While this filter ostensibly targets child pornography, what is to stop it from being used to censor other 'obscene' or 'unwanted' material? It would not take much to tailor this filter to target political speech.
It's not ostensible at all, since the scope of what is filtered is secret. In effect, its only use is political. IMHO.
An earlier report mentioned it would chew through 1.5 Mb/s; the figure you quote is probably more realistic. But even using the smaller figure, if you had a cap of, say, 30 GB/month, you'd eat through it in 44 hours.
Or at 5 Mb/s, 13 hours. Enjoy your half-hour of gameplay per day!
All of the "no" voters are either independent of any EU parliament groups, or belong to the "Europe of Freedom and Democracy" group. Although the EFD group is officially pro-ACTA, of the 31 EFD members
I suspect a fairly substantial library of games will become available, probably fairly swiftly. Someone's already compiled a list of Steam games that already have Mac ports. There's... quite a lot.
Probably a lot of people have already seen the lovely series of pictures that Valve released last week to hint at this announcement in advance, but in case you haven't, here's a compilation, in the correct sequence (and note the iPhone motif at the bottom of each image): image 1 (1980s Mac classic theme) image 2 (Gordon Freeman with shiny Mac hazard suit) image 3 (turrets) image 4 (Team Fortress 2 -- "take a bite out of the... sandwich") image 5 (Left 4 Dead -- "I hate different") image 6 (HL2 + 1984 Mac commercial)
Copyright probably needs to go back to what it was around 130 years ago when it was a sane compromise.
In 1880 copyright in the UK extended for 42 years or life-plus-7 (that's 7, not 70), whichever was longer. That's according to someone on Wikipedia, mind, so take it with a pinch of salt.
In my view that's still too long. Personally I see no public benefit in tying copyright to an author's lifespan at all.
Its pretty easy to island hop from mainland Greece to Crete. You would be looking at 20km at a stretch.
A fair point, which deserves an answer. The reason they're not thinking that is, probably, that there has as yet been no evidence that there were humans in mainland Greece anything like that early. The earliest known sign of human habitation in Europe is only ca. 40k years old.
What they are doing is like telling the customers WE DON'T TRUST YOU and that ain't the way to run a business.
Actually I feel it sends a much stronger message than that: I interpret this as telling me, "If you give us your business, we will punish you." Well, I can think of better companies to do business with: Ironclad, 2D Boy, GOG.com, Stardock...
Incidentally, this DRM has pushed Rock, Paper, Shotgun to boycott all coverage of any aspect of the game henceforth, other than DRM.
Incredible. In-cred-i-ble. It’s like someone taking away your food mid-meal because your napkin’s fallen on the floor. It makes us want to pull an expression we’re not physically capable of, like this. It’s also worth noting this is a day on which EA have turned off multiplayer servers for games that are only a year old – so it’s hard to have faith that Ubi’s activation servers will be around for many years hence.
If you're getting journalists that pissed off, you know you're really doing a good job, right?
I can't believe that list leaves out Aristophanes altogether! All right, here's one from the Clouds that deals with farting.
Student. All right, do you want to hear another of Sokrates' ideas?
Strepsiades. What? Go on, tell me!
Student. Chairephon of Sphettos asked him his opinion on whether gnats sing through their mouths or out their arse.
Strepsiades. Wow! So what did he say about the gnat?
Student. His explanation was that the gnat has a very narrow gut, so the air gets very compressed when it goes through on its way to the arsehole. Then because there's a hollow space facing the tube at the butt-cheeks, it makes a noise because of the force of the wind.
Strepsiades. So gnats have a trumpet for an arse! Thrice-blessed man, what an enterologist!
Not in your way of thinking, perhaps; I'm willing to admit that there may be people who never distinguish the ideas of trial and success. But "trying and doing" a task is both coherent and has a very strong linguistic heritage.
the truth is they only missed the boat for hard-core, tinker-happy nerds...
Running software of your own choosing is being a hard-core, tinker-happy nerd? By that standard I don't think I know anyone who isn't a hard-core tinker-happy nerd. My 80-year-old aunt is scared of number-pads and doesn't know what folders are for, but by your standards she's a hard-core tinker-happy nerd. I think your criteria need adjusting.
Normally "Hide" != "turn off", so it is far from obvious that your solution is correct. Since elsewhere you have claimed to work for Google I must presume that there's a good chance your advice does actually work; but you must admit it's not obvious that your advice is equivalent to "turning off" Buzz.
