"I don't see it as particularly a public/private difference, but a difference of well-run and poorly-run organizations. That might correlate, but I've seen plenty of examples on the opposite sides as well."
Yes, this is absolutely true. The problem (at least here in the UK) is that public sector is almost universally bad because there is absolutely no accountability. In private sector, if you do a bad job, you eventually go bankrupt and lose your job, in public sector that never happens.
I'd be interested to know why public sector projects do work better in Scandinavia, is it because there is more accountability, or is it simply because they're not given so much money to work with? On a project that can be achieved with £1million for example, what should happen is: Person 1) Here's £1million to go do x Person 2) I can't do x with only £1million Person 1) Okay, you're fired, we'll get someone who can
What actually happens is: Person 1) Here's £1million to go do x Person 2) I can't do x with only £1million Person 1) Okay, here's £2million more
Or just outright: Person 1) Here's £3million to go do x Person 2) Okay
I do completely agree the problem isn't specific to public sector just because public sector is public sector, but because of the nature of public sector generally in that it tends not to be held to account or given enough incentive to do a good job (and by incentive, I mean, you get to keep your job if you don't do a shit job). Natural selection is inherent in private sector - those businesses or employees that do shit, go bankrupt or get fired, but it's not inherent in public sector due to the fact central government will just bail them out, and up taxes to cover the cost if need be. There it needs to be created artificially, and I don't think many governments do that.
This is also why the bank bailout may not have been particularly smart, but interestingly as a result of the bank bailout governments have created a lot more legislation to govern how they operate and what they can get away with precisely to create at least some of the necessary accountability artificially. Yet they wont do that with public sector even though it suffers the exact same problems - institutional incompetence fed by lack of accountability.
It's the same worldwide, when I worked in public sector in the UK some years back it was absolutely no different.
The companies know it too, which is why public sector contracts are seen as so lucrative most the time. This is also why I made the move to private sector, sure I miss my 38 days leave a year + 15 more through accrued flexi time and my final salary pension scheme, but ultimately I'm not working with the kind of idiots who are responsible for this sort of thing, and that's worth more than any amount of leave or pension (and besides, private sector career progression is more about talent, than how old you are, so it's been a good move career wise too anyway).
This isn't to say I'm some kind of right wing capitalist that Republican's love, on the contrary, I'm quite socialist in my views, but at the end of the day you can still give too much money to a particular public sector department, and this is exactly what happens when you do, and it's the same wherever you are in the world.
Problem is that tactic has already been mitigated in the past, hence why most governments refuse to negotiate with terrorists on such issues.
Kidnapping entire airliners, or buildings worth of planes was key in the terrorist's playbook in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, hence the formulation of such policies to discourage any effectiveness of such a tactic.
Kidnappings only have any effect if people act on it, but the politicians don't care, and most people see the news and think "What kind of idiot went on holiday to a known kidnap destination" so I doubt it's even effective in raising public support for them. Ironically the drone strikes themselves seem to give them public support, whilst the kidnappings actively reverse that and cause people to demand even tougher action.
"because publishers tend to flock to the most successful console."
Yes, crap, low budget, bargain basement ones that no one buys. You only have to have looked at the Wii section of a store in recent years to see that it's 95% tat, and about 5% quality titles, most of which are 1st party offerings like Zelda, Mario, et. al.
There's no profit in that, that's why despite shifting well over 100 million Wii's Nintendo still failed to make any worthwhile profit (or on some occasions any profit at all) in the last few years. Who cares if you get in a few 50,000 copy selling £10 titles when you could have a 5million+ selling £40 Halo/Gears of War/Uncharted/whatever title each year?
Why would Microsoft turn away from the lower volume high profit model they've had this time? It cost them a lot to get into the market but there's no question that it's been successful since. XBox Live subscriptions pulling them in over $1billion of income alone each year.
People put too much weight on sales numbers, and not enough on profit but here's the thing- in the last few years, which console manufacturers have been the ones whose product offering has been consistently turning a healthy profit (even if the rest of their business was struggling)? Hint: It wasn't Nintendo, it was the other two.
It's the same story in the mobile phone market, Nokia still shifts many hundreds of millions of mobile phones, but they're making no profit from it, because they're all cheap low end dumb phones. Compare this to Apple and Samsung's drastically lower volume, but vastly higher profit high end smartphone offerings and you see the exact same story. The same is true of PCs, most companies that sell plain old laptops/desktops are selling them so cheap at such low margins there's no money in it, that's why IBM got out of the business handing it to Lenovo, that's why even HP nearly did the same. The only money being made from computers are high end offerings - Alienware PCs, MacBooks etc.
Chasing sales figures alone just engages you in a race to the bottom, it let's you declare yourself the winner, but you still lose. Last financial reporting year, Nintendo made a half billion $ loss - for the same period, Microsoft's E&D division responsible for the XBox made over $1bn profit, I don't know exactly how Sony did in it's gaming division, but I know it was pretty positive, so much for Nintendo "winning" the last console round with it's impressive total unit sales...
