Then I read the rest of your post, and I'm not so sure I want to have detachable fingers...
For the record, the reason I said it was was so easy to defeat for criminals, law enforcement, and psychos on planes was that all they had to do was grab your hand and swipe your finger over the reader...
This is much easier to do to an unwilling you than coercing a pass code/phrase, they can simply overpower you and force you to do it, or knock you unconscious and do it, or wait for you to fall asleep. even without resorting to severing your fingers. Although of course... they could do that too.
So, I think this could be used. You could just 'sign' our phone. A reasonable 'signature' would have to my mind at least 50 data points of acceleration or deflection. Since we do vary the sig, some kind of fuzzy matching with the accepted vector would be required - say 90%. Then if it matches, the signature recognizer could use the correct data as the key to the decryption.
a) A lot of peoples signatures vary by WAY more than 10% each run... I can sign twice in a row, and the two are barely the same. For my own signature... sometimes I make a tiny loop for the e, sometimes its just a little pointed bump like an undotted i, sometimes... its just not there at all. There are some definite "features" that my signature consistently has, but other parts are highly variable.
b) The reason signature analysis works at all is because its analyzing a muscle memory motion that we've already committed, so there is consistency. A child doesn't have a signature; they still draw their name out letter by letter each time.
Any sort of "sign your phone" process would have the same problem... we don't have a "swipe motion" we can use... sure we can make one up... but it will take weeks? months? years? of repetition before it has that characteristic rhythm like a signature. At the start we will be like children drawing it out each time...with no muscle memory rhythm.
Thus, we would not need to remember a long key, just let our muscle memory do its thing.
Unfortunately i think we'd need to remember a long key as well... as a backup in case there was problem with these other methods. Your "signing it" example could render your phone otherwise inaccessible by getting a nasty paper cut that made you much more careful and conscious moving your finger... or inducing you to use a different finger than usual... both which would prevent you from matching your characteristic rhythm.
can you place or answer calls without unlocking it? Holding it up for "face recognition" while driving would be illegal in an increasing number of places.
I'm also not convinced that the pattern drawn on screen is really more secure than a short digit password. I admit I don't know a lot about it.
But as a programmer I'm imagining ways that it would be implemented...
After factoring in that the recognition has to be loose enough to accept anything "pretty close", there aren't -that- many different designs you can "draw" in a short number of strokes... well under a million I think... which is roughly equivalent to a 6 digit passcode... yikes.
You can't do much except finger print realistically on a phone... nobody is going to tolerate a retinal scan to make or answer text messages and phone calls.
And it would need to work reliably (low false accept rate / accepting photos of the finger, fingerprints lifted with gummy bears off the phone itself, etc.. or its not secure...with a near zero false reject rate or it would be unacceptable to users...
And to top it off it has to work to those tolerances under a wide range of temperatures and humidity levels and while at least moderately dirty...after all its a phone in your pocket... not a checkpoint in a well controlled environment.
A final nail in biometrics coffin for this sort of application is that you can very easily be coerced to unlock it... from criminals, to law enforcement, to the psycho you fell asleep next to on the plane... all just need to touch your finger to the handset to unlock it...
Getting a pass phrase out of you runs from "we need a wrench" to "we need a judge willing to throw out the 5th"... which is of course doable, but the bar is a bit higher... for now at least.
If you can brute force the passcode because it is only a 4 digit number it's not much use to have secure encryption.
While if you have a 40 character passphrase you have enter everytime you want to unlock it, its not terribly useful as a mobile phone.
Not really sure what the solution is. Some sort of balanced approach... 4 digits to unlock the basic functionality... place and answer calls... use preselected apps...
full passphrase to get deeper in...
with some user options to control where exactly the boundary is...
but this is of course "complicated" which disqualifies it from being ideal too... so I'm not really sure what the solution is.
Or at least, the search warrant is implied in the fact that someone wants to cross the border.
Well, except that it applies to domestic flights.
And while we might want to catch people sneaking into or out of the country with contraband we can safely restrict it to people we actually suspect... searching every man woman child, baby, citizen, foreigner, exchange student, disabled person, and war veteran... "just in case" is beyond ridiculous.
Unfortunately a lot of the hotly anticipating games you used as an example are not for the Wii.
That would be because I went to gamestops most anticipated releases for Xbox 360 page.
Where all I saw was a list of "continued rehashes of old franchises"... which is what the OP was complaining about being "the problem" with the Wii.
