Keep in mind that several of those games are indie games, not "big name publisher" games (Rust, DayZ, I think Dying Light and Evolve are indie too). Steam has become a major indie release platform as well as bigger games.
Steam does other things to increase its popularity besides have big name games; the constant sales, curator and game finding systems, big picture mode, and in-home streaming are all great features that GoG lacks. The last in particular is fantastic; I can install my games on my beastly computer in my room and then play them on my HTPC downstairs on the projector without having to install them twice. I can also add my wife's collection of games to mine and play them interchangeably (we both need the game to play together, but we can share singleplayer games).
While I don't particularly like Steam's DRM, at least for my system it's mostly unobtrusive (if I have issues it's related to 3rd party DRM, not Steam's) and offers some great features I can't get elsewhere. I'd prefer no DRM but there are enough positives that the majority of my game purchases are on Steam. I use GoG as well, especially for classic games as they have fantastic compatibility software, but it won't become a primary for me until the actual service improves.
Gabe Newell has actually stated he's against DRM, and Steam primarily uses it because the studios demand it for their content. In fact, many games on Steam don't use DRM at all; Steamworks DRM is optional, and if you go into the Steam directly for a non-DRM'd game, you can just run it straight from the executable. They don't advertise which games use their DRM and what don't but Valve isn't a pro-DRM company. They offer a non-obtrusive DRM option rather than have everyone use a bunch of different worse ones.
I mean, it's absolutely people's right to hate on Steam, but I'd argue that they do a great job of compromise and offer a lot of extra value to the consumer beyond DRM. That counts for a lot to me. I'd love to see DRM go the way of the dinosaur, but if Steam is the worst I have to deal with, oh-freaking-well.
And by communities I assume he means in the home, where most refrigerators will give you essentially the same thing as the majority of bottled water. And even if the water is from special place, it's still essentially water (there isn't a ton you can do to modify plain water). Even a drinking fountain is not giving you a significantly different product from a bottle of Dasani or Aquafina, other than the plastic bottle.
People pay for the convenience and perceived value of bottled water, not because it's a superior, finite product that they can't easily get elsewhere.
Water is one of the few resources where the comparison actually works because, for the purposes of drinking (as assumed by the example of bottled water), water is effectively an unlimited resource. You can't physically drink enough tap or filtered water to significantly impact your water bill (hence the "essentially free").
Yet people consistently pay for bottled water, including brands like Dasani, which is literally filtered tap water. In both cases we're talking about an essentially unlimited resource, which not coincidentally tends to be free or close to it (weird thing, that supply and demand principle, especially when supply approaches infinity...).
Your comparison to the necessity and tangibility of both things is irrelevant. He wasn't talking about water in general, which is finite and valuable, but about water for drinking in communities, where it is effectively unlimited and available for free. And yet people still pay for that same resource when it's completely unnecessary to do so.
This directly counters your statement that people won't pay for something if they can get it for free and the resource is unlimited. This is demonstrably false.
This comment is hilarious in the context with you being an Insider on Techdirt. So you think that you can't compete with free on a website that offers all of it's content for free that you are currently paying for?
What specifics do you need? You're proving he's right every time you pay for his free content.
There's so much irony here, but one of the biggest is your misconception that piracy is hard, or even risky. It's not, despite millions upon millions of dollars the MPAA and studios have thrown at it. In other words, Mike's "utopian vision" already exists as far as your complaint is concerned.
Here's the thing. A content company isn't competing with pirates. This is a fallacy, and one that even a slight amount of logic utterly destroys. There's only one scenario where piracy even affects a content creator, and that's the scenario where a potential customer would have bought their product, but due to free alternatives, chose not to. Every other scenario is completely irrelevant; maybe the person chose to pirate, but wouldn't have bought the product anyway, or the person didn't pirate, and wouldn't have bought the product ever, or they bought the product. None of those scenarios are slightly affected by piracy, although for some reason everyone gets hung up over the first one. If by some miracle they couldn't pirate your stuff, they still wouldn't buy it, so the end result is the same.
The actual problem, where someone could have been a customer but chose to pirate instead, is always fixed by one of two things: either you make the product available at a price they're willing to pay, or you improve your service to a level that they're willing to pay. If you don't fix one of those two things, all you're doing is creating the person who pirates but wouldn't have bought it anyway, by definition.
The amusing part is that the person who pirates, but may have become a customer, is actually more likely to increase profits than the opposite. Why? If they considered paying they probably have an interest in your product. By pirating it, they are being exposed to the quality of content you create. If they like it, they are more likely to consider purchasing other products from you in the future.
