No, you're missing my point. The reason swear words are a problem is because kids pick them up and use them quickly. The reason violence isn't a problem is because kids don't engage in it nearly as easily.
It's not about delicate ears, it's about what kids are prone to do.
Video games gratify and glorify violence. Period. When headshots are rewarded with easier challenges and further progression, when there are no options to not kill, when killing gratuitously is a function required to progress a story or an experience, then it can not be argued that games provide positive reinforcement.
In the past year, I've played three games: Gun, Billy Hatcher, and Shadow of the Colossus. In Gun, you can scalp innocents in town and they scream, BEGGING YOU not to do it. In Billy Hatcher, there in practically no violence as even the grunts get away. In Shadow of the Colossus, you have to proactively kill sixteen living creatures which do not bother you for absolutely no net benefit to you as a person, or your character. There are even a couple of instances where the creatures do not fight back.
Needless to say, of the the Billy Hatcher was the most boring and less stimulating of the three, despite it being a great game..
We, the players, have become desensitized to the point that there is no longer cognitive dissonance between the ingame logic which allows or compels me to kill innocents and benefit compared to the real world logic which doesn't allow me to. Instead of saying that it isn't bad, that it isn't real, shouldn't we be asking ourselves how is it that we are unable to recognize it as real in the moment we are doing it.
We've become so far removed from it that games where one does not kill do not sell equally.
Video game sales have gone up the last few years. Murder in the United States has gone down.
I'm in my early 30's. I've spent a great number of hours playing Wolfenstein, Mortal Kombat, Doom, Quake, every incarnation of Grand Theft Auto, Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, and so on. Although I don't have reasonable numbers to work with, I'm comfortable saying I played these violent games more than the average person. I watched a lot of gory movies, too. I've had a healthy dose of Three Stooges and Warner Brothers cartoons to boot.
There are a couple of things about me I'd like to say about me. First, I don't think anybody would ever describe me as violent. It takes a lot to even get me to shout at somebody. I don't bang my fist on the keyboard or steering wheel. I don't threaten to hurt people. I have a real calm demeanor. You've all heard that story from other people before so I'll leave this point here.
Secondly, I'd say I'm about as desensitized as it gets. I really cannot imagine that my exposure to all of this media is anything but 'higher than average'. I didn't even find beating up hookers in GTA all that shocking. (Or fun, either. Despite what the noisy people have said, you start avoid killing pedestrians when the cops come after you and make completing missions difficult. Compare that to, say, Crazy Taxi, and well I can tell you what I'd prefer my future kid to play when learning-to-drive time comes along.)
When I was in college, though, I made a surprising discovery. Somebody mentioned Rotten.com, a site where you can see actual real dead bodies. (Do not go there unless you're really to see something like that. NSFW) Two things really struck me about the content of that site. First was that I gasped and made a bitter-beer-face. Second was that this shit didn't look like anything I had seen in Hollywood. (Although I dare say Starship Troopers was awfully close.) Part of it is simply knowing that this was real and not made up baloney, but part of it was that damaged flesh is a very complex... and goopy, swelly, discolor'y. In other words, I reacted to actual murders and accidents in a way that is significantly different from the way I react to them in video games.
Since observing that, I realized that knowing that something actually happened makes a huge difference. I went by the Television Department in college and saw a safety video that was part of the orientation that rail-road workers were required to watch. I wanted to watch it because I caught part of it and was like "That guy got his foot smashed! Neat!!" So the instructor was like "Okay, watch this..." The video I saw had a train come to a stop and put these legs down on the ground, I assume to stabilize the train while cargo boxes were lifted off it. This guy had his hand in the way and the engineer didn't see it. He extended the gear and *goosh* caught the guy's hand. It was just pushed into the ground so hard that the guy pulled his arm back only to find it hand-less. This was not gory, really. There was no real blood or anything visual, it was all covered up by his jacket. But somewhere in the back of my head, a thought made itself heard: "This happened to somebody. It has probably happened a lot." That little clip was far more disturbing to me than anything in Robocop or any other of Verhoven's movies.
