Your argument is flawed because you're building it on the unproven premise that dumping all the information they have outright is the best way to get it noticed by the general public- the people who can actually act on it by altering their voting choices at elections and so forth in response.
Wikileaks previously did just dump information and it was ineffectual, so much important information just went entirely unnoticed.
In contrast, their new method of partnering with media organisations for carefully timed and planned releases has been orders of magnitude more effective as seen by the massive increase in coverage of Wikileaks and it's leaks over the last year.
If you believe the massive coverage Wikileaks, and the information it's leaked has had this past year is not getting the job done you clearly have severe mental issues. The results of Wikileaks work this last year has done more to influence the world (whether you agree it's good or bad) than it ever has. So what if he's sitting on the bank leaks? it's building hype, that hype builds attention, so that when it's finally released, it gets the attention it deserves- look at how previous leaks went entirely unnoticed in mainstream press through the old method of releasing everything.
You claim Assange being a sociopath and hypocritical are facts, this is quite sad as it also demonstrates you don't understand the simple word "fact". Thus far the only people who have built this image of him are his detractors, objectively this means they are not facts whatsoever but are merely personal opinion on behalf of folks like yourself.
The fact you claim it's a fact that Assange is a sociopath says all that needs to be said about your opinion- it's worthless. If you at least phrased it as "In my opinion Assange is a sociopath" it would be a fair comment. Get some objectivity rather than making yourself sound like an ignorant Fox News pundit.
This is retarded, what gives you so much faith in OpenLeaks?
I agree Assange is far from perfect but he's got the job done and that's what's important. Contrast this to the folks behind Wikileaks and they seem to be all talk and no action- have you looked at the logs between Assange and Domscheit-Berg? Have you looked at Domscheit-Berg's comments online, and his actions? If you think Assange is bad then wait until Domscheit-Berg enters the spotlight, we've already been told about how he's going to release a "Hello Magazine" style "Domscheit-Berg reveals all" tabloid trash book about Wikileaks- the guy is at very least as much a money grabbing child as Assange is.
There's really little doubt that Assange is far from perfect, but it really doesn't matter because he has got the job done far better than anyone else has to date. It's really the results that matter, and so far Domscheit-Berg really has little to show for his efforts, despite the fact that if you believe a word he says then there's not a chance in hell Wikileaks would've had the success it has to date.
It's easy to attack the status quo, it's easy to proclaim so other entity is the future, but the fact is the proof is in the pudding, and to date, Domscheit-Berg has done absolutely nothing to demonstrate he is in any way better or more mature than Assange. On the contrary, the creation of OpenLeaks seems to be part of his assault on Assange rather than the creation of an entity for the better of human kind judging by his comments, and that's simply the wrong reason to create that kind of organisation.
If he does do better than Assange,then great, that's fucking brilliant, but like the guy at Cryptome, their complaints about Assange thus far are more demonstrative of dented egos at having the limelight stolen from them, because after all, ego seems a big factor behind the reasons all these types of people leak content. It's the same reason a lot of hackers have always hacked- because it's cool to them to be the best at sticking it to "the man".
Let's just wait to see what happens rather than proclaiming OpenLeaks is the future before it's actually managed to do anything worthwhile whatsoever shall we? Wikileaks supposedly has a lot more damaging content to release yet and if it does, then it'll be in the news a fair while yet.
"China's power is there is no individual, there is only the state. Need a new bridge? Seize houses. New factory? Take land. We need to realize what we are up against and adjust our outdated ideals about business. There is no more free market, there is the chinese way, of the western way where people and property are respected and protected. We need to set up protective measures to protect what is left of our industry."
Spoken like a nationalist with absolutely no real clue about the country he's talking about.
The US is already perhaps the most protectionist state in the Western world but it's obviously not helping. You only have to look at the countless WTO rulings against the US that it has not adhered to due to protectionism from Antigua gambling, to Brazilian cotton, to tarrifs on European/Asian steel. If you're in any doubt as to whether protectionism is not helping the US feel free to Google more rulings (lumber being another example).
Your comments about China and the free market are nonsensical, China has the employee and citizen abuses it does precisely because it's more capitalist than the US nowadays, it is an extreme free market- there are no constraints such as minimum wage, health and safety standards and that sort of thing. China is an example of what happens if you allow corporations all the power they wish, it allows rapid economic increase but polarises citizens causing booming discontent amongst the abused. It creates an extremely low standard of living for many people.
I'm not saying you're completely wrong, but just pointing out your comments about China and the free market, as well as pushing for protectionism are wrong. I agree with you that the US needs to cut military spending and start improving education as this is fundamentally where it's struggling- US military incursions across the world have lost it a lot of friends and made it a lot of enemies and this has made it extremely hard for US corporations to do business across the globe. It has also massively dented the US' influence as a political player, it's no longer seen as a neutral party key to mediating disputes, it's seen as an agressor that causes many disputes.