This is known in fancy business terms as "advertising." Companies pay millions of dollars per year in advertising. A 30-second advertisement during the Super Bowl costs around $4 million. And piracy is advertising, even if it isn't authorized. The best part? It's free. So your worst possible scenario, the person who would have bought, but chose not to due to the availability of free alternatives, just got a full advertisement that didn't cost you a cent (again, because unless your product is at a price or service level they're willing to pay for, they aren't going to pay...this is common sense).
This works even better for the younger crowd. Kids in high school and college rarely have a ton of expendable income, if any. They aren't going to buy a lot of content because they simply can't afford to. No amount of anti-piracy is going to magically change their income; without access to your content, they simply aren't going to buy it.
You know what free access to your stuff causes, though? Interest. Habit. Fandom. Things that, once they do have more expendable income than free time, makes your better service and reasonably priced product more appealing. Studies have shown over and over again that individuals with the highest piracy rates are usually the ones that spend the most money on content. Which is obvious if you think about it; fans want MORE.
Do you think HBO subscriptions would have risen as much if Game of Thrones was only available via HBO, and not piracy? Of course not. The only people watching would be those that already had a subscription. People bought it because they wanted to watch the show the second it came out. And they were willing to pay a ton for it (HBO is really expensive, especially if you don't already have cable).
So yes, they're supposed to sit back and let other people give their stuff away, like they've effectively been doing for years. All that money going to ineffectual lawyers and lobbying could instead go to making a service so good, with so much content, that people will flock to it, and piracy will die out except for the few diehards that refuse to pay for anything (which, incidentally, will never be your customers).
Granted, this sucks for the lawyers and lobbyists making bank on exploiting the content industry, but sorry if I don't really care about the people who are adding nothing to our economy. Which is the whole point of this article, really...the MPAA is made of up lawyers and lobbyists, not content creators.
This makes sense to me, in a twisted sort of way. If your worldview sees content the industry produces and sells as speech then Chris Dodd's support makes sense. By "free speech" he means that they can continue to produce horrible movies, inflate their costs to extreme, incestuous levels in order to justify increasing the costs to the consumer, and keep it coming under the "free speech" moniker.
"Piracy" (copyright infringement), again in this worldview, is illegitimate content; it's evidence of stolen goods. You can't have a "free speech" argument on stolen property, right? Therefore there's no mental conflict; movies can say whatever they want, but if the internet has to be locked down to prevent copyright infringement, that's no problem...they're just preventing mass theft.
It's a worldview that unravels at the slightest logical thought, but it never needs to be taken that far. Spout bull**** long enough and loud enough and it will become the "truth" (citation: see organized religion).
But if you look at the world with that lens this makes "sense." It's somewhat akin to wearing a blindfold at noon and proudly declaring that it's night, but hey, I guess that makes sense when you purposely ignore reality.
Unfortunately you'd have to find conclusive evidence that it was actually intentional. Cable news networks, for all their faults, have backed themselves into a corner that pretty much ensures common mistakes.
Right now news channels compete to see who can get a story "first." It's all about rapid reporting, and also sensational reporting. This encourages news networks to show stories that will grab attention and do it as soon as possible.
Guess what? As speed increases, accuracy tends to decrease. And when you have a bias towards the sensational rather than the mundane (and most events in the world are mundane) this tends to skew the accuracy even more. It shouldn't surprise anyone that cable news networks have horrible accuracy and are usually biased. Heck there's numerous comedy shows dedicated to pointing out where they fail.
I think it would be extremely difficult to prove they were intentionally lying, especially since they probably weren't. Through their "conservative" (in the political version of the word) lens, and at a rapid pace, it's likely they were fully convinced that their BS was true at the time. Once they were debunked (because the research came after the story, as usual) they issued a retraction.
Sure, the retraction is largely useless. Heck, I'm still listening to my family explain how Obama went to Hawaii and forced a couple to cancel their wedding so he could play golf. It's wrong (or at least incredibly skewed) but such is shoot-from-the-hip reporting. But I doubt you'll see much traction on this in court.
I'll let the actual policy on classification speak for itself:
Executive Order 1326: Classified National Security Information, Sec 1.7(a):
"In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to:
(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;
(3) restrain competition; or
(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security."
So considering the Panetta Review was clearly in violation of (1) and possibly (2), how exactly did the Senate staff access classified information? It's not even a question of whether or not they should have had access...it's a question of whether or not the item in question was legally classified in the first place.