I do not believe violent video games desensitize kids because violent video games are not even heading in the vague direction of reality. I don't care how much better the graphics get, they do not touch on the real horrors of violence. I've yet to even really see a movie that managed this.
I think I understand where the fears of this come from. I think we've all seen kids imitate what they see on TV. I think the experience a video game provides, though, is being given way too much credit. All this talk of 'murder simulators' and the like... but if you were on an airplane and the pilot died, and a teenager volunteered to fly the plane with thousands of hours of Playstation time under his belt, would you take it seriously?
That only works provided people keep playing. If they go as silly as say that Penn and Teller Sega CD game where you drive a bus to Vegas, subscriptions dry up.
Also, what's to stop people from checking their email, opening another tab and browsing for half a minute, or raiding the fridge while the commercial streams, same as TV?
Absolutely nothing. On a couple of occasions I have hit 'play', then gone to get dinner or something, then rewound the video and played it that way. Honestly, though, I don't do that often. I think the main reason for that is they show one commercial AND they show you a countdown for how long it lasts. Also, there are times where they'll ask you to watch a 2 minute movie trailer in exchange for an uninterrupted stream. *IF* Hulu stays the way it is, I don't forsee ever really exerting much effort to skip commercials there.
I do agree about the increased value of active choices via the Internet, but most of the time, if there's an ad, instead of clicking to close it, I go do something else for a few secs.
There's no doubt that there is genuine interest in the iPhone and it's not all marketing, the touch interface is really sweet, however you would expect the novelty factor to wear off after a while. It didn't happen. It seems that even now, every time the tiniest update to iPhone-related stuff is published, it gets front page coverage and ok, that is no accident, iPhone news sell and that's a huge marketing power but it's crazy to see it plastered everywhere like that.
Lots of peope on this site have or want iPhones. Lots more people are opinionated on the matter, thus iPhone stories generate lots of comments. You don't need Apple intervention to get silly topics on Slashdot. Look at Microsoft. A bunch of their silly stuff makes it to Slashdot and it's 'news'. The Pirate Bay, somebody's uncle installing FireFox, Opera making a bold claim, Nintendo, Sony, anything that gets the pitchforks a'wavin.
In terms of smartphones the iPhone is not for me
It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all phone. Lack of copy/paste and push email is lame. (Well, it does have push email, but it's something like $60/year.) Here's hoping OS 3.0 satisfactorally relieves both.:)
Every cell phone since hte late 90s has shipped with the ability to play "games".
Why do we persist in pretending the iPhone is something new? Why is it a revolutionary gaming console, when my 5 year old treo (which at least has a dpad and buttons) is a mere phone?
Multi-touch screen. Processing capable of 3d graphics. Accelerometer. App-store. Treo sucked at games. Yadda yadda yadda.
do they pay for this shit, or is it purely an image/cliq thing? If the former, can I get a piece of the action somehow?
Niether. You just don't know what you're talking about. Cure your ignorance at Google.com.
Am I the only one who's starting to be completely saturated by iPhone stories posted left and right and how it's awesome and shiny and great?
Nope. But the iPhone's not alone. I'm f'n tired of Pre stories around here. I've heard enough about FireFox, too.
I think I've reached the point of hype backlash.
I think that point happened for most ppl here around a year or so ago when a line of people materialized at an Apple store a month before the 3G was announced. Everybody assumed it was people just waiting in line for the new vapor phone. It was believable. Untrue, but believable. Now people spout reasons not to like the phone, regardless of whether they're true or whether or not they really matter. (I cannot cast stones here, really. I did this exact same stuff with the PS3 back when it was announced.)
I bow to the Apple marketing team though. They are doing a truly excellent job. Honestly.
