I was amazed the first time I saw my kid kid watching videos of people playing Minecraft. (Then Skyrim, then TF2, . . .) Hours and hours of it. Watching videos of other kids playing video games. My kid is not alone.
I suspect your kid isn't watching these videos for the gameplay, but for the folks that are actually playing the game.
I must admit that I've watched both pewdiepie and Rooster Teeth as well as a number of other Let's Play vids, not for the games, but for the comedy gold. Rage Quit isn't about the game...it is about how funny serious people getting really upset about the game is. The Leeroy Jenkins Meme wasn't about watching a bunch of folks clear a dungeon on World of Warcraft (aside from whether or not it was staged.) It wasn't the game that folks were watching...it could have easily been a bunch of folks sitting in spaceships outside of the Void in Eve, waiting to jump into another team's system. It was Leeroy Jenkins, doing what Leeroy Jenkins does...
1) Authors self-publishing directly with Amazon get 70% instead of the maybe-15% they get from publishers (though of course the readers do not benefit from editorial skill, etc.);
Considering quite a few of the ebooks I own have really crappy formatting errors and other editorial errors, authors who self publish *may* not benefit from editorial skills (though there is certainly nothing preventing a self-publisher from hiring an editor themselves to fulfill this role.) Having a publisher pay you 15% of sales is in no way a guarantee that the publisher will provide author services like an editor for you, nor is it a guarantee they will even actually publish your book (as they could stick it on a shelf never to see light of day again.)
However, if they opened up the format so that it became a standard that other readers can support, then there would be no DRM there at all.
Both Mobipocket and AZW formats are Open eBook Standards using XHTML. Most eBook readers and authors can read and write the files. The only thing that isn't standard is the DRM. I have no problem opening the non-DRM'd Mobi and AZW format files using Calibre or any of the standard viewers. I actually, for some reason, prefer the Amazon Kindle app for reading eBooks, and have books from various other sources (Google Books, etc.) in Amazon Kindle, though the Linux version of Calibre is definitely growing on me.
"At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied."
Hah, I knew it was in there somewhere, you have to click the expand button to find it. I remembered seeing something like this (comment above,) but didn't see it on any of the books I knew were DRM-free...expanding all of them revealed the same verbiage.
Nope, the DRM is optional. There is no requirement, and a lot of books in the Amazon store have no DRM. It's the publishers that insist on it.
That is correct. Many, if not most, of the books I've purchased on Amazon have come without DRM (and I've had no problem moving them from a malfunctioning version of the Kindle app to a working version without having to re-download,) mainly because they are Tor books (yes, I am a Sci-Fi fan,) and Tor has been quite vocal about their views on DRM.
Unfortunately, there isn't really an easy way on the Amazon site to determine if the books have DRM or not. I saw, at one time (I think in the Kindle App itself,) a statement on books already downloaded the statement "The publisher has denied applying DRM to this book," but I cannot find that verbiage anywhere on the site.
If there was, I'd be far happier on spending money on more books because they wouldn't break after three downloads or break when Kindle decided to stop working (because I don't use "Kindle for Windows" on Windows or Kindle's Google App on a Amazon Kindle.)
Remember campers she sat on the bench and claimed that EVERYONE needed to do more to protect copyrights, despite there being nothing in the law supporting that position.
What bothers me most about this whole thing is that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, presiding judge over the United States vs Microsoft Corp., got into hot water for statements he made while hearing the case (though the comments were not printed until after the case was over,) in which he found Microsoft guilty of abusing their Monopoly position. The Appellate court argued that he should have recused himself from the case since he was not impartial. He did not make those comments before the case, and from statements he made, he pretty much determined that Microsoft was bad during the case, based on their own actions, before it was completed, and made those comments to reporters at that time.
Here, we obviously have a jurist that *is* biased before the case, and the Appellate didn't make any comments about this and why the jurist should have recused themselves because of the bias. High-court vs. low-court? I don't think it really is this, but instead just differences on opinion over two similar cases.
help them understand how stupid the author is and answer any questions they had.
