so that they could actually save that money and become MORE independent. Independence and freedom in modern capitalist countries are the ressult of the money value you've accumulated, so when businesses ask for a reduction in the poors wages they are in fact no better then theives and barbarians at the forefront of social problems. But again we are back to the contradiction of capitalis: To profit, you shift the risk and displace the resources of those under you to suck money value up into hierarchy of power that naturally exists in all businesses.
2) People do not have the right to accumulate the planet's resources excessively (just look at all the rich people who suck up land and use it for completely stupid shit that has no long term investment value or social value whatsoever).
3) Use socialist/communist principles to make sure its a *human right* to have food, a roof over your head and a place to live, i.e. take certain (healthy) food and necessities out of capitalist markets completely. While having a market for LUXURY items, candy, chips, etc, so that there is no "poor" at all, because the get food, housing free, but if they want luxuries *** then they have to work and better themselves***. But truly I really don't believe people are that lazy, especially when you care about them, you spread that around and they care back and become responsible because you're not doing the dog-eat-dog bullshit that boss'es do all over america to their minimum wage workers.
4) Have capitalist markets and businesses (like today) that compete in luxuries and everything else that works better under capitalism.
I like the industrious and incentives of capitalism but I hate it's excessive waste that private and human prejudice and discrimination creates, just go to the bronx in new york an
Yeah but I'm talking about brute force password attempts. I know roboform stores it with weaker encryption but I'm just saying a LONG password will take a while to brute force crack without someones data in the first place.
Programs like Roboform make long random passwords very possible, and stored in case one needs it. Ever since form fillers like Roboform appeared my passwords have literally trippled in length if not more for financial institutions, so no asshat can get a list of client #'s and run his brute force logon bot until he hits the jackpot.
"Yes, public opinion can affect business more rapidly than ever. That should be motivation for companies to improve, not for developers to create products to PREVENT public opinion. Man, this world is getting sad, sad, sad!"
Thank the profit motive of capitalism and the backward animal tendencies of the human race, both of them in combination make a wonderful world doesn't it?
(replyin to the parent of the parent, the message before was accidentally submitted withotu formatting)
"Where google may have issues, is if anyone figures out a way to reconstruct a book in total. They would give people like this a lot of ammunition against them. Of course, the library does not prevent me from scanning a book if I take it home, but that is something that will be missed in the hype around it. I am not sure how they could prevent this, but these are some pretty smart guys."
Books are already pirated en mass anyway with the advent of PDF and ebooks, book piracy right now is as booming as much as MP3's. IMO I dont believe book piracy is a big problem simply because it takes HOURS to actually read, comprehend and understand something, and many books people only need pieces of so it's not worth the money, and microtransactions is just not even worth it for books that people only need to use as references or look things up in. We have PUBLIC LIBRARIES that have almost every book you can think of on their shelves which you can borrow and rent for FREE. So I think google is in the OK here especially with regards to certain kinds of works - i.e. math text books, older literature, etc.
IMO copyrights have their uses but they also hold humanity back for the sake of 'the man', this just exemplifies what is WRONG with societies that determine somethings value with money only under a for profit idealogy.
"Where google may have issues, is if anyone figures out a way to reconstruct a book in total. They would give people like this a lot of ammunition against them. Of course, the library does not prevent me from scanning a book if I take it home, but that is something that will be missed in the hype around it. I am not sure how they could prevent this, but these are some pretty smart guys."
Books are already pirated en mass anyway with the advent of PDF and ebooks, book piracy right now is as booming as much as MP3's. IMO I dont believe book piracy is a big problem simply because it takes HOURS to actually read, comprehend and understand something, and many books people only need pieces of so it's not worth the money, and microtransactions is just not even worth it for books that people only need to use as references or look things up in. We have PUBLIC LIBRARIES that have almost every book you can think of on their shelves which you can borrow and rent for FREE. So I think google is in the OK here especially with regards to certain kinds of works - i.e. math text books, older literature, etc.
IMO copyrights have their uses but they also hold humanity back for the sake of 'the man', this just exemplifies what is WRONG with societies that determine somethings value with money only under a for profit idealogy.