In general though I do not believe anything will stop China's rise, I do not believe anything will stop the US' decline, China is simply too big and has historically been too important in the world such that it's natural position is much more prominent than where it is now, and the US' position has been over-inflated, it's really just a natural balancing of the world.
But take some reassurance in this, as China's standing increases, so will it's human rights record, so will the standard of living of people. As a population becomes more wealthy overall education increases, and as education increases so do freedoms and civil liberties. I would not worry too much about China's rise, it's certainly not going to try and take over the world as the likes of Fox News would have you believe- it can't, it has too much internal strife such as in Xinghua province, Taiwan, and Tibet. It's pretty likely that 50 years down the road China will be a modern, more moderate democracy, and as it becomes more moderate it'll also begin to accept independence for places like Tibet, Taiwan and so forth if those provinces still want that. The point is this- you can't rule with an evil iron fist and have your population support you, whilst the Nazi's spread far, it was still ultimately their downfall that their smartest minds had defected, and that internal dissidents were leaking information left, right and centre. That resistance in occupied territory made maintaining that territory impossible in the face of an advancing opposing force too.
Sure the US wont be the super power it was, but so what? I'm British, we had an empire just 60 years ago, I'm sure many at the time were scared about it's decline, but really things aren't that bad. We're good friends with nations we used to rule, sometimes rather brutally, they've learnt to forgive and forget, and whilst
"And it's possible that the whole project will be canceled."
Not likely, the F22 project was cut back because it was not deemed acceptably exportable technology, the F-35 is and already has a bunch of export customers set up, and even helping to fund the project such as Australia and Britain.
It may well be scaled back in capabilities but it will not be cancelled because it's just too important to US defence exports, cancelling it would not only be devastating financially for US defence contractors involved but it would also massively harm the US' image as a trustworthy defence exporter- why trust your military equipment future on a country that just can't deliver and ends up leaving you defenceless and out of pocket? The US just can't afford to cancel the F-35.
"As interesting as a Kinect-style device for my PC sounds, it just ain't gonna work. You need a room about 4 times the size of my living room to use the things."
Apart from the fact that's a gross exageration (well, unless your living room really is only 2m x 2m in size) I think the thing to realise is that Kinect needs space because it's used for full body tracking. If you just wanted a system that tracks hand and finger movement then you don't need all that space. The space requirement of Kinect is almost entirely down to the activities it allows- jumping around and moving left, right, back and forth requires space.
It really depends what the purpose of the device is, if it's just controller free gesture based navigation then the technology can be built to be practical to use at a desk.
"Lots of people don't like their tax money is used like that, but that's the way it is - being in jail in most of Europe is like taking a relaxing holiday."
You're overstating this ability particular with regards to your earlier comments about TVs and game consoles- tax payers do NOT pay for these, the criminals are made to pay for these themselves if they choose to.
Regarding point 3, it's probably worth pointing out that Vodafone in the UK was seen as one of those carriers that wasn't upgrading handsets even a year after release, but that's not the case, they're just slow, very slow.
I say this as Vodafone has finally just it's Android handsets, including the HTC Magic which was one of the biggest problems for lack of updates to Android 2.2.1 just this last week. As such I suspect the fraction 1.5/1.6 to shrink further. Vodafone's Android handsets are no small share of the market. This doesn't help much but it seems people have the impression phones have lost support when they in fact haven't.
I don't really see the problem with developing for 1.5 or 1.6 though if it has all the features you need. You just figure the features of your app out and use the lowest API that provides all the features you need. Ultimately it's little different to dealing with development in general- you have to choose your market, do you want to build an app quickly and easily for a single group of users such as Android 2.0 users, or do you want a bigger market and port to iOS, Symbian, and Android? The larger you want your market to be, the more work you have to do- even with iOS you face the same problem with different features between handsets, and an obsolete version of the OS. It's no different to problems Windows games developers face either really, do you support DirectX10+ only which makes your life easier but shut out XP users or do you support Direct9 and get a wider market for more work? It's part of the package and parcel of software development, and you wont ever escape it I'm afraid.
I agree Android has it's flaws, but I disagree that they're anything unique to Android, or problems that developers haven't long already figured out how to handle. Annoying yes? Unique, and can anything be done to make them a non-issue? No. The increasing fragmentation iOS faces as the iPhone evolves and the OS gets moved to tablets et. al. is evidence enough of the fact you just can't escape it- it's simply the price of progress as the end of the day.
"Does a company really have the power to decide who and what can be developed for a piece of hardware it makes?"
No, but for the company being denied an official license it raises a number of issues:
- They might not be able to legally access/use an official dev kit to build the game, and 3rd party dev kit hardware/software is rare or non-existent
- They will not be able to use any of the XBox/Kinect trademarks on their product box, or advertising, meaning people who see it in a shop wont even know what it's for
So if they can indeed create the software in spite of access to official dev tools, then there's no reason they can't sell it, but if they do then it wont be recognisable as an XBox product, and for an XXX product which would have little exposure in many mainstream stores anyway that means with all the hassle of developing it without an official devkit, and the low sales, it just wouldn't be financially worth it.
