Expect they can't sell them. As long as they give them away for free as fan based art, Paramount will tolerate the infringement. Start charging, probably not.

Paramount is awful at that - they actually tried to shut down a bunch of fan sites many years ago because it infringed on their trademarks.

CBS (who owns Paramount and pretty much reserves Paramount for movies) has been far more tolerant and I think actually gave their approval. Not to make money, but at least CBS won't pursue action against them for making this.

Effectively, CBS has blessed this work of fan fiction...

The problem isn't that Joe User is too stupid. The problem is that these crypto systems are a real bitch to use effectively. They can take far too long to set up, and to work through any problems can waste too much time. Even when they're working, they're a pain in the ass to use. It's so bad that even experienced and knowledgeable people who can get them working don't want to bother with using these systems!

The big problem is key management, actually. The encrypted mail systems are mostly well integrated and "just work". E.g., PGP integrates into Outlook quite well - if you receive an encrypted email, it pops up a dialog asking If you want to decrypt it. Sending just means you need to pick to encrypt it and with what key (though that's usually embedded with the contact name, so even that is automatic).

The problem is sending keys - and most users would just blindly well, email them around. Then there's key management because you have to import those keys into your contacts.

And then there's interoperability - PGP works fine within an Exchange environment, but it doesn't seem robust enough that someone using another encryption system would be able to decrypt or encrypt messages. GPG might work for it, but still.

At least that was how it was when I last used it - we never did send it over the internet, just internal email.

the fact that someone uneducated will think uneducated things based on noting a compound's everyday use simply means that uneducated people need to educate themselves

The problem isn't the uneducated, it's the ignorant. And especially the willfully ignorant.

The uneducated can educate themselves. The ignorant cannot, and the willfully ignorant resist attempts at education.

Apollo 13 had plenty of good bits but the invented conflict in the crew showed that Ron Howard is a poor choice for director when you what something to approximate reality instead of being a fantasy.

And you know what? Creative license was taken throughout the movie including the use of composite characters (flight director was not a real person but a composite).

The reason for this is it's a movie based on a real event. It's a movie, not a documentary, so there has to be certain creative license taken in order to produce something that works with the public.

The conflict was invented to help move the action along because otherwise you have a rather boring movie - the trick is to do it in such a way that it's realistic (it COULD happen) and minor (so the people portrayed don't get tarred with that "reality").

Titanic (you know the James Cameron film?) is the same thing - Rosa didn't exist at all, but was a nice plot device to move things along. Again, it was a fictional movie based on a real event, not a documentary.

There are plenty of documentaries on Apollo 13 and Titanic, go see those if you want the facts. The movies themselves help present the stuff in a more entertaining (asses in seats) way but to accomplish it requires taking creative license.

Requiring fees based on the deployment platform used does not constitute "free" software under any open source definition I have ever read.

Eh?

Free software is about freedom, not price. You can sell your Free software based on your deployment platform. In fact, prior to the internet, if you wanted GNU stuff, you paid the FSF $5000 to get tapes with the software you wanted.

If you create something, you can give it for free on Linux, and make Windows and Mac users pay. Of course, you run into the the possibility that some Windows or Mac user might take your free software and build it for Windows and Mac and give it away. Just because you sell it, doesn't mean someone else can't build it and give it away.

The only thing that is not free is if you demand in your license that Linux users get it for free, but Windows and Mac users must pay and no one else may build it for Windows or Linux (since that's a restriction on use).

I'll start taking all this gender equality stuff being reported seriously when I see at least half as many articles complaining about the latter as I see about the former. If one is a "problem", so is the other. Otherwise I'll take it there's an implicit assumption that women like to teach (or are better teachers) than men. And likewise men like STEM (or are better at STEM) than women.

Funny enough, there is a concern. MenTeach is about children's success. We want a diverse workforce, both men and women teachers, educating and caring for our children.

Of course, a problem is males are driven away from pre-school, elementary and middle school - it's not for lack of will, but there's an inherent distrust that a male teacher will rape all the female students that basically scare off the male teachers.

It's not for lack of interest or lack of skills, it's from an environment that basically does not allow men to teach.

And that's potentially the problem in IT - it's not the women are less skilled or less interested, it's that the men are somehow driving them away.

It's not a problem if it's simply "women don't want to be in IT" and the reason is "they're just not interested". That's something we can't change - you can't force girls to be interested in computers if they're not interested.

