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Comment Doublethink (Score 5, Insightful) 614

"Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them" - 1984

Media

US To Host World Press Freedom Day 614

rekrowyalp writes "From the press release: 'The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day event in 2011. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals' right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information.' Oh the irony."
Google

Google Wants To Take Away Your Capslock Key 968

heptapod writes "Slashdot reported earlier about Google's Chrome notebook and keen-eyed readers would have noticed the lack of a caps lock key. 'According to Google, this will improve the quality of the comments, because people will not be able to write all in capital letters. I'm not a fan of the caps lock key myself. I never use it, so it can go to hell, for all I'm concerned. But taking away choice from people is not good, especially when this is not going to improve the quality of comments.'"

Comment Re:Right to Privacy ? (Score 1) 728

There is *no* explicit right to privacy in the Constitution, or any other doctrine that the USA was founded on. There is a limitation on unreasonable search and seizure, but no explicit right to privacy.

The bill of rights provides only basic examples of your rights, anything not explicitly given to the 3 branches by the document is retained by the people and States; or at least this is how Madison intended for it to work. There was strong opposition to the inclusion of a Bill of Rights to the document for preciously this reason, that the people would interpret them as their only rights.

The Internet

Amazon Web Services Launches DNS Service 146

wiredmikey writes "Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced a highly available and scalable Domain Name System service designed to give developers and businesses a reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications. The service, 'Route 53,' effectively connects user requests to infrastructure running in AWS — such as an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instance, an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer, or an Amazon Simple Storage Service bucket — and can also be used to route users to infrastructure outside of AWS."

Comment Re:hate speech is NOT protected anywhere. (Score 1) 273

"A Place of Assembly Certificate of Operation (PA) is required for premises where 75 or more members of the public gather indoors or 200 or more gather outdoors, for religious, recreational, educational, political or social purposes, or to consume food or drink." - http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/html/applications_and_permits/pa.shtml

Comment Re:How does this happen? (Score 2, Interesting) 313

Obama is as bad as Bush? Are you cracked?

Obama voted against war. Bush started two wars.

Citation Needed

Then Senator Obama served from January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008, the Iraq resolution was enacted enacted October 16, 2002, the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists September 18th, 2001. When did Obama "vote against war", when he was in the Illinois State Senate?

Comment Re:No predator(s)? (Score 2, Funny) 293

Could it be that whatever fauna that survived, adapted and/or now thrives might do so under conditions perhaps harsher due to radiation, yet plausibly improved by a potentially reduced presence of any predator species, whom may not have fared as well, or may have been displaced?

The deer got superpowers, but the bears glow in the dark

Comment Re:Patriotism Is the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel (Score 2, Insightful) 650

The .fortune at the bottom of the page showing this story say:

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.

Slashdot has achieved artificial intelligence. Or it's another part of the same conspiracy hiding the Lincoln Memorial from Beck's zombie army. Or both, since "reality has a well-known liberal bias" (- Stephen Colbert).

My .fortune offers a retort: "Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches... -- Percy Bysshe Shelley"

Comment Re:Gambling leaves a trail of victims (Score 1) 296

To give your comment some context, it's also worth noting that in the UK 0.6% percent of the population struggle with problem gambling, 68% of the population had participated in some form of gambling, and only 3% gambled online.

Source: British Gambling Prevalence Survey 2007 - http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/pdf/british%20gambling%20prevalence%20survey%202007.pdf

Additional arguments can be be made regarding poker vs. other casino games, but I'll leave those for other posters.

Games

Ubisoft Working On a New Anti-Piracy Tool 377

Ubisoft recently revealed that their game sales have seen a 50% drop over the past quarter, blaming the overall market slowdown and piracy (particularly on the DS) for the low numbers. They also announced that four of their games, including Splinter Cell: Conviction and Red Steel 2, would be delayed until 2010. The company's CEO, Yves Guillemot, now says they are working on a new anti-piracy tool that should be ready by the end of 2009. He didn't offer any details about how it would be implemented.
Microsoft

Microsoft Uses Human Computing Game To Tune Bing 119

Al writes "Microsoft researchers have come up with a novel way to fine-tune the algorithms behind the company's new search engine, Bing: a game that harnesses human computing power to improve the results. Called Page Hunt, the game (which of course requires Silverlight to run) shows users a web page and asks them to figure out a search query that should produce the page within the first five results. The idea is to better understand user behavior and expectations and ultimately improve its search algorithms. Other human-computing projects have sought to digitize out-of-print text (reCAPTCHA) and image labeling (Google Image Labeler). Can Microsoft use a similar approach to gain the edge over its rival? Or does Google already have the edge with SearchWiki, which lets searchers re-rank its results?"
Games

Inside Video Game Localization 90

Atlus USA is a company known for their skill at localizing games — that is, adapting the text and speech in a game to a different language or culture. They've written a summary of their timeline for modifying a game, explaining that it's much more complicated than just running everything by a translator. They also have other articles looking at various parts of their work with more detail. When work begins, they take a few weeks to familiarize themselves with the game, giving them the proper context to understand character interactions and names. The actual translation then takes anywhere from a week to a few months, depending on how much material there is and whether they need to bring in new voice actors. Another month or so is allotted to actually implementing the changes and making technical modifications, after which another month or two is dedicated to bug testing. Then the game is submitted back to its original manufacturer for approval, a process that can take two months, and finally the new discs and game boxes are created, which adds another month. Thus, what many gamers see as a "simple" localization process can take six months or more to complete.

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