I don't think there has ever been a time in history where Nintendo hasn't followed this pattern.
They have forever gone from flop to success to flop to success over and over and over. The Wii was a massive success, I predicted about 4 years ago their next offering would be a flop, based on their history alone.
At the time, I suggested I got the impression that Nintendo gets high and complacent on it's success, and then creates a flop, but when the flop inevitably causes massive problems, they then are forced to innovate massively to survive and they create a new success as a result. I still feel this is probably the case with Nintendo.
Responding to both yours, and the GP's post - Iran then was a different animal from Iran now.
They didn't build and use chemical weapons then because they were neither quite as cuckoo, nor quite as developed as they are now. The leadership back then was actually a bit more sane than the current Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad.
For what it's worth though, much of their development of uranium enrichment stems not from indigenous research and knowledge, but from information passed on by North Korea which in turn was received from the AQ Khan network combined with support from Russia, and previously Germany for the civil components of their nuclear programme. I'd take caution in giving Iran too much credit for their programme - they couldn't have got anywhere near as far as they have without massive support from other nations giving them the key knowledge and components.
I watched this once after having heard a few people say it's good, and it is for the most part, but a number of things in it were verifiably incorrect, or clear speculation and nothing more so I'd take it with the same pinch of salt I'd take a Michael Moore documentary - good for a few valid arguments, but watch for the sensationalist lies in between (and I say this as someone who's firmly on Michael Moore's side of the debate on most issues).
Certainly don't put your faith in every word of it like some of the conspiracist nuts do as if it's their bible.
Might I suggest you go read the actual IAEA reports direct from the horses mouth?
They say no such thing, and the IAEA have been very clear in their consecutive reports for about a year now that they have concerns and some degree of evidence that Iran may well be trying to create a nuclear weapon.
I don't know why people keep spreading myths about what the IAEA has or hasn't said, it's very clear what they've said and it's publicly available on their website for all to see.
Who cares what some news organisation or blogger has said, what the IAEA has said is that they've seen enough to be rather concerned. Also, your speculation about what the NPT does and doesn't allow is false too - again, something that can be trivially confirmed by reading the masses of publicly available official documentation on the subject.
I'm not saying whether Iran does or doesn't actually have a bomb or if they are or aren't trying to get one, but I am saying that people trying to defend Iran need to quit it with the lies and myths. They keep making stuff up that simply doesn't tally with official commentary and documentation on the issue, that complete lack of credibility alone does more to damage their cause than anything else. The other side of the debate are far from perfect, but at least whether they intentionally checked them or coincidentally are just on the right side of the argument in this regard, they at least have facts on their side over issues such as Iran's breach of it's obligations, and the IAEA's concerns on the issue.
"The average age of a gamer is in the mid-30s, not under 18. Perhaps Sony is willing to abandon kids to Nintendo and mobile in order to focus on the DINK market with more disposable income, treating your DINK friend as collateral damage."
That stat may well be true, but just because the average age of a a gamer is around 35, doesn't change the fact that there's still an absolutely massive market (a greater market) outside that age range that you need to chase for your product to be feasible in the marketplace. If 30% of gamers are around 30 - 35, that doesn't mean that 20% aren't in the 25 - 30 bracket, 20% aren't in the 20 - 25 bracket, and 20% in the 0 - 20 bracket. Just because you have a peak at say 30 - 35 or whatever, doesn't mean you can ever afford to throw away 60% of the market - even if you're not even catering to the the totality of that 30% of the market such as my friend.
"On what grounds would governments hit Sony for this in a way that they haven't already hit console and smartphone makers for opening download stores?"
The grounds have always been there, the problem is in this case it's traditionally console manufacturers that have held up bricks and mortar stores. Governments will start paying attention when it means large scale retail job losses. Smartphone makers weren't ever a target because they never had a bricks and mortar prescence for software sales in the first place.
"The official word is that Steve Jobs died of complications from pancreatic cancer, not from inability to resell iPhone and iPad games."...
"If console gaming dies, on which platform will people play games that use multiple gamepads? Or will people have to buy a separate PC for each player?"
They'll either keep using old consoles (look how long the PS2 lasted after it's death) or they'll use their phones and tablets more and more. More likely, they'll stick to using the console that DOES still allow used game sales - currently at least the Wii U allows this.
...or he might actually just be telling the truth.
Because, you know, nothing would kill their new product faster than killing the used game market which many parents rely on to even justify buying their kids a console in the first place. Hell, even one of my DINKY friends refuses to buy games new because of the price.
Not to mention the fact that this will kill off various retailers dependent on used game profits that would bring the wrath of governments worldwide.
It's suicide for any company to kill used games on their consoles, if they do it's literally the end of their console business, so either way why worry? The consumer isn't going to really suffer, either the product will be fine, or the product will be dead and PC gaming will get a boost as a result.
Previously they were naive and did it openly, honestly, seeing Bill's face I think he just thought he was engaging in good old capitalism at the time and his opponents were just bitter he'd won.
