To be clear; glquake make 3D video cards take off in the consumer market. I would have never purchased one until glquake promised me reflections.

And all was holy. And I loved it. Canopus, first adopter here.

Exactly, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Then again, Carmack wrote games for OpenGL (when Windows didn't support it without extra drivers...).

So it's not even about Windows vs. Linux. It's about killing Direct X with OpenGL - because, I'm guessing, most programmers are lazy.

And thus it is revealed. People and classes can have that same baseline. It's not that we realize the class differences and there is elements of discrimination does not mean we are the cause of it. Hate crimes don't create hate crimes because the law exists - the laws exist due to the offenders, it is reactionary due to American society (and frankly others too).

There is no class, even those you say aren't protected, the un-named majority, that can't sue or be viewed as a victim for their so-called class. There is nothing in these ideals that elevates anyone in society over another - in fact it seeks to establish to the people the playing field should, in fact, be leveled. For your "people" to be afforded a certain baseline of opportunity we have to have recourse when someone pushes that baseline back/down/whatever to a person because of a class they saw/heard/assumed when they met with them, etc.

"Hardly" - It is not just hardly his fault. The action led directly to those consequences. You are telling me that shaming a man for sleeping with another man - and he kills himself - and that's not a hate crime - and it was hardly his fault? Are you on the defense team because I am getting that you are against all allegations against the man, for whatever reason. Seems to be either an incidental hate crime or one in which he was more negligent than aggravated... but I can't tell you if he meant to shame him for being gay or not. "Just kidding" doesn't cut it, he didn't know he was gay?

At what point of setting up a camera and recording are you responsible for your actions - something has to be done, at least there was a trial.

"Justice" - that word means whatever you want to make it mean. You can make justice an eye for an eye or even harsher if you say that is "justice" where ever you may be. Revenge and justice - who cares? The dead man isn't trying to take revenge. Given there is probation, counseling and other attachments to the short sentence, I'm okay with that. There is a potential there to land in prison for 3 years - or his life can be saved if he's not really dumb enough to do it again if he didn't actually mean to do it.

Anytime someone dies it's hard to swallow 30 days + attachments is enough to even resemble justice when there is a chain of events where said person on trial is along the chain of events that led up to such a situation.

Legality is established if you have access to those channels, those shows, that have already aired. You are essentially time-shifting. Mr. Rogers (RIP) would argue it.

What can't be done due to agreements between other parties not involved in the recording, transcoding and distribution of the files themselves is... distribute them (even after they air in this case mind you).

Movies, TV shows, music - they are restricted by who can distribute them, and that's the problem. It's like being able to have drugs (TV recordings for shows you [paid for and] missed) but no one can sell them but other parties who have agreements in place to be the sole distributor. And that's a civil matter except now we have laws against not agreeing to an exclusivity contract that you were never presented with. I don't even understand how some of these cases actually proceed when I think of how ignorant the argument is - however, I do understand very much so everyone wants to get paid.

There is your golden ticket, content delivery over the internet that is as fast and reliable as pirates that is freely shared and money changes hands to pay the original owners of the works.

Also, we have to take his word that he has friends. And they are at Google.

It's not really data about people - it's just data. That's it. People are just part of the entire model (and the hardest to analyze). Today using Google Music I realized their strategy is simply to collect as much music as possible, from as many sources as possible to do their own internal analysis (who likes what, what types of varieties people tend to like in conjunction, what is most popular, how to catalog it - based on sound, how to develop music searches that rival anything ever seen). The next step is the monetization of that analysis.

Google's business is a three step process. Acquire data, then analyze it and then maybe offer search or another service, depending on what they find. It just happened that the web was all there for them to grab. Then newsgroups... then they bought map data (and companies) and etc. The latest, buying travel booking software (in whatever order). Along the way, and still, they are breaking down web data into new types of searches, through analysis - news, now recipes.

Not to say there might be something nefarious at play - but I don't think this is it. Android handsets would be the way to do it - if they were going to at all.

(I'm the parent poster to the AC)

I agree, I am with you. I replied once to a survey card at 14 years old saying I made $250,000+, was the CIO (or the equivalent), and made the purchasing decisions for 10,000+ employees. For a year I received a free copy of a weekly IT magazine. I loved it - but can't remember the magazine's name.