But if they ARE interested, and something else drives them away that we CAN control, then why don't we? Do we create a hostile atmosphere that makes women uncomfortable? Is there something that we don't do that they want us to do (e.g., shower daily)?

And that's what we really need to research. Perhaps 25% of women in STEM is fine, if 25% of them are interested in STEM fields and the 75% are in other areas, then that's perfect representation. It's a problem if say, 50% of women want to go into STEM and half of hose are somehow driven away from STEM, which means there's a problem we should fix.

Of course, this research is hard, and the answers will upset people - it may upset STEM workers because it can say stuff that they don't want to hear (e.g., "STEM workers are awfully misogynistic and should undergo gender sensitivity training as part of a regular ongoing training program"). Or it may upset women when it turns out they just aren't interested to begin with.

All the interesting intellectual and cultural parts from the book are not present in the adaption.
I am thinking, that the adaption goes the "kick the jap and nazi ass ..." in the end, and thats no good.

No, you cannot just take a book and translate it directly to TV. Or a video game. Or a movie.

They're all different media, and different media has different requirements, and different ways of presenting.

For example, in a book, you can spend a LOT of time going into lavish detail. You can't do that on TV or movies, because you'd bore the audience. So you basically have to skip all that and just show it and make reference to it, but what took half a chapter is basically over in 10 seconds on screen.

It also applies to things that may take a big set up - like say a car accident. Well geez, on screen that's only a few minute scene in slo-mo, even though that might make up a major plot point. And even details like something flying off the car can be missed in all the action.

I get those from time to time so I accidentally give them the wrong name and address. I wonder who they sent out to the apartment complex.

And why would Amazon do that? This is an Amazon-sponsored, Amazon-paid-for, Amazon-produced, Amazon-distributed show. Amazon owns the bloody thing!

Amazon could easily make it available to anywhere Amazon has a country presence.

I presume Amazon is producing those things for their Prime service, so they'd have exclusivity over the produced materials (otherwise I'm sure Ridley Scott will sell it to Netflix too).

Netflix makes their shows available in all regions since they make the show.

I get those from time to time so I accidentally give them the wrong name and address. I wonder who they sent out to the apartment complex.

Interestingly, most of those calls don't go anywhere. Even though you make an appointment, they often don't show up.

The ones that do, are always in a nondescript van with no business name or anything. That's because they change names basically weekly to keep out of scam lists.

Isn't this already the business model for most "apps" these days?

Only on Android.

If you have an app, on iOS, you'll make more money selling it ad-free outright in the App Store. But on Android, you won't make much if you sell it outright - you're far better off putting ads in the app.

Ad-based apps on Android generate far more money than ad-based apps on iOS. LIkewise, Ad-free paid apps on iOS generate far more money than paid apps on Android. (Usually because the Play Store isn't available everywhere, nor is Google Checkout/Wallet, so if you have a paid app, that pretty much eliminates your app from showing up in half the places Google Play is available).

So no, raping customer information is NOT a standard business model. Especially since on iOS you can restrict access to your contacts, location/photos (which are a location proxy). Hell, you can't even track a user across apps easily anymore.

Proprietary formats can't be universally judged as good or bad. There are plenty of counter-examples in both directions. For example, the lack of DRM in the Atari 2600 killed the videogame industry by allowing a huge flood of low quality games to flood the market, and the presence of DRM in the NES revived it by allowing Nintendo to act as a gatekeeper to stop that from happening.

Or take something like Apple's Lightning port. It was non-standard since everyone else used micro USB, yet it improved on the USB connector in key areas like being able to be plugged in either way, and being more robust.

Enough so that the ideas gained from the lightning connector were incorporated into a new conector

Now, USB is "better" in that it's more "standardized" but you have to realize how standards organizations work - they are composed of members who have many competing agendas, usually wanting to push their patents into the standard, and in the end, the final standard comes down to who scratched more backs during the technical discussions.

Why is USB so CPU intensive? Intel probably wanted it that way to sell more and better CPUs (only intel has the VID 0x8086, being one of the founders). Etc. etc. etc.

And sometimes a company has a hard decision to make - go with a standard, or go proprietary, and going proprietary requires a lot of work and justification on why it's better. Apple couldn't just invent a new connector without giving the users tangible benefits - a connector that goes in either way is definitely one of them and makes it slightly edge out the standard.

