Re: I've drilled the aerial out of my cards.
I will upvote you, you're a bit of a nutter, but also a bit of a legend when the machines take over.
653 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Nov 2007
but the majority of films pumped out in it just don't do the medium justice at all. The first 3D film I went to see was Avatar, and it's the only one I've actually watched at the cinema. I enjoyed it, and I did actually think that the 3D added to the overall experience, although as someone who has perfectly matched eyes and 20/20 vision, maybe I'm just lucky.
Recently I went to the London Science Museum and we purchased the Explorer ticket. This gives you access to 3 films in 3D - retrofitted one about the lunar landings, retrofitted one about the red arrows, and a full-length, filmed in 3D Disney show on the IMAX screen. We watched them in that order, and by the end of the second film I had a splitting headache. It was painful after the first film, and terrible after the second one, and the reason for it is that the second film had the cockpit rendered at the front the whole time, slightly out of focus, so my eyes were trying to constantly focus on it, but couldn't. I thought these two films were ok, but they would have been absolutely fine without the 3D.
With the IMAX film, because everything was filmed in 3D (it was about Hubble), and it had high production values, it was actually fantastic, and the 3D didn't just help immerse you or act as a gimmick, it actually added value to the film, because it showed you things in 3D that you will never be able to see in 3D (with the help of a little CGI) instead of just using it to make some butterfly appear in the foreground. I think the fact that it was so big made it easier to focus as well. I would thoroughly encourage anyone to go and see it, because it really does give you a new perspective on the beauty in our universe that you just won't get from the run-of-the-mill pop science docs.
Might want to skip the other two though.
I fully agree that looking at something on your dash is a pretty bad idea, however...
...people use satnavs, they have kids in the back, they hear a noise behind them, they're distracted by someone powering towards them on a bike or in an Audi, there are loads of reasons someone might not be looking out the windscreen, and, while it might not be great to add to those, having an audio alert for that odd moment where you're not giving the road your full attention and someone starts breaking in front of you, then having an audio alert could really prevent accidents.
Also, why do we put up with people who roll out the tired old "but I'm a perfectly good driver without any gadgets, so what's the point" argument. Seriously, how many times when you've used that argument has someone walked up to you, put a gun to your head and forced you to buy the app? If you don't think you need it, don't get it. If you really don't think that a gadget of any type can assist in driving don't get it, but don't complain about it for pity's sake. I'm also going to assume that you don't need lighting because gaslamps will do? Got it.
"So because Google tels you that fascism is extreme right-wing, authoritarian, of intolerant views or practice, you are somehow taking an objective view?"
Oxford Dictionaries Online main definition:
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fascism?q=fascism
an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
From Google:
fas·cism/ˈfaSHizəm/
Noun:
An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
(in general use) Extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.
But yes, I guess it does make sense to let a fascist tell you what it means, rather than take an objective stance.
I've seen something similar at semiconductor trade shows. Didn't work. Attendees <s>didn't want</s> were too scared of girls to break the circle of gawkers to be seen (and photographed) publicly. The booth was bare.
FTFY
All I need now is for strikethrough to work (which it isn't in the preview).
.net is good, you may not like it, but it's true. Especially as someone who was a C++ > C# advocate until I took the time to learn it, to make the assumption that people are "falling into a trap" suggests that there is no real advantage in using it at all, but if you compare development times, C# versions will almost always turnaround quicker. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the full standard is published. If someone wants to go and write their own version, they should be able to quite easily.
The reason VB developers got burned was because the language had major, major deficiencies (and since you'll clearly be wanting an example, how about "Runtime error 6"), and (as with C++.net, which did try this and essentially is a bit rubbish) and it would not have made logical sense to pigeon hole .NET functionality into the existing language.
But what if it's a borderline case where accessing the address book isn't core functionality but can offer added functionality to users?