The top 2 games on the list for the Wii were both new IPs from what i could tell which was interesting, but the rest of the list was sequels and movie tie ins.
But my point wasn't that Wii games aren't largely sequels... because they are. My point was that singling out sequals as being a wii problem is absurd, given the xbox 360 list is almost nothing but sequels too.
Sure Nintendo has Mario Bros, Metroid, and Kirby franchises but the existence of these franchises isn't enough to counter the larger number and much more popular and profitable titles that are coming out on the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Which all appeal to primarily to people like the OP. That's all they play, that's all they want to play. Nintendo jumping in to the "15-30 year old boy who wants to play a supersoldier" fray with a hey look-at-me-too title isn't going to work.
It will alienate the base they cater to and grew with with the Wii... and the 15-30 old guy with with his xbox live gold account is going to sneer at it no matter what it does... if they make even one mario title it'll be etched in their minds as the kiddie-platform that they don't want their freinds to even know they ever enjoyed.
Nintendo is right to forge a different path.
I do agree the hardware really should be stronger this next round - HD is a must now. But not being able to play all the non-exclusive titles that are heavily marketed at the xbox/ps3 crowd isn't really hurting it. Even if the Wii was equal to a ps3 or xbox... do you really think its going to be the platform of choice for the CoD crowd?
That "turned off generation" already abandoned them on the gamecube. But nintendo found a whole new market of people to replace them.
continued rehashes of old franchises.
Lets see what's most anticipated according to gamestop's website:
Assassin's Creed III Another Ghost Recon Witcher 2 Borderlands 2 Tiger Woods PGA 13 Another Star Wars Game Halo 4 Prototype 2 Warriors Orochi 3 Darksiders II Resident Evil 6 Another Bioshock Max Payne 3 (with BONUS!) Sniper Elite 2 Dragons Dogma * first game that is not a continued rehash of an existing franchise? Another Medal of Honor Lollipop Chainsaw * second game that is not an existing franchise Far Cry 3
Yep, continued rehashes of old franchises for the win. And a near uninterupted parade of FPS games. How is it you are not turned off by the xbox360?
they need to out-power the big boys and deliver some adult games
Why is that? There aren't enough Medals of Honors and Halo's on your xbox that you'd buy a wii 2.0 to play even more of them?
Hate to break it to you, but Nintendo already lost you. Pandering to you with a parade of FPSes featuring giant robots that dismember alien zombie hookers isn't really going to win you back... that market is saturated.
Going after new markets is a winning strategy... New Super Mario Bros Wii is probably one of the best games I've ever played. Super Paper Mario and Super Mario Galaxy were great too. The Metroid Primes were well done,and Kirby's epic yarn was pretty much adorable, and the kids loved them all too.
"I am quite familiar with facebook and how it works. I understand how people use it, and I understand its business model. However I believe facebook encourages people to put too much information online, and this creates too much opportunity for both personal and professional liability."
"In fact, the fact that you are requesting access to any facebook account I might have during this interview process demonstrates just how concerned the company is about this sort of liability. I think my decision to refrain from participating in facebook reflects sound judgement."
-- The one place it doesn't really work is these days everyone wants their company to have a twitter feed and facebook page to "connect with customers" or and "promote the brand" and other marketing nonsense. But its on a computer so it gets lumped onto the IT lap, in part. So if you come in to a small company looking to maintain their servers, manage their webhosting agreements, do some web site programming... then its sort of expected you'll be able to help manage their google, facebook, myspace, twitter, yelp, and whatever other online presence they have as well. Hopefully the company is large enough to have someone dedicated to marketing with the prerequisite middle-school computer savvy to do that crap... but if not...then it might be part of your job.
So far I've managed to avoid having to create accounts for that sort of crap, but its been close a few times. Its not a job I want to do.
'm glad someone finally picked up on that. On slashdot, everyone laughs at unenforcable shrink wrap licenses. Most people have utter disdain for copyright and patent. And yet, a facebook TOS is sacrosanct? ROTFL.
Like I said, I'm not the least bit worried about whether I can "get away with it".
I have no respect for facebook or its crappy tos. However I respect myself too much to voluntarily enter into an agreement with them, and then violate it. First I give it legitimacy by agreeing to it, and then I strip myself of any moral high ground by violating it.
"We should be allowed to send an email..." means you must have an email account.
