Applying 10 years hindsight on how people should have been enlightened enough to use Twitter to stop the US going to war is wrong. Remember at the time most of the US was screaming for payback and Iraq was the obvious scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks.
Chances are Twitter would have only solidified public opinion to go to war quicker as any anti-war sentiment at the time would have been slammed out of existence as being unpatriotic.
Also its not like there were no social networking outlets available for public opinion. Slashdot did exist back then too.
Largely its travelling through a vacuum, given the thing didn't explode seconds after it was released from the rocket, I'd say 36 years of travelling through a vacuum to be on par with expectations.
This is not like slamming a rover onto another planet with harsh temperature, wind and dust conditions and having it work 10 times longer then its original mission specs.
SimCity was an epic fail for a game release and there is no way a CEO of a company failing this hard should be allowed to continue at this company.
But this should be just the first of many firings or leavings that this company should expect.
Bottom line is, any new CEO stepping in needs to end the bullshit of imposing always on and stupid DRM schemes, accept that some percentage of content will be stolen, but if you focus on creating good compelling games and offer them at prices people find affordable and high value then you will get more people interested in paying for content rather then stealing it.
SimCity is a beloved game ruined by corporate greed. EA has ruined more games in this way and need to re-evaluate the point of being a game distributor if gamers just find their products repugnant.
I mean it should be possible to create a system that emulates an "open" server, but when a hacker opens up a connection and tries to upload or download data, then fire off a counter measure that will cripple the hacker's system?
I mean after 30+ years of connected networks there is no such thing as an offensive strike in cyber terrorism?
I can't believe that hackers are that smart as to outwit servers attempting to back-deploy payloads onto their systems, or even could block a counter attack. I mean with the mentioned botnet hack, it would seem pretty easy that if it "broke" into an unprotected server that server could send back a crippling packet or something. The botnet is running a service that scans and returns data so the violated server should be able to exploit that and dump terabytes of garbage data back to cripple the botnet. A Denial of Hack.
Actually if I was an active hacker I would rather enjoy luring other hackers to my "unprotected" servers only to f**k with them and mess up their systems.
Oh buddy, if you only new how much of your taxes were wasted you would die several hundred deaths from apoplexy. This would be a drop is a very very large bucket.
Sorry, but I abhor network television. The constant litany of crime scene investigation shows is definite proof of a dumbing down of society. Crime shows are essentially the same story told week after week after week with only minor changes to the who, what, where, why, and how of forensic investigation. I pretty much believe there are no real writers anymore on these shows, only a computer churning out templated scripts.
The moment a show comes out with a plot arc that spans multiple episodes the idiot masses turn away because it is too difficult for them to maintain a connection between multiple 43 minute episodes after several days. Almost every non-serial show is yanked off the air, often before it can even complete a full season. Instead the idiot masses prefer predictability and repeatability, and the show better conclude its plot at the end of 42 minutes.
And don't get me started on "reality" TV. Not just Survivor and its spin-offs, but the slew of shows about hicks trapped in their homes because they bought too much shit and are too lazy to clean up after themselves, or even dumber shows about hicks trading shit to other hicks, or hicks in the swamp, or hicks looking for ghosts. I mean when the American Mid-West and South become one of the biggest entertainment zones in the world. Those channels that spew out this kind of trash are owned by all the network channel parent companies realizing that for near zero investment they can entrap millions into believing they are better then the hicks they are watching on TV, but clearly are directly on par with those people. Hick shows are subsidizing crime investigation shows and its all easy money for networks because there is no integrity at all in television, if there ever was.
And finally in the 500+ channel universe the viewers are so spread out between all this vapid content the idea of getting 20+ million viewers concentrated enough to watch something that is worth while to advertisers is getting much more difficult. Unless its the American Idol finaly or Superbowl, its impossible to get more then a few million people watching TV live at a given moment in time. Distribution companies realize its not about the ad revenue from one show any more, its about spreading out garbage on 20 other channels which gets the most viewership. If people are not watching CSI at that particular moment, its probably because they are watching some overweight pampered 6 year old on crack yelling at the camera about how beautiful she is.