Eh, I personally think it's their product design team. They essentially made the PocketPC we've been wanting since the late 90's. The success of a product with a good web-browser and an ubiquitous internet connetion was inevitable. Both Microsoft and Palm utterly failed to put those two ingredients together. Apple does it, and blammo, everybody can see the potential of it. With potential comes imagination. With imagination comes hype. I think most of the iPhone's hype has come from the people interested in it.
What are the big features of Opera you actually find useful?
(Genuinely asking, not being sarcastic)
Happy to oblidge. Before I go into it, though, I'd like to mention that I use three different computers on any given day. Workstation, laptop, desktop. For that reason, I value sync'age and NOT having to reinstall stuff. That's why FireFox is unnatractive to me as a primary browser. I don't like extension hunting and I especially don't like the constant nagging to update them. I can be on a brand new computer, go to Opera.com, and download the browser with everything ready to go.
Okay, so here's a few things I like about Opera:
- The UI is really good about letting you drag stuff around and organize it in a meaningful way. Instead of going to the bookmarks pulldown or whatever, I just drag the shortcuts up into the top bar. They're easily rearranged and so on. Plus, you can put folders up there that turn into pulldowns. (Note: FireFox has this now. I don't remember it always having it. I can't put my finger on it but whenever I use FF I feel like it goes more smoothly in Opera. Hardly an objective opinion, though.)
Opera's nice about letting you turn tabs into windows and vice/versa. In fact, that's one of the reasons FireFox feels clunky to me. I also dig the trash can icon that lets me reopen tabs I've closed. (In the same order they were originally in, to boot!)
- Bookmark Sync- Opera allows you to create a username and password to store your bookmarks on Opera's server. If I make a bookmark at work, both my desktop and laptop at home will get it. I use this quite a bit when I find stuff on the weekend I really need to examine when I get in on Monday.
- Speed Dial- When you open a New Tab , but before you've navigated to a page, 9 thumbnails will appear for your favorite bookmarks. Nice and quick for getting to pages you frequent. (And you don't need to hog existing UI space for it!) There are extensions for FF that mimic this functionality. This is syncable, too.
- Notes- If you highlight some text, right click, and say "Add to Note", then the text you selected will be copied and stored in 'Notes'. When you click that Note, it takes you to the page where it was found. I've found two important uses for this feature. One: Example code. I can see the sample code right there in the Notes. Two: I like to bookmark 'Funny' comments on Slashdot. This way I can just highlight the quote, click, and blam it's noted. (That'd be far more tedious to do in an organized way with Bookmarks.) This is syncable too, so if I find a 'note' at work, I have it at home, too.
- Transfers Window- I'll skip the Bittorrent bit because, though it works, I prefer an actual BT client. I do like having the Xfers window that shows me what files are there, gives me good info about what's going on with them, and the right-click context menu that matches what Windows does in Explorer.
- Sessions- You can tell Opera "these are the windows I like to have open". Or you can say "I happen to like these particular windows I have open", and open them later. (I think this is syncable, too. I don't remember, actually.) I use this a lot when I'm digging around for reference photos and a bunch of different sites are helpful.
- Fast Forward- If there are a bunch of links on a page, like a bunch of images you want to cycle through, just use the Fast Forward button.
- Popup Blocking- I've never looked into Adblock. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that what Opera has is the same. I don't know, really. Opera blocks pop-ups rather nicely. Let me put it another way: Opera blocks pop-ups that FireFox does not. For this reason, I've never been interested in NoScript or AdBlock or any of that. It is possible to block Flash, though. Sadly I cannot tell you how. I downloaded a portable version of Opera and it had a neat little button that disables all Flash. Well, I'm not
I haven't done the legwork but it appears that an attack vector exists via the App Store. Applications allow downloading of data files (podcasts, for example).
Simply get your application published and give people some incentive to download it (for free). Once your intended target or target quota has installed download a "media file" that's actually the malicious binary. Then it's just a matter of smashing your own application's stack to run the code.
The "simply get your application published" bit, though not impossible to avoid, would leavea a trail leading all the way up to you.
You'd get more satisfaction out of creating a Windows virus.