It always amazes me that we live in a country where people get so upset about revealing classified information regarding illegal activity or other embarrassing secrets when our own laws specifically forbid classifying information for those reasons. Once revealed, it should probably be determined whether or not the information was properly classified before we bother prosecuting someone for improperly revealing classified information.
Government computers are notoriously weak on the security front. We use outdated browsers (about a month ago we upgraded to IE 11 from IE 8...yes, that 8), outdated operating systems (DoD recently upgraded to Win 7 from Win XP) and can't even keep their security certs up-to-date.
For example, I have to ignore a cert warning to come to Techdirt because, according to my computer at work, the security certificate is invalid (it's been an issue since Techdirt moved to complete https). No other computer has issues with TD's certs.
Heck, there's a system I use at work that requires me to create a new password ever three months that must be between 9-15 characters with two uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters, and can't be any of the previous 10 passwords (password crackers, point and laugh). However, if I forget my password, I only have to answer a security questions (like mother's maiden name) and, rather than send me an email to reset the password, resets it directly and shows me a temporary password in plaintext. That's right, if someone figured out someone's mother's maiden name (which is so hard thanks to Facebook) and social security number (again, so difficult to find) they can change their password and have full access to the system.
I fully believe that if "cyberwar" were actually a real threat we'd already have lost so hard our toasters would have stopped working, at least at the government level. It's just another imaginary fear tactic to keep people's attention off the stuff they should really be concerned about.
Either you've paid for it, or you're an infringer.
If only they actually believed this. It might be easier to swallow. This is how I believe they actually think:
"Either you've paid for it and you only use it within the narrow limits I've set for you to use it in, or you're an infringer."
That second part makes the whole thing so much worse. To be honest, I don't really have an issue paying for things, including content. It's when people start telling me that I can only use the content I bought in certain ways and on certain devices that I get really grumpy. And if you tell me to pay for something more than once I say to go [censored] yourself.
I am also in the Marine Corps, and you left out the part of the training where you learn the Law of War forbids torturing prisoners. And the training is to resist captivity, not just torture, as you are required to resist humane capture regardless of whether or not you are being tortured.
Marines don't surrender because of our ethos and because you are more likely to win a battle if you don't consider surrender an option, not because we're afraid that the enemy will capture and torture us for information. The sad truth is that if you're in position to get captured you're probably on the front lines...which means you're probably not very high in rank and probably don't have all that much useful information to give anyway. It's not like a Marine base is well hidden, and the moment we know someone is captured we're going to change all our patrol routes, countersigns, and other sensitive information anyway. All the enemy is likely to learn is the small piece of the plan that you know.
Don't claim the Marine Corps taught you that torture works, or that it believes in torture. That's completely the opposite of our training. You might want to brush up on your SERE handbook before claiming the military taught you torture worked.
She needs to take the side of people like Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and say that an attack on her is an attack on everybody who wants to treat Islam with the same levels of criticism as any other religion.
Heh, this made me laugh out loud. Religions don't want to be criticized. Criticism leads to rational thought, and rational thought is the antithesis of faith...and faith is the foundation of religion.
Islam in particular needs to be cautious about rational thought because the history of the religion reveals, well, issues with its "legitimacy." At the risk of summoning the jihad, Islam has basically the same origin as Mormonism or (arguably) Christianity...it's a cultural offshoot of Judaism based around a charismatic leader.
The sad part is that Islam freely acknowledges this while at the same time denying it. The Jewish and Christian Bible are both considered Muslim holy books and most of the holy figures from them are considered "great prophets of Islam." Yet Islam is the "true" religion, not the ones it's clearly based on. This makes perfect sense through the lens of "faith" but defies logical reasoning.
But hey, when you have a vocal minority that immediately threatens to murder anyone who says something bad about your particular brand of cultural brainwashing, and a silent majority that refuses to condemn them because they are both secretly offended by the criticism and scared of the same psychopaths giving the death threats, it's pretty easy to keep people from thinking too hard.
Because religion poisons everything.
This, a hundred times. I often hear arguments that "religion brings out the best in people" through charity and good behavior, but in my opinion someone who does the right thing just because they're scared of eternal punishment or to get brownie points for the afterlife isn't really that good of a person. The best people are those that do the right thing because they want to make the world around them a better place and do it without any thought of reward or other benefit to themselves.
That being said, I'm not 100% certain there are no supernatural being(s) that influence and/or observe reality. I am, however, 100% certain that they don't follow any of our religions. I can't imagine the hubris that makes people think that any sort of God would follow their rules.
