No, I don't know if the policy is different now. Maybe they didn't tell you, maybe it's been the same policy all along and you just never bothered to read it. I can't say. When I signed up for gmail, I read the privacy policy, decided I was ok with it. When I thought about trying the personalized homepage, I read the privacy policy, decided I was ok with it. (I ended up not using it, because I just like the simple google better.)
I suspect the information was there from the beginning and you just didn't care to read it. Besides, how'd you think they would personalize searches without logging? It's up to you to use common sense.
If you're searching from the personalized homepage, no shit they're logging your searches. I think that if you sign up for a google account, it brings up the privacy policy, or at least tells you to read it. That privacy policy makes it very very clear that they log your searches. Here's something directly from the FAQ "in order to provide the service, Personalized Search saves information about your activity on Google including your search queries, the results you click on, and the date and time of your searches."
You signed up for a service (personalized homepage) the expressly states it logs your activiy, and now you're complaining? Maybe you should read the privacy policy and FAQ of things you sign up for, hmm?
So delete the cookie, don't let them set it again, and don't use gmail. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. I'm well aware of what they're doing and how much they know about me, and I'm fine with it. I get very useful free services, and they have some info about what I look at online; in my book, that's a fair trade. And props to them for not rolling over and giving the logs to the government without a fight.
If you're looking at porn on the internet, then you're either doing it with full knowledge of your circumstances, someone has subverted your computer, or you're doing foolish image searches.
You're basically right, but occassionally porn pops up in the oddest places. A few years ago, in high school, two friends and I were doing a research project on naval warfare. So, we hop on google, search for "naval warfare in the 18th century" and start looking at the results. One of them looks legit and helpful, so we go to the site. It's porn. Not even porn related to our subject, just straight out porn. It was quite shocking. (Though mostly amusing, we were cracking up.)
It's not great science, but a lot of it isn't half bad. Besides which, they're usually testing fairly simple myths to see if they're plausible or not. Some stuff, like "could you raise a boat with ping-pong balls" they do. Scientific or not, that's a good, solid result. It's possible. It's really the busted myths that may or may not be accurate. To give them credit, I usually hear them say things like "for this to work you'd need this, this, this, and this to happen, and that's incredibly unlikely" or "we couldn't build a jetpack, so an average joe probably couldn't either." As for scientific or engineering background, they may not be certified or educated, but they certainly do alright. Their solutions are usually simple, and they typically work. Look at the rig they used to get those ping-pong balls down to the boat. Design me something cheaper, faster, and easier, if you can.
Also, a lot of the time they call in experts. I think that's a pretty good lesson to be teaching people, about both science and life.
I think part of the problem is the title of editor and the connetations it brings up. The job of these poor souls is, as far as I can tell, to find good stories, make them appropriate, post them on the right page, mod down obvious trolls and flamebait, then do it over and over and over again. I also wouldn't be surprised if they did standard admin type stuff for the site.
The title is editor, not copy editor. Just like with a big newspaper, the editor decides what gets printed, the copy editor checks the spelling and grammar. I figure the editors do a damn good job in finding the kind of stories I (and most people here) want to read. I may roll my eyes at the poor spelling and grammar, but I do that at most of the comments too. No biggie.
Except it doesn't maximize profits, necessarily. Let's say a really really good item drops in a particular raid or instance.
Scenario 1: Current set up, individual farmer joins group. He need rolls for it (against the loot rules), maybe 4 other people in the 40-man raid do too. 20% shot at getting this 1000 gold item. (That's just a random guess.)
Scenario 2: All farmers of a company team up, make their own 40-man raid group. 100% shot at getting this item. HOWEVER, if they'd each done it seperately...well, you can do the math. 8 times more profitiable to go the first way, if I see things correctly.
It's not going to change unless the game is radically altered to somehow enforce looting rules or players have stricter control over the group. The latter is exactly what they're doing.
While playing WoW, you stay in a particular area, kill the monsters, grab any loot and gold they drop, sell the goods on the market, then you re-sell the gold for $US online to other players. Rinse, lather, repeat.
It's "real" in that in takes time to make/get. If it takes you an hour to get 10 gold, then whatever that hour of your free time is worth to you is the value of that gold to you.
Your argument is what, that you don't physically hold anything in your hand? Do you have money in the bank? Is that "real"? Ever bought gold (as an investment)? Did they cart it to your house? No, you have a piece of paper (or some bits on the bank's computer) saying it's yours. Obviously, there's difference in that WoW isn't regulated, guaranteed, etc. but it's "real" in pretty much the same way.
I don't understand how exactly a car works. I have a vague idea that combustion of gasoline creates pressure which is channeled into turning wheels, but that's about it. I don't have the foggiest clue how laundry soap works, or dry-cleaning for that matter. In the same token, I haven't the foggiest clue how to understand women.
