Sorry, but China has proved that the Internet is controllable. The communist party has shown that all the "benefits" of the internet--rapid communication, access to technology, skills and educational enhancements, new mass entertainment forms, and greater facilitation of art and commerce--can be had without opening up society in any significant way or of empowering citizens in the slightest. Their walled garden supplies a significant and ever growing fraction of the services available in the rest of the world, and as time goes by, the lessons learned in China are being passed on in turn to western countries, whos governments are similarly coming to grips with the internet.
I was going to respond to your point by noting that Google is the world's largest internet company. Then I noticed that Youporn.com is apparently the 61st highest ranked internet site. I guess you can't exactly say that these guys are small time.
For fucks sake, can we give the social polemical shit a rest for just one article?
The heart of the internet just skipped a beat. This is important in a technical and political sense. Is it too much to ask for some comments giving technical insight into the DNS system, historical precedents, or exisiting context? Instead we get a +5 copy paste rant about the death of the middle class that could be placed in just about any other thread or a ZeroHedge comment section for that matter.
This issue goes to the heart of the controversy over who controls the internet; specifically who controls ICANN and the DNS root servers.
Right now, DNS control resides with the United States, and up to this point they have defended this status quo by assurring the world that the US is a bastion of absolute free speech and therefore best placed to control this most centralised, hierarchical and critical piece of internet architecture.
And now, when faced with the first real and signifigant test of its will, the United States' resolve crumples almost immediately. Gone is any guarantee--implied or otherwise--that the DNS servers will be beyond political or domestic influences(In truth, the takeing down of "terrorist" sites has been ongoing for some years). The weak appeal that these are the actions of a private company is a thin rag which fails to cover the US governments nakedness. This censorship is on the express will of the government.
This was the first real test; the US failed it. This has the potential to split DNS completely; with US trust now bankrupt, no other country will give it credit. In 5 years time, when you go looking for wikileaks.org or indeed slashdot.org, don't expect to get the same IP address as everyone else.
While I don't entirely agree with Assange's style of doing things, it's worth remembering that there is a significant difference between just making information available, and actually making sure it's heard.
That difference is credibility.
If these diplomatic cables simply showed up Usenet one day, lets face it, the world would outright ignore them. Same goes for them being published by an anonymous site somewhere. Wikileaks on the other hand now has a name behind it; it's a brand for whistleblower information, and has significant credibility.
If you look at the sites publication record, the idea of an anti-US stance does not stand up to scrutiny. Wikileaks published a significant amount of material relating to corporate and political misdeeds--Scientology documents, an Icelandic bank, internet censorship--in the years prior to the current cache it obtain from its US sources. Their next target is reputed to be a major bank (an organisation I think Wikileaks are underestimating).
The forces Wikileaks have incensed and the backlash that has been created--ideologically--among a supposedly sophisticated public, reveal just how corrupt, complacent and regressive modern society has become. Gone are the days when the reporters who covered the Watergate scandal were lauded as heroes. We live in an age where ever more radicalised people eagerly swallow all propaganda tossed at them, from online sources in particular. Most of the public vehemence to Wikileaks and Assange that I have seen comes from younger, more tech saavy people. The older generation affords the site and its work far more respect.
These are the times; pervasive corruption and public complicity. Wikileaks is a response to them.
This is the dorkiest thing I've read all year, and perfect Idle fodder. This is why Idle is a good idea; where else could you ever read about this stuff.
Now they are simply an anti-US organization. They lost all claim to moral superiority or credibility at that point.
This view is no doubt a common one in some quarters, but ultimately stems from the unstated and absolutist belief that the United States is intrinsically a force for good in the world. Noam Chomsky mentions this, in relation to the Vietnam War, where even the most left wing of commentators described the war as "[US] blundering efforts to do good". The unquestioning narrative presented was that "US==GOOD, always". I'm sure a lot of Americans even believe it.
Suffice to say this is not the case. Wikileaks has exposed the underlying hypocrisy, corruption, deceit and outright lies behind the public relations veneer. That's real journalism, not the obsequious boot-licking of the shills you call journalists.
And now, having gorged yourself on the swill of lies presented by the mainstream interests, you have the nerve to object--to even be offended--when someone offers you a glass of truth. Go back to your trough; you're not fit to raise your head from it.
I suspect CmdrTaco took one look at the scale of the DDOS attack currently pummeling Wikileaks, wailed in abject terror, then decided not to tempt fate and play the card less likely to draw the botnet owners ire.
