I haven't read Scott Adams' blog for at least a couple of years now since it became bleedingly obvious that he was just click-baiting with deliberately provocative articles (which, in itself, I could have lived with if they weren't all so repetitive), but I seem to remember him talking about the house project back then. He had some pretty weird requirements, like a laundry room as a central hub, with a chute to the next floor and all the bedrooms running off that so laundry could be dropped straight down (and never mind that when the washer is running at night the noise via the chute would be atrocious and keep everyone awake). I don't know if he rained the weirdness in at all as the realities set in, I haven't been following the development, but that probably accounts for why he couldn't order a COTS style affair.
I couldn't agree more - personally I'd do away with leaps years and daylight savings while I was at it. Running our entire calendar system based on systems that were introduced to solve problems that mostly no longer exist, and creating all kinds of computing headaches into the bargain seems a little crazy. I can appreciate the aims of the people behind these types of initiative, but when the differences, as you've pointed out, are incredibly minimal, what makes them think we'll even be using their calendar by the time it would make a difference (let's face it, calendars have a habit of being replaced and even the current one has been massively overhauled since we began using it). Having it dictate mission critical systems when the practical effect on life on Earth is near zero is just a bad idea.
Well it comes down to the enormity of the findings. We might search for the next 10,000 years and find nothing, anyone looking back on that might be justified in saying "what a collosal waste of time and money". Imagine in 10,001 years we find we're not alone (in terms of sentient life) in the universe, suddenly instead of a huge folly it's the greatest human endeavour undertaken. The problem is of course that we have no idea of when or if a breakthrough will ever come (and the other potential amazing discovery - that we are actually unique in the universe - is of course only ever going to be disprovable).
It does seem a little like they're trying to broaden an already insanely broad search spectrum. AI could exist in many more locations than squishy biological life, so you go from specifically looking at solar systems that could support life to looking, well pretty much everywhere from the hottest planets to the cold depths of space.
Firstly, it was a blanket statement and for that reason incorrect. It's wrong to say the whole open source everything-must-be-free mentality goes against business - there are many noteworthy exceptions, although it might be fair to say business finds the concept (and how to monetise it) an uneasy one. Secondly, the fact that a blanket statement was used on a forum with a high bias towards FOSS is what edge it from the "not entirely true" to the "likely flamebait" category. To use the much loved car analogy, Ford have made some good cars and some bad cars, therefore it would be wrong to say "all Fords are rubbish", but if you went to "iLoveMyFord.com" and posted the same thing, it would clearly be flamebait. Just because a statement contains some degree of truth, it doesn't automatically mean the statement wasn't specifically posted to engender an angered response.
That's all well and good when people can easily switch jobs, but a lot of people would struggle to just jump ship and find something else if they disagreed with the policy. The whole reason for this type of law is because the employer wields an unfair advantage in most cases. Without it too many people would be pressured into accepting the policy to either get a job, or to keep a job where the policy had changed since their employment. Also bear in mind that governments (should) enact laws based on the will of the people. If the will of the people is that there should be privacy in the workplace, it really doesn't matter what the company thinks - they have the same choice you're giving employees: accept the laws of the land or take your business elsewhere.
This is about potential employers not using Facebook to prejudice a job interview (although how you enforce that is anyone's guess), that doesn't necessarily preclude your actual employer from looking - that might still be a valid HR use (if you claim you're ill but your FB page says you're out water skiing or something).
They could potentially use it even if they don't pay a fee if they have prior art - the app I was looking at for my HTC Desire covers a lot of similar ground (being able to remotely track your phone, lock it, backup and wipe your data, even monitor if someone swaps the SIM and send you a text or email with the new number). The only thing I'm not sure it covers is someone wiping the OS and installing a new one, maybe that's what the jailbreaking component of this adds over and above the others. Of course it might not be prior art if Apple submitted the patent before the other solutions came to market.
Even Apple wouldn't commit commercial suicide by rolling this out unilaterally. More likely they're going to offer it as a service to Apple users similar to the apps already doing this on (at the very least) the Android marketplace. If they start bricking the phones of legitimate users the net outcome will be Apple will lose a bunch of goodwill and will have to give out a bunch of free replacement phones. After all, much as they'd like you to believe otherwise, jailbreaking isn't illegal. They can claim it invalidates the warranty (I'm not sure how that holds up in court but let's assume for now that it does) but they have no claim on how you use the hardware - valid warranty or not.