I think one of the parts that boggles my mind the most is that there are no actual statistics for how many citizens are killed by police each year. Go look it up. There are "estimates" but no hard data. You can find the exact number (or as far as we know) of murders, suicides, and even deaths from heart disease, but there's no statistic for "killed by police" (although it wouldn't surprise me if those deaths are categorized under the "accidental gun death" category to make guns scarier").
It saddens me that we keep track of every single person killed by capital punishment in prison but when the police are judge, jury, and executioner we shrug and go "why would we track that?"
I suddenly feel like the show "Dexter" is uncomfortably close to reality. If you want to be a serial killer, you know where the best place to get away with it is? Join the police. Kill anyone you want, and maybe you'll get some unpaid leave while they cover it up...er, "investigate."
Wow, where to begin. 9/11 was a tragedy. That doesn't mean you get to violate the Law of Armed Warfare because it's convenient. Our military members have been fighting a war and still are required to follow the high road, even when it's hard, even when they killed your best friend, even when you're angry.
It's disgraceful to those men and women who have been fighting and doing the right thing (and, contrary to popular belief, the soldiers that murder and torture are in the minority). It's a slap in the face, one that says "you're going to do things the right way while people are watching, but because nobody can see us we're going to break the rules."
By saying that you agree with the CIA's actions, by having that mentality, you are ignoring the principles of freedom and justice the Constitution was founded on. The ends do not justify the means.
Let me ask you something. Why would you want this information hidden? The report establishes two very important things: a) that the CIA engaged in torture, and b) the torture was ineffective. Got that? The CIA torture program did nothing to save American lives. And they knew it!
Even if it did, the United States does not stoop the our enemy's level. We're better than that, and we'll win regardless. But it's up to the American people to police our own government, as the Founding Fathers intended. How can we do that if the government is lying to us? Hiding things from us? And we allow it to continue?
It's complacent, ignorant, childish people like you that will bring the country to an early death. Liberals and conservatives have nothing to do with it.
So like real life, I have been actually assaulted more times than I can count, I've been followed and stalked, I have had people pull weapons on me, and try to kill me on at least 3 occasions, and you want to destroy the internet because you feel bad?
Um, if this is true, I'd highly recommend finding a new group of people to hang out with, or a different place to live. Being assaulted "more times than you can count" is not a normal situation.
Just in case, www.thehotline.org is a resource you can use. There is help out there. I don't know if it applies to you, and if I misunderstood, I apologize. If it does, please seek help.
In 2011, approximately 32,163 individuals were killed by guns in the U.S. (including accidental deaths). The U.S. had 15,953 homicides, 11,101 of which were caused by guns. In 2011, there were about 310.5 million people, with a similar number of guns owned (estimates range from 270 million to 310 million) and both legal and illegal ownership is estimated at 101 per 100 people.
Now, compare this to Russia, which has strict gun control laws. In 2011, Russia had a population of around 143 million. The latest data of gun ownership in Russia is about 12,750,000, or around 8.9 guns per 100 people. Although we do not have exact numbers from Russia specific to guns, in 2011 they had 13,826 homicides.
Oh, huh, that's a little odd. Russia, with 10% of the guns per capita and 46% of the population, has a total homicide rate about 2,000 individuals less. Per person, the homicide rate in the U.S. is 1 homicide per 19,463 people and the rate in Russia is 1 homicide per 10,342 people. So the U.S. had 90% more gun ownership, 54% higher population, and a 47% lower homicide rate than Russia.
Here are four countries with higher murder rates than the U.S.: Venezuela, Belize, South Africa, and El Salvador, with homicide rates per 100,000 people of 70.2 El Salvador, 45.1 in Venezuela, 39 in Belize, and 30.9 in South Africa (The U.S. is 4.7). The U.S. has a gun rate per 100 population of 101. Those other countries? Venezuela 10.7, Belize 10, South Africa 6.9, and El Salvador 5.8. The rate of gun homicides per 100,000 people is 39.9 El Salvador, 39 Venezuela, 21.8 Belize, 17 South Africa, and 2.8 United States.
So there are five countries with less guns but higher rates of gun violence, and violence in general, than the U.S. (significantly so!). Are there countries out there with lower gun ownership and lower violence/gun violence than the U.S.? Of course, there are many. But you don't just get to ignore the ones that don't correlate with your theory.
On the post: Cory Doctorow To Push For Ending DRM
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Steam does other things to increase its popularity besides have big name games; the constant sales, curator and game finding systems, big picture mode, and in-home streaming are all great features that GoG lacks. The last in particular is fantastic; I can install my games on my beastly computer in my room and then play them on my HTPC downstairs on the projector without having to install them twice. I can also add my wife's collection of games to mine and play them interchangeably (we both need the game to play together, but we can share singleplayer games).