E.g. Facebook. How many people are quite happy to trust FB (rightly or wrongly) to not do anything nefarious with their data, particularly their address book? And for all intents and purposes, it just saves you the time of adding your contacts manually, so why not allow the extra functionality for those who want it? But what if people don't want it to access their address book, but do want to update things easily on an app designed for their mobile? Do you honestly think it's good to get people into the mindset of "well it said that I could choose for it not to access my address book, so I'll just give it permission to so that I can install it"? It's far better to allow people to install apps and then prevent the usage of certain functionality if the user doesn't want it (on an OS level) rather than make the user decide between some functionality that they want, but something that they don't.
So you don't see that if something isn't being bought, it could actually generate more money if a lower price means more people buy it?
If you can't get it, here's a quick example:
Album costs £10 and 5 people buy it, price is reduced to £5 and 20 people buy it because it seems cheap, especially given its previous cost.
It doesn't surprise me at all that they cause price drops on average, an album has large sales in the first week or so, then drops off. As interest wanes you get a price drop, I don't see why an album would, under normal circumstances, or on average, ever go upwards.
Do you not see how those are different? Or are you just ignoring it?
On one hand you have Sky choosing who distributes their kit. I agree, that should be illegal because it's anti-competitive. It means that they have more receivers on shop shelves than competitors, so consumers have less choice.
On the other hand, you have Apple threatening to use another manufacturer. If they move to someone else, then it's not going to affect the amount of kit being produced, it's going to be the same amount of kit, for the same price, just manufactured by someone else. Why does it matter why they choose one manufacturer over another? What if they told a manufacturer that their prices were too high? Would that be as bad? It's essentially the same, it's just one company choosing one manufacturer because of certain criteria.
Look, if it was in a contract as an exclusivity deal, would you complain? Should there be no guarantee of exclusivity available? Is it unreasonable to broach this as a subject before spending money on drawing up lengthy agreements if it's a certain deal-breaker?
The problem, I would guess, is looking at it as a single study, rather than a process. The next question would be why. Why does working in a box limit creativity? Since we don't really understand the processes of the brain at all, never mind when it comes to things like creativity, any insight that provokes further research has to be a good thing.
It's probably also worth reminding people that the study showed that working in a cubicle might decrease creativity, not that this automatically means working in an open-plan office increases your work output. Perhaps it could be considered that a smaller office, with creative jobs such as illustration, design, development, might benefit better from an open-plan than a huge office with lots of distractions and unrelated jobs.
If the goal of the study is purely to show that working in a cubicle is worse than an open-plan, then you have a valid criticism, but that seems to just be a possible outcome, not the real goal, which would appear to be more along the lines of "what can influence creativity?" taking cues from phrases that have stuck in popular culture, perhaps for good reason, with an aim of understanding creativity better.
I also wonder how many people knocking the research have actually looked at the abstract to see what the justification was, an excerpt:
"These metaphors suggest a connection between concrete bodily experiences and creative cognition. Inspired by recent advances on body-mind linkages under the emerging vernacular of embodied cognition, we explored for the first time whether enacting metaphors for creativity enhances creative problem-solving."
Personally, just me, I think that's quite a good idea for a study.
"it's also disgusting". I find it hard to square with this, partly because whatever someone chooses to do in their own home with a sterile fluid from their own body is entirely up to them, and secondly because there's plenty of people who have to do things other than go to the toilet when they pee (commodes and catheters spring to mind). Not sure why you find it so disgusting to pee in a bottle rather than a bowl covered in germs?
I'll bite.
1) You're a star-nosed mole in a laboratory being stimulated to think you're at a computer.
2) If you're not, prove that. Put up or shut up.
3) Try reading what he said.
There's no such thing as unicorns, leprechauns, jabberwockies, dragons, or hell. I base that statement on the level of proof supporting each one, and as a statement that it's incredibly unlikely that any of them exist (I'll leave open a small possibility that they do, but for all intents and purposes that's the definition of saying something doesn't exist). Do you believe in unicorns? Can you prove that? If you can then there's no point discussing anything with you, if you can't and accept that they don't exist (or that the possibility of them existing is infinitesimally small) just apply the same logic to hell. If you want to believe that something exists without any rational reason to do so, go for it, but don't get all offended when people apply the same logic to it as they do to every other imaginary thing in the history of humanity (even in belief-circles it's a bit hit and miss what they believe about hell, and scripturally it's not got the best representation really).
