"But put it in cleartext on an 802.11g router... and you expect privacy?"
Yes since most people are morons and don't understand the implications. The whole idea that the "user knows best" is flawed. Things like network names on identifiable computers can be mapped geographically using googles techniques to identify who people are, their incomes, occupations, their behavior patterns, etc. When you use the internet and couple those usage patterns with even more data like google maps and Wifi scanning you get even more vectors for accurately determining who people are and what they do, building up a more and more accurate profile of human beings. The fact that this is all going on in violation of other countries laws is the issue.
I'm sure Google and the american government are extremely close, Google and the internet is like the ultimate spy machine. I can only imagine the kinds of files they can build on people from espionage techniques applied to the world public at large.
This kind of information is great for propaganda and other purposes.
"Science is not a field of study it is the approach."
I think one forgets that human beings start at near ground zero as well, it's easy after the fact to know things are errors then it is to know them during the time one lives. How many errors in science today will look just as bad as alchemy in the future?
"That was the original idea behind "Microsoft Wallet", which turned into "Microsoft Passport", currently known as "Windows Live ID". See also: Windows Cardspace."
But they went about it the wrong way to begin with, roboform integrates itself and is easy to use, if something like that had been built in from the start it would have gone a long way. It's not a cure all by any means but it would solve a lot of problems in terms of keeping track of passwords for not-so-important things.
Did you read the article? Roboform is not a cureall but it would help in many instances of password stupidity, i.e. using one password for all sites that you have to *remember*. The reason people use the same password for multiple sites is the cost of remembering them, so if you offload the remembering part to a program like roboform that can automatically generate long random strings as passwords and store them locally in encrypted files, you go a long way to preventing some types of problems.
Religion is not about pursuing good for most people unfortunately, most religious people don't have any sound understanding of their own religion, they only use it as a meaning masturbator. Only a tiny percentage of religious people use it as a means to pursue goodness and better themselves, most just use it as a means to socialize and get an eternal life/after life free ticket and little more.
The way the password systems were designed to were stupid to begin with. Programmers designed password systems for people like themselves. The real issue is, programmers did not forsee the internet and the need for easy authentication at multiple sites with strong keys.
I still don't know why Microsoft and other OS makers have not bought out roboform to integrate it into their OS and change the culture over time.
... the real risk is simply human beings don't know how to think and most aren't intelligent enough to think. Most people would rather live illusions and lies. This is why religion is so pervasive, we are a species that loves our lies, technology or not. It takes real courage to pursue truth with eternal vigilance because it means your morality and feelings get over turned and you have to let real knowledge change you.
... I don't understand why people are so up and up about the voting system given that
1) The vast majority of the public is too stupid to make any kind of sound decision about many issues 2) Most candidates can only get anywhere by money 3) You can never get rid of or mitigate the influence of money on politics since corporations are what makes the world go round. 4) Until their is something of a mass movement/revolt so that the power of corporations are reigned in, voting is irrelevant.
"However other things, like drugs, are not. There is on inherent harm to anyone other than the user."
Wrong. Drugs create wastes in the body and wastes that are expelled from the body that go back into the sewer system, same with drugs. We're pumping a shitload of chemicals into the environment without knowing their long term implications, the idea that the long term risks are known for when these chemicals get into the environment is laughable.
I agree with legalization but I've been reading about just assuming everything you don't know about chemicals or chemistry "must be ok" when you consider the environmental feedback mechanisms.
Environment Canada has officially declared bisphenol A (BPA) toxic. The ubiquitous chemical, found in the lining of nearly all cans used by the food and beverage industry, will have to be phased out in Canada.
BPA is vile stuff. Here's how Scientific American recently described it: "In recent years dozens of scientists around the globe have linked BPA to myriad health effects in rodents: mammary and prostate cancer, genital defects in males, early onset of puberty in females, obesity, and even behavior problems such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder."