Nowadays however they play it like the bad boys, they lobby like crazy, and they fund massive shill campaigns. They pay millions to defame competitors like Google and so forth.
I actually think the old Microsoft was less harmful - everything they did wrong they at least wore on their sleeve. Now they're fighting a kind of subversive shadow war, making politicians puppets, engaging in political corruption, subverting standards processes and so forth.
I don't like this new Microsoft, as they're behind a lot of the bad stuff that goes on in the technology world such as patent trolling, bad laws getting lobbied for/passed, but at first look, it's not so obvious that it's them behind it until the evidence creeps out which sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
Given Bill's modern philanthropic streak I can't help but wonder if the irony of it all is that he may actually have been a positive influence on Microsoft, and it was Ballmer pushing the evil side all along, because since Bill left it's gone from playing rough to outright corruption of national institutions - governments and so forth.
This is Ballmer logic at work, he can't see the road ahead. All he knows is that Google out-innovated them on search and mobile and he wants that destroyed, whatever the cost.
He's a bit like Steve Jobs in that respect, only without the ability to grow profits at all.
Um, Sony is one of two major driving forces behind both the MPAA and RIAA.
Get off your fanboy horse and stop spouting bollocks.
They're still one of the most evil companies on the planet, literally trying to run roughshod right over the top of human rights for the sake of protecting their copyrights and subverting democracy by engaging in governmental corruption in the process.
Honestly, that pales to what the rest of the tech crowd get up to, even Microsoft's anti-trust stuff is trivial compared to a will to remove people's fundamental rights to justice and so forth all for the sake of profit.
I think you need to get a better understanding of statistics, particularly the relevance of sample sizes, and the irrelevance of outliers in a discussion like this.
Fundamentally, the proportion of attacks coming from China is a reasonable enough figure to explain away state sponsorship, or targeted attacks as a general rule when seeing attacks originating from China because the figure isn't disproportionately high relative to the population of the country. If you don't understand why that's simple fact then I can't help you as it means you don't understand even basic stats.
You need a lot higher proportion of attacks from China to have any kind of indication that you're potentially being singled out by Chinese hackers, or that it's a specific problem state in terms of hack attempts which is something that is not demonstrated by the proportion people normally tend to see but often scream as proof that China is a specific special-case problem.
Why does everywhere seem to be keeping the identity of the site in question top secret?
That's rather unacceptable, as many other developers using said site could also have been impacted.
This helps no one other than the admins of a site who failed to properly secure it and they shouldn't have right to anonymity of their site when others may well be at risk.
To be fair, companies like Google have been saying it's morally right that if they can avoid tax in countries like France that they should, and they've simply pay next to no taxes there.
The flip side of that is it means that if governments like the government of France feel it's morally right that companies do pay taxes for things like privacy intrusion, then they also have an equal right to do that.
Or in other words, perhaps if companies like Google didn't dodge taxes in the first place and paid what it was always intended that they owe (whatever the going corporation tax rate is) then they wouldn't make themselves such targets. They can't on one hand openly claim they're doing the right thing by playing the system, and then complain and cry foul when the system plays them. It's a two way street.
A lot of people forget that the population of China is what, 1/5th the world's population?
As such it would make statistical sense that around 1/5th of attacks they see are from China.
This is a figure that tallies roughly pretty well with attacks I've seen on every net facing system I've bothered to monitor. I wouldn't say there are proportionally more attacks from China relative to their share of the world's population than anywhere else. Given the US' population, Russia's population, or a number of South American and Eastern European states whose names I've seen popup a fair bit it's actually the case that I see disproportionally more attacks from these states relative to their population.
I'm not defending China though, I don't buy the conspiracy theories, I think China genuinely is trying to get ahead in the world by stealing corporate secrets more so than anywhere else. The problem is, that Western states are easy targets because they assume that every country is like their own - that no competitor will hack them because that would be corporate suicide for their competitor if the truth ever came to light - the problem with this is that it ignores nations where the governments actively support such activity, rather than come down on it with the full force of the law more actively.
My point though is this, even in TFA it mentions that only something like 140 organisations have been targeted by this group. That's not really a lot, so if you see hack attacks on your personal router it's simple paranoia to assume the Chinese government is trying to hack you rather than a simple statistical likelihood that China has it's share of blanket IP/port scanning script kiddies as anywhere else too. If however you work for a Fortune 500 with something of value, there's a much greater chance that they are indeed out to get you.
"In other words, until a proper study is conducted, you cannot claim the bags are the source of the transmission, nor can you claim the bags are not the source of the transmission.
The same applies to Ford Focuses, small plastic elf figurines, larger than average hippopotamuses, and magical fairies.
So given that that's the case, why even mention plastic bags at all over say any other random real or imagined "thing" unless you have an agenda?
You could argue that well, they have a theory about how plastic bags could be the cause, but anyone could come up with a similar theory about any of the above things I mentioned.
Either they're making a claim that they have absolutely no evidence for, or every word they've uttered and written on the subject is meaningless for the exact reason you cite - they have no evidence either way.