Slashdot Mirror
"... equal opportunity to our fellows at each set of choices in life, and let them make of it both what they may, and what they are capable of. "
equal opportunity is bullshit, everyone gets stuck in the places their potential puts them. Economic equality where everyone has economic security for basics (food, water, electricity, housing) is the only way out of a hellish society, anything luxurious they can go ahead and compete for, but if we want a peaceful world we have to stop using free market principles the divide between rich and poor will get so great something will snap eventually.
It's not "all about the plot", there are only a finite amount of *interesting* plots and conflicts in movies. If you watch movies you know that the more you've watch the more predictable movies because there are only so many interesting plots that people will go to pay and see.
Some movies are about the plots, others are the furthest thing from it. Look at thenew star wars episodes 1,2 and 3. All those movies I thought sucked compared to the originals (except maybe starwars "episode 4", they still dont hold a candle to Empire strikes back and return of the jedi).
A good movie is when all the pieces of you vision come together in a cohesive way and you have a good editor and know what to cut and how to make a movie flow emotionally frome one frame to the next. I think the best movies that have done this 1) A beautiful mind 2) Braveheart, 3) Gladiator. These movies were well directed and had a good sense of emotional flow from one scene to the next.
Most movies are about making people feel something when they are watching it and you have to speak to some aspect of them to get them interested enough to pay. I mean think about gladiator for instance, a movie about a roman general who's betrayed, has his wife and child killed and he wants to exact revenge. It's all in the execution, someone could have fucked that plot by not getting the right actors, the right sets, the right editors, etc. It's all in the execution of an idea ultimately, sometimes things are about the ideas but overall its more about the execution of what works and what doesn't.
... Microsoft gets over their stupid anti-piracy tactics in regards to service packs. Ever since XP1 Ms has made it more time consuming and really not worth it for anyone who's pirated XP to upgrade to XP2. Ever since "genuine advantage" and the other bs that tries to check to see if your windows is "authentic".
"There are a few other in-game usability annoyances, but on the whole, civ 4 is much more playable on release then civ 3 ever was, even after all of its patches and expansion packs."
What are you talking about? I played Civ 3 all the time from the very first release, it mostly had minor bugs, I never had any problems with it even with 1.0. It never crashed, I've had Civ 4 crash to desktop once a game almost and it's always right when a wonder building goes up.
"If you use violence on the child, he relieves this by a process called overjustification, and ends up devaluing the consequences of his behavior, and will continue doing it once you walk away. If you stop the behavior mildly, then the child will be forced to reevaluate his own internal mindset, and behaviorally change will result. Some of you are already saying "That will not work on a 5 year old," but it does. Children learn these things incredibly early on."
I'm sorry but I have to call this person on this. This "one size fits all" is nonsense, every child is *unique* and I've seen enough kids to know that each and every one of them has a different "default" response to certain situations and in certain kids with very strong willed traits there is nothing you can do to turn it off. I've seen kids who would threaten their parents with destroying stuff in the house if they didn't get their way and with time and overtired parents many parents simply don't want their situation ti get worse then it already is, not to mention the time constraints, being tired from work, and having other children.
No amount of knowledge or your special tactics will stop a child with who most people would call stubborn. Every child has a unique set of traits which determines their basic fundamental nature in how they respond when their will and actions are 'infringed upon' by their parents.
"Explains the rational behind music and software downloads perfectly, doesn't it? Little chance of getting caught, you get something you want, and it's easy to do."
That it does but software and music are entirely different to physical products, there is no limit to the supply of digital product, it is limitless, it has a practically supernatural quality to it that it has effectively zero cost to reproduce, whereas physical products do not. They exist in two different worlds. You could even make the argument that charging each individual person for access to songs is in fact theft because of the fact that you have near zero reproduction cost and hence can price gouge the hell out of you customers, the only limit to your profits is population size of the market with mass market affordable stuff like music.
First of all you'll be lucky to survive on just games, you'd need to carry other products as well to draw in othe types of customers. Next is you'll be competing with wal-mart and past titles when after 3-6 months the prices drop on near used prices or below used prices (19-25 bucks from 50-60) for fairly new titles.