So, yes, Neilsen is dead because its irrelevant. When 20+ years of historical data shows that crime shows and reality TV dominate ratings, and these shows are spread out over 500 channels the idea of audience size is a dead concept; what is the point of trying to find out what the average dumb viewer wants to watch on TV at any given moment when it is all just money-making garbage anyways.
It started off with a copyright disclaimer saying "Piracy is not a victimless crime".
It got me thinking, yes I feel for the 1% affected by piracy because instead of making $1.4 billion they will only make $1.2 billion this year.
Most of us just cannot relate to the impact losing $200 million has on your life and so we should do more to prevent online piracy and not steal content ourselves.
I for one will no longer steal content because I am such an asshole for taking profit away from the 1%. They have mouths to feed with caviar, yachts to fuel, and dreams to realize, just like the rest of us.
Please, don't make a 1%'er cry by stealing their content.
Advocating that everyone should buy an electric vehicle but then also advocating everyone to turn off their lights during Earth Hour and conserving energy in general.
If you don't understand the stupidity of people wanting both those conditions then you might be a Greentard.
I worked for a company that "outsourced" a job to Bangladesh and paid the guy $12k/year. He was able to hire a team of 10 people, live in a nice apartment and had maid services on that income.
Of course all 11 worked in some small room that most of us would consider a closet, on average the power went out 15 times a day so they had banks of car batteries in that small room, they had no air conditioning or even a window, and worked in some overcrowded shithole of a city.
So yeah if you want to downsize your income move to Asia, just don't expect to enjoy it, nobody there does.
I just think its a stupid idea, period. I can't stand the type of people that feel they need this kind of persistent connection to the internet and social networking, who feel they need something to aid them in every decision they make and direction they take in life.
Its actually from a growing fear I have that society is dumbing down. For instance there is a significant rise in pedestrian vs car accidents and deaths, both from the drivers texting while behind the wheel of a 2 ton vehicle, and from pedestrians that no longer bother to look both ways before crossing the road because they are texting on their phones. I have actually heard people say that they don't bother looking because pedestrians always have the right of way, but I mean the law isn't going to save you when a car sends you flying 100 feet into the air and land as a jumble of broken bones. Pedestrians can stop being hit if they simply have more respect for themselves and put the phone away while trying to cross busy roads or intersection.
I do fear a society feeling the need to have content and information beamed into their eyeballs. What is the point, so they can read their Tweets 5 seconds faster then it takes to look down at a phone? So they can have advertising more directly tied to their brain? So they can be told directions to a place they drove to 100 times already without the use of navigation aids? Some might say this might fix the growing problem of pedestrians launching themselves into cars, but really this means more people will be distracted by little things popping up in their eyeballs telling them where the nearest Pho restaurant is, or asking their glasses what Pho is..
Also what is ultimately the motive of Google. EVERYTHING Google has done so far has been about exposing people to more advertising, period. Google is not about the innovation of new technology, its about finding innovative way to increase advertising exposure. A laptop based on a web browser is only guaranteed to get more ad impressions then an OS that simply hosts a web browser that may or may not be running. Android was solely about getting a phone into people's hands that offers more advertising through ad and media stores. I don't believe Google truly believes that the Glass project is about aiding society or coming out with something innovative we all need, its about getting more advertising into people's eyes, period.
So we should all fear Google Glass because I think its insincere in its intent and duping millions into believing this is the next big thing when all it is doing is opening up another ad revenue stream for a company already making billions in profit.
Finally, or course, I fear the pending Douchocalypse of bearded men wearing these things.
If only there was some way of using the power of the interweb to look up someone by name and find out more about them. But true, E! News is the most relevant source about who's who.
Look, if you love something and want to rave about it online you just end up looking like a douche or even worse, a shill:
"Oh, I just bought this amazing cracker from Kraft and it tastes so awesome and buttery but OMFG I can't believe its only 20 calories for 20 of them!!!. 5 yummy stars but I really wish I could make it 10!!!!"