It's not that Microsoft can stop them developing and selling the product, it's that Microsoft simply does not have to assist them, and if they don't get assistance from Microsoft then due to the fact the XBox is proprietary, it'll be prohibitively hard for them to go it alone.
Despite all that, the demo the company has shown mentions they're using the FOSS Kinect driver on the PC, so it may well be that this isn't meant for the XBox anyway, and the company just releases it as PC software, compatible with Kinect hardware, using FOSS drivers.
I know it's popular to hate Microsoft, but I don't really see bad of them in this case, it's their platform so why should they have to support something they don't want to? Certainly it should surely be upto them who they do and don't give dev kits to, and do and don't license their trademarks for use to? As I say- they're not stopping you or the developer doing what they want with the system, they're just not giving you any assistance either. It's just unfortunate that without that assistance it's prohibitively hard to do what you want.
Of course in some cases it can be states out, but even if it gives the users country, which, in 99.99% of cases it will, then that's good enough for many advertisers as they'll often have a focus across at least a whole nation with their product/advertising program. Some sites such as the BBC and Hulu trust it enough country-wise that they use it as their core method of ensuring content is only served to users in specific countries- it's trivial to get around with VPN but again, how many people do that really? It's valuable to advertisers and market research folk that's the point.
But I'll take it from that that IP geolocation is in fact a method of gaining a users location (however rough) without any permissions in an iPhone app? I'm not attacking the platform, I know you're a massive fan of it, it's just curiosity, this is something that effects all platforms regardless really.
I also agree that if people are conflating this sort of information that's useful to advertisers with general creepy stalker style GPS location tracking then they're being unfair. They are of course two very different things.
Can apps access the web without permission? IP based location over HTTP is trivial and if web access doesn't require special permission then that's one way to do so.
It is of course much less accurate than GPS based location.
"With the move to substantially increase tuition at all universities in England, there will be growing comparison against the sticker price at the top US schools. That, of course, is an unfair comparison as top US schools while undoubtedly expensive also have exceptional financial aid packages."
This is somewhat of a misconception about UK pricing on your behalf too though. The university fee changes also have better financial aid for poorer students than the previous student fees system, so just as the US ivy league price is rarely paid, the new £9000 fees will rarely be paid- only at the top institutions, by rich families.
Most people don't realise what grants are available in the UK even now, one example is that if you don't already have a degree and earn under around £26,000 a year you can get some or all of your degree paid for AND get upto £250 a year in grant money to spend on whatever you need with the Open University for example. This means basically anyone can get a degree if they want to and are willing to put the time and effort in under the current system, and I see no evidence these specific types of grants are dissapearing under the new system, and in fact, there are loans for part time students to boot on top to pay anything more they need to pay so it's getting better for some at least.
It's also worth pointing out that teaching grants from the government are only being scrapped for the arts too- maths and the sciences are protected, so if you're doing a useful subject the chances are you'll be paying little more than now because there will still be central government funding. This could actually work to improve Britain's university system because over the last 10 years there has been a rise of joke degrees such as David Beckham Studies (Yes, it's a real degree) through to a degree in Bartending- these sorts of stupid things will no longer be tax payer subsidised at least, so there's certainly some positives to the changes however you look at it.
Don't believe the political FUD that's being spread about the university changes, I agree in some cases it's bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as is being made out- if you listen to the rhetoric from the press, Labour supporters, and the student rioters you'd think every university student will now have to pay £9,000 a year, when that's nothing like the case.
As such I wouldn't say comparing sticker prices is unfair at all, because in both England and the US it's simply a worst case that many people wont ever have to pay, but because the amount that is paid is otherwise quite arbitrary, and as sticker price is the absolute maximum, it's probably the best option you've got.
Hi man, you sound really smart, can you tell me which universities you got your degrees at and which courses you took at those unis? I'd love to learn from someone as clever as you.
Can you give me the names of any good books to read that will help me obtain your awesome level of knowledge and understanding?
This doesn't seem right at all at least compared to what I've seen elsewhere.
Fundamentally, this part isn't right:
"1) Russian criminals have control over the wikileaks.org and wikileaks.info domains and are distributing malware. The current real wikileaks website is wikileaks.ch."
Russian criminals do not have control over these domains, Wikileaks has merely chosen a Russian host that specialises in no holds barred hosting, which, not suprisingly, is also happens to be an ISP favoured by criminals, because no holds barred bulletproof hosting means even criminal operations are secure.
Spamhaus has decided that Wikileaks shouldn't be doing business with an ISP that allows criminals hosting and has decided to try and paint Wikileaks as being in league with Russian crime syndicates.
Anonymous did not like the fact Spamhaus is discrediting Wikileaks in this way and so has decided to attack it.