Your next problems is increasing consumer savvy and users who sell their old games on ebay or other such sites for maximum profit. I wouldn't think a game store is a good idea unless you have lots of money already and know how to extract profits.
I really think this is misdirected, kids will find interesting and pursue what the *genuinely find* interesting. I think "Targetting" things for kids is kinda stupid, they will have a natural inclination towards figuring something out that the think is interesting or they wont.
"Put it to you this way. Would you rather have an android with very little real-world experience or another human being fighting side-by-side with you? I'm sorry, but I don't want some software bug or glitch to slug me with a 50 cal round. To fucking risky IMHO."
If the android has the aim of a typical FPS bot and it can intelligently distinguish between friend and foe and can see much further then a human being then, sign me up! In this respect machines are much more accurate then a human being could possibly ever be. The only downside is EMP weaponry would knock bot friends out without suitable shielding and protective mechanisms.
"I read an interesting comment the other day - have you ever seen a review site that gives reviews lower than 6 out of 10? Not much of a scale if the mean is 7.5 and data never appears below that point!"
Yeah but the same thing happens in other "marking" or "rating" systems, take education system where I live in Canada for instance, for some reason they have a out of 100 percent system yet everyone who passes makes %50 or above, and the only meaningful marks are from between 60 and 100, the rest of the 60 marks out of the 100 are pretty much useless, things should be out of 5 / 50 rather then out of 10 because we seem to love to focus on the upper 5 (or 50) half of out of 10 (or 100 if out of 100) it seems pretty inconsistent to me as well and I have no idea why this is as it must be some psychological artifact for wanting to do things in sets or multiples of 10, but it makes little sense if only half of the score really means anything.
"WikiPedia is a great concept, but it needs to grow up before it can earn the place in society that so many ascribe to it now. Part of that growing up process will be accountability of its authors and responsibility to its readers."
While I agree the potential for abuse is there, the potential for abuse and censorship by the "official" maintainers of what is historically true and what is not is also subject to abuse, bias and outright lies. History is just as much lies and mythmaking as it is 'historical fact', history and facts about many things is not something you can easily pin down because of how abstracted history is from the individual mind. Some things are easy to record historically other things are not because of censorship by those that rule and own over those who do not.
I think this is wikipedia's most powerful thing, if somebody knows something factual abou someone it will be subject to scrutiny before it is censored and if it is censored there will be a record of it. People who buy 'official' history are just as worthy of scrutiny IMHO, in many things you're never told the whole story.
Oh please, you present a false dichotomy, one is science and the other isn't? When we design artificial intelligence in the future they will have a theory of ID, so by that measure ID is just as scientific as a non-id theory. It's only historical anti-religious bias that one cannot seperate the design from the religion, they both function as religious worldviews for their adherents irregardless of the evidence as no one was there at the beginning of the earth and watched the development of life on earth.
"Who says everything isn't to blame on genetics? "
Actually everything is the result of genetics, form determines function, unless you deny naturalism, how can anything that exists not be caused by genetics and their interactions with the environment? Makes sense. Sure there is some level of responsibility but people are globs of moving molecules nothing more. Everyones overall potential is fixed by genetics and the interaction with the environment, how can it not be?
"But of course, I'm an unambitious bright guy who hasn't really accomplished anything (but has used his smarts to enable his extraordinary laziness), so what do I know?"
You see the really smart people get other people to do the work for them or they live how they want to live at the pace they choose rather then what society wants. I think genius is over-rated, if you've been recognized as a genius that usually means you've accomplished something someone else thinks is important according to the cultural and idealogical standards of the time (good or not).Next time someone calls someone a genius, ask them if they've conquered the problem of death yet, thats something I'd really like some genius to solve. Many genius's unfortunately show us how weak the individual human mind is, even in it's genius state that it takes many years if not generations to solve complex problems, even when you're a genius.
"where the lighting is just right, their outfit flatters them and they look pretty good."
That's why you ask for lots of regular pictures, or ask them if they have a webcam, it's this simple. If you dont find out she's not you type beforehand, it's your responsibility. I always ask for more pics from different angles or a webcam, I always ask for "the real shots" and tell them I prefer 'natural' girls and it works everytime.