This doesn't absolve them of blame though, the mere mention of some item as a theoretical source of transmission causes needless worry about that item, so why do that if you have absolutely no evidence for the claim as you imply is the case? Unless of course, you have an agenda.
They need to either do further studies and get some real actual evidence, or shut the fuck up, otherwise we can only conclude they're playing politics, rather than doing real actual science.
But I'm not overly convinced it is. All too many stories on Slashdot have overplayed the restrictiveness of some new form of DRM or some new console feature or whatever, and all too often they've been completely and utterly wrong - see the recent Office 2013 activation story for example, as I pointed out in TFA I know for a fact that one was wrong because i had a copy of Office 2013 that explicitly lets me work on multiple machines contrary to the story.
Sometimes it gets it right, sometimes the DRM is as the story says and does take the piss - EA's online activation for Spore when it came out, Ubisoft's DRM and so forth. But even when it has been right how long have these schemes lasted? The Spore case was a catalyst for EA doing a complete turnaround and reverting to no DRM for some games, or at worst much less restrictive DRM.
The point is, stories of such restrictive DRM are rarely true, when they are true, they rarely last precisely because they do cause so much harm to their business so are quickly retracted.
So I agree with you, if the proposals are true then you're probably absolutely right, but personally I'll reserve judgement until the actual facts about these systems come out rather than base it on speculation and lies which, given the last round of console battles there was a lot of with all the shills and fanboys spreading FUD about each other.
I recall very clearly at the time pointing out that since Cook took over day to day running of Apple from Jobs it's strategy changed from innovation and competition to litigation and stagnation.
It's not mere coincidence that it all changed when Cook got greater influence, and escalated after Jobs passed away altogether. I've never liked Steve Jobs, I thought he was a sociopathic, selfish twat in all honesty, but this sounds to be very much a case of Tim Cook trying to pass the buck for his failed strategy and for all Job's rhetoric against Android, I don't think he was that stupid as to attack his very suppliers to the extent Cook has.
I bought Office 2013 Pro Plus through my university's website and it said it was quite clearly licensed for a maximum of 2 machines at once.
That implies that at very least the license can work on two computers and I honestly don't think there's anything magical about the copy and license I purchased even if I did get a student discount (there are perks to remaining a student for life, even alongside working full time!) - certainly the media I received looks like any other copy of Pro Plus and there is no mention of "Super special student offer that magically allows you to run it on two machines at once" though that doesn't of course mean that there aren't regional/license differences - perhaps bundled OEM copies with new machines have the restriction mentioned in TFA rather than retail versions which I presumably received?
Further, the wording "maximum of two at once" almost seems to imply that you can change the machine it's on, just as long as you don't exceed the maximum.
But in my case I was actually pleased to see Microsoft had explicitly decided to authorise you running one copy on multiple machines, if anything this is a step forward - an explicit recognition from Microsoft that people do have multiple machines and expect to not buy a copy per machine, and expect their license to work on multiple computers as mine does.
I think you need to re-read my post. Your response makes absolutely zero sense in the context of it, perhaps you responded to the wrong person?
I made it quite clear that there are some atheists who still have tribalistic tendencies, but simply that it was not inherent in the nature of atheism as it is in religion.
I'm not sure why you brought up the inquisition, I didn't even make any reference to it, nor did I even begin to go down the route of trying to fathom what religions were involved in what wars, though you do seem oblivious of the fact that American Christianity was a driving force in it's battle against "godless" communists which implies you're not exactly coming at this with any objectivity - Vietnam et. al. was as much about trying to instill and spread Western Christian values as it was Communism vs. Democracy.
Don't respond to that though, I'm not interested in what you have to say about it, hence why I didn't raise that point in the first place.
You're right that there's a common root to it all that is not inherently religious in nature- tribalism.
The problem is that religion actively encourages, preaches, and exacerbates the problem of tribalism- it has the inherent requirement that followers believe that their religion and belief is right, and everyone elses is wrong.
In contrast, whilst atheists may well resort to other forms of tribalism to justify their actions - racism, football hooliganism, whatever, there is also the possibility that atheists can rise above such petty, problematic, primal traits.
That is why atheists can claim the moral high ground on this, because following a religion ultimately requires that you succumb to tribalism and accept that your tribe's (religion's) way is the only correct way - the root of just about all of humanity's problems with each other, whereas atheism does not. It is that difference in possibility between the ability to rise up above tribalism and not that creates the moral difference between atheism and religion, even if not every atheist is able to do so in practice.
Yes, I actually read the first few paragraphs of the very Groklaw article that the summary links and it contradicts in big bold letters that headline/summary of the article.
Do people who submit even read the articles they link? or do they just make up random titles and submit random URLs in the hope that if they do it enough at least some of the stories will appear at least somewhat plausible, even if wrong?
Slashdot Mirror
Out of curiosity, what languages and technologies does your team work with?