Instead, this gets far more traction and respect:
"Everyone at Kraft must die from a plague of putrid boils for creating a cracker that tastes like sawdust that was farted out of a Keebler elf's asshole after running a marathon."
The only exception of content that is annoyingly positive all the time is the iTunes music reviews because it is a community of douches trying to out douche each other raving about their favorite artists. First, you can't review something unless you buy it so its stupid to buy something to talk about how much it sucks. Second, if you buy music from an artist then you are already a fanboy so you are going to give it a glowing review in spite of it sounding like a bunch of cat's in heat being banged on drums covered in sandpaper. iTunes music reviews are completely irrelevant because by design it's a self perpetuating shower of douche wash.
If you haven't figured out by now/. is a socially driven website without editors. Articles are posted to lists using algorithms, not humans picking and choosing what gets to the front page or reviewing grammar or spelling. I am pretty sure at this stage of the game/. contains no actual humans involvement, I'm positive even the comments are posted by nerds using social response algorithms.
But even with actual human editors there is no guarantee you are going to get a good stream of stories and well written articles, just look at the Huffington post.
Microsoft can't make a cool product so it can't break into consumer electronics. Microsoft only succeeded in game consoles for making a product people want, but even then I find the Xbox360 about the uncoolest game console for design, Microsoft has the worst industrial designers in the history of industrial design.
I doubt they are dropping Microsoft Phone, but they need to tap into the vapid side of consumers and make something that is just cool and a "must have" device rather then focusing on the feature set. Hey, it works for Apple each and every time.
Slashdot Mirror
Its golf, why would you waste hours watching men drive their balls into a hole.
Applying 10 years hindsight on how people should have been enlightened enough to use Twitter to stop the US going to war is wrong. Remember at the time most of the US was screaming for payback and Iraq was the obvious scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks.
Chances are Twitter would have only solidified public opinion to go to war quicker as any anti-war sentiment at the time would have been slammed out of existence as being unpatriotic.
Also its not like there were no social networking outlets available for public opinion. Slashdot did exist back then too.
Largely its travelling through a vacuum, given the thing didn't explode seconds after it was released from the rocket, I'd say 36 years of travelling through a vacuum to be on par with expectations.
This is not like slamming a rover onto another planet with harsh temperature, wind and dust conditions and having it work 10 times longer then its original mission specs.
F**k, there's nothing out here! They lied to meeeeeeeeeeee...
SimCity was an epic fail for a game release and there is no way a CEO of a company failing this hard should be allowed to continue at this company.
But this should be just the first of many firings or leavings that this company should expect.
Bottom line is, any new CEO stepping in needs to end the bullshit of imposing always on and stupid DRM schemes, accept that some percentage of content will be stolen, but if you focus on creating good compelling games and offer them at prices people find affordable and high value then you will get more people interested in paying for content rather then stealing it.
SimCity is a beloved game ruined by corporate greed. EA has ruined more games in this way and need to re-evaluate the point of being a game distributor if gamers just find their products repugnant.
I mean it should be possible to create a system that emulates an "open" server, but when a hacker opens up a connection and tries to upload or download data, then fire off a counter measure that will cripple the hacker's system?
I mean after 30+ years of connected networks there is no such thing as an offensive strike in cyber terrorism?
I can't believe that hackers are that smart as to outwit servers attempting to back-deploy payloads onto their systems, or even could block a counter attack. I mean with the mentioned botnet hack, it would seem pretty easy that if it "broke" into an unprotected server that server could send back a crippling packet or something. The botnet is running a service that scans and returns data so the violated server should be able to exploit that and dump terabytes of garbage data back to cripple the botnet. A Denial of Hack.
Actually if I was an active hacker I would rather enjoy luring other hackers to my "unprotected" servers only to f**k with them and mess up their systems.
Oh buddy, if you only new how much of your taxes were wasted you would die several hundred deaths from apoplexy. This would be a drop is a very very large bucket.