While I don't particularly like Steam's DRM, at least for my system it's mostly unobtrusive (if I have issues it's related to 3rd party DRM, not Steam's) and offers some great features I can't get elsewhere. I'd prefer no DRM but there are enough positives that the majority of my game purchases are on Steam. I use GoG as well, especially for classic games as they have fantastic compatibility software, but it won't become a primary for me until the actual service improves.
Gabe Newell has actually stated he's against DRM, and Steam primarily uses it because the studios demand it for their content. In fact, many games on Steam don't use DRM at all; Steamworks DRM is optional, and if you go into the Steam directly for a non-DRM'd game, you can just run it straight from the executable. They don't advertise which games use their DRM and what don't but Valve isn't a pro-DRM company. They offer a non-obtrusive DRM option rather than have everyone use a bunch of different worse ones.
I mean, it's absolutely people's right to hate on Steam, but I'd argue that they do a great job of compromise and offer a lot of extra value to the consumer beyond DRM. That counts for a lot to me. I'd love to see DRM go the way of the dinosaur, but if Steam is the worst I have to deal with, oh-freaking-well.
On the post: The MPAA Isn't About Helping Hollywood. It's About Preserving Its Own Need To Exist.
Re: Re: Re:
And by communities I assume he means in the home, where most refrigerators will give you essentially the same thing as the majority of bottled water. And even if the water is from special place, it's still essentially water (there isn't a ton you can do to modify plain water). Even a drinking fountain is not giving you a significantly different product from a bottle of Dasani or Aquafina, other than the plastic bottle.
People pay for the convenience and perceived value of bottled water, not because it's a superior, finite product that they can't easily get elsewhere.
On the post: The MPAA Isn't About Helping Hollywood. It's About Preserving Its Own Need To Exist.
Re: Re: Re:
Yet people consistently pay for bottled water, including brands like Dasani, which is literally filtered tap water. In both cases we're talking about an essentially unlimited resource, which not coincidentally tends to be free or close to it (weird thing, that supply and demand principle, especially when supply approaches infinity...).
Your comparison to the necessity and tangibility of both things is irrelevant. He wasn't talking about water in general, which is finite and valuable, but about water for drinking in communities, where it is effectively unlimited and available for free. And yet people still pay for that same resource when it's completely unnecessary to do so.
This directly counters your statement that people won't pay for something if they can get it for free and the resource is unlimited. This is demonstrably false.
On the post: The MPAA Isn't About Helping Hollywood. It's About Preserving Its Own Need To Exist.
Re:
What specifics do you need? You're proving he's right every time you pay for his free content.
There's so much irony here, but one of the biggest is your misconception that piracy is hard, or even risky. It's not, despite millions upon millions of dollars the MPAA and studios have thrown at it. In other words, Mike's "utopian vision" already exists as far as your complaint is concerned.
Here's the thing. A content company isn't competing with pirates. This is a fallacy, and one that even a slight amount of logic utterly destroys. There's only one scenario where piracy even affects a content creator, and that's the scenario where a potential customer would have bought their product, but due to free alternatives, chose not to. Every other scenario is completely irrelevant; maybe the person chose to pirate, but wouldn't have bought the product anyway, or the person didn't pirate, and wouldn't have bought the product ever, or they bought the product. None of those scenarios are slightly affected by piracy, although for some reason everyone gets hung up over the first one. If by some miracle they couldn't pirate your stuff, they still wouldn't buy it, so the end result is the same.
The actual problem, where someone could have been a customer but chose to pirate instead, is always fixed by one of two things: either you make the product available at a price they're willing to pay, or you improve your service to a level that they're willing to pay. If you don't fix one of those two things, all you're doing is creating the person who pirates but wouldn't have bought it anyway, by definition.
The amusing part is that the person who pirates, but may have become a customer, is actually more likely to increase profits than the opposite. Why? If they considered paying they probably have an interest in your product. By pirating it, they are being exposed to the quality of content you create. If they like it, they are more likely to consider purchasing other products from you in the future.
This is known in fancy business terms as "advertising." Companies pay millions of dollars per year in advertising. A 30-second advertisement during the Super Bowl costs around $4 million. And piracy is advertising, even if it isn't authorized. The best part? It's free. So your worst possible scenario, the person who would have bought, but chose not to due to the availability of free alternatives, just got a full advertisement that didn't cost you a cent (again, because unless your product is at a price or service level they're willing to pay for, they aren't going to pay...this is common sense).
