Honest question here - why do you assume that lessons (in the traditional format of "go to a person who teaches the instrument, and ask them to teach it to you") are a better option than a game? I'd argue that a well structured game which requires the learning of a skill as part of the gameplay is probably the best possible way to learn that skill.
A game is a fantastic practice tool, but its a lousy teacher.
The point is that VNC/RDP-like functionality is now accessible to everyone, which is a good thing. When was the last time Six Pack Joe had a properly configured VNC client?
joe six pack would "Windows Remote Desktop" by clicking it in the start menu, and entering the ip address to connect to.
The reason most joe-sixpacks don't is because they need to enable the RDP server, tweak the firewall rules to let the incoming connection, and know a bit about tcpip to find their address and/or register dynamic-dns name.
As a result, a joe sixpack who needs this ends up overpaying for the functionality with gotomypc or something like that.
With this, Joe sixpack is still going to have to configure his server to host his appications through a web server or something so that he can reach it with his browser to run the gtk apps... wait a minute... joe sixpack is running a linux server? I seriously doubt joe sixpack is going to be going anywhere near this.
incredible difference between "Why exactly do I want do this?" and "What could I use this for?"
I disagree that there is any difference at all. You might have read some sort of negativity there, but take a closer look with an open mind to the idea that there was none. There really was none.
It's like the difference between "That's crap" and "I think there's a better way."
I see the difference there, and understand what your complaint is. I just don't think my statement has the negativity you saw in it. Sure if you read it with the right tone of voice in your head you can make it sound like I'm belittleing it... but that tone of voice makes "What could I use this for?" just as negative...especially if you stress the word "this" while snorting in derision...;)
Perhaps giant food stores sources its beef from a farm that feeds them rotting rat meat.
I could simply stop shopping there until they take the hint and source beef somewhere else... but then they fix that and I find out the peanut butter if 50% rat shit... and I'm back to boycotting them again... or since society has a whole doesn't like this, we could pass regulations that dictate certain minimum standards of conduct, safety, consumer protection, health, quality, and other standards that must be adhered to.
This is no different.
I'd rather have cleanliness standards than wait for the free market to put shit hole restaurants out of business.
And I'd rather have monitoring standards in place so I don't have to have a lawyer read the terms and conditions on every web site I click on.
And that seems to be the fundamental flaw with DRM in physical devices: One does have physical access to them.
That is the fatal theoretical logical flaw with DRM.
But in practice: a) They figure maybe they can hide the secret well enough that you won't be able to find it.
b) They figure that if they can keep you looking for it long enough, it will be a success even if you do eventually find it. If the gamecube were just cracked yesterday, its DRM would have been an unqualified success.
c) They figure they can pass enough laws making looking for the secret, talking about the secret, and using the secret if you find it illegal that few will be motivated to find it, and fewer still will risk spreading or using it.
Every one of their pages has their privacy policy listed.
And you've read them all?
I don't need to read a contract every time I enter a store. I shouldn't need to read one every time I visit a website.
There should be standard minimum defaults and norms in place that the public can rely on without reading a sites terms and conditions.
Every one of their pages has their privacy policy listed.
Google can track you without ever visiting one of their sites. Millions of sites have google ads on them. Millions more use google analytics. Every time someone with a gmail acount sends you an email google has a copy.
Google can collect a fantastic amount of data on me without me ever directly visiting a google domain.
Why can they not monitor who enters their site?
1) I'm not actually entering their site.
2) Why can we not put reasonable limits on what they monitor. I'd be pretty creeped out if a store fingerprinted people when they walked in.. (of course they don't tell you they do it, they just lift a print off something you touched, and store it in a database with the security camera footage... but don't worry they disclose it on a notice in 8 point font taped to the back of a filing cabinet in the basement in a language that resembles but is almost entirely not english.
Why are existing laws not sufficient for internet businesses?
Its nothing to do with the internet specifically. We need laws period that define the limits of electronic surveillance, monitoring, and tracking that would apply to both the real world and online.
Up until now, its been limited by technology, but the potential for monitoring and surveillance in the real world is getting just as invasive.
each site is its own monarchy, and if you dont like it you can leave.