I don't think you need to understand those things, really. As long as you know you can't drive your car off a cliff, or go to the store without taking off your e-brake, or not to drive with your eyes closed, etc., you'll probably do fine. For laundry soap, as long as you know how much to put in, you're ok. If you can read the labels for dry cleaning, it'll work out. Women...well, try and find one that makes sense to you.
My point is, maybe the average person doesn't need to understand exactly how a computer works. The whole transistors - logic gates - boolean logic type stuff isn't really necessary. However, there's a lot of users who don't know you shouldn't connect to the internet without a firewall. Or you shouldn't pull the cord while it'd defragging the harddrive. Or that IE is not the internet. Or why your computer slows down when you open every program you've got. Or why the sony rootkit thing is a big deal. Or why you shouldn't trust anyone on the internet (you know what I mean). All those kind of things can be explained without going into the nitty-gritty detail.
As a tool, computers are rather flawed - the mere fact that they break down so easily is proof of that.
Take a car. Don't change the oil, don't rotate the tires, don't fill them regularly, don't fill the radiator, don't replace the brakepads, don't get a tune up, fill it with the lowest octane fuel you can find, drive recklessly, and you'll get a car that breaks down pretty easily. You take care of a computer, it'll last. You don't, it won't.
How long do you think satellite radio will stay commercial free? Someday they'll realize they can make more money with ads AND paying subscribers. Just like cable.
Yes, the planet's gotten a bit hot. Stepping out in january wearing a spring jacket tells us that.
I have to disagree with that. First off, that could just be a few warmer-than-average years in a row. It's hard to tell the difference between that and a genuine climate change if you're just doing it by feel. Second, if you live in an urban area, especially one that's experienced growth since, say, your childhood, when you remember wearing those huge parkas (just an example, you could be different), it could be further urbanization that's causing the warming you're feeling. Not saying you're wrong, just that your own experience with your local climate might not parallel the global conditions.
I heard someone say once: science tells us how, religion tells us why.
Science tells us the big bang started the universe. It doens't make any statements about what caused the big bang, what was before it, where it came from, etc. That stuff is unknowable, scientifically. Whether you believe it came out of nothing or was created by some higher being, you have a belief based on faith, as you define it. In that way, believing in god is as plausible as not, really.
Maybe a different section (or even site) is in order, just for meta discussion like this. You've got slashcode, how about slashtalk? Or a simple section on the left, with only the really big issues hitting the front page.
Off-topic, I'd just like to say thanks./. is a great community, and I know reading some of the comments you might make you forget that the vast majority of the people here love it. Oh, and I have one question: do your posts start at 3? Is that an attainible karma, or simply a personal thing for you, since it is your site?
Not only that, but we're supposed to be able to discern the difference in a 36kb photo, taken with who-know-what kind of camera, viewed on my crappy old monitor. Yeah, I'm gonna trust that and buy a new HDDVD player and a bunch of movies.
After all, if you were an average (honest) consumer, and you just bought a movie that says "STOP PIRATING MOVIES!!!!11" then wouldn't you think you'd just bought a pirated movie?
I hope most people would be smart enough not to think that a pirated movie would have a "please don't pirate" message included.
- It's mostly legal. You're still violating plenty of patents, but few if any copyrights.
You want to back this up at all? Since when is selling something in violation of a patent? If that's non-obvious I'll eat my hat. And how can you say "You even have to provide your own bandwidth" for direct download and not P2P? I'm fairly certain you use more bandwidth (as in, twice as much, if you're seeding at least till break-even) using bitorrent as opposed to a direct download.
As for other pros and cons, how about with a direct download service you can be sure of what you're getting? That it's not mislabeled, a junk file, poor quality, etc. And as for a P2P network being resistent to nuclear attack killing 90% of the population? See...such a thing would probably destroy all the infastructure that allows the network to exist. Besides with, I doubt that in a post-appocolyptic wasteland you'd be worrying about where to get the next episode of Stargate.
You know, I honestly don't think DRM, as a concept, is evil. The way it's been implemented, yes, it's hellish. But if someone was able to create some form of DRM that prohibited truly illegal actions, but allowed all legal ones (you can transfer it easily among devices, you can make backup copies for your own use, you can sell all rights to someone else, you just can't freely make and handout copies) I'd go for it. I'm really not sure if that can be done, but if google could manage it, I don't see any evil in that. Protecting the rights of copyright holders isn't a bad thing, even if it means you don't get to download free movies anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks to you, I just sprayed rum and coke out of my nose and all over my keyboard.
Well played, sir. Well played.
So what happens when the machines create simpler machines to do the work for them?