This works even better for the younger crowd. Kids in high school and college rarely have a ton of expendable income, if any. They aren't going to buy a lot of content because they simply can't afford to. No amount of anti-piracy is going to magically change their income; without access to your content, they simply aren't going to buy it.
You know what free access to your stuff causes, though? Interest. Habit. Fandom. Things that, once they do have more expendable income than free time, makes your better service and reasonably priced product more appealing. Studies have shown over and over again that individuals with the highest piracy rates are usually the ones that spend the most money on content. Which is obvious if you think about it; fans want MORE.
Do you think HBO subscriptions would have risen as much if Game of Thrones was only available via HBO, and not piracy? Of course not. The only people watching would be those that already had a subscription. People bought it because they wanted to watch the show the second it came out. And they were willing to pay a ton for it (HBO is really expensive, especially if you don't already have cable).
So yes, they're supposed to sit back and let other people give their stuff away, like they've effectively been doing for years. All that money going to ineffectual lawyers and lobbying could instead go to making a service so good, with so much content, that people will flock to it, and piracy will die out except for the few diehards that refuse to pay for anything (which, incidentally, will never be your customers).
Granted, this sucks for the lawyers and lobbyists making bank on exploiting the content industry, but sorry if I don't really care about the people who are adding nothing to our economy. Which is the whole point of this article, really...the MPAA is made of up lawyers and lobbyists, not content creators.
Funny how that works.
On the post: If The DOJ Gets Its Way, Tweeting Out A List Of The 'Worst Passwords On The Internet' Will Be A Felony
Re: Re: Wait isn't everything capable of being a password
Why'd you have to point this out? Now they're going to ban the dictionary! Oh, wait, aren't there password crackers that utilize Wikipedia?
BAN IT ALL! BAN ALL THE WORDS!
On the post: MPAA Boss Chris Dodd Talks About Sony Hack & Free Speech... Ignoring How It Revealed MPAA's Plan To Undermine Free Speech
"Piracy" (copyright infringement), again in this worldview, is illegitimate content; it's evidence of stolen goods. You can't have a "free speech" argument on stolen property, right? Therefore there's no mental conflict; movies can say whatever they want, but if the internet has to be locked down to prevent copyright infringement, that's no problem...they're just preventing mass theft.
It's a worldview that unravels at the slightest logical thought, but it never needs to be taken that far. Spout bull**** long enough and loud enough and it will become the "truth" (citation: see organized religion).
But if you look at the world with that lens this makes "sense." It's somewhat akin to wearing a blindfold at noon and proudly declaring that it's night, but hey, I guess that makes sense when you purposely ignore reality.
On the post: Paris, France To Sue Fox News For Being Fox News
Re: Re:
Right now news channels compete to see who can get a story "first." It's all about rapid reporting, and also sensational reporting. This encourages news networks to show stories that will grab attention and do it as soon as possible.
Guess what? As speed increases, accuracy tends to decrease. And when you have a bias towards the sensational rather than the mundane (and most events in the world are mundane) this tends to skew the accuracy even more. It shouldn't surprise anyone that cable news networks have horrible accuracy and are usually biased. Heck there's numerous comedy shows dedicated to pointing out where they fail.
I think it would be extremely difficult to prove they were intentionally lying, especially since they probably weren't. Through their "conservative" (in the political version of the word) lens, and at a rapid pace, it's likely they were fully convinced that their BS was true at the time. Once they were debunked (because the research came after the story, as usual) they issued a retraction.
Sure, the retraction is largely useless. Heck, I'm still listening to my family explain how Obama went to Hawaii and forced a couple to cancel their wedding so he could play golf. It's wrong (or at least incredibly skewed) but such is shoot-from-the-hip reporting. But I doubt you'll see much traction on this in court.
On the post: New Snowden Leak Reveals GCHQ Collected Emails Of Journalists At NYT, WaPo, Guardian, BBC And Elsewhere
Re:
Nah, the emails are probably addressed to the guys spying anyway.
On the post: CIA Internal Review Clears CIA Of Senate Hacking Allegations; Claims Senate Improperly Accessed Classified Documents
Executive Order 1326: Classified National Security Information, Sec 1.7(a):
"In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to:
(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;
(3) restrain competition; or
(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security."
So considering the Panetta Review was clearly in violation of (1) and possibly (2), how exactly did the Senate staff access classified information? It's not even a question of whether or not they should have had access...it's a question of whether or not the item in question was legally classified in the first place.
It always amazes me that we live in a country where people get so upset about revealing classified information regarding illegal activity or other embarrassing secrets when our own laws specifically forbid classifying information for those reasons. Once revealed, it should probably be determined whether or not the information was properly classified before we bother prosecuting someone for improperly revealing classified information.