Either that or 'Taco has been drinking the American Patriot cool-aid. Given his age, origin and marital status, it's probably the latter.
And much like the PS2, I think the longer developers work with the machine, the better the games are going to get.
This comment sums up why the 5 year cycle hasn't and shouldn't happen right now. In the last 12-18 months, games have come out for both the PS3 and 360 which truly show the potential of the hardware. Developers are coming to grips with the system and are leveraging the ability of the consoles in a way that simply was not happening 3 years ago. Even developers who are not innovating in a strictly technical sense are spending less time on learning the system and more time on gameplay.
May the current consoles last another 3-4 years. I for one will be delighted to see what developers come up with and to not have to spend 400+ for the ability to buy lower quality games.
These files would be damaging if they were carefully analysed and reported.
But the reality is that the main stream media is by now utterly incapable of performing such a feat. Paying someone competent to sift through these files, pick out juicy pieces that will makes news, while still catching eyeballs and not pissing off friends in the military-industrial-political complex? And all while trying to keep up with their twitter and web 2.0 feeds?
Impossible. Just run another story about a celebrities baby or something. This leak will be handled the same way as all the others. 3-4 days of hysteria, then the media will completely lose interest once the prospect of having to do actual journalism rears its head.
What you're advocating ultimately will lead to the fogging of information as diplomats and their staff begin self-censoring out of fear that Wikileaks will reveal what they said.
Competent diplomats do this anyway. Haven't you ever seen "Yes, Minister"? If anything, this will bring an end to the cadre of incompetents who have taken over civil services in recent years.
It's a though terminating cliche. People say it because, odds are, none of us really do all of these things. If someone doesn't like you complaining about something, they can just trot this one out to shut you up.
Think of it as the grown up version of "There are children in the world dying for want of that broccoli.", and "You should be outside on the street corner instead of gawking at that video game.". It's a rather meaningless disparagement which is based on the premise that certain things are _always_ more worthwhile than others, for everyone, all the time.
I'm reminded of this recent Penny Arcade strip and the accompanying commentary. One of the writers--Gabe's--son spend his time playing a 3D sandbox construction game, and is (almost) chided for this an encouraged to play outside in the cold instead. Tycho--the other writer--sums this up succintly.
This is how Gabriel the Younger invests his leisure hours - in the construction and demolition of imaginary worlds. You can't tell me, or at any rate I will refuse to hear, that this doesn't have value.
And it does have value. I'm not saying that play outside doesn't; but games like minecraft are how our future architects and engineers will find their profession. Saying that people should be outside playing instead of this is like saying they should be outside instead of reading a book. The platitude does not stand up to serious scrutiny.
Eating fruits and vegetables and getting lots of exercise is NOT going to reduce your stress levels or help with your anxiety. It's just going to make you more riled up, exhausted, and eat free time that could be spent on far better things; such as meeting people, going out for a meal or just plain relaxing with a good book. That's how you deal with stress and anxiety. You go on an Olympic regime when you want to lose weight.
He trucked over to his ex-Marine brother's place, picked up a three-foot stack of magazines, brought them home and plopped them on my bed....compared to all my friends who were still being victimized by their parents
I'm not actually sure which of you were worse off.
Heavy Rain is the last game that gripped me,... . I'm tired of the GTA formulas, bored of CoDs and don't have the reaction time to think on my feet for AOE III. Is it about time I tossed in the controller and resigned myself to the fact that the games I want only come out once in a blue moon?
I think you need to resign yourself to the fact that you're not so much a gamer, as you are simply a viewer. It's clear from your preferences that you prefer a far more passive medium than that which video games provide.
Now, I'm not much of a fast reaction time player either. I prefer to take my time and plan out my strategies. But a key element of any video game is the challenge and rising to meet it. Only through this can real player satisfaction be gained. Viewer satisfaction on the other hand can be provided by a fairly linear quasi-interactive experience.
For you, I would recommend a game like Uncharted 2. I recommend it to you for the exact reasons I didn't like it. It's a "gripping interactive experience", but an awful pudding of a game, which I think is really what you're looking for.
Google is welcome to bias its results if it wants to. However, if it biases its results than it loses any claim to neutrality.
I don't know where you get this from. Google routinely purges child porn sites and other related material from its search engine. Via Google's own FAQ.
No. Our policies and systems are set up to identify and remove child pornography whenever we become aware of it, regardless of whether that request comes from the government.