... problem. With the advent of widescreen TV's and DVD's this "movie logic" infiltrated computer monitors. 4:3 and even 5:4 (1280x1024) was a good balanced ratio. I use 1280x1024, since I can't stand anything that deviates too far away from 4:3. I really really hate widescreen for daily computer use.
"Anyway, it would not have taken thousands of years of human civilisation, including a mathematical and scientific component, to reach F=ma if classical mechanics were really that obvious."
You're forgetting systems of social organization and hierarchy have direct effects on whether scientific thinking is even possible. I'm sure many individuals of the ancient world made great progress towards scientific thinking but due to political or environmental (economic) circumstances beyond their control stopped this process. I see scientific progress as a matter of fits and starts area's of world history where it can incubate before some upheaval takes place that prevents reaching conceptual "singularity".
Money is power Power corrupts Lobbyists write our laws
Therefore you are incorrect.
Law cannot contain money, lobbyists are proof that your theory of corruption is flawed, lobbyists are the example of market ideology infiltrating every aspect of society. You cannot keep ideological values out of government when all too manny in government see the extension of the market mechanism into government as just how things are done practically given the primacy of commerce and the economy over everything else.
"It has nothing to do with the economic system and everything to do with the fact that some people are assholes who will always try to dick other people over."
That is incorrect, these people get to be assholes because they can afford it because allowing private actors to set prices and profit means wealth will naturally concentrate, because there are no laws on how much one can accumulate.
"I wouldn't be surprised if individuals who work for these firms will start to be publically identified and their private lives targetted."
That's exactly what needs to happen, copyright and corporations have shown themselves to want nothing more then a monopoly, and turn customers and citizens of the world into serfs where the rent everything in perpetuity. WHere ownership rights on the customer end are being rescinded and quite frankly copyright will always be abused it goes against our rights to own what we purchase outright and modify it as we see fit.
I will never understand why westerners are so supportive of corporatist removal of our rights to own outright and modify our stuff as customers and human beings. We've seen how free market ideology works in the real world where there are no scruples and money makes the rules and if you don't have money your voice doesn't matter. We're already in an era of corporate dictatorship of policy to such an insidious degree.
Why exactly would you want more of it? Right now the economy, government and law is so twisted by the structures of power that be, we need constant resistance and less ideological infighting of right vs left, left and right simply doesn't matter, these are distractions from the main issues - the removal of our liberties and rights as human beings view the market mechanism. We're seeing how money and markets can be transform a society into a society of serfs, any system can be gamed, transformed and abused, how so many people can't see this is disturbing.
"That's on an independent game, that only cost $15. It's a great game, and well worth the money."
To you... most gamers rent their games and only but their favorites, the whole business model of *selling full games* has always been questionable from the outset. Most people pirate a game these days to get the full taste of a game before being let down, SOOO many games being released are huge let-downs or have no replay value over the long term. Any money is too much money for a game you don't feel has value to you (one of your favorites).
This is why I hate developers and their piracy numbers, it's like they live in some kind of bizarro land and never remembered what it was to be a gamer as a kid in the age of the NES/SNES when you could rent a game for a couple bucks and finish it that weekend and never pay the full price for a game. Note that the good game franchises from that era are still around today (Castlevania, megaman, mario, zelda, etc).
Game developers need to get a major clue - gamers only buy their favorite games, everything else is a "rental" or played it but would not buy it.
If your game isn't good enough to buy for lots of people that means your game just isn't that valuable, plenty of hugely pirated games are hugely financially successful.
"This is a crazy idea, but maybe people like both?"
No it's not a crazy idea, when the power goes out you'll be glad you have books for all sorts of things. Books are one of the technologies that will be around for a long long time because an ebook requires electricity. Books may not always be on paper but the "traditional" book which you carry around and can access "off the grid" will most likely be with us for a long long time.
"I get tired of the "Get off my lawn, the past was so much better."
I get tired of newbie gamers who have not noticed that game quality in many genres is going down or stagnating. I'm sure most older gamers have noticed how almost EVERY fucking game is a first person shooter. Most gamers probably remember an age where the FPS was one of the genre's and not THE DOMINANT genre of gaming like it is today.