Just a thought.
On the post: The DHS Wants To Pitch In With The Cyberwar But Can't Even Be Bothered To Secure Its Own Backyard
For example, I have to ignore a cert warning to come to Techdirt because, according to my computer at work, the security certificate is invalid (it's been an issue since Techdirt moved to complete https). No other computer has issues with TD's certs.
Heck, there's a system I use at work that requires me to create a new password ever three months that must be between 9-15 characters with two uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters, and can't be any of the previous 10 passwords (password crackers, point and laugh). However, if I forget my password, I only have to answer a security questions (like mother's maiden name) and, rather than send me an email to reset the password, resets it directly and shows me a temporary password in plaintext. That's right, if someone figured out someone's mother's maiden name (which is so hard thanks to Facebook) and social security number (again, so difficult to find) they can change their password and have full access to the system.
I fully believe that if "cyberwar" were actually a real threat we'd already have lost so hard our toasters would have stopped working, at least at the government level. It's just another imaginary fear tactic to keep people's attention off the stuff they should really be concerned about.
On the post: Steven Soderbergh Fought To Make Re-Editing Films Illegal; Now He's Re-Editing Famous Films
Re:
This is it exactly. See, it's copyright infringement when an amateur makes edits. But for a professional it's clearly transformative art.
Sort of like it's murder when a civilian does it, but for police it's clearly self-defense.
Too soon? =)
On the post: Canadian Anti-Piracy Company Caught Using Unattributed And Paywalled Articles To Fill Its Blog
If only they actually believed this. It might be easier to swallow. This is how I believe they actually think:
"Either you've paid for it and you only use it within the narrow limits I've set for you to use it in, or you're an infringer."
That second part makes the whole thing so much worse. To be honest, I don't really have an issue paying for things, including content. It's when people start telling me that I can only use the content I bought in certain ways and on certain devices that I get really grumpy. And if you tell me to pay for something more than once I say to go [censored] yourself.
On the post: Washington Post Shrugs Off Torture Because, You Know, It Polls Well
Re:
Marines don't surrender because of our ethos and because you are more likely to win a battle if you don't consider surrender an option, not because we're afraid that the enemy will capture and torture us for information. The sad truth is that if you're in position to get captured you're probably on the front lines...which means you're probably not very high in rank and probably don't have all that much useful information to give anyway. It's not like a Marine base is well hidden, and the moment we know someone is captured we're going to change all our patrol routes, countersigns, and other sensitive information anyway. All the enemy is likely to learn is the small piece of the plan that you know.
Don't claim the Marine Corps taught you that torture works, or that it believes in torture. That's completely the opposite of our training. You might want to brush up on your SERE handbook before claiming the military taught you torture worked.
On the post: Celine Dion And Human Cannonballs: The Garcia v Google En Banc Oral Argument
Re:
Heh, this made me laugh out loud. Religions don't want to be criticized. Criticism leads to rational thought, and rational thought is the antithesis of faith...and faith is the foundation of religion.
Islam in particular needs to be cautious about rational thought because the history of the religion reveals, well, issues with its "legitimacy." At the risk of summoning the jihad, Islam has basically the same origin as Mormonism or (arguably) Christianity...it's a cultural offshoot of Judaism based around a charismatic leader.
The sad part is that Islam freely acknowledges this while at the same time denying it. The Jewish and Christian Bible are both considered Muslim holy books and most of the holy figures from them are considered "great prophets of Islam." Yet Islam is the "true" religion, not the ones it's clearly based on. This makes perfect sense through the lens of "faith" but defies logical reasoning.
But hey, when you have a vocal minority that immediately threatens to murder anyone who says something bad about your particular brand of cultural brainwashing, and a silent majority that refuses to condemn them because they are both secretly offended by the criticism and scared of the same psychopaths giving the death threats, it's pretty easy to keep people from thinking too hard.
Because religion poisons everything.
This, a hundred times. I often hear arguments that "religion brings out the best in people" through charity and good behavior, but in my opinion someone who does the right thing just because they're scared of eternal punishment or to get brownie points for the afterlife isn't really that good of a person. The best people are those that do the right thing because they want to make the world around them a better place and do it without any thought of reward or other benefit to themselves.
That being said, I'm not 100% certain there are no supernatural being(s) that influence and/or observe reality. I am, however, 100% certain that they don't follow any of our religions. I can't imagine the hubris that makes people think that any sort of God would follow their rules.
On the post: Cleveland Police Union Rep: Citizens Think They Understand The Law? Ridiculous!