Plus, Apple at least had enough pull to be able to swing it and ensure there would be accessories and other things using the new connector.

The main negative is....ebooks... Publishers want to gouge people for having the text of a book read to them, and would rather screw over blind people than permit Apple to read the text of ebooks for no additional charge. Some publishers have some kind of workaround for blind people, so they don't come across as complete douchebags, but the workarounds also tend to be a hassle.

Actually, I haven't heard much brouhaha over using an iPad to read to you - and this was back when the Kindle was being demonized for offering the feature, yet the iPad could do it via accessibility. It isn't the most friendliest of features but you can use VoiceOver with iBooks and have it read aloud any book as part of it.

No, it's not going to be easy since it reads everything else as well, but it comes standard with the iPad.

I guess it's "hard enough" that people don't bother.

I am glad Google is sticking to their policies. 3 months is easily enough time to deploy a fix.

As one of Microsoft's end users, I'd much rather be faced with the quantifiable risk of deploying a patch than the unquantifiable risk that every system I own has been compromised, any data on them exfiltrated or encrypted and used to hold me to ransom, and the possibility that my systems have been used to attack others.

For all we know, Microsoft could be playing a PR game by developing patches and then holding them just past Google's 90 day window. Two in a row now? Seems fishy to me.

Obviously posted by someone who doesn't work in software development, or has to deal with the fact the software needs to work in millions of configurations and with interdependencies.

Plus, the bugs need to be investigated for the root cause. Patching over the flaw doesn't help things since it leaves the vulnerability open. See shellshock - the bug was plastered over the first time and it didn't work, so another patch was released days later with a workaround, but the fundamental problem was still there.

These aren't little toy utilities you write to scratch your itch, these are major millions of line code bases where bugs can be simple errors in code, to complex design bugs. Like say, shellshock (which is a design bug and now you have a problem of how to fix it because people are relying on the faulty behavior). Sure there are tons of automated test suites and they're probably the reason why they had to recall the patch, twice.

As for malfunctioning patches, you'll sing a different tune when you have to go fix dozens of PCs because the patch bluescreens, or you can't install software anymore. Either way, millions of PCs get bricked from a bad update just to meet some company's arbitrary timeline.

And I don't know, those 3+ recalled patches were pretty serious if you were one of the affected people.

This is a situation where the "slippery slope" argument really does apply. If Google is just going to sit on bugs until the vendor patches... they're going to end up with bedsores. And no one likes bedsores.

Instead, they embarass the vendors a couple times, and once heads are pulled out of asses and people realize they're not screwing around, they start taking these things seriously.

You know, Microsoft told Google that yes, it was fixed. But you know what? They found a bug in the fix and they needed more time to fix it.

So what do you want Microsoft to do - release a buggy patch that could kill PCs? Or ask for more time so they could fix it right?

Now, Microsoft had to recall at least 3 patches in 2014 because of various issues. I'm guessing that the 90 day time limit was responsible - Google pressured Microsoft to release patches, and then they were insufficiently tested.

And yes, it can take a LONG time to fix bugs. Especially if they're deep in the system, and the deeper they are, the more testing that has to be done because the likelihood of breaking stuff is bigger. And given PCs come in millions of configurations, testing is hard.

I'm sure the time will come when Google bricks a bunch of phones because they updated Google Play Services because I'm sure Google doesn't test their update against every Android phone out there. Or they force the vendor to fix it.

And yes, for bugs you want it fixed right. I mean, Shellshock took at least 3 different patches. The first patch didn't really work, the second patch was a workaround but still left the vulnerability in - it was just harder to exploit. And the third patch actually went and fixed the issue.

This reminds me of a game from something like 10 years ago that would delete everything from Program Files if you uninstalled it. I can't remember which one that was.

I think World or Warcraft had a bug that deleted boot.ini, which on NT/XP was what the boot loader read to figure out how to boot Windows. (Vista onwards made that file a binary one instead).

End result was a bunch of people had their boot.ini files wiped. XP had a recovery mode where if it doesn't find boot.init, it checks the first partition on the first hard disk - if it finds ntldr, it'll use that. If not (you installed Windows on another drive, or another partition), you get the "cannot find ntldr" error.

So it affected everyone but Windows was working in a back up mode.