I have some sympathy with this viewpoint, it does seem rather unfair of Spamhaus to criticise Wikileaks for hosting with a provider like this, when it's presumably implying they should use more trustworthy hosts in the West, but as those in the West have turned Wikileaks away, and as the US is still responsible for most of the world's spam and Russia only comes in 6th place it seems rather hypocritical and unfair to be slagging off Wikileak's host just because criminals use it too- does Spamhaus have any evidence that this host is any more likely to allow Wikileak's domain to be infected than any of the numerous US hosts which surely allow equivalent activity for the US to be such a high source of spam and malware in the world?
Whilst Spamhaus claims it's viewpoint is innocent, and honestly just trying to protect people, in this context, it does seem two faced, and when it's two faced that does make it seem rather political. The fact is there are thousands, probably milions of sites across the world hosted on ISPs who turn a blind eye to criminal activity on them, why single out Wikileaks and it's host?
"Stuxnet is an awesome weapon. It continues to screw up the centrifuges. They have no way of keeping their systems clean."
No it doesn't, this is the point. At the end of the day you can always just bring in clean computing hardware, or completely restart from scratch with the software. This is why, at worst, it delays things, and does nothing long term to stop the nuclear programming. It doesn't damage the hardware, it merely alters the operation of it, and if the hardware is intact- the most expensive and hardest part to get right, then isolating the systems and sorting the software once you know there is an infection isn't hard, just time consuming.
A military strike decisively destroys the plants and makes it prohibitively costly to start right from the beginning again.
"Israel is (by far) the most nervous about Iran's nuclear program, and already had one pre-emptive attack on a nuclear plant under it's belt that (in their worldview) was a resounding success and is a point of national pride."
Actually, it's done two. It bombed the Osirak reactor in Iraq and '81, and it bombed the Syrian nuclear installation in 2007.
But here's the point, when you consider that Iran is no more a threat to Israel than Iraq was then, and than Syria was in 2007, then why do you think if Israel is responsible, that they made such a change of tactics this time? Why switch to such a covert method that's at worst going to delay things a bit, and certainly not going to completely destroy the facility when their pre-existing modus operandi is simply to go in and bomb the installations? Something they're more than capable of doing.
You may be right that China didn't do it, but there's so many possibilities, just because Iran vocally hates Israel doesn't mean it's any more concerned than other countries. With Iran trying to build long range missiles capable of hitting Europe, what makes you think that pretty much any European country isn't responsible? It's arguable that even Saudi Arabia is more interested in dealing with Iran than Israel.
Yes you're right Israel has motive, but when they want to do something they also tend not to fuck around either, Stuxnet seems to very much be a case of fucking around. It seems more like something designed to disrupt Iran's ambitions rather than outright destroy them, likely to delay their programme to force them to sit at the negotiating table longer, again, something Israel tends not to care about if it's really bothered by something.
"Facebook is kinda silly but it did enable me to reconnect with old College & high school mates I've not seen in 10-15 years (since graduation). Good invention."
Yeah, except I was doing that with friends reunited about 5 years before Facebook came along.
Hardly invented, it's concepts were just copied from sites like MySpace and Friends Reunited.
Yeah that's how I remember it too, I just find it so strange that it could've slowed down. I think I ran it at 320x240 or whatever the resolution was back then, it wouldn't have handled 640x480 well I know that, but I'm amazed that it just wouldn't even do 320x240 well nowadays for some reason. I'm just intrigued to know what the cause of such a slow down would be!
Any idea if there have been any situations where mods have been hit with Cease and Desists in recent years? I don't follow mods too much nowadays I'll admit, but I remember back in the 90s it was happening very frequently with mods based on all sorts of movie IPs.
I was going to ask this too, I don't want to sound overly harsh, but why prioritise recruitment of what are quite possibly the bottom 4% of people from a company that's plummeted to about half it's previous worth in just a few years?
Wouldn't you be just as likely to find good talent by recruiting in general and hence possibly tempting over the ones who didn't get laid off and are hence possibly more capable rather than specifically targetting these folk who did?
Is this a recruitment drive based on sentiment rather than logic, or is there some non-obvious logic behind trying to recruit these specific folks?
They're doing it on the source engine too though which helps.
I'd imagine Valve would be a lot more annoyed if they'd tried to do it on say an id Tech 4 or Unreal engine based game! It's when people take a companies IP elsewhere I think they really start to get a little fucked off.
As an aside, last time I pulled out an old PC and plugged it in out of curiosity, a 486 DX2-66, I found a copy of Quake on it. When I tried to run it it ran at about 3 fps, and Doom didn't break much over 15fps.
Did we really used to put up with that kind of shitty frame rate back then, or has, despite having not been touched for about 15 years, this system mysteriously slowed down? There didn't seem to be any problems with the hard drive or anything, can a processor even "just slow down"? I figured it'd just break and not work, or cause crashes rather than slow down if that was the problem. As the system seemed fine other than the slowness of Quake and Doom I could only assume that we did in fact put up with shitty framerates, but that doesn't seem right. I can't have ever seen myself playing something so painful.
Slashdot Mirror
Your argument is flawed because you're building it on the unproven premise that dumping all the information they have outright is the best way to get it noticed by the general public- the people who can actually act on it by altering their voting choices at elections and so forth in response.