And yes, I do equate removing child porn to hard-coding search results. I do this because I believe in certain standards of integrity. You lose any claim to neutrality or fairness the moment you make a single exception, especially if that exception is on a "moral" basis.
Google is just the AT&T of the internet age. They make the rules; you play by them or you get boycotted.
Slashdot Mirror
Elitist!!!
The No True Scotsman fallacy, eh?
Sorry, but China has proved that the Internet is controllable. The communist party has shown that all the "benefits" of the internet--rapid communication, access to technology, skills and educational enhancements, new mass entertainment forms, and greater facilitation of art and commerce--can be had without opening up society in any significant way or of empowering citizens in the slightest. Their walled garden supplies a significant and ever growing fraction of the services available in the rest of the world, and as time goes by, the lessons learned in China are being passed on in turn to western countries, whos governments are similarly coming to grips with the internet.
I was going to respond to your point by noting that Google is the world's largest internet company. Then I noticed that Youporn.com is apparently the 61st highest ranked internet site. I guess you can't exactly say that these guys are small time.
For fucks sake, can we give the social polemical shit a rest for just one article?
The heart of the internet just skipped a beat. This is important in a technical and political sense. Is it too much to ask for some comments giving technical insight into the DNS system, historical precedents, or exisiting context? Instead we get a +5 copy paste rant about the death of the middle class that could be placed in just about any other thread or a ZeroHedge comment section for that matter.
TOPIC, GENTLEMEN; PLEASE.
This issue goes to the heart of the controversy over who controls the internet; specifically who controls ICANN and the DNS root servers.
Right now, DNS control resides with the United States, and up to this point they have defended this status quo by assurring the world that the US is a bastion of absolute free speech and therefore best placed to control this most centralised, hierarchical and critical piece of internet architecture.
And now, when faced with the first real and signifigant test of its will, the United States' resolve crumples almost immediately. Gone is any guarantee--implied or otherwise--that the DNS servers will be beyond political or domestic influences(In truth, the takeing down of "terrorist" sites has been ongoing for some years). The weak appeal that these are the actions of a private company is a thin rag which fails to cover the US governments nakedness. This censorship is on the express will of the government.
This was the first real test; the US failed it. This has the potential to split DNS completely; with US trust now bankrupt, no other country will give it credit. In 5 years time, when you go looking for wikileaks.org or indeed slashdot.org, don't expect to get the same IP address as everyone else.
That difference is credibility.
If these diplomatic cables simply showed up Usenet one day, lets face it, the world would outright ignore them. Same goes for them being published by an anonymous site somewhere. Wikileaks on the other hand now has a name behind it; it's a brand for whistleblower information, and has significant credibility.
If you look at the sites publication record, the idea of an anti-US stance does not stand up to scrutiny. Wikileaks published a significant amount of material relating to corporate and political misdeeds--Scientology documents, an Icelandic bank, internet censorship--in the years prior to the current cache it obtain from its US sources. Their next target is reputed to be a major bank (an organisation I think Wikileaks are underestimating).
The forces Wikileaks have incensed and the backlash that has been created--ideologically--among a supposedly sophisticated public, reveal just how corrupt, complacent and regressive modern society has become. Gone are the days when the reporters who covered the Watergate scandal were lauded as heroes. We live in an age where ever more radicalised people eagerly swallow all propaganda tossed at them, from online sources in particular. Most of the public vehemence to Wikileaks and Assange that I have seen comes from younger, more tech saavy people. The older generation affords the site and its work far more respect.
These are the times; pervasive corruption and public complicity. Wikileaks is a response to them.
This is the dorkiest thing I've read all year, and perfect Idle fodder. This is why Idle is a good idea; where else could you ever read about this stuff.
Peoples rights are being violated by criminals online. I think this qualifies as a YRO story.
The Internet is an American medium.
This view is no doubt a common one in some quarters, but ultimately stems from the unstated and absolutist belief that the United States is intrinsically a force for good in the world. Noam Chomsky mentions this, in relation to the Vietnam War, where even the most left wing of commentators described the war as "[US] blundering efforts to do good". The unquestioning narrative presented was that "US==GOOD, always". I'm sure a lot of Americans even believe it.
Suffice to say this is not the case. Wikileaks has exposed the underlying hypocrisy, corruption, deceit and outright lies behind the public relations veneer. That's real journalism, not the obsequious boot-licking of the shills you call journalists.
And now, having gorged yourself on the swill of lies presented by the mainstream interests, you have the nerve to object--to even be offended--when someone offers you a glass of truth. Go back to your trough; you're not fit to raise your head from it.