I must be that "some other lifeform". I can't stand or use curved or "Ergonomic" keyboards such as the Microsoft un-Natural keyboard.
I'd rather have my wrists rest flat on the table since I find that far more comfortable than having my hands rotated slightly, thus resting my wrists at an angle (which starts to hurt after awhile).
I think that's case of "YMMV". I've used 'natural' keyboards for years. I like them because they allow me to spread my hands out over the keyboard. My left hand, for example, naturally rests on the E, F, A, left Shift, and Space keys without having to flex my fingers. (I especially love this for gaming.) To use a regular keyboard I not only have to crimp my hand a lot more, but when both hands are on the home row, I'm now angling my hands outward a bit. Over time, that gets to me. I can't stand it. Personally, I think they got the 'natural' part just right because I'm not having to exert any energy to keep my hands on the home row.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you're missing my point. The reason swear words are a problem is because kids pick them up and use them quickly. The reason violence isn't a problem is because kids don't engage in it nearly as easily.
It's not about delicate ears, it's about what kids are prone to do.
Video games gratify and glorify violence. Period. When headshots are rewarded with easier challenges and further progression, when there are no options to not kill, when killing gratuitously is a function required to progress a story or an experience, then it can not be argued that games provide positive reinforcement.
In the past year, I've played three games: Gun, Billy Hatcher, and Shadow of the Colossus. In Gun, you can scalp innocents in town and they scream, BEGGING YOU not to do it. In Billy Hatcher, there in practically no violence as even the grunts get away. In Shadow of the Colossus, you have to proactively kill sixteen living creatures which do not bother you for absolutely no net benefit to you as a person, or your character. There are even a couple of instances where the creatures do not fight back.
Needless to say, of the the Billy Hatcher was the most boring and less stimulating of the three, despite it being a great game..
We, the players, have become desensitized to the point that there is no longer cognitive dissonance between the ingame logic which allows or compels me to kill innocents and benefit compared to the real world logic which doesn't allow me to. Instead of saying that it isn't bad, that it isn't real, shouldn't we be asking ourselves how is it that we are unable to recognize it as real in the moment we are doing it.
We've become so far removed from it that games where one does not kill do not sell equally.
Video game sales have gone up the last few years. Murder in the United States has gone down.
I draw the line at servers where gruesome graphic murder is OK but swear words are not.
Think of the children? Seriously??
That's just too messed up to support.
Why? Lots of kids run around saying the f-word but not that many of them are campers at the playground.
I have murdered millions of Nazis ...
Millions?! What game was that where you were killing several thousand Nazis a session? Spore?
I'm in my early 30's. I've spent a great number of hours playing Wolfenstein, Mortal Kombat, Doom, Quake, every incarnation of Grand Theft Auto, Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, and so on. Although I don't have reasonable numbers to work with, I'm comfortable saying I played these violent games more than the average person. I watched a lot of gory movies, too. I've had a healthy dose of Three Stooges and Warner Brothers cartoons to boot.
There are a couple of things about me I'd like to say about me. First, I don't think anybody would ever describe me as violent. It takes a lot to even get me to shout at somebody. I don't bang my fist on the keyboard or steering wheel. I don't threaten to hurt people. I have a real calm demeanor. You've all heard that story from other people before so I'll leave this point here.
Secondly, I'd say I'm about as desensitized as it gets. I really cannot imagine that my exposure to all of this media is anything but 'higher than average'. I didn't even find beating up hookers in GTA all that shocking. (Or fun, either. Despite what the noisy people have said, you start avoid killing pedestrians when the cops come after you and make completing missions difficult. Compare that to, say, Crazy Taxi, and well I can tell you what I'd prefer my future kid to play when learning-to-drive time comes along.)
