Not really. The right to be forgotten applies to more than search engines. It's more accurately described as delete my tracks and every map anyone has made documenting my tracks.
I abandoned Firefox ages ago and switched to Chrome, despite some of my most beloved extensions not being available, or being less functional on Chrome, because I got sick of the direction they were going.
One of the things that ticked me off from a user perspective was constantly having my extensions disabled due to forced updates that broke them at a pace so rapid that the (mostly) volunteers who made those extensions in their spare time while holding down regular jobs were unable or unwilling to keep up with. It's asking quite a lot of a lot of free or hobbyist developers to create and update the extensions that make the browser usable for so many different people and use cases to deal with a constant influx of changes that break their work every few weeks. I was sick of that.
The other thing that ticked me off was a change they made to their download manager. It used to be there was an option you could check that would automatically delete downloads from the download manager's list when closing the browser, so you'd start out with a clean downloads list every time you started the browser, but for some idiotic reason, they decided that was not a useful feature and should be removed-- so they took the option and its functionality out entirely, so even setting the option in about:config didn't do anything.
The reasoning behind that choice made sense, from a default config point of view-- it could lead a user to believe that deleting the download from their downloads list meant that the download wouldn't show up in their browsing history when in fact the download still existed in the download history, so they thought removing that option made more sense from a user privacy/security expectation point of view. That's probably correct, although such a user would likely also delete their history on exit as well, and that option already existed and still exists today, so it's still an illogical position.
Even more illogical was the decision to remove the option to clear the downloads history on exit entirely, because the functionality still exists in the browser if you're willing to go through half a dozen clicks and an extra window before closing the browser-- clicking to open the download manager, then clicking the "clear" button will do exactly what the former option did, removing the downloads from the downloads list, but not from the browser history-- but there is no functionality to automate this behavior anymore.
What put the final nail in the coffin for me, though, was the response I and many other users got when we reported the issue and put in a feature request to bring the old functionality back at least as a configurable option. Despite our presenting several valid use cases in which the option would solve problems for users as was requested by the developer(s) reading the issue-- we were told that those reasons didn't matter, didn't make sense, and would be ignored, and that if we really wanted it back, we could just use an extension to get it back (an extension which doesn't exist, and obviously none of the users who have the issue are able to create ourselves or we would have, although no guarantee we'd be able to keep up with the seemingly bi-weekly API breaks to keep it compatible/snark) or live without it.
But that attitude seems to have become almost pervasive in the Mozilla/Firefox development world, and since I can't abide that kind of blind commitment to an unreasonable ideological position and that kind of dismissive attitude of my quite legitimate needs (from my point of view), I abandoned ship and haven't looked back.
At this point, I couldn't care less what Mozilla/Firefox thinks about anything-- they have utterly lost their way and become basically what Microsoft of old was. I have better things to spend my days in this life with than that. I mourn the loss of what was once a fantastic product and community, but there's no point keeping the corpse lying around and posing it to make it seem like it's still alive. You were great once, Firefox, but now you're dead. Get back in your casket.
In addition the shooter had no way to know with any reasonable degree of certainty that the 'drone' was unarmed. It could have been carrying an explosive device - and not just a gun as was recently seen, but actual c4 explosive.
Are you kidding? You can't possibly be serious with this. Either that or you don't live in the United States.
I can de facto be at least "reasonably certain" that a drone hovering over my yard is not armed and not carrying actual C4 explosive. I can do so because there are exactly zero incidences in all of human history of an armed drone-- particularly armed with C4 explosive-- hovering over someone's yard watching their 16 year old daughter in her bathing suit. To suggest that he couldn't know with any reasonable certainty is, frankly, insane. Of course he could know that with reasonable certainty. The likelihood that he'd be wrong is about as close to zero as you can get-- well beyond five nines of confidence.
I get that there's a strong Libertarian contingent on Slashdot, but you guys really need to join reality once in a while. You can do that without selling out on any Libertarian values. In fact, it'd probably benefit the Libertarian movement immensely if people would do that. Reality can actually be observed and measured and verified and validated, so there's no need to deal in delusion or fantasy in support of liberty.
Voters quit allowing governments to get the revenues they need to do their jobs properly, so they've taken to using whatever shady means at their disposal to be able to keep doing what voters insist they do better but refuse to give them the funding for.