No, I don't know if the policy is different now. Maybe they didn't tell you, maybe it's been the same policy all along and you just never bothered to read it. I can't say. When I signed up for gmail, I read the privacy policy, decided I was ok with it. When I thought about trying the personalized homepage, I read the privacy policy, decided I was ok with it. (I ended up not using it, because I just like the simple google better.)
I suspect the information was there from the beginning and you just didn't care to read it. Besides, how'd you think they would personalize searches without logging? It's up to you to use common sense.
If you're searching from the personalized homepage, no shit they're logging your searches. I think that if you sign up for a google account, it brings up the privacy policy, or at least tells you to read it. That privacy policy makes it very very clear that they log your searches. Here's something directly from the FAQ "in order to provide the service, Personalized Search saves information about your activity on Google including your search queries, the results you click on, and the date and time of your searches."
You signed up for a service (personalized homepage) the expressly states it logs your activiy, and now you're complaining? Maybe you should read the privacy policy and FAQ of things you sign up for, hmm?
So delete the cookie, don't let them set it again, and don't use gmail. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. I'm well aware of what they're doing and how much they know about me, and I'm fine with it. I get very useful free services, and they have some info about what I look at online; in my book, that's a fair trade. And props to them for not rolling over and giving the logs to the government without a fight.
If you're looking at porn on the internet, then you're either doing it with full knowledge of your circumstances, someone has subverted your computer, or you're doing foolish image searches.
You're basically right, but occassionally porn pops up in the oddest places. A few years ago, in high school, two friends and I were doing a research project on naval warfare. So, we hop on google, search for "naval warfare in the 18th century" and start looking at the results. One of them looks legit and helpful, so we go to the site. It's porn. Not even porn related to our subject, just straight out porn. It was quite shocking. (Though mostly amusing, we were cracking up.)
It's not great science, but a lot of it isn't half bad. Besides which, they're usually testing fairly simple myths to see if they're plausible or not. Some stuff, like "could you raise a boat with ping-pong balls" they do. Scientific or not, that's a good, solid result. It's possible. It's really the busted myths that may or may not be accurate. To give them credit, I usually hear them say things like "for this to work you'd need this, this, this, and this to happen, and that's incredibly unlikely" or "we couldn't build a jetpack, so an average joe probably couldn't either." As for scientific or engineering background, they may not be certified or educated, but they certainly do alright. Their solutions are usually simple, and they typically work. Look at the rig they used to get those ping-pong balls down to the boat. Design me something cheaper, faster, and easier, if you can.
Also, a lot of the time they call in experts. I think that's a pretty good lesson to be teaching people, about both science and life.
As it happens, she was pretty freaked out by it, which neither she nor anyone else was really expecting. It was very unpleasant to watch, I found. :(
I think part of the problem is the title of editor and the connetations it brings up. The job of these poor souls is, as far as I can tell, to find good stories, make them appropriate, post them on the right page, mod down obvious trolls and flamebait, then do it over and over and over again. I also wouldn't be surprised if they did standard admin type stuff for the site.
The title is editor, not copy editor. Just like with a big newspaper, the editor decides what gets printed, the copy editor checks the spelling and grammar. I figure the editors do a damn good job in finding the kind of stories I (and most people here) want to read. I may roll my eyes at the poor spelling and grammar, but I do that at most of the comments too. No biggie.
Except it doesn't maximize profits, necessarily. Let's say a really really good item drops in a particular raid or instance.
Scenario 1: Current set up, individual farmer joins group. He need rolls for it (against the loot rules), maybe 4 other people in the 40-man raid do too. 20% shot at getting this 1000 gold item. (That's just a random guess.)
Scenario 2: All farmers of a company team up, make their own 40-man raid group. 100% shot at getting this item. HOWEVER, if they'd each done it seperately...well, you can do the math. 8 times more profitiable to go the first way, if I see things correctly.
It's not going to change unless the game is radically altered to somehow enforce looting rules or players have stricter control over the group. The latter is exactly what they're doing.
While playing WoW, you stay in a particular area, kill the monsters, grab any loot and gold they drop, sell the goods on the market, then you re-sell the gold for $US online to other players. Rinse, lather, repeat.
It's "real" in that in takes time to make/get. If it takes you an hour to get 10 gold, then whatever that hour of your free time is worth to you is the value of that gold to you.
Your argument is what, that you don't physically hold anything in your hand? Do you have money in the bank? Is that "real"? Ever bought gold (as an investment)? Did they cart it to your house? No, you have a piece of paper (or some bits on the bank's computer) saying it's yours. Obviously, there's difference in that WoW isn't regulated, guaranteed, etc. but it's "real" in pretty much the same way.
I don't understand how exactly a car works. I have a vague idea that combustion of gasoline creates pressure which is channeled into turning wheels, but that's about it. I don't have the foggiest clue how laundry soap works, or dry-cleaning for that matter. In the same token, I haven't the foggiest clue how to understand women.