When I was in college, though, I made a surprising discovery. Somebody mentioned Rotten.com, a site where you can see actual real dead bodies. (Do not go there unless you're really to see something like that. NSFW) Two things really struck me about the content of that site. First was that I gasped and made a bitter-beer-face. Second was that this shit didn't look like anything I had seen in Hollywood. (Although I dare say Starship Troopers was awfully close.) Part of it is simply knowing that this was real and not made up baloney, but part of it was that damaged flesh is a very complex... and goopy, swelly, discolor'y. In other words, I reacted to actual murders and accidents in a way that is significantly different from the way I react to them in video games.
Since observing that, I realized that knowing that something actually happened makes a huge difference. I went by the Television Department in college and saw a safety video that was part of the orientation that rail-road workers were required to watch. I wanted to watch it because I caught part of it and was like "That guy got his foot smashed! Neat!!" So the instructor was like "Okay, watch this..." The video I saw had a train come to a stop and put these legs down on the ground, I assume to stabilize the train while cargo boxes were lifted off it. This guy had his hand in the way and the engineer didn't see it. He extended the gear and *goosh* caught the guy's hand. It was just pushed into the ground so hard that the guy pulled his arm back only to find it hand-less. This was not gory, really. There was no real blood or anything visual, it was all covered up by his jacket. But somewhere in the back of my head, a thought made itself heard: "This happened to somebody. It has probably happened a lot." That little clip was far more disturbing to me than anything in Robocop or any other of Verhoven's movies.
I do not believe violent video games desensitize kids because violent video games are not even heading in the vague direction of reality. I don't care how much better the graphics get, they do not touch on the real horrors of violence. I've yet to even really see a movie that managed this.
I think I understand where the fears of this come from. I think we've all seen kids imitate what they see on TV. I think the experience a video game provides, though, is being given way too much credit. All this talk of 'murder simulators' and the like... but if you were on an airplane and the pilot died, and a teenager volunteered to fly the plane with thousands of hours of Playstation time under his belt, would you take it seriously?
Why doesn't Blizzard or some other studio do it?
Man.. imagine what the splash screen for that would look like!
Which is why linux sysadmins are higher paid than MSCE ones. Yep, makes perfect sense.
Weee, flame war!
Heh you might want to re-think that one, it's working against you.
No, I'm saying they proved there's a significant difference between thawed and thawed chickens. ;D
Adam and Jamie tackled this one on Mythbusters.
Using the same protocols as the 'official' testing, they found that thawed chickens busted windscreens as effectively as thawed chickens.
Wrong.
They revisited the myth and proved, beyond a doubt, that frozen chickens cause more damage.
To be fair, though, they went over that myth like three times before they finally came up with a test that proved it once and for all.
More time travelling = more time playing
More time playing = more money earned
That only works provided people keep playing. If they go as silly as say that Penn and Teller Sega CD game where you drive a bus to Vegas, subscriptions dry up.
Also, what's to stop people from checking their email, opening another tab and browsing for half a minute, or raiding the fridge while the commercial streams, same as TV?
Absolutely nothing. On a couple of occasions I have hit 'play', then gone to get dinner or something, then rewound the video and played it that way. Honestly, though, I don't do that often. I think the main reason for that is they show one commercial AND they show you a countdown for how long it lasts. Also, there are times where they'll ask you to watch a 2 minute movie trailer in exchange for an uninterrupted stream. *IF* Hulu stays the way it is, I don't forsee ever really exerting much effort to skip commercials there.
I do agree about the increased value of active choices via the Internet, but most of the time, if there's an ad, instead of clicking to close it, I go do something else for a few secs.
You'll still hear the audio.
Finally, this should stop perennial "firefox is a memory hog" trolls. Hopefully.
You mean like the BSOD or flying chair comments?
There's no doubt that there is genuine interest in the iPhone and it's not all marketing, the touch interface is really sweet, however you would expect the novelty factor to wear off after a while. It didn't happen. It seems that even now, every time the tiniest update to iPhone-related stuff is published, it gets front page coverage and ok, that is no accident, iPhone news sell and that's a huge marketing power but it's crazy to see it plastered everywhere like that.