"I don't see it as particularly a public/private difference, but a difference of well-run and poorly-run organizations. That might correlate, but I've seen plenty of examples on the opposite sides as well."
Yes, this is absolutely true. The problem (at least here in the UK) is that public sector is almost universally bad because there is absolutely no accountability. In private sector, if you do a bad job, you eventually go bankrupt and lose your job, in public sector that never happens.
I'd be interested to know why public sector projects do work better in Scandinavia, is it because there is more accountability, or is it simply because they're not given so much money to work with? On a project that can be achieved with £1million for example, what should happen is:
Person 1) Here's £1million to go do x
Person 2) I can't do x with only £1million
Person 1) Okay, you're fired, we'll get someone who can
What actually happens is:
Person 1) Here's £1million to go do x
Person 2) I can't do x with only £1million
Person 1) Okay, here's £2million more
Or just outright:
Person 1) Here's £3million to go do x
Person 2) Okay
I do completely agree the problem isn't specific to public sector just because public sector is public sector, but because of the nature of public sector generally in that it tends not to be held to account or given enough incentive to do a good job (and by incentive, I mean, you get to keep your job if you don't do a shit job). Natural selection is inherent in private sector - those businesses or employees that do shit, go bankrupt or get fired, but it's not inherent in public sector due to the fact central government will just bail them out, and up taxes to cover the cost if need be. There it needs to be created artificially, and I don't think many governments do that.
This is also why the bank bailout may not have been particularly smart, but interestingly as a result of the bank bailout governments have created a lot more legislation to govern how they operate and what they can get away with precisely to create at least some of the necessary accountability artificially. Yet they wont do that with public sector even though it suffers the exact same problems - institutional incompetence fed by lack of accountability.
It's the same worldwide, when I worked in public sector in the UK some years back it was absolutely no different.
The companies know it too, which is why public sector contracts are seen as so lucrative most the time. This is also why I made the move to private sector, sure I miss my 38 days leave a year + 15 more through accrued flexi time and my final salary pension scheme, but ultimately I'm not working with the kind of idiots who are responsible for this sort of thing, and that's worth more than any amount of leave or pension (and besides, private sector career progression is more about talent, than how old you are, so it's been a good move career wise too anyway).
This isn't to say I'm some kind of right wing capitalist that Republican's love, on the contrary, I'm quite socialist in my views, but at the end of the day you can still give too much money to a particular public sector department, and this is exactly what happens when you do, and it's the same wherever you are in the world.
Problem is that tactic has already been mitigated in the past, hence why most governments refuse to negotiate with terrorists on such issues.
Kidnapping entire airliners, or buildings worth of planes was key in the terrorist's playbook in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, hence the formulation of such policies to discourage any effectiveness of such a tactic.
Kidnappings only have any effect if people act on it, but the politicians don't care, and most people see the news and think "What kind of idiot went on holiday to a known kidnap destination" so I doubt it's even effective in raising public support for them. Ironically the drone strikes themselves seem to give them public support, whilst the kidnappings actively reverse that and cause people to demand even tougher action.
"because publishers tend to flock to the most successful console."
Yes, crap, low budget, bargain basement ones that no one buys. You only have to have looked at the Wii section of a store in recent years to see that it's 95% tat, and about 5% quality titles, most of which are 1st party offerings like Zelda, Mario, et. al.
There's no profit in that, that's why despite shifting well over 100 million Wii's Nintendo still failed to make any worthwhile profit (or on some occasions any profit at all) in the last few years. Who cares if you get in a few 50,000 copy selling £10 titles when you could have a 5million+ selling £40 Halo/Gears of War/Uncharted/whatever title each year?
Why would Microsoft turn away from the lower volume high profit model they've had this time? It cost them a lot to get into the market but there's no question that it's been successful since. XBox Live subscriptions pulling them in over $1billion of income alone each year.
People put too much weight on sales numbers, and not enough on profit but here's the thing- in the last few years, which console manufacturers have been the ones whose product offering has been consistently turning a healthy profit (even if the rest of their business was struggling)? Hint: It wasn't Nintendo, it was the other two.
It's the same story in the mobile phone market, Nokia still shifts many hundreds of millions of mobile phones, but they're making no profit from it, because they're all cheap low end dumb phones. Compare this to Apple and Samsung's drastically lower volume, but vastly higher profit high end smartphone offerings and you see the exact same story. The same is true of PCs, most companies that sell plain old laptops/desktops are selling them so cheap at such low margins there's no money in it, that's why IBM got out of the business handing it to Lenovo, that's why even HP nearly did the same. The only money being made from computers are high end offerings - Alienware PCs, MacBooks etc.
Chasing sales figures alone just engages you in a race to the bottom, it let's you declare yourself the winner, but you still lose. Last financial reporting year, Nintendo made a half billion $ loss - for the same period, Microsoft's E&D division responsible for the XBox made over $1bn profit, I don't know exactly how Sony did in it's gaming division, but I know it was pretty positive, so much for Nintendo "winning" the last console round with it's impressive total unit sales...