Wikileaks previously did just dump information and it was ineffectual, so much important information just went entirely unnoticed.
In contrast, their new method of partnering with media organisations for carefully timed and planned releases has been orders of magnitude more effective as seen by the massive increase in coverage of Wikileaks and it's leaks over the last year.
If you believe the massive coverage Wikileaks, and the information it's leaked has had this past year is not getting the job done you clearly have severe mental issues. The results of Wikileaks work this last year has done more to influence the world (whether you agree it's good or bad) than it ever has. So what if he's sitting on the bank leaks? it's building hype, that hype builds attention, so that when it's finally released, it gets the attention it deserves- look at how previous leaks went entirely unnoticed in mainstream press through the old method of releasing everything.
You claim Assange being a sociopath and hypocritical are facts, this is quite sad as it also demonstrates you don't understand the simple word "fact". Thus far the only people who have built this image of him are his detractors, objectively this means they are not facts whatsoever but are merely personal opinion on behalf of folks like yourself.
The fact you claim it's a fact that Assange is a sociopath says all that needs to be said about your opinion- it's worthless. If you at least phrased it as "In my opinion Assange is a sociopath" it would be a fair comment. Get some objectivity rather than making yourself sound like an ignorant Fox News pundit.
This is retarded, what gives you so much faith in OpenLeaks?
I agree Assange is far from perfect but he's got the job done and that's what's important. Contrast this to the folks behind Wikileaks and they seem to be all talk and no action- have you looked at the logs between Assange and Domscheit-Berg? Have you looked at Domscheit-Berg's comments online, and his actions? If you think Assange is bad then wait until Domscheit-Berg enters the spotlight, we've already been told about how he's going to release a "Hello Magazine" style "Domscheit-Berg reveals all" tabloid trash book about Wikileaks- the guy is at very least as much a money grabbing child as Assange is.
There's really little doubt that Assange is far from perfect, but it really doesn't matter because he has got the job done far better than anyone else has to date. It's really the results that matter, and so far Domscheit-Berg really has little to show for his efforts, despite the fact that if you believe a word he says then there's not a chance in hell Wikileaks would've had the success it has to date.
It's easy to attack the status quo, it's easy to proclaim so other entity is the future, but the fact is the proof is in the pudding, and to date, Domscheit-Berg has done absolutely nothing to demonstrate he is in any way better or more mature than Assange. On the contrary, the creation of OpenLeaks seems to be part of his assault on Assange rather than the creation of an entity for the better of human kind judging by his comments, and that's simply the wrong reason to create that kind of organisation.
If he does do better than Assange,then great, that's fucking brilliant, but like the guy at Cryptome, their complaints about Assange thus far are more demonstrative of dented egos at having the limelight stolen from them, because after all, ego seems a big factor behind the reasons all these types of people leak content. It's the same reason a lot of hackers have always hacked- because it's cool to them to be the best at sticking it to "the man".
Let's just wait to see what happens rather than proclaiming OpenLeaks is the future before it's actually managed to do anything worthwhile whatsoever shall we? Wikileaks supposedly has a lot more damaging content to release yet and if it does, then it'll be in the news a fair while yet.
"China's power is there is no individual, there is only the state. Need a new bridge? Seize houses. New factory? Take land. We need to realize what we are up against and adjust our outdated ideals about business. There is no more free market, there is the chinese way, of the western way where people and property are respected and protected. We need to set up protective measures to protect what is left of our industry."
Spoken like a nationalist with absolutely no real clue about the country he's talking about.
The US is already perhaps the most protectionist state in the Western world but it's obviously not helping. You only have to look at the countless WTO rulings against the US that it has not adhered to due to protectionism from Antigua gambling, to Brazilian cotton, to tarrifs on European/Asian steel. If you're in any doubt as to whether protectionism is not helping the US feel free to Google more rulings (lumber being another example).
Your comments about China and the free market are nonsensical, China has the employee and citizen abuses it does precisely because it's more capitalist than the US nowadays, it is an extreme free market- there are no constraints such as minimum wage, health and safety standards and that sort of thing. China is an example of what happens if you allow corporations all the power they wish, it allows rapid economic increase but polarises citizens causing booming discontent amongst the abused. It creates an extremely low standard of living for many people.
I'm not saying you're completely wrong, but just pointing out your comments about China and the free market, as well as pushing for protectionism are wrong. I agree with you that the US needs to cut military spending and start improving education as this is fundamentally where it's struggling- US military incursions across the world have lost it a lot of friends and made it a lot of enemies and this has made it extremely hard for US corporations to do business across the globe. It has also massively dented the US' influence as a political player, it's no longer seen as a neutral party key to mediating disputes, it's seen as an agressor that causes many disputes.
In general though I do not believe anything will stop China's rise, I do not believe anything will stop the US' decline, China is simply too big and has historically been too important in the world such that it's natural position is much more prominent than where it is now, and the US' position has been over-inflated, it's really just a natural balancing of the world.