As a result of your post, I noticed that although Google gives an answer for 10! it does not for 9000! (for moderately obvious reasons). I became curious, and established that the highest number they give factorials for is 170!. I wonder what's so special about 170!?
While it took it a little over a minute to open that mess up on a 1.8GHz Sempron, when it did the doc looked correct and was easily edited and saved. Maybe you got a bad install, maybe there is some other problem, I don't know.
Different OS maybe? I find AbiWord decent under Windows, but pretty horrible under Linux.
As I see it, the device came before the name; the name is just something someone made up and it happened to catch. When the first Asus EEEs came out, there was no marketingese name for mini-laptops, but the selling point was the size. Even then, when they came with crappy 4 GB drives and 7 inch screens, they still had such an enormous advantage over laptops in portability that they sold like hotcakes. I saw them in a brick-and-mortar shop before hearing about them, and bought one that day -- precisely because of size.
No one cared about net applications then, and only Google -- and Ubuntu, it seems -- cares about that now. As a customer I certainly don't. It was never about net access; it was always size and weight. Then some marketers decided that this new category of laptop needed a name, and they came up with most inappropriate one possible: "netbook". As a result, now marketers want to make "net"books instead of mini-laptops, and the utility of the product is dropping enormously as a result.
(They're ignoring size for good reason, mind. Smaller sizes don't cost extra, after all.)
Personally, I never cared about net access. The reason I've gone through 2 mini-laptops now and am going to be buying a third soon was SIZE, SIZE, SIZE. I can't emphasise that enough. That is the only selling point. Net applications are a gigantic disadvantage if I'm on the go.
Oh come on, on the first move in this thread? Surely you're aware we're playing under Mortimer's Third Amendment, whereby you can't proceed north of Omicron Centauri until someone has declared a Double Paddington!
If the last sentence of my post was rude -- and it wasn't nearly as rude as your entire post -- that's still not much excuse for misrepresenting me. The only really important piece of information I presented was that the core meaning of "try" is "test". Obviously words have secondary meanings; if you take the time to read my post, you'll find that, amazingly, I actually said that.
The dictionaries you cite do not contradict any of the factual data I presented; rather they confirm my claim about the age of the two expressions "try and" and "try to", which as I stated (and you agreed, snarkily) is not a central issue because it's a secondary meaning. You misrepresent me as stating a view opposite to dictionary.com as to which expression is more "formal": I did not. I avoided commenting on that then, and I continue to reserve comment now.
Enough of your rudeness, touchiness, and misrepresentations. It's about time I went and found a glass of something nice anyway.
Can we please stop using "try and" when we mean "try to"? Many say it's non-standard in written speech, but it's worse - it means something entirely different.
"Try and" is in fact the older expression, and is closer to the core meaning of "try". Here's the earliest usage --
They try and express their love to God by their thankfulness to him. -- J. Sergeant, 1686
"Try" taking an infinitive only goes back to a 1697 poem of Dryden's (though there's a cognate usage of "trial" that goes back to 1683).
Age isn't the main indicator of which is better, of course. The point is that once upon a time "try" didn't mean "attempt"; that's a secondary meaning that it was gaining in the late 17th century. The original meaning, which it still has, is "test, prove, experiment", as in "Try before you buy", or "I shall try this infrared camera technology and, I hope, thereby determine the tastiest slices of beef".
In that sense "try and" makes considerably more sense than "try to": the implication of "try and determine" is that two intents are behind the one action, i.e. "I will conduct an experiment" and also "I shall (I hope!) determine". It's not actually being used as a modal verb, in other words.
The short answer is: you're fighting the losing side of a 300-year-old battle, and isn't it fun what you can find when you actually take the time to look in a dictionary?
China has a strong tradition of swift trials and swifter executions for those citizens who through unauthorized behavior embarrass them on the world stage.
"Embarrassing China on the world stage", which is what has happened with Google, is slightly different from "murdering six children and causing the hospitalisation of nearly a thousand more", which is what happened with the baby food scandal.
In of those cases, a death sentence seems to me an entirely fitting and responsible reaction. The other case is not remotely comparable, and it is irresponsible to suggest that it is.
video footage was often used to the defendant's advantage in court.
Dear me, what a waste (from the point of view of the troopers, that is). Why not just get a court to rule that camera evidence supporting the defendant is to be classed as "hearsay"? Then they'd have the terrific situation where it could only be used in court if it's to the defendant's disadvantage.