A fictional character's statement in a book of fiction somehow tells you the intelligence of the author?
Authors don't necessarily agree with the ideas or actions of characters in their books. Often times, characters are based on amalgams of people in the author's life. Most authors I've heard talk about the process of writing is that their characters tend to write themselves (though in reality, it is the author writing the character, the character may be based on their observations of others and even a character based on some opposite of their own experiences.) I've heard authors complain about their characters and there are some authors that have been very vocal about their hatred for some of their characters. One author told me he relished in killing some of his characters off during the writing of a book just because he hated them so much.
Anyone who looks at a fictional book and makes comments about the author's intelligence based on a character in their book (and not on things like language, communication skills, etc.) is only showing their own intelligence.
An email applet in the browser needs some form of scripting,
I'm sorry, but this isn't true, and never has been true.
An "email applet" might need scripting, but web-mail does not. People have been able to send and receive email from a website without using client-side scripting for a very long time. GMail could provide email capability on their server without providing any javascript, java, or any other client scripting. (Theoretically, they could do the same without server scripting, but it would be a little harder.) The website would look straight out of the 90's, there wouldn't be much in the way of validation, and you wouldn't have much in bells and whistles, but you wouldn't have to worry about client-side scripting security either. Popping up a form to receive text with a submit button would work fine. And you could have a separate third-party application, like GPG, handle the encryption of your email for you.
But all of this is an aside to your argument. Most people use web-mail because they don't want to/can't install third party software on their computer in order to access email. Putting encryption into the web-mail software fixes part of the problem. Would you rather fix part of the problem, or fix none of the problem?
I actually did make use of the Samsung health tracking app.
I've used S-Voice on my Galaxy SIII, which doesn't require an account. It is a decent Siri clone. If there was a better one out there that I was aware of, I'd use it instead. Haven't tried the health app but CardioTrainer does everything I want it to do.
The big hole in the browser is the canvas, which is available to most code running in the browser. A secure encryption module serves little purpose if the plain-text can be exfiltrated. Given the Java experience, I would never trust a browser to give the necessary level degree of protection of the plain text.
Java, and even JavaScript/ActiveX (which are entirely different languages) are not necessary for a browser. And things like sandboxing, when implemented properly (i.e. not the way Sun/Oracle has done it,) can keep one module from interfering with another.
Canvas access can be blocked and/or protected. In some cases browsers currently protect canvas access between security domains, blocking all access to an encrypted page from an unencrypted frame. It would take some work, but it is not impossible. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater seems tragic, especially when the water is still warm. For paranoid people, the only real way to fix this is to generate locked down, single purpose virtual machines that run a specialized OS and email app, but for the rest of us, the browser is fine so long as the producer of the browser is transparent about what they are doing and smart about security. The biggest problem isn't the browser, but all the malware/spyware installed on the OS anyway.
I think it might be a Google account first, and then a Samsung account second. You have to have a Samsung account to start the phone.
I own three Samsung devices. I do not, nor have I ever, had a Samsung account. This just isn't true. While two of the three Samsungs are rooted (can't root the third as I do not own it, and my employer might be a little miffed if I do,) at no point in the process did I ever have to log into or create a Samsung account.
The only time I've ever saw a request to create an account it was when I actually started one of the Samsung bloatware apps, before the phone was rooted, and it allowed me to exit the app without creating an account.
You can have convenience, or you can have security.
While it is true that convenience and security are mutually exclusive, the truth is also that perfect security is unobtainable, and no matter what you do, someone may come along and undo everything you have done. The goal is to manage risks, not avoid them entirely.
There are protections against modules being replaced. Its called cryptographic hashing, and its existed for at least 30 years. While the browser will have to be modified to include this hashing capability, it wouldn't be terribly difficult.
Browser security will need to be hardened some, but it would be far easier to trust that nobody is listening on your computer versus nobody listening on Google's servers.