"This might be because of two definitions of the word geek. One is the socially bad one, of a some smart, but socially annoying guy hiding in his parents basement."
All nerds who live in their parents basements who have hot girlfriends disagree with you!
I know guys who still live with their parents simply because it makes no financial sense to live on their own, it's just North american cultures obsession with 'independence' that stigmatizes someone still living with their parents. Many people do simply because it is the most rational thing to do, not to mention many of those nerds may be *looking after their parents*. In japan and in other cultures living with your parents is considered very normal, not to mention the huge surplus of money you save and have to spend on what you want not giving it over to your profiteering landlord.
Sure it's nice to be independent. People go ahead and live on their own and fork out that money to their landlord, meanwhile the nerds are enjoying their new HDTV and Xbox 360, while the other guy is considering having to make the choice of one or the other. The basement nerd stigma is ridiculous, these people are still human beings (I can see the jokes coming).
Is it just me, or aren't targeted ads just another block in the wall on the way to an orwellian society? It is efficient yes, but you can't target ads properly without knowing absolutely who the person is, the demographic, how old he/she is and what his/her interests are. Google targets ads very well that I can't really believe anything about their privacy policy, there is simply no way because they correlate ads and their relevancy so well and it is only increasing in efficiency.
"Change your passwords regularly. If that's too much trouble, rotate easy to remember (yet secure) passwords"
Better yet use Roboform's random password generator and save your passwords to encrypted key files, and back them up often, then you do not have to remember your passwords ever, just backup your keycards
"Fundamentally, computer games still look like computer games."
What is fundamentally wrong with games that do not look like real life? Why would I want Halo to be 'as real as possible'? Most gamers do not give a flying fuck about 'realism', it's about the art direction. Many games are extremely exagerated versions loosely based on reality, would many warcraft players want warcraft to look 'real'? I doubt it, they want the artists to use their imagination and take them places they've never been.
I'm not thinking while playing Halo "This would be so good if it all looked real!" I'm thinking "wow I wonder what kind of crazy shit those game developers and artists imaginations will come up with next!". Realism can only take you so far, I really would never want most of my games rendered real, only certain types of games could benefit from chasing realism to the extreme, and even then lots of real rendered shit looks absolutely boring. I'd never want to see burnout for instance try to be overly 'real', do you think anything in most modern games is real? i.e. the special effects, the crazy exagerated physics, etc? In my opinion, the quality of the art and animation matters more then how "real" it looks it just has to flow together and mesh nicely into an exciting believable world and experience, thats all it has to accomplish.
"I don't think gov't ownership of land is the greatest idea either (unless someone can explain a better way in which it'd work), but your comments are totally nonsensical."
Government ownership of land already takes place on a massive scale. i.e. what do you think nations are? The "united states" of america? Canada? etc? What about reserves and parks, Government owned corporations, the military bases, etc?
There are lots of BENEFITS to government / democratic ownership of public resources (i.e. lands that can be used for farming, food, geared to income housing, etc). Capitalism creates as many problems as it solves becasue of the anarchic valuations, and people who abuse the land (i.e. rich with excessive property ownership, huge gigantic mansions, etc, their ecological footprint is enormous), just like in your example with housing how the value of homes increased at such a rate to put many people in the economy in a pickle because their wages are stagnant, not to mention the displacement and rampant outsourcing as a result of capitalism royally screwing the middle class in the American economy where education is becoming more and more worthless because businesses can get many more educated and bright people for the price of one middle class white collar american.,
In Capitalism businesses want to do contradictory things and these always end up as social problems: Reduce costs, get the most out of their workers and yet pay the lowest wages. It's a fucked up system designed by backward and ignorant human beings, we inherited this system and there's got to be a better way.
I always thought that:
1) People should have a right to exist, have food, and a warm place to live so the economy could never displace food, clothing and housing of people need in the first place so they don't turn to crime, or worse start a revolution because they can't afford housing or to feed or cloth themselves (especially when there is NO scarcity in the amount of food, housing or clothing, it's just an illusion). The problem of scarcity is an illusion in modern society, I have many articles of massive amounts of food destroye by industry and government that could be GIVEN AWAY to the poorest in the nation so that they could actually save that money and become MORE independent. Independence and freedom in modern capitalist countries are the ressult of the money value you've accumulated, so when businesses ask for a reduction in the poors wages they are in fact no better then theives and barbarians at the forefront of social problems. But again we are back to the contradiction of capitalis: To profit, you shift the risk and displace the resources of those under you to suck money value up into hierarchy of power that naturally exists in all businesses.