I can choose any of umteen zillion mail providers, or self host if I'm so inclined.
"We should be able to poke stuff into a web form..." means you must have Internet access AND a web browser.
And I've spoken out before against government dictating what browser we use too. Remember when a lot of government sites only worked with Internet Explorer? Was that ever a "good thing"?
"We should be able to mail them a letter..." means you have to be able to afford a stamp and have the ability to write.
The country has a publicly funded school system to teach you... you really don't have much to complain about. As for the stamp... Canada lets you write your representatives without one. Good idea there.
Facebook is free. Get a free account under a dummy name. You get to participate, facebook gets nothing. What's your problem with that?
So your solution is to violate facebooks terms of service? So not only do you want me to deal with specific commercial entity I dislike, but you would have me violate my agreement with them too...
I don't have a facebook account because I don't want to agree to their terms of services, because I have principles. Not because I don't think I could get away with lying to them. Your attitude is what is wrong with the world...
This problem is much cheaper to solve: get a facebook account. The only tie back to you is an email address, and you can buffer that through a throwaway gmail account.
And agreeing to a 3rd party commercial entities terms of service to participate in democracy doesn't strike you as lunacy?
Why -exactly- should I need to agree to facebook's terms of use as a prerequisite for any sort of participation or interaction with my elected government?
Not everything is about the money something costs me. The fact that I -can- get a throwaway facebook account for free in no way changes the fact that I absolutely should not have to.
This is wrong.
It may well be convenient for many citizens, and even expedient and efficient for the government, but it is fundamentally wrong.
asking if you are over or under a specific set of ages is equivalent to asking the age.
Asking if you are old enough to serve alcohol (18 here) when applying for a job where you will be serving alcohol is -not- equivalent to asking one's age.
Asking someone applying to pick cotton whether they can serve alcohol could be argued as some sort of attempt to illegitimately narrow down someone's age, but that's not really the case I'm referring to.
True, but the number of artists who have become famous that way vs. overnight sensation due to viral videos on the internet is still very much skewed towards the "traditional" way. But give it another 20 years and we will see what happens to that ratio.
On the other hand, how many "youtube artists" ended up deeply in debted to youtube? Many many "famous" artists have nothing except debts to the record company... and not because they were foolish... but because on paper their multiplatinum album wasn't actually profitable...at least as far as their contract was concerned.
No, even then they don't need to ask "age". They only need to ask whether they are legally old enough to... "whatever". Or are you "over 16" "over 18" or whatever.
They need the answer to a simple binary yes/no question. They don't need your age quantified to answer it.
So Windows can't do it as well as *nix. Explain that and why if you want to.
But if you want to emulate it on Windows 7 here are several products.... x,y,z... which is best at it? Is still a perfectly valid question, and the answer is x y or z. Not... use linux.
To turn the tables: we often see people ask "what is the best way to run Windows App X on Linux"
And then we get people suggesting Vmware, VirtualBox, WINE, Cedega, and whatever else... oh is it a.dotnet command line utility.. actually mono can run it as-is... or oh its a command line java utlity? that might actually run as-is if you just extract the jar files...oh its not really actually a windows app its a dos application... here try DOSBOX
Or you could be a troll and not answer the question... and just say "Forget linux, Install Windows"
And your whole line of argument about the quirky edge cases... where really, if it was designed to run on windows, then running it on baremetal in windows is the most reliable and only truly fully supported way of doing it.... and anything else might work well enough most of the time... but...
True or not, its pretty irrelevant to the question though.
An always on camera in your living room that records everything send the stream to samsung has been done before?
When? Where?
If you're so afraid about TVs becoming more advanced, then why not be so scared about cell phones,
I vaguely recall NSA wiretapping our phone calls was something of an issue for a lot of people...
game consoles, iPods and the like?
Because the game consoles and ipods: a) have indicators when they are recording b) don't stream that data back to the mothership
Sure they have the -potential- too, but the difference here is that samsung actually -is- streaming the data out.
Besides it's not like these companies have all of the staff and resources necessary to watch and monitor the thousands to millions of TV users all at once.
All it takes is one creep set-hopping from living room to living room...
They don't need to be everywhere at once to be beyond creepy.
Oh, and that's great... until your sitting there in the restaurant and your battery dies, and suddenly you can't pay for your meal.