Leave Samsung alone.
Sorry, but I abhor network television. The constant litany of crime scene investigation shows is definite proof of a dumbing down of society. Crime shows are essentially the same story told week after week after week with only minor changes to the who, what, where, why, and how of forensic investigation. I pretty much believe there are no real writers anymore on these shows, only a computer churning out templated scripts.
The moment a show comes out with a plot arc that spans multiple episodes the idiot masses turn away because it is too difficult for them to maintain a connection between multiple 43 minute episodes after several days. Almost every non-serial show is yanked off the air, often before it can even complete a full season. Instead the idiot masses prefer predictability and repeatability, and the show better conclude its plot at the end of 42 minutes.
And don't get me started on "reality" TV. Not just Survivor and its spin-offs, but the slew of shows about hicks trapped in their homes because they bought too much shit and are too lazy to clean up after themselves, or even dumber shows about hicks trading shit to other hicks, or hicks in the swamp, or hicks looking for ghosts. I mean when the American Mid-West and South become one of the biggest entertainment zones in the world. Those channels that spew out this kind of trash are owned by all the network channel parent companies realizing that for near zero investment they can entrap millions into believing they are better then the hicks they are watching on TV, but clearly are directly on par with those people. Hick shows are subsidizing crime investigation shows and its all easy money for networks because there is no integrity at all in television, if there ever was.
And finally in the 500+ channel universe the viewers are so spread out between all this vapid content the idea of getting 20+ million viewers concentrated enough to watch something that is worth while to advertisers is getting much more difficult. Unless its the American Idol finaly or Superbowl, its impossible to get more then a few million people watching TV live at a given moment in time. Distribution companies realize its not about the ad revenue from one show any more, its about spreading out garbage on 20 other channels which gets the most viewership. If people are not watching CSI at that particular moment, its probably because they are watching some overweight pampered 6 year old on crack yelling at the camera about how beautiful she is.
So, yes, Neilsen is dead because its irrelevant. When 20+ years of historical data shows that crime shows and reality TV dominate ratings, and these shows are spread out over 500 channels the idea of audience size is a dead concept; what is the point of trying to find out what the average dumb viewer wants to watch on TV at any given moment when it is all just money-making garbage anyways.
Billions of songs donloaded
1 million applications available
18 million Jailbreaks.
Priceless.
It started off with a copyright disclaimer saying "Piracy is not a victimless crime".
It got me thinking, yes I feel for the 1% affected by piracy because instead of making $1.4 billion they will only make $1.2 billion this year.
Most of us just cannot relate to the impact losing $200 million has on your life and so we should do more to prevent online piracy and not steal content ourselves.
I for one will no longer steal content because I am such an asshole for taking profit away from the 1%. They have mouths to feed with caviar, yachts to fuel, and dreams to realize, just like the rest of us.
Please, don't make a 1%'er cry by stealing their content.
Advocating that everyone should buy an electric vehicle but then also advocating everyone to turn off their lights during Earth Hour and conserving energy in general.
If you don't understand the stupidity of people wanting both those conditions then you might be a Greentard.
I worked for a company that "outsourced" a job to Bangladesh and paid the guy $12k/year. He was able to hire a team of 10 people, live in a nice apartment and had maid services on that income.
Of course all 11 worked in some small room that most of us would consider a closet, on average the power went out 15 times a day so they had banks of car batteries in that small room, they had no air conditioning or even a window, and worked in some overcrowded shithole of a city.
So yeah if you want to downsize your income move to Asia, just don't expect to enjoy it, nobody there does.
Its the same thing, get educated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation
I have no respect for a bird that gets killed 4 - 6 feet off the ground.
I'm afraid of Americans....wearing Google Glass.
I just think its a stupid idea, period. I can't stand the type of people that feel they need this kind of persistent connection to the internet and social networking, who feel they need something to aid them in every decision they make and direction they take in life.