Just like each store and restaurant is its own monarchy... that can do whatever it wants to you the minute you set foot in the door... ? Hmm... we seem to have created all sorts of rules for accessibility, for consumer protection, and so forth... why should a website be any different?
Secondly, a site like google has its fingers in 70%+ of the advertising on the web. If you don't want to interact with google, you might as well cancel your internet access. Or... we could ensure there are rules in place limiting what google can do to what we as a society are ok with.
He can threaten to veto pretty much every law passed by Congress if they do not pass Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
The president is constitutionally required to state his objections to the legislation in writing. What is his objection to the legislation? That congress isn't doing what he wants on some other bill?
Classy.
It might work, but its a clear abuse of procedure at best if he doesn't genuinely veto the bill on its own merit (or lack thereof), and I think there are too many procedural games being played as it is.
If my neighbors gave me have the shit Google does for free, they could write down all they want.
The difference being that you are assuming you actually have a choice. I don't think they should have the right to record you by default, but if you want them do... that's entirely up to you.
The result of Google collecting data on me? Free email and long distance calls with the downside of targeted adds.
What about these downsides...... the possibility of discrimination, arrest, imprisonment and death.
I mean, why exactly do you think the government won't be allowed to snoop through google's notes on you when they feel like trumping up some "discrimination, arrest, imprisonment, and death"?
It doesn't really matter who collects the data. Once its collected; people you don't want looking at it are going to be looking at it.
Better that it not be collected in the first place.
Can we PLEASE stop talking about Google as if they did something wrong? I don't exactly blame my neighbors for hearing me when I stand on the top of my house screaming my personal information in all directions.
I don't blame the people at the next table when they overhear my conversation either. But they aren't deliberately listening in, recording it, transcribing it, and publishing it on the web.
And they aren't following me from restaurant to restaurant recording my conversations at each, and adding them to the web, all linked together.
They aren't writing down what I'm wearing at each meal, and then analyzing it to determine colour preferences, brand preferences, income level, social standing, peer group, etc. And then selling this information...
Likewise you don't really care that your neighbors can see and hear you outside. But you'd probably object if your neighbor started keeping "files" on you, recording your comings and goings, writing down what you are wearing, producing transcripts of everything they see and hear...while watching your home with binoculars and cameras... and then publishing and selling it all on the web.
That's modern parenting for you... plop your kid in front of the TV (in their bed room, of course), or Wii, or iPad, or whatever other gadget, and get them out of your hair for a couple hours after work until they pass out, exhausted, from extensive video screen stimulation.
So if the kid is doing an activity for a couple hours unattended the parents are rubbish at parenting?
The must completely helicopter the child, and be orbiting within 3 feet at all times, continually interacting from the moment the child wakes up until they fall asleep.
At what point does responsibility move from Facebook to the person who submits, what is essentially public, information about you?
The point at which they start building profiles or otherwise commercializing the information.
At what point does responsibility move from Facebook to the person who submits, what is essentially public, information about you?
Your mistake is thinking that its essentially public information.
Its essentially private. That small bits of private information are leaked continually in public is a compromise we all make in exchange for interacting with others and we are generally ok with it.
But that doesn't make it ok to systematically take all those little leaks, aggregate them, and then publish and sell them.
When I go outside my front door people can see what I am wearing and also what time I went outside. I'm perfectly fine with that.
But I would be extremely creeped out if someone set up a camera at the edge of my property and recorded everytime I came and went, and then published a log of it, while also cataloging what I was wearing each time, and over time creating an accurate estimation of what I wear, what brands I like, what colors, how much I spend on clothes, how often I buy new clothes, etc.
That is essentially private information. That bits of it leak out each time I go out in public is a fact of life, but its not permission to collect it, analyze it, and then publish it.
A big part of being "polite" is to not see what you aren't supposed to see. You don't listen to others conversations at restaurants. You don't look up womens skits. You don't sit at your front window with a pair of binoculars watching the neighbors house.
It is of course legal to overhear what is said at the next table, and there is no law against happening to see a bit more flesh than was intended, and if you are bird watching and your binoculars train past your neighbors home that's perfectly fine too.