2) People do not have the right to accumulate the planet's resources excessively (just look at all the rich people who suck up land and use it for completely stupid shit that has no long term investment value or social value whatsoever).
3) Use socialist/communist principles to make sure its a *human right* to have food, a roof over your head and a place to live, i.e. take certain (healthy) food and necessities out of capitalist markets completely. While having a market for LUXURY items, candy, chips, etc, so that there is no "poor" at all, because the get food, housing free, but if they want luxuries *** then they have to work and better themselves***. But truly I really don't believe people are that lazy, especially when you care about them, you spread that around and they care back and become responsible because you're not doing the dog-eat-dog bullshit that boss'es do all over america to their minimum wage workers.
4) Have capitalist markets and businesses (like today) that compete in luxuries and everything else that works better under capitalism.
I like the industrious and incentives of capitalism but I hate it's excessive waste that private and human prejudice and discrimination creates, just go to the bronx in new york an
Yeah but I'm talking about brute force password attempts. I know roboform stores it with weaker encryption but I'm just saying a LONG password will take a while to brute force crack without someones data in the first place.
"Who has a sixty-character passphrase?"
Programs like Roboform make long random passwords very possible, and stored in case one needs it.
Ever since form fillers like Roboform appeared my passwords have literally trippled in length if not more for financial institutions, so no asshat can get a list of client #'s and run his brute force logon bot until he hits the jackpot.
"Yes, public opinion can affect business more rapidly than ever. That should be motivation for companies to improve, not for developers to create products to PREVENT public opinion. Man, this world is getting sad, sad, sad!"
Thank the profit motive of capitalism and the backward animal tendencies of the human race, both of them in combination make a wonderful world doesn't it?
(replyin to the parent of the parent, the message before was accidentally submitted withotu formatting)
"Where google may have issues, is if anyone figures out a way to reconstruct a book in total. They would give people like this a lot of ammunition against them. Of course, the library does not prevent me from scanning a book if I take it home, but that is something that will be missed in the hype around it. I am not sure how they could prevent this, but these are some pretty smart guys."
Books are already pirated en mass anyway with the advent of PDF and ebooks, book piracy right now is as booming as much as MP3's. IMO I dont believe book piracy is a big problem simply because it takes HOURS to actually read, comprehend and understand something, and many books people only need pieces of so it's not worth the money, and microtransactions is just not even worth it for books that people only need to use as references or look things up in. We have PUBLIC LIBRARIES that have almost every book you can think of on their shelves which you can borrow and rent for FREE. So I think google is in the OK here especially with regards to certain kinds of works - i.e. math text books, older literature, etc.
IMO copyrights have their uses but they also hold humanity back for the sake of 'the man', this just exemplifies what is WRONG with societies that determine somethings value with money only under a for profit idealogy.
"Where google may have issues, is if anyone figures out a way to reconstruct a book in total. They would give people like this a lot of ammunition against them. Of course, the library does not prevent me from scanning a book if I take it home, but that is something that will be missed in the hype around it. I am not sure how they could prevent this, but these are some pretty smart guys." Books are already pirated en mass anyway with the advent of PDF and ebooks, book piracy right now is as booming as much as MP3's. IMO I dont believe book piracy is a big problem simply because it takes HOURS to actually read, comprehend and understand something, and many books people only need pieces of so it's not worth the money, and microtransactions is just not even worth it for books that people only need to use as references or look things up in. We have PUBLIC LIBRARIES that have almost every book you can think of on their shelves which you can borrow and rent for FREE. So I think google is in the OK here especially with regards to certain kinds of works - i.e. math text books, older literature, etc. IMO copyrights have their uses but they also hold humanity back for the sake of 'the man', this just exemplifies what is WRONG with societies that determine somethings value with money only under a for profit idealogy.