But take some reassurance in this, as China's standing increases, so will it's human rights record, so will the standard of living of people. As a population becomes more wealthy overall education increases, and as education increases so do freedoms and civil liberties. I would not worry too much about China's rise, it's certainly not going to try and take over the world as the likes of Fox News would have you believe- it can't, it has too much internal strife such as in Xinghua province, Taiwan, and Tibet. It's pretty likely that 50 years down the road China will be a modern, more moderate democracy, and as it becomes more moderate it'll also begin to accept independence for places like Tibet, Taiwan and so forth if those provinces still want that. The point is this- you can't rule with an evil iron fist and have your population support you, whilst the Nazi's spread far, it was still ultimately their downfall that their smartest minds had defected, and that internal dissidents were leaking information left, right and centre. That resistance in occupied territory made maintaining that territory impossible in the face of an advancing opposing force too.
Sure the US wont be the super power it was, but so what? I'm British, we had an empire just 60 years ago, I'm sure many at the time were scared about it's decline, but really things aren't that bad. We're good friends with nations we used to rule, sometimes rather brutally, they've learnt to forgive and forget, and whilst
"And it's possible that the whole project will be canceled."
Not likely, the F22 project was cut back because it was not deemed acceptably exportable technology, the F-35 is and already has a bunch of export customers set up, and even helping to fund the project such as Australia and Britain.
It may well be scaled back in capabilities but it will not be cancelled because it's just too important to US defence exports, cancelling it would not only be devastating financially for US defence contractors involved but it would also massively harm the US' image as a trustworthy defence exporter- why trust your military equipment future on a country that just can't deliver and ends up leaving you defenceless and out of pocket? The US just can't afford to cancel the F-35.
"As interesting as a Kinect-style device for my PC sounds, it just ain't gonna work. You need a room about 4 times the size of my living room to use the things."
Apart from the fact that's a gross exageration (well, unless your living room really is only 2m x 2m in size) I think the thing to realise is that Kinect needs space because it's used for full body tracking. If you just wanted a system that tracks hand and finger movement then you don't need all that space. The space requirement of Kinect is almost entirely down to the activities it allows- jumping around and moving left, right, back and forth requires space.
It really depends what the purpose of the device is, if it's just controller free gesture based navigation then the technology can be built to be practical to use at a desk.
"Lots of people don't like their tax money is used like that, but that's the way it is - being in jail in most of Europe is like taking a relaxing holiday."
You're overstating this ability particular with regards to your earlier comments about TVs and game consoles- tax payers do NOT pay for these, the criminals are made to pay for these themselves if they choose to.
On one of the last days to get your Christmas shopping done too.
Bastards.
Regarding point 3, it's probably worth pointing out that Vodafone in the UK was seen as one of those carriers that wasn't upgrading handsets even a year after release, but that's not the case, they're just slow, very slow.
I say this as Vodafone has finally just it's Android handsets, including the HTC Magic which was one of the biggest problems for lack of updates to Android 2.2.1 just this last week. As such I suspect the fraction 1.5/1.6 to shrink further. Vodafone's Android handsets are no small share of the market. This doesn't help much but it seems people have the impression phones have lost support when they in fact haven't.
I don't really see the problem with developing for 1.5 or 1.6 though if it has all the features you need. You just figure the features of your app out and use the lowest API that provides all the features you need. Ultimately it's little different to dealing with development in general- you have to choose your market, do you want to build an app quickly and easily for a single group of users such as Android 2.0 users, or do you want a bigger market and port to iOS, Symbian, and Android? The larger you want your market to be, the more work you have to do- even with iOS you face the same problem with different features between handsets, and an obsolete version of the OS. It's no different to problems Windows games developers face either really, do you support DirectX10+ only which makes your life easier but shut out XP users or do you support Direct9 and get a wider market for more work? It's part of the package and parcel of software development, and you wont ever escape it I'm afraid.
I agree Android has it's flaws, but I disagree that they're anything unique to Android, or problems that developers haven't long already figured out how to handle. Annoying yes? Unique, and can anything be done to make them a non-issue? No. The increasing fragmentation iOS faces as the iPhone evolves and the OS gets moved to tablets et. al. is evidence enough of the fact you just can't escape it- it's simply the price of progress as the end of the day.
"Does a company really have the power to decide who and what can be developed for a piece of hardware it makes?"
No, but for the company being denied an official license it raises a number of issues:
- They might not be able to legally access/use an official dev kit to build the game, and 3rd party dev kit hardware/software is rare or non-existent
- They will not be able to use any of the XBox/Kinect trademarks on their product box, or advertising, meaning people who see it in a shop wont even know what it's for
So if they can indeed create the software in spite of access to official dev tools, then there's no reason they can't sell it, but if they do then it wont be recognisable as an XBox product, and for an XXX product which would have little exposure in many mainstream stores anyway that means with all the hassle of developing it without an official devkit, and the low sales, it just wouldn't be financially worth it.