But we recognize that its private, politeness dictates that we not seek it, and if we happen upon it, to ignore it. Quite the opposite of making a business model of systematically collecting, aggregating, and publishing it.
He just never says transparent in the first place and you liken that to them being the problem.
Bush and especially Cheney both repeatedly spoke out in favor of extending government secrecy. Cheney wouldn't even disclose how many people worked for him, he invented a new classification "treated as secret" for the stuff he wrote that wasn't actually even classified, he personally ordered secret service logs destroyed, and so on... he was about as anti-transparency as it gets.
If Bush & Cheney were simply silent on the issue that would be quite different, and I'd agree with you. But they weren't remotely silent.
You could have my life be an open book when there is a very small government with very few rules to get caught up in. Also, I would need everybody to be non-judgmental. If I want a wife AND a girlfriend, you may get to know, but do not get to say anything about it.
I'm actually more or less with you on this. If there really were NO privacy at all, I think society would adapt and cope just fine.
The whole reason for privacy is the government and your neighbors always go apeshit once they know what you are up to, so it is better they do not know.
And the government and people in power in particular are very fond of their privacy, and it won't work out if its privacy for some, and none for the rest.
When lovers can have sex in public without cops busting them or people gawking at them, then we will have a world that doesn't need privacy.
Perhaps, but isn't the risk of being caught or gawked at half the reason they are doing it?;p
Don't agree with Facebook's rules? Then don't use it
I don't. How can I be sure facebook still isn't profilling me through what other people are saying and doing and tagging in relation to me? Indeed I bet there are all sorts of things about me on there... given my sister is on there, and other family members...
How do I even find out what facebook is doing with my likeness and how many people have access to those images..? Oh easy... I just... have to join up first? But that would entail signing the eula...
The assumption is that what google does is not wrong.
The point of IsoHunt's defense is not that "two wrongs make a right", but rather that google is doing nothing wrong, and that isohunt is really just a search engine like google, and therefore, like google, isohunt is not doing anything wrong.
To paraphrase your analogy:
"They sound like my 8 year old nephew who protested the other day when he was chastised for calling his little dog a "bitch", because he heard a veterinarian call his dog a bitch so why couldn't he?"
Frankly I'd be proud if my 8 year old made that argument. Its a good argument.
If he gave specific instructions then why weren't they followed? He's the President of the United States.
The President is not God-Emperor.
A CEO typically has far more direct power over their organization.
The buck stops with him.
Its great rhetoric, but not much else.
You can blame one man for all that is wrong in the United States all you like but its absurd on its face.
The President is a figurehead. He has power, but it pretty limited.
It's his job to take responsibility for the departments under his control.
Fair enough. Just exactly how under his control is it exactly? And what exactly would you have him do?
Giving him a pass and saying it's someone else's fault that his personal and specific instructions were completely ignored is disingenuous at best.
Its "insincere"? Its "lacking in candor"? Are you sure you know what "disingenous" means?
That said, I'm not giving him a pass, but I do recognize there is a substantial difference between being ineffective at fixing a problem, and enthusiastically perpetrating a problem.
Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder.
Am I using the anonymity afforded by an opaque slashdot account to commit crimes? Are you really saying I'm some sort of weird exceptional case? Really?
Slashdot Mirror
Honest question here - why do you assume that lessons (in the traditional format of "go to a person who teaches the instrument, and ask them to teach it to you") are a better option than a game? I'd argue that a well structured game which requires the learning of a skill as part of the gameplay is probably the best possible way to learn that skill.
A game is a fantastic practice tool, but its a lousy teacher.
And while Jackson appreciates the convenience of exchanging e-business cards, Twitter handles, and phone numbers (texting),
And how exactly does a normal person hand someone new an 'e-business card' without spelling out your email address to them...?
The whole point of a business card is that I don't have to spell out my name, phone number, and email address to people in person.
The point is that VNC/RDP-like functionality is now accessible to everyone, which is a good thing. When was the last time Six Pack Joe had a properly configured VNC client?
joe six pack would "Windows Remote Desktop" by clicking it in the start menu, and entering the ip address to connect to.
