Characters in science fiction stories allow us to look at things differently than we normally do.

In some cases, it lets us look at prejudice, racism, etc. (But but.. HE'S BLACK and WHITE and I'm WHITE AND BLACK).

To be honest, I never thought about it before, but the treatment of the droids in Star Wars is really just another look into George's racism.

When he was growing up- racism was so prevalent, you could be blind to it. Just watch old 1950's movies and TV shows and it's atrocious.

I don't think George was trying to make a point and get people to see their racism and willingness to be sadistic (or even casually murderous) to weaker beings but wowsers- the author really opens my eyes. I won't see Star Wars the same way again.

Even the GOOD guys are fairly callous and evil to droids- treating intelligent beings as slaves.

Very interesting.

He lost because the U.S. government has it's hand so far up Sweden's ass that the U.S. are poking their fingers in Sweden's mouth and controlling what they say.

I'm a U.S. citizen and it's shameful to me. I'm embarrassed for Sweden.

Except if you read the link you will see she wasn't sleeping. She later recanted and said she was half asleep.

A female prosecutor dropped the charges. One of the females involved wanted the charges dropped and the state pursued them anyway.

Let's put it more likely given the spending of millions of dollars over a dubious rape case by a foreign national (it's not like he pulled a stranger off the street and violently violated her while she screamed and pleaded for him to stop and he didn't drug them etc etc.)

Anyway.. what's more likely...

The US government is smearing him, is going to illegally take him away and torture him out of spite (since he really has no secrets they don't already have)...

Or that he SUDDENLY became a rapist RIGHT AFTER dumping a bunch of US government secrets.

Nobody is taking out DRM from XBOX or Playstation. They're only talking about taking away region locking and phoning home for daily authentication. You're still going to have to deal with Ubisoft and their uPlay bullshit and redeemable one-time codes and so on.

People also seem to be constantly conflating DRM with used games. The two have little to do with each other. Sony has said they won't infringe on your right to own your purchases and lend, give, trade, sell them and they won't let others do that, either. That doesn't mean DRM won't still be used.

Really? I see a ton of people with those little round dot bandaids and similar things over their macbook/pro/other laptop cameras all the time. In an age where the government petitions the court to use your webcam to monitor you and malware exists to monitor your webcam and stream it back to douchebags somewhere and so on, you'd be a fool *not* to. Or, at least, not to make a specific conscious decision to leave it uncovered.

Here's what is wrong with it -- and the comparisons to Steam are always off the mark.

On previous consoles, you can play any game you own. You bought it. It is yours. You physically have it somewhere. You can still play your PS2 games on a PS2. You can still play your NES games on an almost 30 year old NES. With digital games on console, you'll be able to play them until they decide to turn the download server off. Or turn the DRM system off. Or turn off XBox Live and move on to the next thing. It also means that there is no more going out and buying a Sega Jaguar from 20 years ago and a bunch of used games somewhere to play it on, because you enjoy it or because you weren't into games at the time the Jaguar came out, but you'd like to experience them.

Then, there's also the issue of generations... A game you buy in September of this year on the 360 won't be playable when you upgrade to the XBOX ONE two months later. On Steam (well, PC in general - let's stop acting like Steam is the entirety of PC gaming) - I can still play games I bought ten years ago on my newest rig, even though it is the tenth machine I've built in ten years. I can still play PC games on my PC that are thirty years old.

And, finally, Microsoft has shown no interest in discounting games. Their "on demand" selection is both pathetic in variety and price, usually charging more for the digital version of a game that is several years old than the actual physical copy would cost to order online and have shipped to your house. On PC - you have a massive collection of indie stuff directly from developers and publishers, a ton on Desura, many sold through Humble Bundles. You have tons of older stuff preserved through GOG, and you have unbelievably steep discounts on newer games, on Steam. Often, during the same year they were released. And all that without paying $60/yr.

Gamestop's business model is irrelevant. Further, what do you or I care? I am not in the business of worrying about the financials of the game industry. I am in the business of watching my own finances and if I can save money, that is important to me. Gamestop is pretty crappy and so is their exploitive business model. Using that as some justification to diminish consumers' rights to own their purchased content and have portability and resale and so on is a bit like using the shit the Westboro Baptist Church says as an excuse for eradicating free speech.

How is this going to help you, if it requires kinect to identify you during automatic login to your account?

It is a scam that only the low IQ waste their money on.

"The group is designed for the carriers to let 'mobile operators shape Ubuntu's mobile strategy. " This will do nothing but destroy the platform. Carriers have nothing good to "advise" any phone OS maker about. Every one of them shovel more crap on top of the phone that what is upposed to be there and destroy features they dont like.

Thus ends Ubuntu Phone OS.

I really like this idea. It could push things enough that the effort to keep him under wraps breaks down.

One that actually has a clue as to how Logic and computers work. Almost every single CS grad we get nowdays cant even pass the tests for employment like binary math, or solving a logic problem.

Full details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

The rape charges are a bit tenuous.
Firstly, they started with consensual sex.
Secondly, some of the females changed their accusations.

In one of the two cases, the "rape" charge based on not using a condom was found to actually be that the condom broke during consensual sex.

To quote the meat:

An extradition hearing took place on 7â"8 and 11 February 2011 before the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court.[260][261] At the hearing, Assange's defence raised a variety of objections, including mismatches between the EAW and the original accuser statements to the Swedish police[262][263] that exaggerated the nature of the complaints.[264][265] In particular they argued the original police reports showed - contrary to the EAW - absence of alleged rape; absence of alleged force or injury; admission in both cases of consensual sex on the same occasions as the allegations; and splitting of a condom used with plaintiff 1 rather than failure to use one.

The defence also highlighted evidence that: plaintiff 2 had later admitted to being "half asleep" after consensual sex, rather than "asleep"; that the plaintiffs had originally been seeking to compel Assange to take an STD test rather than prosecution;[266] and that plaintiff 1 had thrown a Crayfish party for Assange at her home the evening after the alleged incidents, from which she tweeted: "Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world's coolest, smartest people! It's amazing!" and invited Assange to stay in her room afterwards.[267][268]

---

The entire thing is a ridiculous abuse of government power and abuse of the rule of law.
They do not spend millions of dollars per rapist. If they DID we would probably catch more of rapists until we went broke.

I've had the misfortune to have to deal with this Ian guy and he's an UTTER UTTER c--t.

BT is a disgraceful company and the amount of people in the company I work for who have needed to use BT and been royally screwed over by them is shocking.

At least he's leaving BT and going in to government where this behavior is expected I guess.

As a dual British citizen, I can only say this:

his appointment to the House of Lords is a strong argument in favour of getting rid of the undemocratic House of Lords, or at least making it an elected body.

No, that's just how they smell now, they never learned how to bathe.

"You've been programming for at least 20 years. That means you've started when things weren't buried behind seven layers of abstraction but had to be done by hand. In languages that didn't help you all that much, but didn't get in the way of letting you get things done either. So, like me, you've seen things those young whippersnappers wouldn't believe."

Those languages still exist, and real programmers learn them and even more powerful stuff that makes you a far better programmer... Like Assembler.

the "young whipper snappers" had better get off their asses and learn it so they can leverage knowledge that their peers do not have so they can be far more valuable in the workforce.

Honestly they really should force CS students to program on Arduinos and Pics before they ever touch larger hardware. Forced to deal with slow processor, tiny ram and near zero storage makes better programmers.