Agent Smith, we need to be on the watch for these pathogens entering our soil. Here, open this bottle and take a sniff. Note the scene. If you detect any of these while on shift, please inform your superior immediately.

Now, please report to quarantine room C for the next 36 hours....

I don't get it. Samsung, Sony, etc have Blu-ray players, they've got Android phones, why not combine both technologies into one awesome media box?

So I got to thinking... "surely somebody has thought of/tried this somewhere by now"

I've found this thus far. It says it supports 3d blu-ray and menus... though I don't see where you would insert the discs (hopefully it's not just for rips)

That used to be the advantage of cheap DVD players too.
The bigger brand names respected region encoding, un-skippable previews/warnings, etc. The cheaper ones were sometimes a bit noisy (parts movement) but generally they didn't bother to implement "features" such as region-lock or unskippable sections, which actually made them more useful.

There don't seem to be as many off-brand Blu-ray players, especially if you want one with Netflix etc. I'd love to see an android-based system which combines something like a Minix X8 or Asus Cube and a Blu-ray. Bonus points if somebody could come up with a blu-ray "shell" which basically includes the drive, power, and infrared remote but allows an upgradable android core for the advanced OS features. It shouldn't be hard to have something which just plugs into the base for power and connects to the drive via a OTG interface. The biggest issue is probably stuff like the Java and copy protection/licensing crap.

Also, how much of said "private data" is actually harvested the phone itself, other than perhaps location data?
Gmail: That goes to Goog's servers before your phone
Talk: Same thing
Contacts: Can be kept on just the phone without sync (for that matter, sync can be toggled on/off for most things)
Browsing history: Do they get anything if you use firefox instead of chrome, and/or don't sync bookmarks?
Maps/Latitude: Location stuff can be turned off

Most of the ways they can get information *from* the phone seem inherent in the functionality being used: i.e. use of gmail, maps, etc

It would be interesting to learn what data is being "sync'ed" beyond that needed to get the functionality out of the given apps.

Or just turn off all location services. On every phone I've got, it's usually a question during the initial installation process.

Yeah. I don't find the implication (that I'm black, gay, whatever) offensive so much as the terms themselves, which are particularly vile as their basic connotation is that somebody of whatever group is less valuable as a human than others.

Erm, read my comment. I'm certainly not saying this is acceptable, what I am saying is that all bad behaviour gets "reported" under some fairly narrow categories. Having a better way of report - and dealing with - such behaviour would be beneficial to all.

For example, if you're reporting personal threats, a report could also scan the chat log for key-words and escalate. Racial/sexist could scan stuff like the N word or b**ch. As there are probably quite a lot of reports, this should help push stuff that's more serious and beyond the typical "noob, loser" etc up the chain.

There's no reason an improvement to such a system couldn't benefit not only women, but everyone.

The difference here as usual is that women expect to be treated differently

The difference is that people pay more attention when it's not a random white male complaining. Seriously, I could do without that shit too, but when I complain about it, I'm a whiner. When a woman complains about it, it's a potential gender-discrimination issue. Ya know what though, if women can clean that shit up - at the very least so that 20+ men aren't acting like 12-yr-old boys - hopefully it will improve things for everybody. That sounds fine to me.

I'm fine with the occasional noob or "you suck", but some people really seem to take being offensive as their goal in life, to the point where the only thing they seem to want is to make everyone else have a shitty time.

So for (b), if Linda is consistenly a serious issue, then Fred reports it. If he reports it multiple times and it isn't dealt with, then he sues the company for harassment.
Literally telling Linda to go f*** herself isn't really a winning response in any situation.

I represent that remark. The fact is that men are expected to want sex, so unless it's guy-on-guy or somebody twice your age, it's not taken seriously.
That said, I'd imagine that penetrative rape - the type commonly suffered by females - is a lot more traumatic.

As a straight male, I've been called Noob, loser, moron, fag (though it doesn't apply), n*gga (though it doesn't apply), whatever.

As much as I hate internet tracking, something I wish it was a little better in terms of these losers. Maybe if the game corps could better track the useless trolls and accept feedback then things would clean up.
DOTA2 had a $10m tournament this year. It's big news. Yet the only real categories they have for reporting are the broad "communication abuse" and then feeding/etc. Maybe if had better ways of identifying (and warning/enforcing) the racist, sexist pricks we could clean some of this crap up. Steam and Origin capture most of the non-console game market, so getting a perma-ban from multiplayer on both platforms (not just the game, but the whole thing) would go a long away to showing that this shit isn't acceptable.

Back when I worked in schools, one of our techs setup LTSP with NFS-mounted homedirs.
I mentioned that perhaps IP-based host authorization wasn't exactly a secure way of doing things, especially when it applied to both students and teachers/admin-staff.
I was told that it wouldn't be an issue, and that files were perfectly safe.

So some time goes by and a demo is scheduled for the system. My compatriot logs in and... he gets a hot-pink desktop with My Little Pony wallpaper theme. Unfortunately that didn't dissuade him from going with NFS, and they rolled it out anyways: "kids will never figure that out"

One thing that shouldn't be underestimated is the ability of a user (especially a young user) with *lots* of free time on his/her hands to figure out ways to game the system...

The sad part being that many non first-world countries still have better internet service than our so-called first-world countries...

These laws are toothless. "Must answer within 20 days"... or what? With no one held immediately culpable, the law is precisely meaningless.

Heard of anyone going to jail for this?

Heard of anyone paying a fine for this?

Even heard of anyone losing their job for this?

Compare: If you don't do something the government desires you to do, there will be consequences.

This is just like the constitution: "Highest law in the land" -- violate it -- as SCOTUS and congress have done over and over -- and the consequences? Nothing.

Just so you taxpayers know your place. The laws aren't for the government. Those are just laws "for show." The real laws are just for you. Because, you know, they care about you.