No worry you've got a car charger in the car... oh... but you need the nfc phone to get back into the parkade you used... and you realize that even if you got to the car you'd need the phone on to unlock it since you got one of those new digital keys embedded in your smartphone...
So you'll need to call onstar to remote open your car door... except your phone is dead.
Small rectangles and what not have some major advantages... being too reliant on electricity and networks for such basic functions has a downside.
The iPad is a wonderful "adjunct" to a computer. It is NOT a replacement therefore, and it was never intended as such.
Sort of agree.
Looking up stuff on the internet while sitting in your livingroom. (Coffee-table computing), where the "instant-on" puts nearly ZERO annoyance factor between desire for information and fulfilment.
Yes, this is where it excels. Someone says something on TV news or makes a reference to something, and you want to look up something more about it. "What is ganache?" or "What does a lavender point siamese cat look like?" or "What planet are Wookies from again?" or "What percentage of the GDP did the USA spend on the military vs healthcare?"... whatever... And as long as you stop there a tablet is fine.
But I've got a 13" Macboo Pro in my livingroom that covers this role, and I'd NEVER be able to drop down to a tablet -- why? Because after i look up whatever it was on the tablet, I'll refresh the slashdot home page and look at the news... and if I decide to reply, then suddenly I reget being on a tablet.
And I'll send a message to a friend on steam, and reply to a few messages on skype. Now a lot of this is do able on a tablet, but its just so much better on a laptop.
Using as an auxiliary computer using Telnet and/or VNC-type connectivity while doing development (or do you carry a second display with your laptop?)
What now? I have a nice fast i7 based desktop with 2 large screens while doing "development". If I want to do something on the side... I've got a laptop, and yes, I can plug the laptop into a 2nd display as well if I want. Who does serious development on a laptop? And then needs an itoy as a 2ndary screen? -boggle-
Medium-scale gaming. Most games on a phone are a joke, due to screen size.
The 13" laptop beats tablets for "medium scale gaming". I mean unless you think fruit ninja and angry birds are pinnacles of gaming. And the amount of utterly ad-ridden shovelware that passes for games in the app stores is sick. No thanks. My laptop has steam, and plenty of much higher caliber games... games that i can play on my other computers as well if I'm so inclined. Plus I've got access to things like the humble bundles...
And if one wanted mobile gaming in a serious way, I'd suggest a 3DS or something.
"Take anywhere" home security display/control. (Insert advertisement for LiveCams Pro here). Again, phone screen is too small, and the laptop isn't with you in the garage.
You'll take your tablet into the garage but not your laptop? Why exactly?
Oh, and as an e-reader while working. I use mine to browse documentation while doing development on my work-laptop. No more pawing back and forth between windows... REALLY handy when trying to learn something new!
Um...if I was doing development with just a laptop screen sure... I guess I'd appreciate a tablet... but the real question is why is my development platform so wholly inadequate for the job. Where am developing I that I'm carrying a laptop -and- a tablet around but can't have a proper multiscreen setup?
I mean sure, the last time i was on vacation, I had to hotfix something from a 13" laptop from a hotel room in the carribbean, and I'd have given anything for some more screen real-estate... even a tablet. But really... how often does this come up? And if it came up that often then I would carry 2 laptops or a secondary screen...
CAN you do these things with other devices? Sure; but that's not the point. The point is whether it's BETTER for the application; not whether the application is POSSIBLE using another device.
Exactly. And the answer is its POSSIBLE using a tablet, but its BETTER on a laptop, for all but the most trivial tasks.
Now if there was a tech discussion site which had real names and a proper friend/ignore mechanism, that would beat Slashdot hands down.
Do you have any evidence for that? Everytime someone close to the source of real information would be tempted to posted he'd know that anything he said would be immediately flagged by his boss...
Would someone who worked for IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, Samsung, Google, Motorola, Apple, Lego, three letter government agencies be able to speak their mind?
Yes I'm sure everything they ever posted would be professional, polite, properly disclaimed, and entirely trite.
Slashdot Mirror
Then I read the rest of your post, and I'm not so sure I want to have detachable fingers...
For the record, the reason I said it was was so easy to defeat for criminals, law enforcement, and psychos on planes was that all they had to do was grab your hand and swipe your finger over the reader...
This is much easier to do to an unwilling you than coercing a pass code/phrase, they can simply overpower you and force you to do it, or knock you unconscious and do it, or wait for you to fall asleep. even without resorting to severing your fingers. Although of course... they could do that too.