Both sides seem to have missed the point. On the one hand, taking physical items really is theft, it's not the same at all. This should be utterly obvious to anyone who can be bothered to actually think about it for a moment. On the other hand, the analogy of letting people see your garden isn't accurate either, because there's no loss incurred whatsoever.
It's far more like you spending ages preening your garden and making it look lovely, and then charging a tenner for people to wander around and look at it. If someone then visits your garden, and makes an absolutely perfect replica of it somewhere else and lets people visit for free, that's more in the ballpark. People who might have visited your garden decide it's easier to go to the free one instead, or that it's just too expensive to visit yours.
The difficulty is that this is a very simplistic view of human behaviour, in reality people might decide that they want to view your garden because it's the original. Or that they want to pay to view yours because they feel guilty about just looking at it for free. Or they decide to pay to visit your other gardens because of the experience of the free one. That is a little closer to the truth of it. Then imagine that with every person who visits your garden they also get far better service, they're taken around in a golf cart by you, explaining every inch of it, so the experience is actually better, but not everyone places that high a value on the experience (I would equate that to buying a physical album with box art etc.).
Let's also say that in order to stamp out these other gardens you screened a large presentation to the people who DID pay to go to yours all about how the other gardens were hurting yours before letting them in, and then you randomly picked some of them and threatened to hunt them down for stealing your ideas.
It's not a clear-cut argument either way, whatever some people would like to think (people who are on the freetard side who think it is tend to be doing so to justify their own actions, and those opposing it tend to like the idea that they are morally superior to someone), and that's why important questions about the way that music is distributed and the way that copyright law works have to be answered, rather than just taking one viewpoint and arguing it until you're blue in the face. I download things, as I've said before, and I don't do it that often. 90% of the things I download are things that I wouldn't pay money for (either I can't really afford it, or it's not something I would consider buying. Say about 40% of that I buy at a later date when things change (i.e. I can afford it, or I realise it's worth it after all), mostly because I like physical goods. The other 10% are things that I intend to buy, but want sooner, and there's no digital distribution service for them available, and usually I buy all of these things eventually. I accept that what I'm doing is technically wrong, but by doing this I really do buy more things at the end of the day.
So can we all just grow up a bit, and admit that it's a fuzzy issue, instead of trying to be all tabloid about it?
" I need commit none of those errors in order to despise anyone who flies that flag"
And that isn't grouping them together as one entity? Gotcha.
It's better to be right and have people actually bother reading what you said, the less polite you are the less likely that you'll have people spend time to look at what you've written and treat it without a prejudgement. I have no problem with being wrong, I like being corrected, but you haven't done this so far.
But there's one fatal flaw - fascists can only truly limit people's free speech in a free society if they gain power. As a believer in democracy, I have to admit that even if I disagree with what they would do, if the majority of people who voted went for a fascist party then I'm in the minority and will accept the result and emigrate. The thing is, that's very unlikely so I feel quite safe. There is a more insidious method though, and that's by arguing that there are equal or worse people who need their free speech limiting but that's only possible when we decide who has rights and who doesn't. The ONLY way to combat this type of thinking is to show how dangerous, detrimental and disgusting those ideologies are, not by trying to sweep it under the carpet.
I'm no Nazi fan but I do believe in democracy and free speech. If a political party holds repugnant views that's their right, and they have the same rights to privacy as the rest of us. Is there any difference between this and the posting of pictures and addresses by Redwatch (the BNP spotters) of anti-fascist protestors other than being on seperate sides? My point is that as soon as you start curtailing rights or ignoring the flaunting of rights for a few it becomes much harder to justify the protection of those rights in other cases. This is why public opinion isn't used as a measure of guilt in courts and why we don't support the death penalty regardless of crime. If you don't have privacy of political views democracy breaks down or is stifled (e.g. Iraq). I find many religious doctrines repugnant but if I started naming Christians who supported discrimination against gays or Jews who supported Palestinian settlements, or Muslims who supported the oppression of women would that be right as well? And where would that leave our privacy?
it usually means you're being a dick. And you're wrong. It's probably worth pointing out that you've misunderstood Anonymous as being a single entity with singular views, perhaps even a heirarchy. It's a collective of different views, it's more like a hashtag than a party name, and so it's not that their views change from day to day, it's just that a different segment decides to voice their opinions and rally some like-minded people around them. If you think that you can classify them all as one thing or another you're kind of missing the point.
that an app could take out Linux? Or OSX? Or could take out Android?