The irony is if they came up with a system which looked at the age of the subjects and cross-referenced the sexual connotations of the images/videos, they'd end up filtering out a good percentage of what the RIAA's masters peddle.
Definitely - the whole "pirate" angle kind of backfired on them, since Hollywood has glamourised pirates to the degree that people are more than happy to be associated with them. You can just imagine the suits at RIAA sitting around the conference table discussing how their piratcy propaganda has failed and asking who can they associate downloaders with that could possibly be worse than pirates.
Fable 2 was a bone of contention on the XBOX anyway - all games are meant to be required to allow users to get 1,000 gamer points via achievements, out of the box without any additional expense (other than a gold subscription for online multiplayer). Only some (or one, I forget) of the achievements in Fable 2 were tied to a separate game that had to be purchased (Fable Pub Games or something - you basically earned items in the one game that were used to unlock expressions in the other) - their weasel excuse was that you could get these items from other people who had played the game so technically you didn't need to buy more than the original game (ignoring the fact that the other people still had to). If that's their modus operandi these days, you probably had a lucky escape.
Ditto GFWL for DoW II (seems like that's how they got most of us) - the insane thing is Live is actually okay on the Xbox, it's a lot more like Steam is on the PC, i.e. a hub for all your games, game related news and gaming friends, it's always there in the background but when you don't need, it it's not overly intrusive, you don't need to be online to play, you're always logged into the system in the background so you can switch games without logging out and back in, etc. It's just a seamless experience. If they'd created something similar on the PC it could at least be comparable to Steam, instead the whole thing feels like some cobbled together afterthought.
If by "additional shit" you mean "having them remove that ridiculously limited inventory space", since the only way to be able to store anything over and above what you're carrying (despite all the crates littered around your camp) was by first buying and completing the DLC. I don't have any issue with paying extra (or not) for new quests/characters/items but seriously, storing stuff at camp should be part of the basic gaming experience. Especially on the first playthrough when you're not sure if stuff might be needed later for quests (all the seemingly useless stuff I dumped which it later turned out I was meant to give to people in my camp to give them a fighting boost in the end battle, for instance).
Oh, has a court enforced said contract and legally ruled out cracking a game you bought (and thought you owned) to remove said restrictions? Because until they do, I don't see this as any real restriction, much as it might annoy the software houses.
Or that, like all good screening tools, it's used as an aid to proper diagnosis rather than the final arbiter of such. There's nothing wrong with mass screening per se so long as you don't rely on it to make the final decision. On the other hand, I wonder what percentage of those false positives are, as GP pointed out, potentially patients who were misdiagnosed in the first instance.
There's a snowball's chance in hell that the government will form a new body to review hundreds of thousands of applications, and if they tried to lock out the app store altogether...
Isn't that the point of the administration fee - to pay for someone else to review the app? As for them being kicked out if they tried to lock out the app store, well they're not suggesting anything they don't already do with traditional (and much bigger) game markets. If that's not sufficient to generate enough uproar to get the law overturned, what makes you think smart phone owners will have any more impact?
That only matters if you care whether Labour or Liberal get in. If, as GP suggested, they're equally bad choices then at least voting for someone else will register your ire at the main parties - sure the one who gets into power might not care this time around, but next time it might give the other party the prompting they need to adopt the policies that won your vote.
Maybe they averaged out the sharper edges but it's certainly anything but standardised. More likely what they did was have everyone on screen talk in such a watered down version of the local dialect so as not to offend those in the south east that they perpetuated the myth that they standardised pronunciation (even today someone with a heavy Glaswegian accent sounds vastly different to someone with a heavy Yorkshire accent sounds vastly different to someone with a heavy Birmingham accent sounds vastly different to... you get the picture).
My circle of friends found ourselves doing this back in the 90's in the days when usenet and IRC were the Facebook and Twitter of the era. It began as a gag by phonetically spelling out how we'd say the words in a real world context (for instance "roflmao" would be "roffle mayo" or even "roffle with mayo" if we were feeling extravagent) but then we found them creeping into everyday usage which was incredibly weird at the time (when most people would look blank when they encountered a typed "lol" or emoticon). Nom I use all teh time, though.