If you're impeding cross traffic, you've entered the intersection illegally. In most places, the sensor is placed so that you don't trigger the camera until you've physically entered the intersection, which is the same point where you're in the way of cross traffic and are likely to cause a collision. It doesn't matter if cross traffic is still able to swerve to avoid you, you're still blocking their right of way.
Courts (and law) aren't so naive as to think that "being in front" absolves one from all responsibility in an accident.
Courts are also not so naive as to confuse someone rear ending someone for following too closely when they're stopping at a red light for someone rear ending someone who's intentionally trying to cause an accident by slamming on their brakes on an open road or at a green light.
Is your state so backwards that running a red light means you haven't cleared the intersection rather than you entered the intersection after the red light? That's not been the case in any state I've lived in. If that is the case, then you ought to petition your legislature to fix the statute.
I don't know the timings of lights outside my usual driving areas either, but I have one simple rule that I apply to all traffic lights that keeps me from running red lights anywhere I've traveled (more than a million miles so far).
Green means proceed when the intersection is clear and it's safe to do so.
Red means stop.
Yellow also means stop because yellow is never followed by green.
If you can't come to a safe stop because of icy conditions when the light turns yellow, it's because you're driving too fast for the conditions. Do they really not teach people these things before they get a driver's license anymore? It's pretty basic common sense stuff really.
But those average speed over distance cameras can ONLY work in favor of the driver, they can never return a speed higher than was actually traveled. So is the complaint that they actually work and can't be tricked like real police officers in patrol cars and simpler cameras can?
How about the fact that the two parties have worked together to create more and more hurdles for independent candidates and candidates from other parties to gain ballot access?... The People get to participate in a symbolic ritual, but the whole system is rigged so that nothing really changes.
As for the first case, it's not a conspiracy, it's the natural outcome.
As for the second part, the system is rigged so that nothing really changes. But it's rigged by human psychology, and exploited by politicians (and businesses, and abusive spouses, and con-artists etc.).
This is correct. Polygraphs only measure stress, they can't tell what the stress is caused by, so the results are only as useful as the polygraph operator himself. They're also only accurate in high stakes questioning, which since he's basically screwed regardless of the outcome, this may not be to him. I would rather have him questioned by a competent interviewer in the presence of a panel of 2 or 3 truth wizards if I wanted to rely on the results myself.
Don't forget that Aldrich Aimes passed multiple polygraph tests administered by the best operators we had.
Your test is a little invalid. you're using it to determine whether it should be considered a phone or a tablet here, but in order to use it as a PHONE, you don't need to be able to reach the whole screen with your thumb while holding the device in one hand. You only need to be able to reach the dialer buttons which only occupy the lower half of the screen at full size, and only one corner of the lower half of the screen when you enable the one-handed operation mode for people with smaller hands.
Diesel hybrids aren't really practical due to the way they work. Diesel engines just aren't suited to being started and stopped constantly like that, and because of the high compression ratios needed for diesel to work, it wastes quite a lot more energy every time the hybrid system has to restart the engine (then there's the heat and lack of heat problem-- my Prius often has to waste a bit of fuel just to keep the combustion system warm enough to control emissions as it is). I think that's one of the big reasons Toyota decided to use their modified pseudo-Atkinson cycle engine instead for their hybrid systems-- they spent a ton of time and money researching and developing it, and it's the most popular system today because it's so well designed. The variable compression ratio makes them a lot more efficient than diesel would be in the long run too, although the efficiency is relatively close in most cases. But I suspect that the main reason is that of emissions. You can keep the emissions much lower with gas than with diesel if that's what you tune it for.
You're right about the (ancient) notions of diesel in the U.S. though. I've seen a lot of modern Mercedes diesels here in the U.S., and unless you know what the Blu-tech badge means, I think most Americans wouldn't have any idea they weren't running on ordinary gasoline. The technology has come a long way since the old days, although since American trucks are about the only diesels most people here see, they probably believe the smoke-belching, noisy behemoths are the only way diesel can run even today.
It's less of an issue, but it's still an issue because that's the way physics works. There are many benefits to diesel engines-- and consumers here in the U.S. should be more aware of them-- but for whatever reason, we're not. I've always wondered why that is. Any idea?