I don't think there has ever been a time in history where Nintendo hasn't followed this pattern.
They have forever gone from flop to success to flop to success over and over and over. The Wii was a massive success, I predicted about 4 years ago their next offering would be a flop, based on their history alone.
At the time, I suggested I got the impression that Nintendo gets high and complacent on it's success, and then creates a flop, but when the flop inevitably causes massive problems, they then are forced to innovate massively to survive and they create a new success as a result. I still feel this is probably the case with Nintendo.
Responding to both yours, and the GP's post - Iran then was a different animal from Iran now.
They didn't build and use chemical weapons then because they were neither quite as cuckoo, nor quite as developed as they are now. The leadership back then was actually a bit more sane than the current Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad.
For what it's worth though, much of their development of uranium enrichment stems not from indigenous research and knowledge, but from information passed on by North Korea which in turn was received from the AQ Khan network combined with support from Russia, and previously Germany for the civil components of their nuclear programme. I'd take caution in giving Iran too much credit for their programme - they couldn't have got anywhere near as far as they have without massive support from other nations giving them the key knowledge and components.
I watched this once after having heard a few people say it's good, and it is for the most part, but a number of things in it were verifiably incorrect, or clear speculation and nothing more so I'd take it with the same pinch of salt I'd take a Michael Moore documentary - good for a few valid arguments, but watch for the sensationalist lies in between (and I say this as someone who's firmly on Michael Moore's side of the debate on most issues).
Certainly don't put your faith in every word of it like some of the conspiracist nuts do as if it's their bible.
Might I suggest you go read the actual IAEA reports direct from the horses mouth?
They say no such thing, and the IAEA have been very clear in their consecutive reports for about a year now that they have concerns and some degree of evidence that Iran may well be trying to create a nuclear weapon.
I don't know why people keep spreading myths about what the IAEA has or hasn't said, it's very clear what they've said and it's publicly available on their website for all to see.
Who cares what some news organisation or blogger has said, what the IAEA has said is that they've seen enough to be rather concerned. Also, your speculation about what the NPT does and doesn't allow is false too - again, something that can be trivially confirmed by reading the masses of publicly available official documentation on the subject.
I'm not saying whether Iran does or doesn't actually have a bomb or if they are or aren't trying to get one, but I am saying that people trying to defend Iran need to quit it with the lies and myths. They keep making stuff up that simply doesn't tally with official commentary and documentation on the issue, that complete lack of credibility alone does more to damage their cause than anything else. The other side of the debate are far from perfect, but at least whether they intentionally checked them or coincidentally are just on the right side of the argument in this regard, they at least have facts on their side over issues such as Iran's breach of it's obligations, and the IAEA's concerns on the issue.
"The average age of a gamer is in the mid-30s, not under 18. Perhaps Sony is willing to abandon kids to Nintendo and mobile in order to focus on the DINK market with more disposable income, treating your DINK friend as collateral damage."
That stat may well be true, but just because the average age of a a gamer is around 35, doesn't change the fact that there's still an absolutely massive market (a greater market) outside that age range that you need to chase for your product to be feasible in the marketplace. If 30% of gamers are around 30 - 35, that doesn't mean that 20% aren't in the 25 - 30 bracket, 20% aren't in the 20 - 25 bracket, and 20% in the 0 - 20 bracket. Just because you have a peak at say 30 - 35 or whatever, doesn't mean you can ever afford to throw away 60% of the market - even if you're not even catering to the the totality of that 30% of the market such as my friend.
"On what grounds would governments hit Sony for this in a way that they haven't already hit console and smartphone makers for opening download stores?"
The grounds have always been there, the problem is in this case it's traditionally console manufacturers that have held up bricks and mortar stores. Governments will start paying attention when it means large scale retail job losses. Smartphone makers weren't ever a target because they never had a bricks and mortar prescence for software sales in the first place.
"The official word is that Steve Jobs died of complications from pancreatic cancer, not from inability to resell iPhone and iPad games." ...
"If console gaming dies, on which platform will people play games that use multiple gamepads? Or will people have to buy a separate PC for each player?"
They'll either keep using old consoles (look how long the PS2 lasted after it's death) or they'll use their phones and tablets more and more. More likely, they'll stick to using the console that DOES still allow used game sales - currently at least the Wii U allows this.
...or he might actually just be telling the truth.
Because, you know, nothing would kill their new product faster than killing the used game market which many parents rely on to even justify buying their kids a console in the first place. Hell, even one of my DINKY friends refuses to buy games new because of the price.
Not to mention the fact that this will kill off various retailers dependent on used game profits that would bring the wrath of governments worldwide.
It's suicide for any company to kill used games on their consoles, if they do it's literally the end of their console business, so either way why worry? The consumer isn't going to really suffer, either the product will be fine, or the product will be dead and PC gaming will get a boost as a result.
Actually I think they do it better.
Previously they were naive and did it openly, honestly, seeing Bill's face I think he just thought he was engaging in good old capitalism at the time and his opponents were just bitter he'd won.