You should watch the movie because it's one of the funniest films of the last decade.
I agree. I like some of South Park, but really haven't cared much for anything else that Trey and Matt have produced, but this movie is awesome, not only on being funny, but on being political satire on the current attitudes and opinions about the US governments reach in areas of law and politics vs the rest of the world. If anything, it makes fun of American views of the rest of the world.
And I'd say it very much is life imitating art imitating life.
Is "walking on the wrong side of the street" actually a crime? If so, I'd love to hear the rationale behind it.
While I don't know much about what happened, and I doubt, based on what I did read/watch that it was; there are times in which walking on the wrong side *is* a safety concern and thus may be an infraction. If the video shown on the news report of the location is correct, there is no sidewalk separating pedestrians from traffic, but also, it looks like a low-speed residential area (looks like a single lane of traffic with a lot of grass to walk on, so walking off the road shouldn't be much of a problem.)
If you are on a high-speed highway, with no shoulder and no sidewalk, walking on the same side of the road as traffic (the right side) is *extremely* dangerous. You cannot see traffic coming from behind and cannot react to get out of the way if traffic doesn't happen to see you. I know CAVC 21956 limits it solely to this situation, and thus you can walk on any side of the road you want unless you fit into this very specific situation. Of course, California is not Texas, and the rules are likely different. I am not sure how much help walking on the left side would have been in this case when the road is so narrow...cars driving the opposite way are easily visible no matter what side you are on, and cars behind you are going to be just as invisible.
Mexico is following Turkey in its war against technology.
I cannot think of any country not at war against technology at the moment. Sure, Turkey and Mexico are up there, but just about every country out there seems to be scared of technology at the moment.
Can't say that I blame them...freedom *is* scary.
I don't know how the governments survived hundreds of years ago, when they weren't in control over every aspect of everyone's lives and people did a lot of stuff without the oversight and control of the government. The fear of those governments that people might be out there doing stuff that they couldn't control...must have kept them up every night.
I wonder if they have an irate flag like AT&T land-line had. When I was a customer, I knew that I had the flag set for me, because whenever I'd call, I'd immediately get a supervisor (who would even be worse at handling me.) They couldn't seem to understand why I was so upset with them, but every time I called it was to complain about my modem line (which failed to meet the voice standards FCC had required for the company,) and would constantly try to up-sell me to their "business/modem" lines while ignoring the fact that I couldn't even get decent voice calls (I made it a point to call them using the phone line I was having problems with, so when they would tell me that there was nothing wrong with the line after telling me I was breaking up and they couldn't hear me very well with all the static, but they never seemed to catch on.)
If they have an irate flag, they had to have recorded something that would clue an auditor in to a problem.
Which means Square-Enix is on its way out as a company. Don't let the door hit you. Futile would be the correct word I'd use too.
The only games I've purchased in the last three years with DRM came from Steam, and that was three years ago. Everything else has come from DRM-Free sites such as GoG. Square-Enix won't get any of my money.
I've been burned way too many times in the past on DRM. Games that wouldn't play on Virtualized Hardware, or on a different version of Windoze than they were expecting, or games that I purchased and was never able to install or run because of a bug in the DRM...they burned me once and I'll never give them the opportunity to burn me again.
Oops, that is Riverside, Iowa, located right next door (well, slightly North and East of Washington.) Maybe they need the MRAP to keep all the Trekies in line?
On the post: Nintendo Has A Plan To Share Ad Revenue With YouTubers, But Nobody's Happy About It
Re: It is a video game
I suspect your kid isn't watching these videos for the gameplay, but for the folks that are actually playing the game.
I must admit that I've watched both pewdiepie and Rooster Teeth as well as a number of other Let's Play vids, not for the games, but for the comedy gold. Rage Quit isn't about the game...it is about how funny serious people getting really upset about the game is. The Leeroy Jenkins Meme wasn't about watching a bunch of folks clear a dungeon on World of Warcraft (aside from whether or not it was staged.) It wasn't the game that folks were watching...it could have easily been a bunch of folks sitting in spaceships outside of the Void in Eve, waiting to jump into another team's system. It was Leeroy Jenkins, doing what Leeroy Jenkins does...