I don't think you need to understand those things, really. As long as you know you can't drive your car off a cliff, or go to the store without taking off your e-brake, or not to drive with your eyes closed, etc., you'll probably do fine. For laundry soap, as long as you know how much to put in, you're ok. If you can read the labels for dry cleaning, it'll work out. Women...well, try and find one that makes sense to you.
My point is, maybe the average person doesn't need to understand exactly how a computer works. The whole transistors - logic gates - boolean logic type stuff isn't really necessary. However, there's a lot of users who don't know you shouldn't connect to the internet without a firewall. Or you shouldn't pull the cord while it'd defragging the harddrive. Or that IE is not the internet. Or why your computer slows down when you open every program you've got. Or why the sony rootkit thing is a big deal. Or why you shouldn't trust anyone on the internet (you know what I mean). All those kind of things can be explained without going into the nitty-gritty detail.
As a tool, computers are rather flawed - the mere fact that they break down so easily is proof of that.
Take a car. Don't change the oil, don't rotate the tires, don't fill them regularly, don't fill the radiator, don't replace the brakepads, don't get a tune up, fill it with the lowest octane fuel you can find, drive recklessly, and you'll get a car that breaks down pretty easily. You take care of a computer, it'll last. You don't, it won't.
How long do you think satellite radio will stay commercial free? Someday they'll realize they can make more money with ads AND paying subscribers. Just like cable.
Yes, the planet's gotten a bit hot. Stepping out in january wearing a spring jacket tells us that.
I have to disagree with that. First off, that could just be a few warmer-than-average years in a row. It's hard to tell the difference between that and a genuine climate change if you're just doing it by feel. Second, if you live in an urban area, especially one that's experienced growth since, say, your childhood, when you remember wearing those huge parkas (just an example, you could be different), it could be further urbanization that's causing the warming you're feeling. Not saying you're wrong, just that your own experience with your local climate might not parallel the global conditions.
I believe it's multiplying he's after.
I think the metaphor is more like: you have a broken leg, and instead of setting it, you just use a crutch for years.
Though now that you mention it, it is kind of a silly metaphor.
So where do all the illegal screener releases come from?
Their kids.
I heard someone say once: science tells us how, religion tells us why.
Science tells us the big bang started the universe. It doens't make any statements about what caused the big bang, what was before it, where it came from, etc. That stuff is unknowable, scientifically. Whether you believe it came out of nothing or was created by some higher being, you have a belief based on faith, as you define it. In that way, believing in god is as plausible as not, really.
Maybe a different section (or even site) is in order, just for meta discussion like this. You've got slashcode, how about slashtalk? Or a simple section on the left, with only the really big issues hitting the front page.
/. is a great community, and I know reading some of the comments you might make you forget that the vast majority of the people here love it. Oh, and I have one question: do your posts start at 3? Is that an attainible karma, or simply a personal thing for you, since it is your site?
Off-topic, I'd just like to say thanks.
No silly, stupidfoo is simply William Shatner's /. account.
Not only that, but we're supposed to be able to discern the difference in a 36kb photo, taken with who-know-what kind of camera, viewed on my crappy old monitor. Yeah, I'm gonna trust that and buy a new HDDVD player and a bunch of movies.
After all, if you were an average (honest) consumer, and you just bought a movie that says "STOP PIRATING MOVIES!!!!11" then wouldn't you think you'd just bought a pirated movie?
I hope most people would be smart enough not to think that a pirated movie would have a "please don't pirate" message included.
- It's mostly legal. You're still violating plenty of patents, but few if any copyrights.
You want to back this up at all? Since when is selling something in violation of a patent? If that's non-obvious I'll eat my hat. And how can you say "You even have to provide your own bandwidth" for direct download and not P2P? I'm fairly certain you use more bandwidth (as in, twice as much, if you're seeding at least till break-even) using bitorrent as opposed to a direct download.
As for other pros and cons, how about with a direct download service you can be sure of what you're getting? That it's not mislabeled, a junk file, poor quality, etc. And as for a P2P network being resistent to nuclear attack killing 90% of the population? See...such a thing would probably destroy all the infastructure that allows the network to exist. Besides with, I doubt that in a post-appocolyptic wasteland you'd be worrying about where to get the next episode of Stargate.
You know, I honestly don't think DRM, as a concept, is evil. The way it's been implemented, yes, it's hellish. But if someone was able to create some form of DRM that prohibited truly illegal actions, but allowed all legal ones (you can transfer it easily among devices, you can make backup copies for your own use, you can sell all rights to someone else, you just can't freely make and handout copies) I'd go for it. I'm really not sure if that can be done, but if google could manage it, I don't see any evil in that. Protecting the rights of copyright holders isn't a bad thing, even if it means you don't get to download free movies anymore.