So, I think this could be used. You could just 'sign' our phone. A reasonable 'signature' would have to my mind at least 50 data points of acceleration or deflection. Since we do vary the sig, some kind of fuzzy matching with the accepted vector would be required - say 90%. Then if it matches, the signature recognizer could use the correct data as the key to the decryption.
a) A lot of peoples signatures vary by WAY more than 10% each run... I can sign twice in a row, and the two are barely the same. For my own signature ... sometimes I make a tiny loop for the e, sometimes its just a little pointed bump like an undotted i, sometimes... its just not there at all. There are some definite "features" that my signature consistently has, but other parts are highly variable.
b) The reason signature analysis works at all is because its analyzing a muscle memory motion that we've already committed, so there is consistency. A child doesn't have a signature; they still draw their name out letter by letter each time.
Any sort of "sign your phone" process would have the same problem... we don't have a "swipe motion" we can use... sure we can make one up... but it will take weeks? months? years? of repetition before it has that characteristic rhythm like a signature. At the start we will be like children drawing it out each time...with no muscle memory rhythm.
Thus, we would not need to remember a long key, just let our muscle memory do its thing.
Unfortunately i think we'd need to remember a long key as well... as a backup in case there was problem with these other methods. Your "signing it" example could render your phone otherwise inaccessible by getting a nasty paper cut that made you much more careful and conscious moving your finger... or inducing you to use a different finger than usual ... both which would prevent you from matching your characteristic rhythm.
can you place or answer calls without unlocking it? Holding it up for "face recognition" while driving would be illegal in an increasing number of places.
I'm also not convinced that the pattern drawn on screen is really more secure than a short digit password. I admit I don't know a lot about it.
But as a programmer I'm imagining ways that it would be implemented...
After factoring in that the recognition has to be loose enough to accept anything "pretty close", there aren't -that- many different designs you can "draw" in a short number of strokes... well under a million I think... which is roughly equivalent to a 6 digit passcode... yikes.
Biometric auth perhaps? .. Not perfect of course..
You can't do much except finger print realistically on a phone... nobody is going to tolerate a retinal scan to make or answer text messages and phone calls.
And it would need to work reliably (low false accept rate / accepting photos of the finger, fingerprints lifted with gummy bears off the phone itself, etc.. or its not secure...with a near zero false reject rate or it would be unacceptable to users...
And to top it off it has to work to those tolerances under a wide range of temperatures and humidity levels and while at least moderately dirty...after all its a phone in your pocket... not a checkpoint in a well controlled environment.
A final nail in biometrics coffin for this sort of application is that you can very easily be coerced to unlock it... from criminals, to law enforcement, to the psycho you fell asleep next to on the plane... all just need to touch your finger to the handset to unlock it...
Getting a pass phrase out of you runs from "we need a wrench" to "we need a judge willing to throw out the 5th" ... which is of course doable, but the bar is a bit higher... for now at least.
If you can brute force the passcode because it is only a 4 digit number it's not much use to have secure encryption.
While if you have a 40 character passphrase you have enter everytime you want to unlock it, its not terribly useful as a mobile phone.
Not really sure what the solution is. Some sort of balanced approach... 4 digits to unlock the basic functionality... place and answer calls... use preselected apps...
full passphrase to get deeper in...
with some user options to control where exactly the boundary is...
but this is of course "complicated" which disqualifies it from being ideal too... so I'm not really sure what the solution is.
This works in places with a system of government where getting 7% of the votes translates to a voice in government.
Or at least, the search warrant is implied in the fact that someone wants to cross the border.
Well, except that it applies to domestic flights.
And while we might want to catch people sneaking into or out of the country with contraband we can safely restrict it to people we actually suspect... searching every man woman child, baby, citizen, foreigner, exchange student, disabled person, and war veteran... "just in case" is beyond ridiculous.
Unfortunately a lot of the hotly anticipating games you used as an example are not for the Wii.
That would be because I went to gamestops most anticipated releases for Xbox 360 page.
Where all I saw was a list of "continued rehashes of old franchises"... which is what the OP was complaining about being "the problem" with the Wii.
The top 2 games on the list for the Wii were both new IPs from what i could tell which was interesting, but the rest of the list was sequels and movie tie ins.
But my point wasn't that Wii games aren't largely sequels... because they are. My point was that singling out sequals as being a wii problem is absurd, given the xbox 360 list is almost nothing but sequels too.