It's not that Microsoft can stop them developing and selling the product, it's that Microsoft simply does not have to assist them, and if they don't get assistance from Microsoft then due to the fact the XBox is proprietary, it'll be prohibitively hard for them to go it alone.
Despite all that, the demo the company has shown mentions they're using the FOSS Kinect driver on the PC, so it may well be that this isn't meant for the XBox anyway, and the company just releases it as PC software, compatible with Kinect hardware, using FOSS drivers.
I know it's popular to hate Microsoft, but I don't really see bad of them in this case, it's their platform so why should they have to support something they don't want to? Certainly it should surely be upto them who they do and don't give dev kits to, and do and don't license their trademarks for use to? As I say- they're not stopping you or the developer doing what they want with the system, they're just not giving you any assistance either. It's just unfortunate that without that assistance it's prohibitively hard to do what you want.
Of course in some cases it can be states out, but even if it gives the users country, which, in 99.99% of cases it will, then that's good enough for many advertisers as they'll often have a focus across at least a whole nation with their product/advertising program. Some sites such as the BBC and Hulu trust it enough country-wise that they use it as their core method of ensuring content is only served to users in specific countries- it's trivial to get around with VPN but again, how many people do that really? It's valuable to advertisers and market research folk that's the point.
But I'll take it from that that IP geolocation is in fact a method of gaining a users location (however rough) without any permissions in an iPhone app? I'm not attacking the platform, I know you're a massive fan of it, it's just curiosity, this is something that effects all platforms regardless really.
I also agree that if people are conflating this sort of information that's useful to advertisers with general creepy stalker style GPS location tracking then they're being unfair. They are of course two very different things.
Can apps access the web without permission? IP based location over HTTP is trivial and if web access doesn't require special permission then that's one way to do so.
It is of course much less accurate than GPS based location.
You're not a soldier by any chance are you?
"With the move to substantially increase tuition at all universities in England, there will be growing comparison against the sticker price at the top US schools. That, of course, is an unfair comparison as top US schools while undoubtedly expensive also have exceptional financial aid packages."
This is somewhat of a misconception about UK pricing on your behalf too though. The university fee changes also have better financial aid for poorer students than the previous student fees system, so just as the US ivy league price is rarely paid, the new £9000 fees will rarely be paid- only at the top institutions, by rich families.
Most people don't realise what grants are available in the UK even now, one example is that if you don't already have a degree and earn under around £26,000 a year you can get some or all of your degree paid for AND get upto £250 a year in grant money to spend on whatever you need with the Open University for example. This means basically anyone can get a degree if they want to and are willing to put the time and effort in under the current system, and I see no evidence these specific types of grants are dissapearing under the new system, and in fact, there are loans for part time students to boot on top to pay anything more they need to pay so it's getting better for some at least.
It's also worth pointing out that teaching grants from the government are only being scrapped for the arts too- maths and the sciences are protected, so if you're doing a useful subject the chances are you'll be paying little more than now because there will still be central government funding. This could actually work to improve Britain's university system because over the last 10 years there has been a rise of joke degrees such as David Beckham Studies (Yes, it's a real degree) through to a degree in Bartending- these sorts of stupid things will no longer be tax payer subsidised at least, so there's certainly some positives to the changes however you look at it.
Don't believe the political FUD that's being spread about the university changes, I agree in some cases it's bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as is being made out- if you listen to the rhetoric from the press, Labour supporters, and the student rioters you'd think every university student will now have to pay £9,000 a year, when that's nothing like the case.
As such I wouldn't say comparing sticker prices is unfair at all, because in both England and the US it's simply a worst case that many people wont ever have to pay, but because the amount that is paid is otherwise quite arbitrary, and as sticker price is the absolute maximum, it's probably the best option you've got.
Hi man, you sound really smart, can you tell me which universities you got your degrees at and which courses you took at those unis? I'd love to learn from someone as clever as you.
Can you give me the names of any good books to read that will help me obtain your awesome level of knowledge and understanding?
This doesn't seem right at all at least compared to what I've seen elsewhere.
Fundamentally, this part isn't right:
"1) Russian criminals have control over the wikileaks.org and wikileaks.info domains and are distributing malware. The current real wikileaks website is wikileaks.ch."
Russian criminals do not have control over these domains, Wikileaks has merely chosen a Russian host that specialises in no holds barred hosting, which, not suprisingly, is also happens to be an ISP favoured by criminals, because no holds barred bulletproof hosting means even criminal operations are secure.
Spamhaus has decided that Wikileaks shouldn't be doing business with an ISP that allows criminals hosting and has decided to try and paint Wikileaks as being in league with Russian crime syndicates.
Anonymous did not like the fact Spamhaus is discrediting Wikileaks in this way and so has decided to attack it.
I have some sympathy with this viewpoint, it does seem rather unfair of Spamhaus to criticise Wikileaks for hosting with a provider like this, when it's presumably implying they should use more trustworthy hosts in the West, but as those in the West have turned Wikileaks away, and as the US is still responsible for most of the world's spam and Russia only comes in 6th place it seems rather hypocritical and unfair to be slagging off Wikileak's host just because criminals use it too- does Spamhaus have any evidence that this host is any more likely to allow Wikileak's domain to be infected than any of the numerous US hosts which surely allow equivalent activity for the US to be such a high source of spam and malware in the world?