Its actually from a growing fear I have that society is dumbing down. For instance there is a significant rise in pedestrian vs car accidents and deaths, both from the drivers texting while behind the wheel of a 2 ton vehicle, and from pedestrians that no longer bother to look both ways before crossing the road because they are texting on their phones. I have actually heard people say that they don't bother looking because pedestrians always have the right of way, but I mean the law isn't going to save you when a car sends you flying 100 feet into the air and land as a jumble of broken bones. Pedestrians can stop being hit if they simply have more respect for themselves and put the phone away while trying to cross busy roads or intersection.
I do fear a society feeling the need to have content and information beamed into their eyeballs. What is the point, so they can read their Tweets 5 seconds faster then it takes to look down at a phone? So they can have advertising more directly tied to their brain? So they can be told directions to a place they drove to 100 times already without the use of navigation aids? Some might say this might fix the growing problem of pedestrians launching themselves into cars, but really this means more people will be distracted by little things popping up in their eyeballs telling them where the nearest Pho restaurant is, or asking their glasses what Pho is..
Also what is ultimately the motive of Google. EVERYTHING Google has done so far has been about exposing people to more advertising, period. Google is not about the innovation of new technology, its about finding innovative way to increase advertising exposure. A laptop based on a web browser is only guaranteed to get more ad impressions then an OS that simply hosts a web browser that may or may not be running. Android was solely about getting a phone into people's hands that offers more advertising through ad and media stores. I don't believe Google truly believes that the Glass project is about aiding society or coming out with something innovative we all need, its about getting more advertising into people's eyes, period.
So we should all fear Google Glass because I think its insincere in its intent and duping millions into believing this is the next big thing when all it is doing is opening up another ad revenue stream for a company already making billions in profit.
Finally, or course, I fear the pending Douchocalypse of bearded men wearing these things.
Isn't this what the devil does...
Cause according to /., 3D printing is the solution for everything these days.
Nobody cares.
Not about the original article or whether it was correct.
If only there was some way of using the power of the interweb to look up someone by name and find out more about them. But true, E! News is the most relevant source about who's who.
more wailing harlots.
Or are people just seeding 99.98% of the thing and nobody knows how it ends?
Look, if you love something and want to rave about it online you just end up looking like a douche or even worse, a shill:
"Oh, I just bought this amazing cracker from Kraft and it tastes so awesome and buttery but OMFG I can't believe its only 20 calories for 20 of them!!!. 5 yummy stars but I really wish I could make it 10!!!!"
Instead, this gets far more traction and respect:
"Everyone at Kraft must die from a plague of putrid boils for creating a cracker that tastes like sawdust that was farted out of a Keebler elf's asshole after running a marathon."
The only exception of content that is annoyingly positive all the time is the iTunes music reviews because it is a community of douches trying to out douche each other raving about their favorite artists. First, you can't review something unless you buy it so its stupid to buy something to talk about how much it sucks. Second, if you buy music from an artist then you are already a fanboy so you are going to give it a glowing review in spite of it sounding like a bunch of cat's in heat being banged on drums covered in sandpaper. iTunes music reviews are completely irrelevant because by design it's a self perpetuating shower of douche wash.
It's Monday, I'm in a mood.
If you haven't figured out by now /. is a socially driven website without editors. Articles are posted to lists using algorithms, not humans picking and choosing what gets to the front page or reviewing grammar or spelling. I am pretty sure at this stage of the game /. contains no actual humans involvement, I'm positive even the comments are posted by nerds using social response algorithms.
But even with actual human editors there is no guarantee you are going to get a good stream of stories and well written articles, just look at the Huffington post.
Microsoft can't make a cool product so it can't break into consumer electronics. Microsoft only succeeded in game consoles for making a product people want, but even then I find the Xbox360 about the uncoolest game console for design, Microsoft has the worst industrial designers in the history of industrial design.
I doubt they are dropping Microsoft Phone, but they need to tap into the vapid side of consumers and make something that is just cool and a "must have" device rather then focusing on the feature set. Hey, it works for Apple each and every time.