On the post: Accepting Amazon's DRM Makes It Impossible To Challenge Its Monopoly
Re: Two points
Considering quite a few of the ebooks I own have really crappy formatting errors and other editorial errors, authors who self publish *may* not benefit from editorial skills (though there is certainly nothing preventing a self-publisher from hiring an editor themselves to fulfill this role.) Having a publisher pay you 15% of sales is in no way a guarantee that the publisher will provide author services like an editor for you, nor is it a guarantee they will even actually publish your book (as they could stick it on a shelf never to see light of day again.)
On the post: Accepting Amazon's DRM Makes It Impossible To Challenge Its Monopoly
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Both Mobipocket and AZW formats are Open eBook Standards using XHTML. Most eBook readers and authors can read and write the files. The only thing that isn't standard is the DRM. I have no problem opening the non-DRM'd Mobi and AZW format files using Calibre or any of the standard viewers. I actually, for some reason, prefer the Amazon Kindle app for reading eBooks, and have books from various other sources (Google Books, etc.) in Amazon Kindle, though the Linux version of Calibre is definitely growing on me.
On the post: Accepting Amazon's DRM Makes It Impossible To Challenge Its Monopoly
Re: Re: Re: Re:
See Vikarti Anatra comment below... You actually have to expand the description to find it.
On the post: Accepting Amazon's DRM Makes It Impossible To Challenge Its Monopoly
Re: Re: Re:
Hah, I knew it was in there somewhere, you have to click the expand button to find it. I remembered seeing something like this (comment above,) but didn't see it on any of the books I knew were DRM-free...expanding all of them revealed the same verbiage.
On the post: Accepting Amazon's DRM Makes It Impossible To Challenge Its Monopoly
Re: Re: Re:
That is correct. Many, if not most, of the books I've purchased on Amazon have come without DRM (and I've had no problem moving them from a malfunctioning version of the Kindle app to a working version without having to re-download,) mainly because they are Tor books (yes, I am a Sci-Fi fan,) and Tor has been quite vocal about their views on DRM.
Unfortunately, there isn't really an easy way on the Amazon site to determine if the books have DRM or not. I saw, at one time (I think in the Kindle App itself,) a statement on books already downloaded the statement "The publisher has denied applying DRM to this book," but I cannot find that verbiage anywhere on the site.
If there was, I'd be far happier on spending money on more books because they wouldn't break after three downloads or break when Kindle decided to stop working (because I don't use "Kindle for Windows" on Windows or Kindle's Google App on a Amazon Kindle.)
On the post: Appeals Court Overturns Prenda Win From Former RIAA Lobbyist Judge
Re: Re:
What bothers me most about this whole thing is that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, presiding judge over the United States vs Microsoft Corp., got into hot water for statements he made while hearing the case (though the comments were not printed until after the case was over,) in which he found Microsoft guilty of abusing their Monopoly position. The Appellate court argued that he should have recused himself from the case since he was not impartial. He did not make those comments before the case, and from statements he made, he pretty much determined that Microsoft was bad during the case, based on their own actions, before it was completed, and made those comments to reporters at that time.
Here, we obviously have a jurist that *is* biased before the case, and the Appellate didn't make any comments about this and why the jurist should have recused themselves because of the bias. High-court vs. low-court? I don't think it really is this, but instead just differences on opinion over two similar cases.
On the post: Censorious Parent Calls Cops On Teen Giving Away Books In A Local Park
Re: Re:
A fictional character's statement in a book of fiction somehow tells you the intelligence of the author?