Whilst Spamhaus claims it's viewpoint is innocent, and honestly just trying to protect people, in this context, it does seem two faced, and when it's two faced that does make it seem rather political. The fact is there are thousands, probably milions of sites across the world hosted on ISPs who turn a blind eye to criminal activity on them, why single out Wikileaks and it's host?
"Stuxnet is an awesome weapon. It continues to screw up the centrifuges. They have no way of keeping their systems clean."
No it doesn't, this is the point. At the end of the day you can always just bring in clean computing hardware, or completely restart from scratch with the software. This is why, at worst, it delays things, and does nothing long term to stop the nuclear programming. It doesn't damage the hardware, it merely alters the operation of it, and if the hardware is intact- the most expensive and hardest part to get right, then isolating the systems and sorting the software once you know there is an infection isn't hard, just time consuming.
A military strike decisively destroys the plants and makes it prohibitively costly to start right from the beginning again.
"Israel is (by far) the most nervous about Iran's nuclear program, and already had one pre-emptive attack on a nuclear plant under it's belt that (in their worldview) was a resounding success and is a point of national pride."
Actually, it's done two. It bombed the Osirak reactor in Iraq and '81, and it bombed the Syrian nuclear installation in 2007.
But here's the point, when you consider that Iran is no more a threat to Israel than Iraq was then, and than Syria was in 2007, then why do you think if Israel is responsible, that they made such a change of tactics this time? Why switch to such a covert method that's at worst going to delay things a bit, and certainly not going to completely destroy the facility when their pre-existing modus operandi is simply to go in and bomb the installations? Something they're more than capable of doing.
You may be right that China didn't do it, but there's so many possibilities, just because Iran vocally hates Israel doesn't mean it's any more concerned than other countries. With Iran trying to build long range missiles capable of hitting Europe, what makes you think that pretty much any European country isn't responsible? It's arguable that even Saudi Arabia is more interested in dealing with Iran than Israel.
Yes you're right Israel has motive, but when they want to do something they also tend not to fuck around either, Stuxnet seems to very much be a case of fucking around. It seems more like something designed to disrupt Iran's ambitions rather than outright destroy them, likely to delay their programme to force them to sit at the negotiating table longer, again, something Israel tends not to care about if it's really bothered by something.
Great news for Europe as a whole, due to our common market importing these from Spain means they wont face customs checks.
Sounds like Spain will make a good distribution base for them.
"Facebook is kinda silly but it did enable me to reconnect with old College & high school mates I've not seen in 10-15 years (since graduation). Good invention."
Yeah, except I was doing that with friends reunited about 5 years before Facebook came along.
Hardly invented, it's concepts were just copied from sites like MySpace and Friends Reunited.
Yeah that's how I remember it too, I just find it so strange that it could've slowed down. I think I ran it at 320x240 or whatever the resolution was back then, it wouldn't have handled 640x480 well I know that, but I'm amazed that it just wouldn't even do 320x240 well nowadays for some reason. I'm just intrigued to know what the cause of such a slow down would be!
Any idea if there have been any situations where mods have been hit with Cease and Desists in recent years? I don't follow mods too much nowadays I'll admit, but I remember back in the 90s it was happening very frequently with mods based on all sorts of movie IPs.
I was going to ask this too, I don't want to sound overly harsh, but why prioritise recruitment of what are quite possibly the bottom 4% of people from a company that's plummeted to about half it's previous worth in just a few years?
Wouldn't you be just as likely to find good talent by recruiting in general and hence possibly tempting over the ones who didn't get laid off and are hence possibly more capable rather than specifically targetting these folk who did?
Is this a recruitment drive based on sentiment rather than logic, or is there some non-obvious logic behind trying to recruit these specific folks?
They're doing it on the source engine too though which helps.
I'd imagine Valve would be a lot more annoyed if they'd tried to do it on say an id Tech 4 or Unreal engine based game! It's when people take a companies IP elsewhere I think they really start to get a little fucked off.
No, it didn't have one, I think it was a 486 SX33 originally, so was really at the point where turbo buttons were starting to dissapear from cases.
As an aside, last time I pulled out an old PC and plugged it in out of curiosity, a 486 DX2-66, I found a copy of Quake on it. When I tried to run it it ran at about 3 fps, and Doom didn't break much over 15fps.
Did we really used to put up with that kind of shitty frame rate back then, or has, despite having not been touched for about 15 years, this system mysteriously slowed down? There didn't seem to be any problems with the hard drive or anything, can a processor even "just slow down"? I figured it'd just break and not work, or cause crashes rather than slow down if that was the problem. As the system seemed fine other than the slowness of Quake and Doom I could only assume that we did in fact put up with shitty framerates, but that doesn't seem right. I can't have ever seen myself playing something so painful.