How many first person shooters have we had since doom? You'd think after all these years FPS games would be played out... but now they are even turning RPG's into FPS games (oblivion --> Fallout 3), Gears of war --> Mass effect 2.
If you hadn't noticed this trend of homogenization of games then you clearly are incapable of seeing what has happened. It only sounds to you like it's "Get off my lawn" but look at final fantasy 12 and 13, the battle systems in those games can't hold a candle to the battle systems of earlier games.
When you have newer gamers complaining over a game that has _gasp_ actual gameplay and calls real older or true gamers "retards" for actually liking to have game mechanics in their games and not just a bunch of cutscenes, then yeah they are going to get a little miffed that too many games don't focus on making the activity you are doing in the games fun. I've watched final fantasy series be butchered by movie/story types who don't like the loot/equipment/battle and stat management aspect of oldschool RPG's, compare a game like FF1/FF6/FF7 to FFX and beyond.
I think the real problem is when you want to take an older game and update it but not alienate the fanbase, I think that's where the sentiment comes from because a lot of "innovative games" are absolute garbage because the designers were clueless.
... is because the amount of work and talent to create a modern game is huge, much more then it was in the 80's and early 90's, to build a game you need a LOT of talented people the problem is that it's extremely hard to get consistency and cohesion of art assets and gameplay vision because of team sizes.
Few games get it right, but games like God of war for example or soul calibur 2 are excellent examples of when a project comes together well.
Slashdot Mirror
"But put it in cleartext on an 802.11g router... and you expect privacy?"
Yes since most people are morons and don't understand the implications. The whole idea that the "user knows best" is flawed. Things like network names on identifiable computers can be mapped geographically using googles techniques to identify who people are, their incomes, occupations, their behavior patterns, etc. When you use the internet and couple those usage patterns with even more data like google maps and Wifi scanning you get even more vectors for accurately determining who people are and what they do, building up a more and more accurate profile of human beings. The fact that this is all going on in violation of other countries laws is the issue.
I'm sure Google and the american government are extremely close, Google and the internet is like the ultimate spy machine. I can only imagine the kinds of files they can build on people from espionage techniques applied to the world public at large.
This kind of information is great for propaganda and other purposes.
"Science is not a field of study it is the approach."
I think one forgets that human beings start at near ground zero as well, it's easy after the fact to know things are errors then it is to know them during the time one lives. How many errors in science today will look just as bad as alchemy in the future?
"It still feels kind of wrong though."
The only thing wrong is their broken business model, information was never designed to be propertized in an internet age. Tough shit for them.
"That was the original idea behind "Microsoft Wallet", which turned into "Microsoft Passport", currently known as "Windows Live ID". See also: Windows Cardspace."
But they went about it the wrong way to begin with, roboform integrates itself and is easy to use, if something like that had been built in from the start it would have gone a long way. It's not a cure all by any means but it would solve a lot of problems in terms of keeping track of passwords for not-so-important things.
Did you read the article? Roboform is not a cureall but it would help in many instances of password stupidity, i.e. using one password for all sites that you have to *remember*. The reason people use the same password for multiple sites is the cost of remembering them, so if you offload the remembering part to a program like roboform that can automatically generate long random strings as passwords and store them locally in encrypted files, you go a long way to preventing some types of problems.
Religion is not about pursuing good for most people unfortunately, most religious people don't have any sound understanding of their own religion, they only use it as a meaning masturbator. Only a tiny percentage of religious people use it as a means to pursue goodness and better themselves, most just use it as a means to socialize and get an eternal life/after life free ticket and little more.
The way the password systems were designed to were stupid to begin with. Programmers designed password systems for people like themselves. The real issue is, programmers did not forsee the internet and the need for easy authentication at multiple sites with strong keys.
I still don't know why Microsoft and other OS makers have not bought out roboform to integrate it into their OS and change the culture over time.
http://www.roboform.com/
Roboform generates unique passwords and makes "click button" authentication easy, and you can back up your encrypted passwords on USB sticks, etc.