Sure Nintendo has Mario Bros, Metroid, and Kirby franchises but the existence of these franchises isn't enough to counter the larger number and much more popular and profitable titles that are coming out on the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Which all appeal to primarily to people like the OP. That's all they play, that's all they want to play. Nintendo jumping in to the "15-30 year old boy who wants to play a supersoldier" fray with a hey look-at-me-too title isn't going to work.
It will alienate the base they cater to and grew with with the Wii... and the 15-30 old guy with with his xbox live gold account is going to sneer at it no matter what it does... if they make even one mario title it'll be etched in their minds as the kiddie-platform that they don't want their freinds to even know they ever enjoyed.
Nintendo is right to forge a different path.
I do agree the hardware really should be stronger this next round - HD is a must now. But not being able to play all the non-exclusive titles that are heavily marketed at the xbox/ps3 crowd isn't really hurting it. Even if the Wii was equal to a ps3 or xbox... do you really think its going to be the platform of choice for the CoD crowd?
I don't.
Wii won in unit sales
And turned a profit on every unit sold.
but they have turned a generation off
That "turned off generation" already abandoned them on the gamecube. But nintendo found a whole new market of people to replace them.
continued rehashes of old franchises.
Lets see what's most anticipated according to gamestop's website:
Assassin's Creed III
Another Ghost Recon
Witcher 2
Borderlands 2
Tiger Woods PGA 13
Another Star Wars Game
Halo 4
Prototype 2
Warriors Orochi 3
Darksiders II
Resident Evil 6
Another Bioshock
Max Payne 3 (with BONUS!)
Sniper Elite 2
Dragons Dogma * first game that is not a continued rehash of an existing franchise?
Another Medal of Honor
Lollipop Chainsaw * second game that is not an existing franchise
Far Cry 3
Yep, continued rehashes of old franchises for the win. And a near uninterupted parade of FPS games. How is it you are not turned off by the xbox360?
they need to out-power the big boys and deliver some adult games
Why is that? There aren't enough Medals of Honors and Halo's on your xbox that you'd buy a wii 2.0 to play even more of them?
Hate to break it to you, but Nintendo already lost you. Pandering to you with a parade of FPSes featuring giant robots that dismember alien zombie hookers isn't really going to win you back... that market is saturated.
Going after new markets is a winning strategy... New Super Mario Bros Wii is probably one of the best games I've ever played. Super Paper Mario and Super Mario Galaxy were great too. The Metroid Primes were well done,and Kirby's epic yarn was pretty much adorable, and the kids loved them all too.
My answer was something along the lines of:
"I am quite familiar with facebook and how it works. I understand how people use it, and I understand its business model. However I believe facebook encourages people to put too much information online, and this creates too much opportunity for both personal and professional liability."
"In fact, the fact that you are requesting access to any facebook account I might have during this interview process demonstrates just how concerned the company is about this sort of liability. I think my decision to refrain from participating in facebook reflects sound judgement."
--
The one place it doesn't really work is these days everyone wants their company to have a twitter feed and facebook page to "connect with customers" or and "promote the brand" and other marketing nonsense. But its on a computer so it gets lumped onto the IT lap, in part. So if you come in to a small company looking to maintain their servers, manage their webhosting agreements, do some web site programming... then its sort of expected you'll be able to help manage their google, facebook, myspace, twitter, yelp, and whatever other online presence they have as well. Hopefully the company is large enough to have someone dedicated to marketing with the prerequisite middle-school computer savvy to do that crap... but if not...then it might be part of your job.
So far I've managed to avoid having to create accounts for that sort of crap, but its been close a few times. Its not a job I want to do.
Just like a PAC/SuperPAC isn't allowed to "coordinate" with a candidate....
'm glad someone finally picked up on that. On slashdot, everyone laughs at unenforcable shrink wrap licenses. Most people have utter disdain for copyright and patent. And yet, a facebook TOS is sacrosanct? ROTFL.
Like I said, I'm not the least bit worried about whether I can "get away with it".
I have no respect for facebook or its crappy tos. However I respect myself too much to voluntarily enter into an agreement with them, and then violate it. First I give it legitimacy by agreeing to it, and then I strip myself of any moral high ground by violating it.
I respect -myself- too much for that.
"We should be allowed to send an email..." means you must have an email account.
