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Comment Re:Cutting edge journalism (Score -1, Flamebait) 179

Wait... Google provides your cellphone directly? How did you get on their corporate plan?

Or are you talking about those Nexuses that are provided by a different carrier, and as such that carrier retains the right to do whatever they want to the OSS Android underneath?

You know... because Google can't just go on to the Verizon/T-Mobile/AT&T/Sprint network and update everyone's phone. The provider provides the specific Android build.

And that's why they can't update all the devices at once. Because everyone and their mother can develop their own kernel, and their own Android for their platform.

Now, if everyone just ran AOSP, then Google would be fine to update everyone at the same time.

Comment Re:Clickbait-ish Headline (Score 5, Insightful) 121

yeah, you'll probably deserved get indexed by Google.

deservedly*

But not only that, it's not like Google can infer intent to share the data... you put it out there, and Google said, "hey, this is publically available, obviously people want this to be indexed!"

There's no adequate way to fix this either, because if it's opt-in, then unknowing individuals will fail to opt-in for indexing... if it's opt-out, then unknowing individuals will fail to properly opt-out (robots.txt for example)

If you put up private data publically on the internet then you simply have to accept the fact that no one else could have known that you didn't want to share the data...

Submission + - ESA Rebukes EFF's Request to Exempt Abandoned Games from Some DMCA Rules (eff.org)

eldavojohn writes: It's 2015 and the EFF is still submitting requests to alter or exempt certain applications of the draconian DMCA. One such request concerns abandoned games that utilized or required online servers for matchmaking or play (PDF warning) and the attempts taken to archive those games. A given examples is Madden '09 that had its servers shut down a mere one and a half years after release. Another is Gamespy and the EA & Nintendo titles that were not migrated to other servers. I'm sure everyone can come up with a once cherished game that required online play that is now abandoned and lost to the ages. While the EFF is asking for exemptions for museums and archivists, the ESA appears to take the stance that it's hacking and all hacking is bad. In prior comments (PDF warning), the ESA has called reverse engineering a proprietary game protocol "a classic wolf in sheep’s clothing" as if allowing this evil hacking will loose Sodom & Gomorrah upon the industry. Fellow gamers, these years now that feel like the golden age of online gaming will be the dark ages of games as historians of the future try to recreate what online play was like now for many titles.

Comment Re:Even worse. (Score 5, Informative) 289

Actual Executive Order

Nothing there says criminal penalties.

Also, it says that the actors must be outside of the United States. Remind me again, but Snowden did all of his stuff inside of the United States, right?

As usual, non-lawyers read something think it means something that makes them upset, and it spreads and no one actually sits down to read the actual law.

Comment Yep Problem Solved, Shut Down All Further Research (Score 1) 477

Pedestrians will have to learn new skills to avoid careening out of control cars that do not recognize the pedestrians....

.

new jobs will open up for people who have to dig cars out of snowbanks

a new employment category autonomous assistants will "drive" the self-driving cars in poor weather conditions

Yep that's right because once the pattern recognition has mastered the easy stuff -- which it seems to be close to doing -- they'll shut down all development on tackling edge cases and anomalies. That's how it works, right? We're still driving cars with shoe brakes and using regular picture framing glass so our bodies are cut up in an accident, right?

I mean, some of these problems like icy roads and snow might make for unsolvable problems but we already have cars that can detect loss of traction and go into traction control mode. Have you ever heard of ABS? Developments like that will likely come along for the special cases of autonomous driving. If they don't, it's certainly not a death knell on the technology. At this point, I'll accept a 95% solution.

Comment What an Embarrassingly Vapid Article (Score 5, Interesting) 477

Bottom line: we probably cannot imagine all the implications and collateral effects driverless cars will cause beginning early in 2020 for top-end and early adopters and progressively more widespread year after year until mid 2030 when these cars will be our major form of transportation.

That's it? That's your substance? Hell, why not try? Here are my own guesses:

  • Insurance companies will struggle to adjust. You know all those annoying GEICO commercials? Prepare to watch a lot less of them and if you're in the auto insurance business, now would be a good time to diversify. And if you're not in that business, prepare to enjoy not having to pay monthly on auto insurance. Huge plus for the economy.
  • Real Estate prices will fluctuate away from metropolises. Oh, 1,000 sq ft in a downtown townhouse is $1.5 million dollars? Or a nice house on 100 acres of land is $125,000 but it's one hour away from downtown? Yeah, I think I'll just take that hour drive twice a day and just watch netflix on my phone or read on my kindle or code on my laptop or even just sleep it.
  • Drunk driving/texting while driving/distracted driving will become ailments of the past. Lose your license? Afraid of going home from happy hour "buzzed"? Just buy an autonomous car. A lot less accidents too -- huge plus for society.
  • Organ sources will dry up. A lot of organs come from car & motorcycle accidents. Morbid but true. Need to up our game on printing organs in order to prepare for this.
  • If idiots connect their cars or the underlying system to the internet, people will end up at hacked destinations.
  • Parking will become a bigger business -- especially garages that work hand in hand with autonomous vehicles.

These are all, of course, many years off. But it is starting to look more and more inevitable.

Submission + - Chinese Certificate Authority CNNIC Is Dropped from Google Products

eldavojohn writes: A couple weeks ago, Google contacted the CNNIC (China's CA) to alert them of a problem regarding the delegated power of issuing fraudulent certificates for domains (in fact this came to light after fraudulent certificates were issued for Google's domains). Following this, Google decided to remove the CNNIC Root and EV CA as trusted CAs in its Chrome browser and all Google products. Today, the CNNIC responded to Google: "1. The decision that Google has made is unacceptable and unintelligible to CNNIC, and meanwhile CNNIC sincerely urge that Google would take users’ rights and interests into full consideration. 2. For the users that CNNIC has already issued the certificates to, we guarantee that your lawful rights and interests will not be affected." Mozilla is waiting to formulate a plan.

Submission + - AngularJS Releases Version 2.0; Rebranded to CircleJS

eldavojohn writes: Popular JavaScript client-side MVC framework AngularJS has announced a new release and rebranding after days of hard work and midnight development. Version 1.3 (codenamed AcuteJS) was shortly followed by version 1.4 (codenamed ObtuseJS) and now the project has finally come full circle. "Moving to TypeScript has allowed us to implement four-way data binding between the keyboard and database," the sole developer who devotes 17.2% of his time to maintaining AngularJS said, "a keystroke is now just a few hundred thousand digest cycles away from being stored through your browser to the server — of course your printer will receive a promise." Despite criticism of event listeners triggering other event listeners that then, in turn, trigger the event listeners that triggered them, CircleJS looks to be a forerunner in the race from micro-MVC to nano-MVC architecture.

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