It's all very well getting angry about it, but if you can do it maliciously then you CAN do it by accident.OSes should look to minimise this sort of thing, but it won't protect you from stupid coders. Safari is more to blame than the OS, and it's a bit sad that the article takes the easy route to place the most blame on MS, rather than at least an equal footing.
You shouldn't simply decide based on what seems sensible to you
1) Whether quantum physics is a good model of reality
2) Whether government spending is historically good at reversing downturns in the USA
3) Whether bringing in immigrants can help create jobs
It's easy enough to make judgements about all three of these without knowing a single fact other than what you've seen in the media or heard anecdotally from a friend, but if you look at historical examples, evidence, and current research, you'll get a more informed opinion. Maybe bringing immigrants in won't create jobs, and there will be a study that comprehensively destroys this one, but just forming an opinion and assuming it's right because it seems more "sensible" to you doesn't make you a cynic, it just makes you uninformed.
I really wish there wasn't this weird push towards "common sense" thinking over anything else. It's idiotic that in this current day and age we should make any sort of assumption that common sense alone can help us explain complex issues like immigration, economics or science.
I think that Karen Gillan is one of the few things that's right with Doctor Who (along with Matt Smith), although it's got a hell of a lot better since Russell T Davies left. You just have to look at Torchwood to see how small a fish he really is and how utterly incapable he is of making something which sits in that perfect zone between made-up things and realistic scenarios (my best example being that he has to make something up to find a mole in the FBI instead of just thinking up something plausible or a better plot device), or, for that, good dialogue.
Isn't that the truth. Here's what really happens:
1) Some users who don't know bugger all about security download an app and click ok on everything
2) They review app and say it's amazing
3) Users who might normally be more careful think that it's probably fine because lots of people reviewed it positively
4) Because they won't see adverse affects, these users become desensitized to the boxes asking for permissions (and because of just how often you have to click ok to install some things) and ignore them
And there you go, random shit being installed. Asking a user if they want something to do something doesn't make the system any more secure, the only way to almost guarantee security is to use the Apple model, but assuming that this is a bad thing as you probably do (I don't like the way that they treat developers, but for users it's a pretty good option in my opinion) then you'll just have to suck up the fact that permissions questions are a veneer of security to give people the idea that Android does something in their interest.
Full price for a game that you don't own? I buy a fair number of Steam games which means that I take the risk of Valve folding or deciding to turn the whole thing off some day. I don't think that's a huge risk, but with this, it's still a small company, and playing the games requires that your internet connection is decent and working, and you're paying full price for some game sitting on a server somewhere? At least if Steam ever did die I have the games on my HDD so I can (probably) crack them to avoid the need for the Steam client. With this, you could end up paying a lot of money for nothing. Don't they have some form of a subscription model which would give you so many PlayPass credits (or whatever) per month?
1) It's still not clear exactly what it keeps for sending. If it records things temporarily because it has to, then so be it. The reporting of it sounds varied, and I don't really know Android well enough to really get to the bottom of it, but it does sound like it just has a global hook on text entry, and then filters out the presses it gets back for the interesting ones. The fact that it stores those presses in RAM while it's processing them shouldn't shock anyone technical, or be cause for alarm.
2) It's installed by the carriers, so they will clearly whitelist the URL that it uploads to. You may notice a bit of a reduction in your data connection while it uploads, but it won't cost you a penny. If we take their guy at his word then it only uploads when the carrier asks it to. This doesn't sound particularly malicious.
All in all, it sounds like a poor design of some diagnostics software (probably so that it was easier to port), not an attempt to harvest data maliciously. Stop jumping the gun already.