I'm confused about getting stranded looking for a charger on a back country road with a gas/electric hybrid. I've never once needed a charger for mine and don't know of anyone else who has either.
In terms of work done per fuel consumed, gas engines are much more efficient under heavy load than under light load, so the increased efficiency here is partially an illusion. That's why cars like the Prius always try to run the ICE at a higher load at a lower RPM, which the e-CVT works brilliantly for.
But what you can do with a locked phone, whether subsidized or not, is smash it, burn it, destroy it, sell it etc., all without breaking any laws. You just can't unlock it.
You're absolutely right that it would be different if they were white Christian or Jewish, I don't deny that. What I do deny though is that the attacks themselves are because they're brown. They're only less objectionable because they're brown. Welcome to racist America.:/
The U.S. so far has been using them in conflict with terrorists. Hackers/terrorists would be using them for crime or terrorism.
I know the arguments-- why is it different when the government does it? Why is it OK for the government to do it? Why is it OK that they're killing civilians? Women? Kids? And so on, ad infinitum.
The difference is that they're (currently) being used in a "war" against a non-nation state. There are civilian and innocent casualties in all conflicts, but the casualties so far have been less than in more conventional warfare. Never before have we been able to target specific individuals in a conflict except on the most limited scale (i.e. Saddam or Usama). I think it's important not to lose sight of that fact, just as it's important to continue to try to reduce civilian/innocent casualties either with or without drones, and to avoid conflict where possible in the first place. The government using them for legitimate (as far as governments attacking people is legitimate) purposes is apples to oranges compared to hackers potentially using them for whatever they would use them for.
I see where you're coming from, but it's not entirely valid. And it has nothing to do with skin color, race, religion, nationality etc., it has to do with the actions undertaken by the targeted individuals.
Because drones are just one of many human interfaces to cyber-weapons? What happens when one of those is hacked? Especially when the difference between one and a hundred is how many hosts you connect to. Far-fetched definitely, but a drone is almost by definition a hackable weapon system.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. The right to be forgotten applies to more than search engines. It's more accurately described as delete my tracks and every map anyone has made documenting my tracks.
I abandoned Firefox ages ago and switched to Chrome, despite some of my most beloved extensions not being available, or being less functional on Chrome, because I got sick of the direction they were going.
One of the things that ticked me off from a user perspective was constantly having my extensions disabled due to forced updates that broke them at a pace so rapid that the (mostly) volunteers who made those extensions in their spare time while holding down regular jobs were unable or unwilling to keep up with. It's asking quite a lot of a lot of free or hobbyist developers to create and update the extensions that make the browser usable for so many different people and use cases to deal with a constant influx of changes that break their work every few weeks. I was sick of that.
The other thing that ticked me off was a change they made to their download manager. It used to be there was an option you could check that would automatically delete downloads from the download manager's list when closing the browser, so you'd start out with a clean downloads list every time you started the browser, but for some idiotic reason, they decided that was not a useful feature and should be removed-- so they took the option and its functionality out entirely, so even setting the option in about:config didn't do anything.
The reasoning behind that choice made sense, from a default config point of view-- it could lead a user to believe that deleting the download from their downloads list meant that the download wouldn't show up in their browsing history when in fact the download still existed in the download history, so they thought removing that option made more sense from a user privacy/security expectation point of view. That's probably correct, although such a user would likely also delete their history on exit as well, and that option already existed and still exists today, so it's still an illogical position.
Even more illogical was the decision to remove the option to clear the downloads history on exit entirely, because the functionality still exists in the browser if you're willing to go through half a dozen clicks and an extra window before closing the browser-- clicking to open the download manager, then clicking the "clear" button will do exactly what the former option did, removing the downloads from the downloads list, but not from the browser history-- but there is no functionality to automate this behavior anymore.
What put the final nail in the coffin for me, though, was the response I and many other users got when we reported the issue and put in a feature request to bring the old functionality back at least as a configurable option. Despite our presenting several valid use cases in which the option would solve problems for users as was requested by the developer(s) reading the issue-- we were told that those reasons didn't matter, didn't make sense, and would be ignored, and that if we really wanted it back, we could just use an extension to get it back (an extension which doesn't exist, and obviously none of the users who have the issue are able to create ourselves or we would have, although no guarantee we'd be able to keep up with the seemingly bi-weekly API breaks to keep it compatible /snark) or live without it.