I suspect that such a ruling will eventually come about, probably from the UK since automatic surveillance is so prevalent there. Afterwards it will take only a short time to spread to every jurisdiction in the world. Not a single politician, anywhere, would resist it.
Clarification: that doesn't stop lots of places putting audio/video recordings of masses, etc., online, of course; apparently it's a popular thing for people to join in the prayers online. It's just the sacraments themselves that have to be in person.
I know you're joking, but that raises some interesting questions. As long as it's direct communication between the priest and person, could that kind of stuff... like confession be done over an iPhone (or IRC, instant messaging, etc)? I wonder if something like that has ever been done over, say, videoconferencing?
The short answer is "no", it seems; this document prepared by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications indicates a very firm negative on that -- though it states it as an assumption, rather than a policy ("Virtual reality is no substitute for the... sacraments, and shared worship in a flesh-and-blood human community. There are no sacraments on the Internet...").
Suppose someone is dying, and is requesting last rites, and you just can't get a priest there physically in time?
My understanding is that in in extremo situations, very few rules apply. The Eucharist can be administered under the weirdest of circumstances, people of any religion (or no religion) can perform baptisms. It'd be up to the local bishop to decide, of course, but I'd guess when someone is dying just about anything goes.
Thanks for that. I'd been using CustomizeGoogle since forever, and had missed the fact that it had been superceded by a newer extension (one that actually works). I have now updated.
On another note, I tried clicking on TFA (yes, I know) and got an interesting response that I hadn't seen before:
Page unavailable
Access Denied
Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Proxy Avoidance"
Well, it's my workplace's internet connection, so I guess they can do what they like. No indication of which service they're using to identify "evil" sites like this, though.
Slashdot Mirror
While this filter ostensibly targets child pornography, what is to stop it from being used to censor other 'obscene' or 'unwanted' material? It would not take much to tailor this filter to target political speech.
It's not ostensible at all, since the scope of what is filtered is secret. In effect, its only use is political. IMHO.
An earlier report mentioned it would chew through 1.5 Mb/s; the figure you quote is probably more realistic. But even using the smaller figure, if you had a cap of, say, 30 GB/month, you'd eat through it in 44 hours.
Or at 5 Mb/s, 13 hours. Enjoy your half-hour of gameplay per day!
The full list of "no" voters, with voting history, contact details, etc.
Netherlands
Louis Bontes, Partij voor de Vrijheid
Laurence J.A.J. Stassen, Partij voor de Vrijheid
Daniel van der Stoep, Partij voor de Vrijheid
UK
John Stewart Agnew, UK Independence Party
Marta Andreasen, UK Independence Party
Gerard Batten, UK Independence Party
John Bufton, UK Independence Party
Trevor Coleman, UK Independence Party
William, Earl of Dartmouth, UK Independence Party
Nigel Farage, UK Independence Party
Mike Nattrass, UK Independence Party
Paul Nuttall, UK Independence Party
Nicole Sinclaire, UK Independence Party
All of the "no" voters are either independent of any EU parliament groups, or belong to the "Europe of Freedom and Democracy" group. Although the EFD group is officially pro-ACTA, of the 31 EFD members
I suspect a fairly substantial library of games will become available, probably fairly swiftly. Someone's already compiled a list of Steam games that already have Mac ports. There's ... quite a lot.
Probably a lot of people have already seen the lovely series of pictures that Valve released last week to hint at this announcement in advance, but in case you haven't, here's a compilation, in the correct sequence (and note the iPhone motif at the bottom of each image): ... sandwich")
image 1 (1980s Mac classic theme)
image 2 (Gordon Freeman with shiny Mac hazard suit)
image 3 (turrets)
image 4 (Team Fortress 2 -- "take a bite out of the
image 5 (Left 4 Dead -- "I hate different")
image 6 (HL2 + 1984 Mac commercial)
Copyright probably needs to go back to what it was around 130 years ago when it was a sane compromise.
In 1880 copyright in the UK extended for 42 years or life-plus-7 (that's 7, not 70), whichever was longer. That's according to someone on Wikipedia, mind, so take it with a pinch of salt.
In my view that's still too long. Personally I see no public benefit in tying copyright to an author's lifespan at all.
Its pretty easy to island hop from mainland Greece to Crete. You would be looking at 20km at a stretch.
A fair point, which deserves an answer. The reason they're not thinking that is, probably, that there has as yet been no evidence that there were humans in mainland Greece anything like that early. The earliest known sign of human habitation in Europe is only ca. 40k years old.