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I haven't read Scott Adams' blog for at least a couple of years now since it became bleedingly obvious that he was just click-baiting with deliberately provocative articles (which, in itself, I could have lived with if they weren't all so repetitive), but I seem to remember him talking about the house project back then. He had some pretty weird requirements, like a laundry room as a central hub, with a chute to the next floor and all the bedrooms running off that so laundry could be dropped straight down (and never mind that when the washer is running at night the noise via the chute would be atrocious and keep everyone awake). I don't know if he rained the weirdness in at all as the realities set in, I haven't been following the development, but that probably accounts for why he couldn't order a COTS style affair.
I couldn't agree more - personally I'd do away with leaps years and daylight savings while I was at it. Running our entire calendar system based on systems that were introduced to solve problems that mostly no longer exist, and creating all kinds of computing headaches into the bargain seems a little crazy. I can appreciate the aims of the people behind these types of initiative, but when the differences, as you've pointed out, are incredibly minimal, what makes them think we'll even be using their calendar by the time it would make a difference (let's face it, calendars have a habit of being replaced and even the current one has been massively overhauled since we began using it). Having it dictate mission critical systems when the practical effect on life on Earth is near zero is just a bad idea.
Well it comes down to the enormity of the findings. We might search for the next 10,000 years and find nothing, anyone looking back on that might be justified in saying "what a collosal waste of time and money". Imagine in 10,001 years we find we're not alone (in terms of sentient life) in the universe, suddenly instead of a huge folly it's the greatest human endeavour undertaken. The problem is of course that we have no idea of when or if a breakthrough will ever come (and the other potential amazing discovery - that we are actually unique in the universe - is of course only ever going to be disprovable).
It does seem a little like they're trying to broaden an already insanely broad search spectrum. AI could exist in many more locations than squishy biological life, so you go from specifically looking at solar systems that could support life to looking, well pretty much everywhere from the hottest planets to the cold depths of space.
Firstly, it was a blanket statement and for that reason incorrect. It's wrong to say the whole open source everything-must-be-free mentality goes against business - there are many noteworthy exceptions, although it might be fair to say business finds the concept (and how to monetise it) an uneasy one. Secondly, the fact that a blanket statement was used on a forum with a high bias towards FOSS is what edge it from the "not entirely true" to the "likely flamebait" category. To use the much loved car analogy, Ford have made some good cars and some bad cars, therefore it would be wrong to say "all Fords are rubbish", but if you went to "iLoveMyFord.com" and posted the same thing, it would clearly be flamebait. Just because a statement contains some degree of truth, it doesn't automatically mean the statement wasn't specifically posted to engender an angered response.
That's all well and good when people can easily switch jobs, but a lot of people would struggle to just jump ship and find something else if they disagreed with the policy. The whole reason for this type of law is because the employer wields an unfair advantage in most cases. Without it too many people would be pressured into accepting the policy to either get a job, or to keep a job where the policy had changed since their employment. Also bear in mind that governments (should) enact laws based on the will of the people. If the will of the people is that there should be privacy in the workplace, it really doesn't matter what the company thinks - they have the same choice you're giving employees: accept the laws of the land or take your business elsewhere.
This is about potential employers not using Facebook to prejudice a job interview (although how you enforce that is anyone's guess), that doesn't necessarily preclude your actual employer from looking - that might still be a valid HR use (if you claim you're ill but your FB page says you're out water skiing or something).
They could potentially use it even if they don't pay a fee if they have prior art - the app I was looking at for my HTC Desire covers a lot of similar ground (being able to remotely track your phone, lock it, backup and wipe your data, even monitor if someone swaps the SIM and send you a text or email with the new number). The only thing I'm not sure it covers is someone wiping the OS and installing a new one, maybe that's what the jailbreaking component of this adds over and above the others. Of course it might not be prior art if Apple submitted the patent before the other solutions came to market.
Even Apple wouldn't commit commercial suicide by rolling this out unilaterally. More likely they're going to offer it as a service to Apple users similar to the apps already doing this on (at the very least) the Android marketplace. If they start bricking the phones of legitimate users the net outcome will be Apple will lose a bunch of goodwill and will have to give out a bunch of free replacement phones. After all, much as they'd like you to believe otherwise, jailbreaking isn't illegal. They can claim it invalidates the warranty (I'm not sure how that holds up in court but let's assume for now that it does) but they have no claim on how you use the hardware - valid warranty or not.
God help us when we encounter the Communist Terrorist Paedophile who was part of the Cold War!
Especially if he's infringing on someone's copyright at the time.
