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Comment: Re:Indeed. (Score 1) 219

by KitFox (#39811293) Attached to: Privacy Advocates Slam Google Drive's Privacy Policies

There is indeed a huge difference between the Google TOS and the others. A few important words in the Google TOS are pretty ominous -- "publicly perform", "publicly display", and "promoting".

You give a document to Google, say one that contains sensitive information like your passwords, tax returns, or bank account numbers, and they can take a full-page advertisement in the New York Times showing the content of your document. They might not, but they can under these terms.

Or, you store an MP3 your band recorded with them, say one that's destined to be a barn-burner of a single, and they can use it in their television ads, for free. They might not, but again, "publicly perform" and "promoting" are dangerously broad terms.

No thank you.

Still subject to Privacy Policy. So yes, if you put a document of your passwords or tax return on the internet and click "Share with Anybody who has the URL", they will show it to anybody who has the URL, whether you gave that URL to them or not. However if you say "Viewable by me only", showing your MP3 on their commercial would be a violation of their Privacy Policy, which would quite properly fall back on them.

Comment: Re:Why X360 and Kinect exclusive? (Score 2, Interesting) 95

I'll hit both sides in this case.

The first consideration is that PC Gamers, who already spend a ton of money on the gaming rigs and have a lot more capability than any console's half-decade-old tech, feel now like the game manufacturer is treating them like second-class citizens. PC games that have Console-optimized content, focus on the console development over PC development, generally a perceived lack of respect for the PC gaming population. Literally to the point where, in this case, development of mods for the PC is not only effectively almost Open Source, but Bethesda isn't even making any official mods except HD packs that don't look as good as the third party ones.

It's to the point where the people who spend the most money on their hardware have the least support. Then the fact that the game is throttled to work best on what is effectively nearly ancient technology these days, their super-hardware does them little good. Try using a 1x3 surround-screen setup and you'll quickly discover that the menus and UI are sized based on the width of the screen without accounting for the height. Unusable. Skyrim could have been a beautiful experience for the high-powered gamer, but it isn't unless the gamers themselves fix it. Fixing it is often a battle against the official developers also, as official patches that fix a handful of things also break dozens of third-party fixes.

Now that it's to the point where PC gamers are feeling like they're being told "Sorry, your gaming experience can be far too much better than those peoples'. We need to give you a handicap.", we're getting less and less pleased. Here's a comparison: What would you do if Amazon.com said "We're giving out cool stuff to people who buy things from us! But... We decided not to give it to anybody who lists a book on our system. Sorry, Michael, you've got all the benefits of publishing a book, so you can't have this stuff." I would expect you to potentially feel slighted. All in all, it's human nature to not want to be considered an afterthought, unsupported, inferior market segment, etc. People buy high end PCs to have a better gaming experience than the people who spend a quarter as much on a console. They don't expect to be tossed the scraps and told to fend for themselves by the game developers just because they have better hardware.

On the other side of the coin, there are many times more users buying it for the consoles. It's just a "business decision" to make the important stuff for the bigger market. One can also consider that the "additional content" probably has a strong propensity for carrying a cost, so the highest revenue will come from the larger market segment. Money speaks, after all.

Comment: Re:Why X360 and Kinect exclusive? (Score 2) 95

PC gamers aren't upset about the lack of voice control. We've had that forever by comparison.

What we ARE upset about is:

"...been hard at work on creating the first set of game add-ons that will be exclusive to the Xbox 360. This additional content will add new quests, locations, features, and much more to the world of Skyrim."

Comment: "Only 5% of users" exceed the cap? (Score 1) 211

by KitFox (#39220995) Attached to: After Complaints, AT&T Solidifies, Increases Data Limit

Sometimes I think that people like to throw around numbers because they realize how few people understand the true impact.

Let's take "Only 5%" in real terms...

That means one in twenty people are being throttled. Crit in a d20 system? You're throttled. 1,000,000 Customers? 50,000 are throttled. That's a medium rural city being throttled. AT&T's nearly hundred million customers? Potentially five million throttled customers each month.*

5% is not a lot with a small total, but can be a pretty big number when you get to the subscriber count they have.

(* I am aware of the fact that they had around 95 million subscribers in January 2011, and that not all of them will be data users. There are plenty of dumb phones still around. Feel free to cut it down to, say, twenty million smart phone users at risk of bring throttled, and you still catch a million.)

Comment: Re:Will it stop frivolous patents and patent wars? (Score 1) 368

by KitFox (#37348488) Attached to: Patent Reform Bill Passes Senate

If your product is on the market before the slimy scum bag files for a patent, he'll be rejected at the patent office, because your product is prior art. Every aspect of the product is prior art, whether it was patented or not. Under a first to file system, you can't sue someone (successfully) for patent infringement if their product was for sale to the public before you filed. Under a first to invent system, the slimy scum bag might win, if he actually invented the "trivial aspect of your product" before you did, plus various other conditions. Under the first to file system, that messy problem of proving who invented first is removed.

The above statement (parent), if true, is the most informative item I have read in this entire comment discussion.

Earth

Anti-Matter Belt Discovered Around Earth 208

Posted by timothy
from the just-a-pinch-between-the-cheek-and-gum dept.
hydrofix writes "A thin band of antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time. The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters [arXiv] (Note: abstract free, full text paywalled), confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter. The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and cosmic rays. Aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of these antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft — an idea explored in a report for NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts."

Comment: Re:gee, a sneaky way to get the average /.ers age (Score 1) 336

by KitFox (#36341134) Attached to: I've had a personal email account for ...

Why not just use 'number of total birthdays' to declare the legal age, instead of our current 'number of total birthdays minus one' (which doesn't count the day of your actual birth)? That would also fix the problem.

People born on February 29th would have to wait a darn long time to drive or watch adult movies.

Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?

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