I fully agree with what you're saying. Someone taking something that is yours, and then claiming it is their own work, and profiting from it, is a terrible thing to do. It's essentially fraud.
Now let's say that someone bought a few pictures off you for a decent sum, and you found out a year later that they had made a copy using a scanner and decent printer, framed it, and given it away as a Christmas present to someone. Would you be as mad at them as you were to the person that profited from your work claiming it was your own?
I don't honestly know the answer to whether or not piracy is a problem. I've pirated stuff in the past, but, being utterly and completely honest, I never did it when it is something that I would otherwise buy or pay for. In the few cases where I have been happy with it (not even particularly amazed) I have bought it, and some studies have shown that people who pirate DO in fact spend more money on the same items than those who don't. I also don't think that it's fair to blame the decline of the music industry at the feet of piracy, it started as soon as people started getting access to information and realised that they didn't have to listen to the tripe that was being shoved down their throats. It's also a direct result of the swamp of music that is mediocre borne out of the availability of instruments, recording gear and studios. Unfortunately, while this provides some real quality that we would never have seen twenty years ago, hidden under a rock, it also provides some real mediocrity with bands who should never have seen the light of day managing to get some exposure and then complain that no-one is buying their music.
However, I do find it difficult to contend with the argument of fairness. Is it fair that someone who has worked their whole life, and whose hard work has culminated in an astounding piece of music, art or literature, should be rewarded with nothing? Of course not, but we really are entering a new era of distribution, and it's more possible than ever to offset losses from piracy by circumventing the music industry. Promotion and distribution are getting easier every day, and people are now, more than ever, drawn by quality rather than buying any old thing. In some ways the music industry is turning very rapidly into a truly free market, with people getting the money which is deemed that they deserve. I think it's also difficult to talk about fairness when the people who are most vociferous are those who earn many times the average person's salary. Is that fair? Is it fair that scientists who are working on medical breakthroughs, or an understanding of our universe can earn a pittance, while people who happen to be able to make music quite well can earn ridiculous sums and then complain about a drop of 10% in their income as if it's the end of the world? I don't expect them to get nothing, but I don't see why they should be deemed more important to society.
But all of this is by the by because both examples are of people taking credit for something that you have done, or profiting by it, which most people would say is plain wrong (including most pirates I suspect). The question is, what if they aren't profiting from it? I gave an example for your second analogy, but for your first one it would be more like your colleague printing off your work lots then handing it out to your co-workers and bosses, saying how much he liked it, and telling everyone that it was by you. You aren't getting paid for the extra copies, just the work you did originally, but isn't that a good thing for you?
Obviously this isn't a direct parallel, because in order for it to be so you would have to pay artists a fixed wage for their work, but do you get my more general point? In many ways, filesharing is all about respect, with a bit of naivety mixed in.
I'd also remind you that many of the greatest artists who ever lived earned very little and died in poverty (and in some cases, lunacy). I think they deserved respect while they were alive, but if you want to compare yourself to them, maybe you should think just how much better off you are to start with?
Good thing you waited for the story to play out before getting on your shiny bandwagon. Egg on face? From that article:
"Update: chpwn notes that initial research indicated that Carrier IQ's software may only be active when the iPhone is in diagnostic mode. In a blog post, chpwn confirms that, based on his initial testing, Apple has added some form of Carrier IQ software to all versions of iOS, including iOS 5. However, the good news is that it does not appear to actually send any information so long as a setting called DiagnosticsAllowed is set to off, which is the default. Finally, the local logs on iOS seem to store much less information than what has been seen on Android, limited to some call activity and location (if enabled), but not any text from the web browser, SMS, or anywhere else. We'll let you know when more details arise."
Which do you think is worse now?
None of the saucers mentioned in the article have motherships, they're the actual deep space vehicles. It makes no sense to design a deep-space vehicle to behave well in an atmosphere.
"However, short of some magical property that allows spacecraft entering a planet's atmosphere to avoid the normal laws of aerodynamic"
There's generally so many laws of physics ignored when people get onto the topic of alien spacecraft or future spacecraft in the media, what's a few more?