The reason most joe-sixpacks don't is because they need to enable the RDP server, tweak the firewall rules to let the incoming connection, and know a bit about tcpip to find their address and/or register dynamic-dns name.
As a result, a joe sixpack who needs this ends up overpaying for the functionality with gotomypc or something like that.
With this, Joe sixpack is still going to have to configure his server to host his appications through a web server or something so that he can reach it with his browser to run the gtk apps... wait a minute ... joe sixpack is running a linux server? I seriously doubt joe sixpack is going to be going anywhere near this.
incredible difference between "Why exactly do I want do this?" and "What could I use this for?"
I disagree that there is any difference at all. You might have read some sort of negativity there, but take a closer look with an open mind to the idea that there was none. There really was none.
It's like the difference between "That's crap" and "I think there's a better way."
I see the difference there, and understand what your complaint is. I just don't think my statement has the negativity you saw in it. Sure if you read it with the right tone of voice in your head you can make it sound like I'm belittleing it... but that tone of voice makes "What could I use this for?" just as negative...especially if you stress the word "this" while snorting in derision... ;)
I have a server at home.
I would like to edit something at home, from work. That's one trivial example.
Me too.
But I already have several remote access solutions. (Remote desktop services, vnc, etc) I'm not sure what advantage this give me.
I'm not stifling creativity. I'm just not sure what the point is.
Perhaps giant food stores sources its beef from a farm that feeds them rotting rat meat.
I could simply stop shopping there until they take the hint and source beef somewhere else... but then they fix that and I find out the peanut butter if 50% rat shit... and I'm back to boycotting them again... or since society has a whole doesn't like this, we could pass regulations that dictate certain minimum standards of conduct, safety, consumer protection, health, quality, and other standards that must be adhered to.
This is no different.
I'd rather have cleanliness standards than wait for the free market to put shit hole restaurants out of business.
And I'd rather have monitoring standards in place so I don't have to have a lawyer read the terms and conditions on every web site I click on.
Why exactly do I want do this?
And more importantly, can I run firefox 4 in firefox 4 in firefox 4 in firefox 4?
And that seems to be the fundamental flaw with DRM in physical devices: One does have physical access to them.
That is the fatal theoretical logical flaw with DRM.
But in practice:
a) They figure maybe they can hide the secret well enough that you won't be able to find it.
b) They figure that if they can keep you looking for it long enough, it will be a success even if you do eventually find it. If the gamecube were just cracked yesterday, its DRM would have been an unqualified success.
c) They figure they can pass enough laws making looking for the secret, talking about the secret, and using the secret if you find it illegal that few will be motivated to find it, and fewer still will risk spreading or using it.
They've been right enough I guess.
Every one of their pages has their privacy policy listed.
And you've read them all?
I don't need to read a contract every time I enter a store. I shouldn't need to read one every time I visit a website.
There should be standard minimum defaults and norms in place that the public can rely on without reading a sites terms and conditions.
Every one of their pages has their privacy policy listed.
Google can track you without ever visiting one of their sites. Millions of sites have google ads on them. Millions more use google analytics. Every time someone with a gmail acount sends you an email google has a copy.
Google can collect a fantastic amount of data on me without me ever directly visiting a google domain.
Why can they not monitor who enters their site?
1) I'm not actually entering their site.
2) Why can we not put reasonable limits on what they monitor. I'd be pretty creeped out if a store fingerprinted people when they walked in.. (of course they don't tell you they do it, they just lift a print off something you touched, and store it in a database with the security camera footage... but don't worry they disclose it on a notice in 8 point font taped to the back of a filing cabinet in the basement in a language that resembles but is almost entirely not english.
Why are existing laws not sufficient for internet businesses?
Its nothing to do with the internet specifically. We need laws period that define the limits of electronic surveillance, monitoring, and tracking that would apply to both the real world and online.
Up until now, its been limited by technology, but the potential for monitoring and surveillance in the real world is getting just as invasive.
each site is its own monarchy, and if you dont like it you can leave.