Lots of peope on this site have or want iPhones. Lots more people are opinionated on the matter, thus iPhone stories generate lots of comments. You don't need Apple intervention to get silly topics on Slashdot. Look at Microsoft. A bunch of their silly stuff makes it to Slashdot and it's 'news'. The Pirate Bay, somebody's uncle installing FireFox, Opera making a bold claim, Nintendo, Sony, anything that gets the pitchforks a'wavin.
In terms of smartphones the iPhone is not for me
It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all phone. Lack of copy/paste and push email is lame. (Well, it does have push email, but it's something like $60/year.) Here's hoping OS 3.0 satisfactorally relieves both. :)
Every cell phone since hte late 90s has shipped with the ability to play "games".
Why do we persist in pretending the iPhone is something new? Why is it a revolutionary gaming console, when my 5 year old treo (which at least has a dpad and buttons) is a mere phone?
Multi-touch screen. Processing capable of 3d graphics. Accelerometer. App-store. Treo sucked at games. Yadda yadda yadda.
do they pay for this shit, or is it purely an image/cliq thing? If the former, can I get a piece of the action somehow?
Niether. You just don't know what you're talking about. Cure your ignorance at Google.com.
Am I the only one who's starting to be completely saturated by iPhone stories posted left and right and how it's awesome and shiny and great?
Nope. But the iPhone's not alone. I'm f'n tired of Pre stories around here. I've heard enough about FireFox, too.
I think I've reached the point of hype backlash.
I think that point happened for most ppl here around a year or so ago when a line of people materialized at an Apple store a month before the 3G was announced. Everybody assumed it was people just waiting in line for the new vapor phone. It was believable. Untrue, but believable. Now people spout reasons not to like the phone, regardless of whether they're true or whether or not they really matter. (I cannot cast stones here, really. I did this exact same stuff with the PS3 back when it was announced.)
I bow to the Apple marketing team though. They are doing a truly excellent job. Honestly.
Eh, I personally think it's their product design team. They essentially made the PocketPC we've been wanting since the late 90's. The success of a product with a good web-browser and an ubiquitous internet connetion was inevitable. Both Microsoft and Palm utterly failed to put those two ingredients together. Apple does it, and blammo, everybody can see the potential of it. With potential comes imagination. With imagination comes hype. I think most of the iPhone's hype has come from the people interested in it.
What are the big features of Opera you actually find useful?
(Genuinely asking, not being sarcastic)
Happy to oblidge. Before I go into it, though, I'd like to mention that I use three different computers on any given day. Workstation, laptop, desktop. For that reason, I value sync'age and NOT having to reinstall stuff. That's why FireFox is unnatractive to me as a primary browser. I don't like extension hunting and I especially don't like the constant nagging to update them. I can be on a brand new computer, go to Opera.com, and download the browser with everything ready to go.
Okay, so here's a few things I like about Opera:
- The UI is really good about letting you drag stuff around and organize it in a meaningful way. Instead of going to the bookmarks pulldown or whatever, I just drag the shortcuts up into the top bar. They're easily rearranged and so on. Plus, you can put folders up there that turn into pulldowns. (Note: FireFox has this now. I don't remember it always having it. I can't put my finger on it but whenever I use FF I feel like it goes more smoothly in Opera. Hardly an objective opinion, though.)
Opera's nice about letting you turn tabs into windows and vice/versa. In fact, that's one of the reasons FireFox feels clunky to me. I also dig the trash can icon that lets me reopen tabs I've closed. (In the same order they were originally in, to boot!)
- Bookmark Sync- Opera allows you to create a username and password to store your bookmarks on Opera's server. If I make a bookmark at work, both my desktop and laptop at home will get it. I use this quite a bit when I find stuff on the weekend I really need to examine when I get in on Monday.
- Speed Dial- When you open a New Tab , but before you've navigated to a page, 9 thumbnails will appear for your favorite bookmarks. Nice and quick for getting to pages you frequent. (And you don't need to hog existing UI space for it!) There are extensions for FF that mimic this functionality. This is syncable, too.