The value you mention is accuracy - which is not that sought after in the current market. Right now if you create a mailing list for motorcycle owners, which no one can actually use (DMV laws against it) and instead use inferred data - you will get the same response rate as you typically do. It's really up to the analysts. Facebook can gather data, but the question is can they actually leverage it - or will they sell you a data dump? Will it be an external or internal cost? Right now, you can place ads there, but you can't just buy from them a list of names and interests (income, and etc).

In that regard Facebook could at most, right now, give me partial information - name, city, phone number. If they are provided. E-mail would require a TOS change. They don't ask for a street address. So I would then need to do a merge with my existing consumer database and find out where John P. Smith lives, if I have him, or do I have him as John Smith, no initial.

There is another side to it - that you don't mention, and I failed to - a channel to reach consumers. Facebook, beyond interstitial ads, could be the mailing address, the inbox, etc for individuals and households you would like to hit. E-mail laws are in place, phone laws are in place (snail mail - forget it - bulk mailing supports the post office). There is no reason Facebook couldn't suddenly turn on a way for someone to send marketing material to users directly.

If facebook's data collection really was no more egregious than current practices there is absolutely no way wall-street would be drowning in their own drool over the company.

I disagree. They are valued because of the user-base and the eyeballs for ads right now - and using the data generically to target ads (they are horrible! I would do much better with a custom list... and probably charge less). They can not learn any more than what Visa is telling Experian, etc. Why do you think you have been urged to get that Debit Mastercard? The credit card companies, and their ilk, the houses who collect, analyze and sell this data - some totally private - are valued indeed. Facebook has yet to be traded in a way to let the market actually decide their value. It's a guess - and it's the internet - it's fleeting at best.

I don't even come to say I support all of this marketing stuff. I was called scum, over and over here - and I take it with a grain of salt and all. I was floored myself when I learned how it all worked - but we have to make money. Creating a mailing list isn't exactly dumping petrochemicals in the river by the playground. In reality, no one looks at the names - no one checks up on people. The lists are actually made to be small - and not to bother people who won't reply (it's a higher cost per contact/response/order/etc).

Yes, I'm amoral because I used the data others collected to send you bulk mail - highly targeted bulk mail that you likely responded to because I was good at my job.

It's my fault someone collected it. If I didn't have the job, my boss would have bought the data and had someone else do create the lists...

But you don't understand my point. You say you don't want this happening, but you are doing nothing to stop it - but bitching, right? Because you really lost the ability to control this a long, long time ago.

It's as bad as people saying they don't want to use Facebook because, gasp, "they" will learn about you. I worked as a marketing database analyst - they have known about you for years. For pennies I could buy demographic data (per household) for my metro area telling me if someone was likely to own pets, what type of money they made, what their job was, their ethnic background and other mundane details. If people are really concerned about their privacy, as much as they claim here, I wonder how they even get to Slashdot. How did they sign up for Internet service - if stolen, how did they get their PCs? Did they ever do anything that could have been sent up to companies like Experian? Because if so - "they" already know.

And really - "they" don't care. Then just want you to buy more tanning visits.

You provide a well connected, sane and non-paranoid point of view. You are clearly helping the real debate going on about privacy.

They are deleting nothing, it doesn't apply to you - and probably most people here. It's hardly even news at all to be honest.

Completely OT, and totally trollish to say the least. Even Bing doesn't show any results to back up such a claim.

they filter and censor search results as they (or other big companies) see fit

Please elaborate on this...

Because I think even the CEO couldn't get Google to remove results.

Departing Google CEO Eric Schmidt was known for some of his bumbling public statements -- like saying that privacy didn't matter -- but apparently he made some internal blunders as well.

One of the biggest: asking Google's search team to remove information about a political donation from its search results.
According to a new book about Google by Steven Levy, Schmidt's request was shot down by Google exec Sheryl Sandberg, who is now COO of Facebook. The book was reviewed this morning by the New York Times, which got an advance copy.

The fact he would make such a request at all is pretty amazing -- especially since Google's lawyers have said that the company never promotes or eliminates particular sites from search results, even when trying to fight spam. Earlier this month, Google engineer Matt Cutts contradicted this stance, basically admitting that Google can use "whitelists" to exclude certain sites from changes to the algorithm.

But hey, it is their search engine and all.