Nowadays however they play it like the bad boys, they lobby like crazy, and they fund massive shill campaigns. They pay millions to defame competitors like Google and so forth.
I actually think the old Microsoft was less harmful - everything they did wrong they at least wore on their sleeve. Now they're fighting a kind of subversive shadow war, making politicians puppets, engaging in political corruption, subverting standards processes and so forth.
I don't like this new Microsoft, as they're behind a lot of the bad stuff that goes on in the technology world such as patent trolling, bad laws getting lobbied for/passed, but at first look, it's not so obvious that it's them behind it until the evidence creeps out which sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
Given Bill's modern philanthropic streak I can't help but wonder if the irony of it all is that he may actually have been a positive influence on Microsoft, and it was Ballmer pushing the evil side all along, because since Bill left it's gone from playing rough to outright corruption of national institutions - governments and so forth.
This is Ballmer logic at work, he can't see the road ahead. All he knows is that Google out-innovated them on search and mobile and he wants that destroyed, whatever the cost.
He's a bit like Steve Jobs in that respect, only without the ability to grow profits at all.
Um, Sony is one of two major driving forces behind both the MPAA and RIAA.
Get off your fanboy horse and stop spouting bollocks.
They're still one of the most evil companies on the planet, literally trying to run roughshod right over the top of human rights for the sake of protecting their copyrights and subverting democracy by engaging in governmental corruption in the process.
Honestly, that pales to what the rest of the tech crowd get up to, even Microsoft's anti-trust stuff is trivial compared to a will to remove people's fundamental rights to justice and so forth all for the sake of profit.
I think you need to get a better understanding of statistics, particularly the relevance of sample sizes, and the irrelevance of outliers in a discussion like this.
Fundamentally, the proportion of attacks coming from China is a reasonable enough figure to explain away state sponsorship, or targeted attacks as a general rule when seeing attacks originating from China because the figure isn't disproportionately high relative to the population of the country. If you don't understand why that's simple fact then I can't help you as it means you don't understand even basic stats.
You need a lot higher proportion of attacks from China to have any kind of indication that you're potentially being singled out by Chinese hackers, or that it's a specific problem state in terms of hack attempts which is something that is not demonstrated by the proportion people normally tend to see but often scream as proof that China is a specific special-case problem.
Why does everywhere seem to be keeping the identity of the site in question top secret?
That's rather unacceptable, as many other developers using said site could also have been impacted.
This helps no one other than the admins of a site who failed to properly secure it and they shouldn't have right to anonymity of their site when others may well be at risk.
To be fair, companies like Google have been saying it's morally right that if they can avoid tax in countries like France that they should, and they've simply pay next to no taxes there.
The flip side of that is it means that if governments like the government of France feel it's morally right that companies do pay taxes for things like privacy intrusion, then they also have an equal right to do that.
Or in other words, perhaps if companies like Google didn't dodge taxes in the first place and paid what it was always intended that they owe (whatever the going corporation tax rate is) then they wouldn't make themselves such targets. They can't on one hand openly claim they're doing the right thing by playing the system, and then complain and cry foul when the system plays them. It's a two way street.
A lot of people forget that the population of China is what, 1/5th the world's population?
As such it would make statistical sense that around 1/5th of attacks they see are from China.
This is a figure that tallies roughly pretty well with attacks I've seen on every net facing system I've bothered to monitor. I wouldn't say there are proportionally more attacks from China relative to their share of the world's population than anywhere else. Given the US' population, Russia's population, or a number of South American and Eastern European states whose names I've seen popup a fair bit it's actually the case that I see disproportionally more attacks from these states relative to their population.
I'm not defending China though, I don't buy the conspiracy theories, I think China genuinely is trying to get ahead in the world by stealing corporate secrets more so than anywhere else. The problem is, that Western states are easy targets because they assume that every country is like their own - that no competitor will hack them because that would be corporate suicide for their competitor if the truth ever came to light - the problem with this is that it ignores nations where the governments actively support such activity, rather than come down on it with the full force of the law more actively.
My point though is this, even in TFA it mentions that only something like 140 organisations have been targeted by this group. That's not really a lot, so if you see hack attacks on your personal router it's simple paranoia to assume the Chinese government is trying to hack you rather than a simple statistical likelihood that China has it's share of blanket IP/port scanning script kiddies as anywhere else too. If however you work for a Fortune 500 with something of value, there's a much greater chance that they are indeed out to get you.
"In other words, until a proper study is conducted, you cannot claim the bags are the source of the transmission, nor can you claim the bags are not the source of the transmission.
The same applies to Ford Focuses, small plastic elf figurines, larger than average hippopotamuses, and magical fairies.
So given that that's the case, why even mention plastic bags at all over say any other random real or imagined "thing" unless you have an agenda?
You could argue that well, they have a theory about how plastic bags could be the cause, but anyone could come up with a similar theory about any of the above things I mentioned.
Either they're making a claim that they have absolutely no evidence for, or every word they've uttered and written on the subject is meaningless for the exact reason you cite - they have no evidence either way.