The irony is if they came up with a system which looked at the age of the subjects and cross-referenced the sexual connotations of the images/videos, they'd end up filtering out a good percentage of what the RIAA's masters peddle.
Definitely - the whole "pirate" angle kind of backfired on them, since Hollywood has glamourised pirates to the degree that people are more than happy to be associated with them. You can just imagine the suits at RIAA sitting around the conference table discussing how their piratcy propaganda has failed and asking who can they associate downloaders with that could possibly be worse than pirates.
Hmm, I wonder how that would work...
If they're using a term like "the screen is too small", then probably not.
Fable 2 was a bone of contention on the XBOX anyway - all games are meant to be required to allow users to get 1,000 gamer points via achievements, out of the box without any additional expense (other than a gold subscription for online multiplayer). Only some (or one, I forget) of the achievements in Fable 2 were tied to a separate game that had to be purchased (Fable Pub Games or something - you basically earned items in the one game that were used to unlock expressions in the other) - their weasel excuse was that you could get these items from other people who had played the game so technically you didn't need to buy more than the original game (ignoring the fact that the other people still had to). If that's their modus operandi these days, you probably had a lucky escape.
Ditto GFWL for DoW II (seems like that's how they got most of us) - the insane thing is Live is actually okay on the Xbox, it's a lot more like Steam is on the PC, i.e. a hub for all your games, game related news and gaming friends, it's always there in the background but when you don't need, it it's not overly intrusive, you don't need to be online to play, you're always logged into the system in the background so you can switch games without logging out and back in, etc. It's just a seamless experience. If they'd created something similar on the PC it could at least be comparable to Steam, instead the whole thing feels like some cobbled together afterthought.
If by "additional shit" you mean "having them remove that ridiculously limited inventory space", since the only way to be able to store anything over and above what you're carrying (despite all the crates littered around your camp) was by first buying and completing the DLC. I don't have any issue with paying extra (or not) for new quests/characters/items but seriously, storing stuff at camp should be part of the basic gaming experience. Especially on the first playthrough when you're not sure if stuff might be needed later for quests (all the seemingly useless stuff I dumped which it later turned out I was meant to give to people in my camp to give them a fighting boost in the end battle, for instance).
Oh, has a court enforced said contract and legally ruled out cracking a game you bought (and thought you owned) to remove said restrictions? Because until they do, I don't see this as any real restriction, much as it might annoy the software houses.
Or that, like all good screening tools, it's used as an aid to proper diagnosis rather than the final arbiter of such. There's nothing wrong with mass screening per se so long as you don't rely on it to make the final decision. On the other hand, I wonder what percentage of those false positives are, as GP pointed out, potentially patients who were misdiagnosed in the first instance.
There's a snowball's chance in hell that the government will form a new body to review hundreds of thousands of applications, and if they tried to lock out the app store altogether...
Isn't that the point of the administration fee - to pay for someone else to review the app? As for them being kicked out if they tried to lock out the app store, well they're not suggesting anything they don't already do with traditional (and much bigger) game markets. If that's not sufficient to generate enough uproar to get the law overturned, what makes you think smart phone owners will have any more impact?
That only matters if you care whether Labour or Liberal get in. If, as GP suggested, they're equally bad choices then at least voting for someone else will register your ire at the main parties - sure the one who gets into power might not care this time around, but next time it might give the other party the prompting they need to adopt the policies that won your vote.
Maybe they averaged out the sharper edges but it's certainly anything but standardised. More likely what they did was have everyone on screen talk in such a watered down version of the local dialect so as not to offend those in the south east that they perpetuated the myth that they standardised pronunciation (even today someone with a heavy Glaswegian accent sounds vastly different to someone with a heavy Yorkshire accent sounds vastly different to someone with a heavy Birmingham accent sounds vastly different to... you get the picture).
Actually, I can haz cheezberger 105 years ago!
We used to phonetically write it as "roffle mayo", as it made it sound like a fun sandwich filling rather than a goofy communist dictator.
My circle of friends found ourselves doing this back in the 90's in the days when usenet and IRC were the Facebook and Twitter of the era. It began as a gag by phonetically spelling out how we'd say the words in a real world context (for instance "roflmao" would be "roffle mayo" or even "roffle with mayo" if we were feeling extravagent) but then we found them creeping into everyday usage which was incredibly weird at the time (when most people would look blank when they encountered a typed "lol" or emoticon). Nom I use all teh time, though.