... the real risk is simply human beings don't know how to think and most aren't intelligent enough to think. Most people would rather live illusions and lies. This is why religion is so pervasive, we are a species that loves our lies, technology or not. It takes real courage to pursue truth with eternal vigilance because it means your morality and feelings get over turned and you have to let real knowledge change you.
Most people do not want to do that.
... I don't understand why people are so up and up about the voting system given that
1) The vast majority of the public is too stupid to make any kind of sound decision about many issues
2) Most candidates can only get anywhere by money
3) You can never get rid of or mitigate the influence of money on politics since corporations are what makes the world go round.
4) Until their is something of a mass movement/revolt so that the power of corporations are reigned in, voting is irrelevant.
"However other things, like drugs, are not. There is on inherent harm to anyone other than the user."
Wrong. Drugs create wastes in the body and wastes that are expelled from the body that go back into the sewer system, same with drugs. We're pumping a shitload of chemicals into the environment without knowing their long term implications, the idea that the long term risks are known for when these chemicals get into the environment is laughable.
I agree with legalization but I've been reading about just assuming everything you don't know about chemicals or chemistry "must be ok" when you consider the environmental feedback mechanisms.
Environment Canada has officially declared bisphenol A (BPA) toxic. The ubiquitous chemical, found in the lining of nearly all cans used by the food and beverage industry, will have to be phased out in Canada.
BPA is vile stuff. Here's how Scientific American recently described it: "In recent years dozens of scientists around the globe have linked BPA to myriad health effects in rodents: mammary and prostate cancer, genital defects in males, early onset of puberty in females, obesity, and even behavior problems such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=just-how-harmful-are-bisphenol-a-plastics
... wage stagnation. While it says "We're paying less" if your wage has remained constant as well, aren't you paying the same?
... problem. With the advent of widescreen TV's and DVD's this "movie logic" infiltrated computer monitors. 4:3 and even 5:4 (1280x1024) was a good balanced ratio. I use 1280x1024, since I can't stand anything that deviates too far away from 4:3. I really really hate widescreen for daily computer use.
the same people who predicted that the merging of gpu and cpu would happen before 2003. These doofuses can't get anything right.
"Anyway, it would not have taken thousands of years of human civilisation, including a mathematical and scientific component, to reach F=ma if classical mechanics were really that obvious."
You're forgetting systems of social organization and hierarchy have direct effects on whether scientific thinking is even possible. I'm sure many individuals of the ancient world made great progress towards scientific thinking but due to political or environmental (economic) circumstances beyond their control stopped this process. I see scientific progress as a matter of fits and starts area's of world history where it can incubate before some upheaval takes place that prevents reaching conceptual "singularity".
Money is power
Power corrupts
Lobbyists write our laws
Therefore you are incorrect.
Law cannot contain money, lobbyists are proof that your theory of corruption is flawed, lobbyists are the example of market ideology infiltrating every aspect of society. You cannot keep ideological values out of government when all too manny in government see the extension of the market mechanism into government as just how things are done practically given the primacy of commerce and the economy over everything else.
"It has nothing to do with the economic system and everything to do with the fact that some people are assholes who will always try to dick other people over."
That is incorrect, these people get to be assholes because they can afford it because allowing private actors to set prices and profit means wealth will naturally concentrate, because there are no laws on how much one can accumulate.
"I wouldn't be surprised if individuals who work for these firms will start to be publically identified and their private lives targetted."
That's exactly what needs to happen, copyright and corporations have shown themselves to want nothing more then a monopoly, and turn customers and citizens of the world into serfs where the rent everything in perpetuity. WHere ownership rights on the customer end are being rescinded and quite frankly copyright will always be abused it goes against our rights to own what we purchase outright and modify it as we see fit.