This doesn't absolve them of blame though, the mere mention of some item as a theoretical source of transmission causes needless worry about that item, so why do that if you have absolutely no evidence for the claim as you imply is the case? Unless of course, you have an agenda.
They need to either do further studies and get some real actual evidence, or shut the fuck up, otherwise we can only conclude they're playing politics, rather than doing real actual science.
I think you're right if it's true.
But I'm not overly convinced it is. All too many stories on Slashdot have overplayed the restrictiveness of some new form of DRM or some new console feature or whatever, and all too often they've been completely and utterly wrong - see the recent Office 2013 activation story for example, as I pointed out in TFA I know for a fact that one was wrong because i had a copy of Office 2013 that explicitly lets me work on multiple machines contrary to the story.
Sometimes it gets it right, sometimes the DRM is as the story says and does take the piss - EA's online activation for Spore when it came out, Ubisoft's DRM and so forth. But even when it has been right how long have these schemes lasted? The Spore case was a catalyst for EA doing a complete turnaround and reverting to no DRM for some games, or at worst much less restrictive DRM.
The point is, stories of such restrictive DRM are rarely true, when they are true, they rarely last precisely because they do cause so much harm to their business so are quickly retracted.
So I agree with you, if the proposals are true then you're probably absolutely right, but personally I'll reserve judgement until the actual facts about these systems come out rather than base it on speculation and lies which, given the last round of console battles there was a lot of with all the shills and fanboys spreading FUD about each other.
Actually, for the most part, they didn't.
I recall very clearly at the time pointing out that since Cook took over day to day running of Apple from Jobs it's strategy changed from innovation and competition to litigation and stagnation.
It's not mere coincidence that it all changed when Cook got greater influence, and escalated after Jobs passed away altogether. I've never liked Steve Jobs, I thought he was a sociopathic, selfish twat in all honesty, but this sounds to be very much a case of Tim Cook trying to pass the buck for his failed strategy and for all Job's rhetoric against Android, I don't think he was that stupid as to attack his very suppliers to the extent Cook has.
This is all on Cook, period.
I'm not sure how true the summary is tbh.
I bought Office 2013 Pro Plus through my university's website and it said it was quite clearly licensed for a maximum of 2 machines at once.
That implies that at very least the license can work on two computers and I honestly don't think there's anything magical about the copy and license I purchased even if I did get a student discount (there are perks to remaining a student for life, even alongside working full time!) - certainly the media I received looks like any other copy of Pro Plus and there is no mention of "Super special student offer that magically allows you to run it on two machines at once" though that doesn't of course mean that there aren't regional/license differences - perhaps bundled OEM copies with new machines have the restriction mentioned in TFA rather than retail versions which I presumably received?
Further, the wording "maximum of two at once" almost seems to imply that you can change the machine it's on, just as long as you don't exceed the maximum.
But in my case I was actually pleased to see Microsoft had explicitly decided to authorise you running one copy on multiple machines, if anything this is a step forward - an explicit recognition from Microsoft that people do have multiple machines and expect to not buy a copy per machine, and expect their license to work on multiple computers as mine does.
I think you need to re-read my post. Your response makes absolutely zero sense in the context of it, perhaps you responded to the wrong person?
I made it quite clear that there are some atheists who still have tribalistic tendencies, but simply that it was not inherent in the nature of atheism as it is in religion.
I'm not sure why you brought up the inquisition, I didn't even make any reference to it, nor did I even begin to go down the route of trying to fathom what religions were involved in what wars, though you do seem oblivious of the fact that American Christianity was a driving force in it's battle against "godless" communists which implies you're not exactly coming at this with any objectivity - Vietnam et. al. was as much about trying to instill and spread Western Christian values as it was Communism vs. Democracy.
Don't respond to that though, I'm not interested in what you have to say about it, hence why I didn't raise that point in the first place.
You're right that there's a common root to it all that is not inherently religious in nature- tribalism.
The problem is that religion actively encourages, preaches, and exacerbates the problem of tribalism- it has the inherent requirement that followers believe that their religion and belief is right, and everyone elses is wrong.
In contrast, whilst atheists may well resort to other forms of tribalism to justify their actions - racism, football hooliganism, whatever, there is also the possibility that atheists can rise above such petty, problematic, primal traits.
That is why atheists can claim the moral high ground on this, because following a religion ultimately requires that you succumb to tribalism and accept that your tribe's (religion's) way is the only correct way - the root of just about all of humanity's problems with each other, whereas atheism does not. It is that difference in possibility between the ability to rise up above tribalism and not that creates the moral difference between atheism and religion, even if not every atheist is able to do so in practice.
Yes, I actually read the first few paragraphs of the very Groklaw article that the summary links and it contradicts in big bold letters that headline/summary of the article.
Do people who submit even read the articles they link? or do they just make up random titles and submit random URLs in the hope that if they do it enough at least some of the stories will appear at least somewhat plausible, even if wrong?