Just like each store and restaurant is its own monarchy... that can do whatever it wants to you the minute you set foot in the door... ? Hmm... we seem to have created all sorts of rules for accessibility, for consumer protection, and so forth... why should a website be any different?
Secondly, a site like google has its fingers in 70%+ of the advertising on the web. If you don't want to interact with google, you might as well cancel your internet access. Or... we could ensure there are rules in place limiting what google can do to what we as a society are ok with.
He can threaten to veto pretty much every law passed by Congress if they do not pass Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
The president is constitutionally required to state his objections to the legislation in writing. What is his objection to the legislation? That congress isn't doing what he wants on some other bill?
Classy.
It might work, but its a clear abuse of procedure at best if he doesn't genuinely veto the bill on its own merit (or lack thereof), and I think there are too many procedural games being played as it is.
If my neighbors gave me have the shit Google does for free, they could write down all they want.
The difference being that you are assuming you actually have a choice. I don't think they should have the right to record you by default, but if you want them do... that's entirely up to you.
The result of Google collecting data on me? Free email and long distance calls with the downside of targeted adds.
What about these downsides... ... the possibility of discrimination, arrest, imprisonment and death.
I mean, why exactly do you think the government won't be allowed to snoop through google's notes on you when they feel like trumping up some "discrimination, arrest, imprisonment, and death"?
It doesn't really matter who collects the data. Once its collected; people you don't want looking at it are going to be looking at it.
Better that it not be collected in the first place.
Bradley Manning.
is really a separate issue.
And for the record, I think Obama is wrong on this issue.
That said, I don't really think Manning would be better off under Bush, McCain, Hilary Clinton, Ron Paul, or whoever was running the Green Party...
...until Congress...
I'm curious, what ~exactly~ do you expect Obama to do? What exactly would you do differently?
Can we PLEASE stop talking about Google as if they did something wrong? I don't exactly blame my neighbors for hearing me when I stand on the top of my house screaming my personal information in all directions.
I don't blame the people at the next table when they overhear my conversation either. But they aren't deliberately listening in, recording it, transcribing it, and publishing it on the web.
And they aren't following me from restaurant to restaurant recording my conversations at each, and adding them to the web, all linked together.
They aren't writing down what I'm wearing at each meal, and then analyzing it to determine colour preferences, brand preferences, income level, social standing, peer group, etc. And then selling this information...
Likewise you don't really care that your neighbors can see and hear you outside. But you'd probably object if your neighbor started keeping "files" on you, recording your comings and goings, writing down what you are wearing, producing transcripts of everything they see and hear...while watching your home with binoculars and cameras... and then publishing and selling it all on the web.
That's modern parenting for you... plop your kid in front of the TV (in their bed room, of course), or Wii, or iPad, or whatever other gadget, and get them out of your hair for a couple hours after work until they pass out, exhausted, from extensive video screen stimulation.
So if the kid is doing an activity for a couple hours unattended the parents are rubbish at parenting?
The must completely helicopter the child, and be orbiting within 3 feet at all times, continually interacting from the moment the child wakes up until they fall asleep.
At what point does responsibility move from Facebook to the person who submits, what is essentially public, information about you?
The point at which they start building profiles or otherwise commercializing the information.
At what point does responsibility move from Facebook to the person who submits, what is essentially public, information about you?
Your mistake is thinking that its essentially public information.
Its essentially private. That small bits of private information are leaked continually in public is a compromise we all make in exchange for interacting with others and we are generally ok with it.
But that doesn't make it ok to systematically take all those little leaks, aggregate them, and then publish and sell them.
When I go outside my front door people can see what I am wearing and also what time I went outside. I'm perfectly fine with that.
But I would be extremely creeped out if someone set up a camera at the edge of my property and recorded everytime I came and went, and then published a log of it, while also cataloging what I was wearing each time, and over time creating an accurate estimation of what I wear, what brands I like, what colors, how much I spend on clothes, how often I buy new clothes, etc.
That is essentially private information. That bits of it leak out each time I go out in public is a fact of life, but its not permission to collect it, analyze it, and then publish it.