I will never understand why westerners are so supportive of corporatist removal of our rights to own outright and modify our stuff as customers and human beings. We've seen how free market ideology works in the real world where there are no scruples and money makes the rules and if you don't have money your voice doesn't matter. We're already in an era of corporate dictatorship of policy to such an insidious degree.
Why exactly would you want more of it? Right now the economy, government and law is so twisted by the structures of power that be, we need constant resistance and less ideological infighting of right vs left, left and right simply doesn't matter, these are distractions from the main issues - the removal of our liberties and rights as human beings view the market mechanism. We're seeing how money and markets can be transform a society into a society of serfs, any system can be gamed, transformed and abused, how so many people can't see this is disturbing.
"That's on an independent game, that only cost $15. It's a great game, and well worth the money."
To you... most gamers rent their games and only but their favorites, the whole business model of *selling full games* has always been questionable from the outset. Most people pirate a game these days to get the full taste of a game before being let down, SOOO many games being released are huge let-downs or have no replay value over the long term. Any money is too much money for a game you don't feel has value to you (one of your favorites).
This is why I hate developers and their piracy numbers, it's like they live in some kind of bizarro land and never remembered what it was to be a gamer as a kid in the age of the NES/SNES when you could rent a game for a couple bucks and finish it that weekend and never pay the full price for a game. Note that the good game franchises from that era are still around today (Castlevania, megaman, mario, zelda, etc).
Game developers need to get a major clue - gamers only buy their favorite games, everything else is a "rental" or played it but would not buy it.
If your game isn't good enough to buy for lots of people that means your game just isn't that valuable, plenty of hugely pirated games are hugely financially successful.
Better yet gaming news sites/review sites are mostly garbage outside of convenience of finding aggregated info, trailers and user reviews/forums.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/the_videogame_news_racket/
"This is a crazy idea, but maybe people like both?"
No it's not a crazy idea, when the power goes out you'll be glad you have books for all sorts of things. Books are one of the technologies that will be around for a long long time because an ebook requires electricity. Books may not always be on paper but the "traditional" book which you carry around and can access "off the grid" will most likely be with us for a long long time.
This is probably one of the best comments I have ever read on slashdot, thank you for your contribution!
"I get tired of the "Get off my lawn, the past was so much better."
I get tired of newbie gamers who have not noticed that game quality in many genres is going down or stagnating. I'm sure most older gamers have noticed how almost EVERY fucking game is a first person shooter. Most gamers probably remember an age where the FPS was one of the genre's and not THE DOMINANT genre of gaming like it is today.
How many first person shooters have we had since doom? You'd think after all these years FPS games would be played out... but now they are even turning RPG's into FPS games (oblivion --> Fallout 3), Gears of war --> Mass effect 2.
If you hadn't noticed this trend of homogenization of games then you clearly are incapable of seeing what has happened. It only sounds to you like it's "Get off my lawn" but look at final fantasy 12 and 13, the battle systems in those games can't hold a candle to the battle systems of earlier games.
When you have newer gamers complaining over a game that has _gasp_ actual gameplay and calls real older or true gamers "retards" for actually liking to have game mechanics in their games and not just a bunch of cutscenes, then yeah they are going to get a little miffed that too many games don't focus on making the activity you are doing in the games fun. I've watched final fantasy series be butchered by movie/story types who don't like the loot/equipment/battle and stat management aspect of oldschool RPG's, compare a game like FF1/FF6/FF7 to FFX and beyond.
I think the real problem is when you want to take an older game and update it but not alienate the fanbase, I think that's where the sentiment comes from because a lot of "innovative games" are absolute garbage because the designers were clueless.
... is because the amount of work and talent to create a modern game is huge, much more then it was in the 80's and early 90's, to build a game you need a LOT of talented people the problem is that it's extremely hard to get consistency and cohesion of art assets and gameplay vision because of team sizes.
Few games get it right, but games like God of war for example or soul calibur 2 are excellent examples of when a project comes together well.
"Whats the odds that there are people quietly trying things like this on humans somewhere?"
Given the race for military/economic supremacy - highly likely.