But that attitude seems to have become almost pervasive in the Mozilla/Firefox development world, and since I can't abide that kind of blind commitment to an unreasonable ideological position and that kind of dismissive attitude of my quite legitimate needs (from my point of view), I abandoned ship and haven't looked back.
At this point, I couldn't care less what Mozilla/Firefox thinks about anything-- they have utterly lost their way and become basically what Microsoft of old was. I have better things to spend my days in this life with than that. I mourn the loss of what was once a fantastic product and community, but there's no point keeping the corpse lying around and posing it to make it seem like it's still alive. You were great once, Firefox, but now you're dead. Get back in your casket.
Are you kidding? You can't possibly be serious with this. Either that or you don't live in the United States.
I can de facto be at least "reasonably certain" that a drone hovering over my yard is not armed and not carrying actual C4 explosive. I can do so because there are exactly zero incidences in all of human history of an armed drone-- particularly armed with C4 explosive-- hovering over someone's yard watching their 16 year old daughter in her bathing suit. To suggest that he couldn't know with any reasonable certainty is, frankly, insane. Of course he could know that with reasonable certainty. The likelihood that he'd be wrong is about as close to zero as you can get-- well beyond five nines of confidence.
I get that there's a strong Libertarian contingent on Slashdot, but you guys really need to join reality once in a while. You can do that without selling out on any Libertarian values. In fact, it'd probably benefit the Libertarian movement immensely if people would do that. Reality can actually be observed and measured and verified and validated, so there's no need to deal in delusion or fantasy in support of liberty.
Voters quit allowing governments to get the revenues they need to do their jobs properly, so they've taken to using whatever shady means at their disposal to be able to keep doing what voters insist they do better but refuse to give them the funding for.
Please immigrate to the U.S. We need people like you here to spread genes that can think.
If you're impeding cross traffic, you've entered the intersection illegally. In most places, the sensor is placed so that you don't trigger the camera until you've physically entered the intersection, which is the same point where you're in the way of cross traffic and are likely to cause a collision. It doesn't matter if cross traffic is still able to swerve to avoid you, you're still blocking their right of way.
Courts (and law) aren't so naive as to think that "being in front" absolves one from all responsibility in an accident.
Courts are also not so naive as to confuse someone rear ending someone for following too closely when they're stopping at a red light for someone rear ending someone who's intentionally trying to cause an accident by slamming on their brakes on an open road or at a green light.
This is true but perhaps the law that's broken is the one that issues a license to anyone who's had a weak pulse in the past 50 years.
Is your state so backwards that running a red light means you haven't cleared the intersection rather than you entered the intersection after the red light? That's not been the case in any state I've lived in. If that is the case, then you ought to petition your legislature to fix the statute.
I don't know the timings of lights outside my usual driving areas either, but I have one simple rule that I apply to all traffic lights that keeps me from running red lights anywhere I've traveled (more than a million miles so far).
Green means proceed when the intersection is clear and it's safe to do so.
Red means stop.
Yellow also means stop because yellow is never followed by green.
If you can't come to a safe stop because of icy conditions when the light turns yellow, it's because you're driving too fast for the conditions. Do they really not teach people these things before they get a driver's license anymore? It's pretty basic common sense stuff really.
Why was this modded troll?
But those average speed over distance cameras can ONLY work in favor of the driver, they can never return a speed higher than was actually traveled. So is the complaint that they actually work and can't be tricked like real police officers in patrol cars and simpler cameras can?
How about the fact that the two parties have worked together to create more and more hurdles for independent candidates and candidates from other parties to gain ballot access? ...
The People get to participate in a symbolic ritual, but the whole system is rigged so that nothing really changes.
As for the first case, it's not a conspiracy, it's the natural outcome.
As for the second part, the system is rigged so that nothing really changes. But it's rigged by human psychology, and exploited by politicians (and businesses, and abusive spouses, and con-artists etc.).