A big part of being "polite" is to not see what you aren't supposed to see. You don't listen to others conversations at restaurants. You don't look up womens skits. You don't sit at your front window with a pair of binoculars watching the neighbors house.
It is of course legal to overhear what is said at the next table, and there is no law against happening to see a bit more flesh than was intended, and if you are bird watching and your binoculars train past your neighbors home that's perfectly fine too.
But we recognize that its private, politeness dictates that we not seek it, and if we happen upon it, to ignore it. Quite the opposite of making a business model of systematically collecting, aggregating, and publishing it.
I'd defend Bush's lack of personal involvement in many of the previous administrations issues just as readily.
I hardly qualify as an Obama apologist.
I'm simply a realist who recognizes that the president (ANY president) isn't directly behind every single decision "the government" makes.
He just never says transparent in the first place and you liken that to them being the problem.
Bush and especially Cheney both repeatedly spoke out in favor of extending government secrecy. Cheney wouldn't even disclose how many people worked for him, he invented a new classification "treated as secret" for the stuff he wrote that wasn't actually even classified, he personally ordered secret service logs destroyed, and so on... he was about as anti-transparency as it gets.
If Bush & Cheney were simply silent on the issue that would be quite different, and I'd agree with you. But they weren't remotely silent.
You could have my life be an open book when there is a very small government with very few rules to get caught up in. Also, I would need everybody to be non-judgmental. If I want a wife AND a girlfriend, you may get to know, but do not get to say anything about it.
I'm actually more or less with you on this. If there really were NO privacy at all, I think society would adapt and cope just fine.
The whole reason for privacy is the government and your neighbors always go apeshit once they know what you are up to, so it is better they do not know.
And the government and people in power in particular are very fond of their privacy, and it won't work out if its privacy for some, and none for the rest.
When lovers can have sex in public without cops busting them or people gawking at them, then we will have a world that doesn't need privacy.
Perhaps, but isn't the risk of being caught or gawked at half the reason they are doing it? ;p
Don't agree with Facebook's rules? Then don't use it
I don't. How can I be sure facebook still isn't profilling me through what other people are saying and doing and tagging in relation to me? Indeed I bet there are all sorts of things about me on there... given my sister is on there, and other family members...
How do I even find out what facebook is doing with my likeness and how many people have access to those images..? Oh easy... I just... have to join up first? But that would entail signing the eula...
Well kid, two wrongs don't make a right...
You went the wrong way with it.
The assumption is that what google does is not wrong.
The point of IsoHunt's defense is not that "two wrongs make a right", but rather that google is doing nothing wrong, and that isohunt is really just a search engine like google, and therefore, like google, isohunt is not doing anything wrong.
To paraphrase your analogy:
"They sound like my 8 year old nephew who protested the other day when he was chastised for calling his little dog a "bitch", because he heard a veterinarian call his dog a bitch so why couldn't he?"
Frankly I'd be proud if my 8 year old made that argument. Its a good argument.
If he gave specific instructions then why weren't they followed? He's the President of the United States.
The President is not God-Emperor.
A CEO typically has far more direct power over their organization.
The buck stops with him.
Its great rhetoric, but not much else.
You can blame one man for all that is wrong in the United States all you like but its absurd on its face.
The President is a figurehead. He has power, but it pretty limited.
It's his job to take responsibility for the departments under his control.
Fair enough. Just exactly how under his control is it exactly? And what exactly would you have him do?
Giving him a pass and saying it's someone else's fault that his personal and specific instructions were completely ignored is disingenuous at best.
Its "insincere"? Its "lacking in candor"? Are you sure you know what "disingenous" means?
That said, I'm not giving him a pass, but I do recognize there is a substantial difference between being ineffective at fixing a problem, and enthusiastically perpetrating a problem.
You're presuming your opaqueness.
Not really. I know how thin the veil is, but if I wanted more ... I could get one pretty arbitrarily impenetrable with sufficient effort.
But this is anon enough for my needs.
Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder.
Am I using the anonymity afforded by an opaque slashdot account to commit crimes? Are you really saying I'm some sort of weird exceptional case? Really?