- Notes- If you highlight some text, right click, and say "Add to Note", then the text you selected will be copied and stored in 'Notes'. When you click that Note, it takes you to the page where it was found. I've found two important uses for this feature. One: Example code. I can see the sample code right there in the Notes. Two: I like to bookmark 'Funny' comments on Slashdot. This way I can just highlight the quote, click, and blam it's noted. (That'd be far more tedious to do in an organized way with Bookmarks.) This is syncable too, so if I find a 'note' at work, I have it at home, too.
- Transfers Window- I'll skip the Bittorrent bit because, though it works, I prefer an actual BT client. I do like having the Xfers window that shows me what files are there, gives me good info about what's going on with them, and the right-click context menu that matches what Windows does in Explorer.
- Sessions- You can tell Opera "these are the windows I like to have open". Or you can say "I happen to like these particular windows I have open", and open them later. (I think this is syncable, too. I don't remember, actually.) I use this a lot when I'm digging around for reference photos and a bunch of different sites are helpful.
- Fast Forward- If there are a bunch of links on a page, like a bunch of images you want to cycle through, just use the Fast Forward button.
- Popup Blocking- I've never looked into Adblock. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that what Opera has is the same. I don't know, really. Opera blocks pop-ups rather nicely. Let me put it another way: Opera blocks pop-ups that FireFox does not. For this reason, I've never been interested in NoScript or AdBlock or any of that. It is possible to block Flash, though. Sadly I cannot tell you how. I downloaded a portable version of Opera and it had a neat little button that disables all Flash. Well, I'm not
Was anyone really expecting the greedy phone companies to give us tethering?
No, but it does mean that the iPhone doesn't have exclusivity on this lacking feature.
I'm sure all seven Opera users will be thrilled.
Show a little respect. The seven of us are shaking down features you'll be using on Firefox in three or four years.
I haven't done the legwork but it appears that an attack vector exists via the App Store. Applications allow downloading of data files (podcasts, for example).
Simply get your application published and give people some incentive to download it (for free). Once your intended target or target quota has installed download a "media file" that's actually the malicious binary. Then it's just a matter of smashing your own application's stack to run the code.
The "simply get your application published" bit, though not impossible to avoid, would leavea a trail leading all the way up to you.
You'd get more satisfaction out of creating a Windows virus.
Haven't windmills been doing this for centuries?
Yep. That's how Don Quixote got into the Guiness book of World Records for reaching 30,000 feet.
Not many birds fly at 30,000 feet, Einstein.
Small nitpick: Presumably these kites will have cables reaching all the way down to the ground.
I must be that "some other lifeform". I can't stand or use curved or "Ergonomic" keyboards such as the Microsoft un-Natural keyboard.
I'd rather have my wrists rest flat on the table since I find that far more comfortable than having my hands rotated slightly, thus resting my wrists at an angle (which starts to hurt after awhile).
I think that's case of "YMMV". I've used 'natural' keyboards for years. I like them because they allow me to spread my hands out over the keyboard. My left hand, for example, naturally rests on the E, F, A, left Shift, and Space keys without having to flex my fingers. (I especially love this for gaming.) To use a regular keyboard I not only have to crimp my hand a lot more, but when both hands are on the home row, I'm now angling my hands outward a bit. Over time, that gets to me. I can't stand it. Personally, I think they got the 'natural' part just right because I'm not having to exert any energy to keep my hands on the home row.
I was never discussing open versus closed standards. This is about proprietary versus standard.
That's why he argued with you the whole time. You're using 'proprietary' to mean 'uncommon'.
Your point's valid, you're just using the wrong term.
Ogg Vorbis was better in quality than MP3
As I recall, it also took up a lot more CPU cycles, and portable music manufacturers didn't want to use it because of poor battery performance.
Any chance we can blame Slashdot for VHS too?
I don't recall Slashdot users folding their arms and saying (with a +5) "I'm not buying an iPod because it doesn't support VHS".