This is correct. Polygraphs only measure stress, they can't tell what the stress is caused by, so the results are only as useful as the polygraph operator himself. They're also only accurate in high stakes questioning, which since he's basically screwed regardless of the outcome, this may not be to him. I would rather have him questioned by a competent interviewer in the presence of a panel of 2 or 3 truth wizards if I wanted to rely on the results myself.
Don't forget that Aldrich Aimes passed multiple polygraph tests administered by the best operators we had.
Your test is a little invalid. you're using it to determine whether it should be considered a phone or a tablet here, but in order to use it as a PHONE, you don't need to be able to reach the whole screen with your thumb while holding the device in one hand. You only need to be able to reach the dialer buttons which only occupy the lower half of the screen at full size, and only one corner of the lower half of the screen when you enable the one-handed operation mode for people with smaller hands.
Diesel hybrids aren't really practical due to the way they work. Diesel engines just aren't suited to being started and stopped constantly like that, and because of the high compression ratios needed for diesel to work, it wastes quite a lot more energy every time the hybrid system has to restart the engine (then there's the heat and lack of heat problem-- my Prius often has to waste a bit of fuel just to keep the combustion system warm enough to control emissions as it is). I think that's one of the big reasons Toyota decided to use their modified pseudo-Atkinson cycle engine instead for their hybrid systems-- they spent a ton of time and money researching and developing it, and it's the most popular system today because it's so well designed. The variable compression ratio makes them a lot more efficient than diesel would be in the long run too, although the efficiency is relatively close in most cases. But I suspect that the main reason is that of emissions. You can keep the emissions much lower with gas than with diesel if that's what you tune it for.
You're right about the (ancient) notions of diesel in the U.S. though. I've seen a lot of modern Mercedes diesels here in the U.S., and unless you know what the Blu-tech badge means, I think most Americans wouldn't have any idea they weren't running on ordinary gasoline. The technology has come a long way since the old days, although since American trucks are about the only diesels most people here see, they probably believe the smoke-belching, noisy behemoths are the only way diesel can run even today.
It's less of an issue, but it's still an issue because that's the way physics works. There are many benefits to diesel engines-- and consumers here in the U.S. should be more aware of them-- but for whatever reason, we're not. I've always wondered why that is. Any idea?
I'm confused about getting stranded looking for a charger on a back country road with a gas/electric hybrid. I've never once needed a charger for mine and don't know of anyone else who has either.
In terms of work done per fuel consumed, gas engines are much more efficient under heavy load than under light load, so the increased efficiency here is partially an illusion. That's why cars like the Prius always try to run the ICE at a higher load at a lower RPM, which the e-CVT works brilliantly for.
Best Slashdot explanation comment I've read in years!
But what you can do with a locked phone, whether subsidized or not, is smash it, burn it, destroy it, sell it etc., all without breaking any laws. You just can't unlock it.
You're absolutely right that it would be different if they were white Christian or Jewish, I don't deny that. What I do deny though is that the attacks themselves are because they're brown. They're only less objectionable because they're brown. Welcome to racist America. :/
The U.S. so far has been using them in conflict with terrorists. Hackers/terrorists would be using them for crime or terrorism.
I know the arguments-- why is it different when the government does it? Why is it OK for the government to do it? Why is it OK that they're killing civilians? Women? Kids? And so on, ad infinitum.
The difference is that they're (currently) being used in a "war" against a non-nation state. There are civilian and innocent casualties in all conflicts, but the casualties so far have been less than in more conventional warfare. Never before have we been able to target specific individuals in a conflict except on the most limited scale (i.e. Saddam or Usama). I think it's important not to lose sight of that fact, just as it's important to continue to try to reduce civilian/innocent casualties either with or without drones, and to avoid conflict where possible in the first place. The government using them for legitimate (as far as governments attacking people is legitimate) purposes is apples to oranges compared to hackers potentially using them for whatever they would use them for.
I see where you're coming from, but it's not entirely valid. And it has nothing to do with skin color, race, religion, nationality etc., it has to do with the actions undertaken by the targeted individuals.
Because drones are just one of many human interfaces to cyber-weapons? What happens when one of those is hacked? Especially when the difference between one and a hundred is how many hosts you connect to. Far-fetched definitely, but a drone is almost by definition a hackable weapon system.