I suspect CmdrTaco took one look at the scale of the DDOS attack currently pummeling Wikileaks, wailed in abject terror, then decided not to tempt fate and play the card less likely to draw the botnet owners ire.
Either that or 'Taco has been drinking the American Patriot cool-aid. Given his age, origin and marital status, it's probably the latter.
This comment sums up why the 5 year cycle hasn't and shouldn't happen right now. In the last 12-18 months, games have come out for both the PS3 and 360 which truly show the potential of the hardware. Developers are coming to grips with the system and are leveraging the ability of the consoles in a way that simply was not happening 3 years ago. Even developers who are not innovating in a strictly technical sense are spending less time on learning the system and more time on gameplay.
May the current consoles last another 3-4 years. I for one will be delighted to see what developers come up with and to not have to spend 400+ for the ability to buy lower quality games.
These files would be damaging if they were carefully analysed and reported.
But the reality is that the main stream media is by now utterly incapable of performing such a feat. Paying someone competent to sift through these files, pick out juicy pieces that will makes news, while still catching eyeballs and not pissing off friends in the military-industrial-political complex? And all while trying to keep up with their twitter and web 2.0 feeds?
Impossible. Just run another story about a celebrities baby or something. This leak will be handled the same way as all the others. 3-4 days of hysteria, then the media will completely lose interest once the prospect of having to do actual journalism rears its head.
Competent diplomats do this anyway. Haven't you ever seen "Yes, Minister"? If anything, this will bring an end to the cadre of incompetents who have taken over civil services in recent years.
It's a though terminating cliche. People say it because, odds are, none of us really do all of these things. If someone doesn't like you complaining about something, they can just trot this one out to shut you up.
Think of it as the grown up version of "There are children in the world dying for want of that broccoli.", and "You should be outside on the street corner instead of gawking at that video game.". It's a rather meaningless disparagement which is based on the premise that certain things are _always_ more worthwhile than others, for everyone, all the time.
I'm reminded of this recent Penny Arcade strip and the accompanying commentary. One of the writers--Gabe's--son spend his time playing a 3D sandbox construction game, and is (almost) chided for this an encouraged to play outside in the cold instead. Tycho--the other writer--sums this up succintly.
And it does have value. I'm not saying that play outside doesn't; but games like minecraft are how our future architects and engineers will find their profession. Saying that people should be outside playing instead of this is like saying they should be outside instead of reading a book. The platitude does not stand up to serious scrutiny.
Eating fruits and vegetables and getting lots of exercise is NOT going to reduce your stress levels or help with your anxiety. It's just going to make you more riled up, exhausted, and eat free time that could be spent on far better things; such as meeting people, going out for a meal or just plain relaxing with a good book. That's how you deal with stress and anxiety. You go on an Olympic regime when you want to lose weight.
I'm not actually sure which of you were worse off.
Indeed. Their extension uses the IBM logo.
It's actually pretty easy.
I think you need to resign yourself to the fact that you're not so much a gamer, as you are simply a viewer. It's clear from your preferences that you prefer a far more passive medium than that which video games provide.
Now, I'm not much of a fast reaction time player either. I prefer to take my time and plan out my strategies. But a key element of any video game is the challenge and rising to meet it. Only through this can real player satisfaction be gained. Viewer satisfaction on the other hand can be provided by a fairly linear quasi-interactive experience.
For you, I would recommend a game like Uncharted 2. I recommend it to you for the exact reasons I didn't like it. It's a "gripping interactive experience", but an awful pudding of a game, which I think is really what you're looking for.
Shouldn't that be, "...only outlaws will have obscure genitalia"?
Ladies and Gentlemen of Slashdot; I give you, a Fianna Fail Voter.
I don't know where you get this from. Google routinely purges child porn sites and other related material from its search engine. Via Google's own FAQ.
And yes, I do equate removing child porn to hard-coding search results. I do this because I believe in certain standards of integrity. You lose any claim to neutrality or fairness the moment you make a single exception, especially if that exception is on a "moral" basis.
Google is just the AT&T of the internet age. They make the rules; you play by them or you get boycotted.
Heh, The Matrix. Remember back in the 1990s when everyone made fun all the grungers, cyberpunks, and goths for being anti-establishment....
Well, who's laughing now!?!
And you can show that the majority of Facebook users understand the terms of this contract, yes? In fact, can you can show us the bill of sale?
Now those are what I call "special interests".