> Performing actions that US govt sees as 'acts of war', against other, *allied*, country?
Well, the European Parliament has found that the CIA in conjunction with right-wing Europeans committed many different acts of terror -- acts killing and wounding hundreds of civilians -- on our own NATO allies during the 1980s in US gov't's pursuit of a strategy of tension.
So for the US gov't to do this would be nothing new.
Great news! I can blame it on the bacteria!
Because I thought I was fat from eating calorie-laden, fat-riddled, corporate-processed junk food and sitting on my ass all day.
Yes, exactly. If some site wants to bar me from using their site because I block their ads, or only allow session cookies, or lobotomize JavaScript -- or whatever -- they're free to do that. I have no problem with that.
For example, I refuse to read NYT articles that require me to create an account. I feel not only is the NYT overrated, but the overzealous way they track users means I'd rather not use their "service". Ditto for Facebook, once aptly described as a surveillance service disguised as a "fun" social network.
More and more people are going to have to decide whether they're sheep being led to the slaughter, sacrificing their privacy, attention (in the case of ads), and forced to do this or that because some "service" wants this, or whether they're actual customers or consumers with real rights and the ability to make decisions. IMO since the Internet was privatized/corporatized after the 1990s telecomm act, the pendulum has swung way too far towards users being considered sheep for exploitation.
As Andrew Lewis bluntly put it: "If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
There are several reasons I block ads: I don't want to be tracked. And I don't want to be conned, gamed, decieved and/or lied to (and for most ads, this is their goal). But most of all, to me it goes back to a fundamental concept of computing: This is my computer, I'm paying for the network link, and I get to choose what enters my computer and how I use/display that data/info.
Sadly, advertising permeates our society and is forced down people's throats everywhere. Back in college when they had ideals, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google said, "We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." They were right. The same concept applies to other advertising.
Does this mean that Destructoid or other sites might disappear because people like me don't want advertising? Yup, it might. But that's not my problem -- it's an "adapt or die" mindset. If they choose a less deceptive way of funding themselves -- straight subscription, crowd sourcing, whatever -- I'll decide whether their value is worth me paying what they ask.
Then I'll decide whether to allow their text, data, pics and videos, etc., into my computer, and I then I'll decide how I want to use/display that content.
There's an old saying in business: The customer is always right. If the customer doesn't like your advertising or business model, the business has a problem, not the customer.
The brilliant and hilarious political writer Molly Ivins wrote the ultimate takedown of Camille Paglia's absurd intellectual methods (20 years ago!). Archive.org has a PDF of the original article from Mother Jones magazine.
If you plan to read it, ignore the rest of this comment, but if you're not going to follow the link, here's the final paragraph of the article:
There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS." Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole." Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole.
Every time I've done prints at local store, the color has been awful. Sometimes the image itself turns grainy. The prints I order through iPhoto are wonderful, though I haven't ordered in a few months. I believe they were using Kodak's service, which is getting handed over to Shutterfly?
But considering the fact of global warming/climate change and the topic of greenhouse gases, isn't our core problem that we are simply burning too much stuff? With that in mind, is this really going to help?
Shouldn't our focus be on creating forms of energy that produce energy without burning things?
As a beekeeper I have to say that this is the most ridiculous thing I've seen. There are so many issues wrong with this that it's absurd.
I've had observation hives (here's one example) in my home. Some work pretty well, others not so well. Take my word for it, this one won't.
Airplanes today have basically the same controls on them -- joystick, foot pedals, etc -- that they did when the Wright Brothers invented the airplane early in the 20th century -- they haven't changed the UI in that amount of time.
Cars haven't basically changed since they removed the manual lever throttle and went with the gas pedal -- many decades of a standard UI.
Why can't we do that with computers? Stop reinventing the wheel!
Do normal people really care about KDE versus GNOME? Don't they just want a UI that works and isn't constantly changing things?
Look at Windows. What are the UI changes between Win95, Win2K, XP, etc. etc. Aren't they just cosmetic BS to make people say, "Gee whiz, they changed X, Y and Z -- isn't that cool?!" Were people really demanding that Microsoft keep rearranging the Control Panel?
What was wrong with the UI standard that every program will have a pull down menu, and on that menu will be a File menu, and in that File menu will be a Close/Exit option, and on every pull down menu will have a Help menu, etc, etc.
The problem with our UIs isn't the UI, it's a lack of standards and a bunch of clueless coders that keep reinventing the wheel and confusing the hell out of 90% of people for no good reason.
Apple is pretty predictable -- once they've started showing their hand. They consistently take successful ideas used in one place and expand them as far as possible. Successful user interface paradigms developed for one application later appear in others. The iOS App Store begat the Mac App Store. So it seems pretty obvious that Apple, having introduced Siri, will expand it.
Except for major OS releases to paid developer program members, Apple almost never releases anything with a "beta" label. Siri is labeled a beta, which surely is meant to indicate that more functionality is planned.
Let's say you have to design a connector for a device which is relatively thin, and is expected to get thinner in the future. Existing common connection standards like USB don't provide the functionality you want. What's the most obvious shape? How about a flat line?
Wow, amazing work. I don't think there's much inspiration required.
First, piracy is a copyright violation; piracy is NOT theft.
But to a address your point:
I'm not sure how busting people for making counterfeit hardcopy and selling them for money qualifies as a "corrupt scheme/racket".
The corrupt scheme is the inflating of the value of the so-called piracy by counting every blank disc as a pirated copy and lying like this for political purposes. This is the same immoral/sleazy tactic used by police to inflate the "street value" of seized marijuana plants. The corrupt cops count seeds, seedlings, leaves, stems, root balls, etc. when they know that only the bud of the pot plant gets sold and has real value. They lie this way to make the "crime" seem bigger.
This is the same reason the corrupt PI lies about the value of pirated material. But in this case, they're also doing it to influence corrupt, corporate-funded politicians to pass harsher laws.
What a low-life pond scum, willing participating in such a corrupt scheme/racket. Some people will do anything for money.
May the worms eat his dead body from its casket and vomit his remains.
Apple's products are hardware-software bundles. Apple sometimes sells updated software to use on hardware you already bought from them. They also are a vendor of content -- none of which they create -- with the goal of making their hardware-software bundles even more appealing.
Stupid exceptions that don't change my argument:
FileMaker (a mostly-ignored Apple subsidiary)
You can use iTunes on Windows to purchase music & video and never put them on an Apple device. This wasn't the goal of the iTunes Music Store, and doesn't make much money for Apple.
The legions of 3rd-party products Apple sells online and at their stores have nothing to do with this.
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