Humans in Africa, however ...
What they are doing is like telling the customers WE DON'T TRUST YOU and that ain't the way to run a business.
Actually I feel it sends a much stronger message than that: I interpret this as telling me, "If you give us your business, we will punish you." Well, I can think of better companies to do business with: Ironclad, 2D Boy, GOG.com, Stardock ...
Incidentally, this DRM has pushed Rock, Paper, Shotgun to boycott all coverage of any aspect of the game henceforth, other than DRM.
Incredible. In-cred-i-ble. It’s like someone taking away your food mid-meal because your napkin’s fallen on the floor. It makes us want to pull an expression we’re not physically capable of, like this. It’s also worth noting this is a day on which EA have turned off multiplayer servers for games that are only a year old – so it’s hard to have faith that Ubi’s activation servers will be around for many years hence.
If you're getting journalists that pissed off, you know you're really doing a good job, right?
Citations != peer review
I can't believe that list leaves out Aristophanes altogether! All right, here's one from the Clouds that deals with farting.
Student. All right, do you want to hear another of Sokrates' ideas?
Strepsiades. What? Go on, tell me!
Student. Chairephon of Sphettos asked him his opinion on whether gnats sing through their mouths or out their arse.
Strepsiades. Wow! So what did he say about the gnat?
Student. His explanation was that the gnat has a very narrow gut, so the air gets very compressed when it goes through on its way to the arsehole. Then because there's a hollow space facing the tube at the butt-cheeks, it makes a noise because of the force of the wind.
Strepsiades. So gnats have a trumpet for an arse! Thrice-blessed man, what an enterologist!
-- Clouds 154-66, transl. me
It's a fun diversion, but you really have to wonder. About civilization.
People are still reading Aristophanes. Fart jokes have always been funny. I'm not worrying too much. (Not about that, anyway.)
"I'm going to try TO teach you decent grammar."
It's not two separate actions.
It can be.
Not in your way of thinking, perhaps; I'm willing to admit that there may be people who never distinguish the ideas of trial and success. But "trying and doing" a task is both coherent and has a very strong linguistic heritage.
the truth is they only missed the boat for hard-core, tinker-happy nerds...
Running software of your own choosing is being a hard-core, tinker-happy nerd? By that standard I don't think I know anyone who isn't a hard-core tinker-happy nerd. My 80-year-old aunt is scared of number-pads and doesn't know what folders are for, but by your standards she's a hard-core tinker-happy nerd. I think your criteria need adjusting.
Normally "Hide" != "turn off", so it is far from obvious that your solution is correct. Since elsewhere you have claimed to work for Google I must presume that there's a good chance your advice does actually work; but you must admit it's not obvious that your advice is equivalent to "turning off" Buzz.
I'd settle for 10! dollars.
As a result of your post, I noticed that although Google gives an answer for 10! it does not for 9000! (for moderately obvious reasons). I became curious, and established that the highest number they give factorials for is 170!. I wonder what's so special about 170!?
While it took it a little over a minute to open that mess up on a 1.8GHz Sempron, when it did the doc looked correct and was easily edited and saved. Maybe you got a bad install, maybe there is some other problem, I don't know.
Different OS maybe? I find AbiWord decent under Windows, but pretty horrible under Linux.
As I see it, the device came before the name; the name is just something someone made up and it happened to catch. When the first Asus EEEs came out, there was no marketingese name for mini-laptops, but the selling point was the size. Even then, when they came with crappy 4 GB drives and 7 inch screens, they still had such an enormous advantage over laptops in portability that they sold like hotcakes. I saw them in a brick-and-mortar shop before hearing about them, and bought one that day -- precisely because of size.
No one cared about net applications then, and only Google -- and Ubuntu, it seems -- cares about that now. As a customer I certainly don't. It was never about net access; it was always size and weight. Then some marketers decided that this new category of laptop needed a name, and they came up with most inappropriate one possible: "netbook". As a result, now marketers want to make "net"books instead of mini-laptops, and the utility of the product is dropping enormously as a result.
(They're ignoring size for good reason, mind. Smaller sizes don't cost extra, after all.)
Personally, I never cared about net access. The reason I've gone through 2 mini-laptops now and am going to be buying a third soon was SIZE, SIZE, SIZE. I can't emphasise that enough. That is the only selling point. Net applications are a gigantic disadvantage if I'm on the go.
</rant>
Where's Mornington Crescent?