Re:
It saddens me that we keep track of every single person killed by capital punishment in prison but when the police are judge, jury, and executioner we shrug and go "why would we track that?"
I suddenly feel like the show "Dexter" is uncomfortably close to reality. If you want to be a serial killer, you know where the best place to get away with it is? Join the police. Kill anyone you want, and maybe you'll get some unpaid leave while they cover it up...er, "investigate."
On the post: Feinstein's Summary Paper On CIA's 'Interrogation Program' Report Contains Plenty Of Torture
Re: interrogation
It's disgraceful to those men and women who have been fighting and doing the right thing (and, contrary to popular belief, the soldiers that murder and torture are in the minority). It's a slap in the face, one that says "you're going to do things the right way while people are watching, but because nobody can see us we're going to break the rules."
By saying that you agree with the CIA's actions, by having that mentality, you are ignoring the principles of freedom and justice the Constitution was founded on. The ends do not justify the means.
Let me ask you something. Why would you want this information hidden? The report establishes two very important things: a) that the CIA engaged in torture, and b) the torture was ineffective. Got that? The CIA torture program did nothing to save American lives. And they knew it!
Even if it did, the United States does not stoop the our enemy's level. We're better than that, and we'll win regardless. But it's up to the American people to police our own government, as the Founding Fathers intended. How can we do that if the government is lying to us? Hiding things from us? And we allow it to continue?
It's complacent, ignorant, childish people like you that will bring the country to an early death. Liberals and conservatives have nothing to do with it.
On the post: No, Tech Companies Can't Easily Create A 'ContentID' For Harassment, And It Would Be A Disaster If They Did
Re: Things that are on topic
Um, if this is true, I'd highly recommend finding a new group of people to hang out with, or a different place to live. Being assaulted "more times than you can count" is not a normal situation.
Just in case, www.thehotline.org is a resource you can use. There is help out there. I don't know if it applies to you, and if I misunderstood, I apologize. If it does, please seek help.
On the post: No, Tech Companies Can't Easily Create A 'ContentID' For Harassment, And It Would Be A Disaster If They Did
Re: Magic tech is everywhere
http://xkcd.com/1425/
On the post: Cop Accidentally Shoots Man, Ignores Emergency Responder, Other Cops In Order To Text Union Rep
Re: Re: Re: Error
In 2011, approximately 32,163 individuals were killed by guns in the U.S. (including accidental deaths). The U.S. had 15,953 homicides, 11,101 of which were caused by guns. In 2011, there were about 310.5 million people, with a similar number of guns owned (estimates range from 270 million to 310 million) and both legal and illegal ownership is estimated at 101 per 100 people.
Now, compare this to Russia, which has strict gun control laws. In 2011, Russia had a population of around 143 million. The latest data of gun ownership in Russia is about 12,750,000, or around 8.9 guns per 100 people. Although we do not have exact numbers from Russia specific to guns, in 2011 they had 13,826 homicides.
Oh, huh, that's a little odd. Russia, with 10% of the guns per capita and 46% of the population, has a total homicide rate about 2,000 individuals less. Per person, the homicide rate in the U.S. is 1 homicide per 19,463 people and the rate in Russia is 1 homicide per 10,342 people. So the U.S. had 90% more gun ownership, 54% higher population, and a 47% lower homicide rate than Russia.
Here are four countries with higher murder rates than the U.S.: Venezuela, Belize, South Africa, and El Salvador, with homicide rates per 100,000 people of 70.2 El Salvador, 45.1 in Venezuela, 39 in Belize, and 30.9 in South Africa (The U.S. is 4.7). The U.S. has a gun rate per 100 population of 101. Those other countries? Venezuela 10.7, Belize 10, South Africa 6.9, and El Salvador 5.8. The rate of gun homicides per 100,000 people is 39.9 El Salvador, 39 Venezuela, 21.8 Belize, 17 South Africa, and 2.8 United States.
So there are five countries with less guns but higher rates of gun violence, and violence in general, than the U.S. (significantly so!). Are there countries out there with lower gun ownership and lower violence/gun violence than the U.S.? Of course, there are many. But you don't just get to ignore the ones that don't correlate with your theory.
On the post: No, Tech Companies Can't Easily Create A 'ContentID' For Harassment, And It Would Be A Disaster If They Did
Re:
TURN OFF comments.
So, uh, remove all discussion from the internet except that which has been approved?
Oh, yeah, big improvement.
I've got a better idea...if you don't want to be harassed, TURN OFF your computer and get a flip phone.
Problem solved.
Next >>