I can choose any of umteen zillion mail providers, or self host if I'm so inclined.
"We should be able to poke stuff into a web form..." means you must have Internet access AND a web browser.
And I've spoken out before against government dictating what browser we use too. Remember when a lot of government sites only worked with Internet Explorer? Was that ever a "good thing"?
"We should be able to mail them a letter..." means you have to be able to afford a stamp and have the ability to write.
The country has a publicly funded school system to teach you... you really don't have much to complain about.
As for the stamp... Canada lets you write your representatives without one. Good idea there.
Facebook is free. Get a free account under a dummy name. You get to participate, facebook gets nothing. What's your problem with that?
So your solution is to violate facebooks terms of service? So not only do you want me to deal with specific commercial entity I dislike, but you would have me violate my agreement with them too...
I don't have a facebook account because I don't want to agree to their terms of services, because I have principles. Not because I don't think I could get away with lying to them. Your attitude is what is wrong with the world...
This problem is much cheaper to solve: get a facebook account. The only tie back to you is an email address, and you can buffer that through a throwaway gmail account.
And agreeing to a 3rd party commercial entities terms of service to participate in democracy doesn't strike you as lunacy?
Why -exactly- should I need to agree to facebook's terms of use as a prerequisite for any sort of participation or interaction with my elected government?
Not everything is about the money something costs me. The fact that I -can- get a throwaway facebook account for free in no way changes the fact that I absolutely should not have to.
This is wrong.
It may well be convenient for many citizens, and even expedient and efficient for the government, but it is fundamentally wrong.
asking if you are over or under a specific set of ages is equivalent to asking the age.
Asking if you are old enough to serve alcohol (18 here) when applying for a job where you will be serving alcohol is -not- equivalent to asking one's age.
Asking someone applying to pick cotton whether they can serve alcohol could be argued as some sort of attempt to illegitimately narrow down someone's age, but that's not really the case I'm referring to.
True, but the number of artists who have become famous that way vs. overnight sensation due to viral videos on the internet is still very much skewed towards the "traditional" way. But give it another 20 years and we will see what happens to that ratio.
On the other hand, how many "youtube artists" ended up deeply in debted to youtube? Many many "famous" artists have nothing except debts to the record company... and not because they were foolish... but because on paper their multiplatinum album wasn't actually profitable...at least as far as their contract was concerned.
I think it was banned in kazahkstan not kuwait.
In any case surely there are official channels to request flags and anthems and other national symbols from...like the teams themselves...
One doesn't think one would need to be hitting the pirate bay for this stuff...
No, even then they don't need to ask "age". They only need to ask whether they are legally old enough to ... "whatever". Or are you "over 16" "over 18" or whatever.
They need the answer to a simple binary yes/no question. They don't need your age quantified to answer it.
Why do you need to tell them you don't know it "honestly"? You could save yourself the script, and just lie.
Are you worried they are going to torture it out of you, and you genuinely need not to know it?
So Windows can't do it as well as *nix. Explain that and why if you want to.
But if you want to emulate it on Windows 7 here are several products.... x,y,z... which is best at it? Is still a perfectly valid question, and the answer is x y or z. Not ... use linux.
To turn the tables: we often see people ask "what is the best way to run Windows App X on Linux"
And then we get people suggesting Vmware, VirtualBox, WINE, Cedega, and whatever else ... oh is it a .dotnet command line utility.. actually mono can run it as-is... or oh its a command line java utlity? that might actually run as-is if you just extract the jar files...oh its not really actually a windows app its a dos application... here try DOSBOX
Or you could be a troll and not answer the question... and just say "Forget linux, Install Windows"
And your whole line of argument about the quirky edge cases ... where really, if it was designed to run on windows, then running it on baremetal in windows is the most reliable and only truly fully supported way of doing it.... and anything else might work well enough most of the time... but...
True or not, its pretty irrelevant to the question though.
Then why answer the question? To hear yourself speak?
It's nothing that hasn't been done before.
An always on camera in your living room that records everything send the stream to samsung has been done before?
When? Where?
If you're so afraid about TVs becoming more advanced, then why not be so scared about cell phones,
I vaguely recall NSA wiretapping our phone calls was something of an issue for a lot of people...
game consoles, iPods and the like?
Because the game consoles and ipods:
a) have indicators when they are recording
b) don't stream that data back to the mothership
Sure they have the -potential- too, but the difference here is that samsung actually -is- streaming the data out.