Oh come on, on the first move in this thread? Surely you're aware we're playing under Mortimer's Third Amendment, whereby you can't proceed north of Omicron Centauri until someone has declared a Double Paddington!
If the last sentence of my post was rude -- and it wasn't nearly as rude as your entire post -- that's still not much excuse for misrepresenting me. The only really important piece of information I presented was that the core meaning of "try" is "test". Obviously words have secondary meanings; if you take the time to read my post, you'll find that, amazingly, I actually said that.
The dictionaries you cite do not contradict any of the factual data I presented; rather they confirm my claim about the age of the two expressions "try and" and "try to", which as I stated (and you agreed, snarkily) is not a central issue because it's a secondary meaning. You misrepresent me as stating a view opposite to dictionary.com as to which expression is more "formal": I did not. I avoided commenting on that then, and I continue to reserve comment now.
Enough of your rudeness, touchiness, and misrepresentations. It's about time I went and found a glass of something nice anyway.
Can we please stop using "try and" when we mean "try to"? Many say it's non-standard in written speech, but it's worse - it means something entirely different.
"Try and" is in fact the older expression, and is closer to the core meaning of "try". Here's the earliest usage --
They try and express their love to God by their thankfulness to him. -- J. Sergeant, 1686
"Try" taking an infinitive only goes back to a 1697 poem of Dryden's (though there's a cognate usage of "trial" that goes back to 1683).
Age isn't the main indicator of which is better, of course. The point is that once upon a time "try" didn't mean "attempt"; that's a secondary meaning that it was gaining in the late 17th century. The original meaning, which it still has, is "test, prove, experiment", as in "Try before you buy", or "I shall try this infrared camera technology and, I hope, thereby determine the tastiest slices of beef".
In that sense "try and" makes considerably more sense than "try to": the implication of "try and determine" is that two intents are behind the one action, i.e. "I will conduct an experiment" and also "I shall (I hope!) determine". It's not actually being used as a modal verb, in other words.
The short answer is: you're fighting the losing side of a 300-year-old battle, and isn't it fun what you can find when you actually take the time to look in a dictionary?
Posting to remove an erroneous moderation.
China has a strong tradition of swift trials and swifter executions for those citizens who through unauthorized behavior embarrass them on the world stage.
"Embarrassing China on the world stage", which is what has happened with Google, is slightly different from "murdering six children and causing the hospitalisation of nearly a thousand more", which is what happened with the baby food scandal.
In of those cases, a death sentence seems to me an entirely fitting and responsible reaction. The other case is not remotely comparable, and it is irresponsible to suggest that it is.
video footage was often used to the defendant's advantage in court.
Dear me, what a waste (from the point of view of the troopers, that is). Why not just get a court to rule that camera evidence supporting the defendant is to be classed as "hearsay"? Then they'd have the terrific situation where it could only be used in court if it's to the defendant's disadvantage.
I suspect that such a ruling will eventually come about, probably from the UK since automatic surveillance is so prevalent there. Afterwards it will take only a short time to spread to every jurisdiction in the world. Not a single politician, anywhere, would resist it.
Clarification: that doesn't stop lots of places putting audio/video recordings of masses, etc., online, of course; apparently it's a popular thing for people to join in the prayers online. It's just the sacraments themselves that have to be in person.
I know you're joking, but that raises some interesting questions. As long as it's direct communication between the priest and person, could that kind of stuff... like confession be done over an iPhone (or IRC, instant messaging, etc)? I wonder if something like that has ever been done over, say, videoconferencing?
The short answer is "no", it seems; this document prepared by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications indicates a very firm negative on that -- though it states it as an assumption, rather than a policy ("Virtual reality is no substitute for the ... sacraments, and shared worship in a flesh-and-blood human community. There are no sacraments on the Internet ...").
Suppose someone is dying, and is requesting last rites, and you just can't get a priest there physically in time?
My understanding is that in in extremo situations, very few rules apply. The Eucharist can be administered under the weirdest of circumstances, people of any religion (or no religion) can perform baptisms. It'd be up to the local bishop to decide, of course, but I'd guess when someone is dying just about anything goes.
Thanks for that. I'd been using CustomizeGoogle since forever, and had missed the fact that it had been superceded by a newer extension (one that actually works). I have now updated.
On another note, I tried clicking on TFA (yes, I know) and got an interesting response that I hadn't seen before:
Page unavailable
Access Denied
Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Proxy Avoidance"
Well, it's my workplace's internet connection, so I guess they can do what they like. No indication of which service they're using to identify "evil" sites like this, though.