Besides it's not like these companies have all of the staff and resources necessary to watch and monitor the thousands to millions of TV users all at once.
All it takes is one creep set-hopping from living room to living room...
They don't need to be everywhere at once to be beyond creepy.
Oh, and that's great... until your sitting there in the restaurant and your battery dies, and suddenly you can't pay for your meal.
No worry you've got a car charger in the car... oh... but you need the nfc phone to get back into the parkade you used... and you realize that even if you got to the car you'd need the phone on to unlock it since you got one of those new digital keys embedded in your smartphone...
So you'll need to call onstar to remote open your car door... except your phone is dead.
Small rectangles and what not have some major advantages... being too reliant on electricity and networks for such basic functions has a downside.
The iPad is a wonderful "adjunct" to a computer. It is NOT a replacement therefore, and it was never intended as such.
Sort of agree.
Looking up stuff on the internet while sitting in your livingroom. (Coffee-table computing), where the "instant-on" puts nearly ZERO annoyance factor between desire for information and fulfilment.
Yes, this is where it excels. Someone says something on TV news or makes a reference to something, and you want to look up something more about it. "What is ganache?" or "What does a lavender point siamese cat look like?" or "What planet are Wookies from again?" or "What percentage of the GDP did the USA spend on the military vs healthcare?" ... whatever... And as long as you stop there a tablet is fine.
But I've got a 13" Macboo Pro in my livingroom that covers this role, and I'd NEVER be able to drop down to a tablet -- why? Because after i look up whatever it was on the tablet, I'll refresh the slashdot home page and look at the news... and if I decide to reply, then suddenly I reget being on a tablet.
And I'll send a message to a friend on steam, and reply to a few messages on skype. Now a lot of this is do able on a tablet, but its just so much better on a laptop.
Using as an auxiliary computer using Telnet and/or VNC-type connectivity while doing development (or do you carry a second display with your laptop?)
What now? I have a nice fast i7 based desktop with 2 large screens while doing "development". If I want to do something on the side... I've got a laptop, and yes, I can plug the laptop into a 2nd display as well if I want. Who does serious development on a laptop? And then needs an itoy as a 2ndary screen? -boggle-
Medium-scale gaming. Most games on a phone are a joke, due to screen size.
The 13" laptop beats tablets for "medium scale gaming". I mean unless you think fruit ninja and angry birds are pinnacles of gaming. And the amount of utterly ad-ridden shovelware that passes for games in the app stores is sick. No thanks. My laptop has steam, and plenty of much higher caliber games... games that i can play on my other computers as well if I'm so inclined. Plus I've got access to things like the humble bundles...
And if one wanted mobile gaming in a serious way, I'd suggest a 3DS or something.
"Take anywhere" home security display/control. (Insert advertisement for LiveCams Pro here). Again, phone screen is too small, and the laptop isn't with you in the garage.
You'll take your tablet into the garage but not your laptop? Why exactly?
Oh, and as an e-reader while working. I use mine to browse documentation while doing development on my work-laptop. No more pawing back and forth between windows... REALLY handy when trying to learn something new!
Um...if I was doing development with just a laptop screen sure ... I guess I'd appreciate a tablet... but the real question is why is my development platform so wholly inadequate for the job. Where am developing I that I'm carrying a laptop -and- a tablet around but can't have a proper multiscreen setup?
I mean sure, the last time i was on vacation, I had to hotfix something from a 13" laptop from a hotel room in the carribbean, and I'd have given anything for some more screen real-estate... even a tablet. But really... how often does this come up? And if it came up that often then I would carry 2 laptops or a secondary screen...
CAN you do these things with other devices? Sure; but that's not the point. The point is whether it's BETTER for the application; not whether the application is POSSIBLE using another device.
Exactly. And the answer is its POSSIBLE using a tablet, but its BETTER on a laptop, for all but the most trivial tasks.
Now if there was a tech discussion site which had real names and a proper friend/ignore mechanism, that would beat Slashdot hands down.
Do you have any evidence for that? Everytime someone close to the source of real information would be tempted to posted he'd know that anything he said would be immediately flagged by his boss...
Would someone who worked for IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, Samsung, Google, Motorola, Apple, Lego, three letter government agencies be able to speak their mind?
Yes I'm sure everything they ever posted would be professional, polite, properly disclaimed, and entirely trite.