Authors don't necessarily agree with the ideas or actions of characters in their books. Often times, characters are based on amalgams of people in the author's life. Most authors I've heard talk about the process of writing is that their characters tend to write themselves (though in reality, it is the author writing the character, the character may be based on their observations of others and even a character based on some opposite of their own experiences.) I've heard authors complain about their characters and there are some authors that have been very vocal about their hatred for some of their characters. One author told me he relished in killing some of his characters off during the writing of a book just because he hated them so much.
Anyone who looks at a fictional book and makes comments about the author's intelligence based on a character in their book (and not on things like language, communication skills, etc.) is only showing their own intelligence.
On the post: Google Apparently Trying To Make Encrypted Email Easier
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm sorry, but this isn't true, and never has been true.
An "email applet" might need scripting, but web-mail does not. People have been able to send and receive email from a website without using client-side scripting for a very long time. GMail could provide email capability on their server without providing any javascript, java, or any other client scripting. (Theoretically, they could do the same without server scripting, but it would be a little harder.) The website would look straight out of the 90's, there wouldn't be much in the way of validation, and you wouldn't have much in bells and whistles, but you wouldn't have to worry about client-side scripting security either. Popping up a form to receive text with a submit button would work fine. And you could have a separate third-party application, like GPG, handle the encryption of your email for you.
But all of this is an aside to your argument. Most people use web-mail because they don't want to/can't install third party software on their computer in order to access email. Putting encryption into the web-mail software fixes part of the problem. Would you rather fix part of the problem, or fix none of the problem?
On the post: Google Apparently Trying To Make Encrypted Email Easier
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Thanks John... Took the words right out of my mouth.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Installing Bloatware That No One Uses... And Everyone Hates
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I've used S-Voice on my Galaxy SIII, which doesn't require an account. It is a decent Siri clone. If there was a better one out there that I was aware of, I'd use it instead. Haven't tried the health app but CardioTrainer does everything I want it to do.
On the post: Google Apparently Trying To Make Encrypted Email Easier
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Java, and even JavaScript/ActiveX (which are entirely different languages) are not necessary for a browser. And things like sandboxing, when implemented properly (i.e. not the way Sun/Oracle has done it,) can keep one module from interfering with another.
Canvas access can be blocked and/or protected. In some cases browsers currently protect canvas access between security domains, blocking all access to an encrypted page from an unencrypted frame. It would take some work, but it is not impossible. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater seems tragic, especially when the water is still warm. For paranoid people, the only real way to fix this is to generate locked down, single purpose virtual machines that run a specialized OS and email app, but for the rest of us, the browser is fine so long as the producer of the browser is transparent about what they are doing and smart about security. The biggest problem isn't the browser, but all the malware/spyware installed on the OS anyway.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Installing Bloatware That No One Uses... And Everyone Hates
Re: Re:
I own three Samsung devices. I do not, nor have I ever, had a Samsung account. This just isn't true. While two of the three Samsungs are rooted (can't root the third as I do not own it, and my employer might be a little miffed if I do,) at no point in the process did I ever have to log into or create a Samsung account.
The only time I've ever saw a request to create an account it was when I actually started one of the Samsung bloatware apps, before the phone was rooted, and it allowed me to exit the app without creating an account.
On the post: Google Apparently Trying To Make Encrypted Email Easier
Re: Re: Re:
While it is true that convenience and security are mutually exclusive, the truth is also that perfect security is unobtainable, and no matter what you do, someone may come along and undo everything you have done. The goal is to manage risks, not avoid them entirely.
There are protections against modules being replaced. Its called cryptographic hashing, and its existed for at least 30 years. While the browser will have to be modified to include this hashing capability, it wouldn't be terribly difficult.
Browser security will need to be hardened some, but it would be far easier to trust that nobody is listening on your computer versus nobody listening on Google's servers.
On the post: Megaupload Asks Hong Kong Court To Drop Restraining Order On Megaupload Assets, Claiming Legal Violations
Re: Re:
I agree. I like some of South Park, but really haven't cared much for anything else that Trey and Matt have produced, but this movie is awesome, not only on being funny, but on being political satire on the current attitudes and opinions about the US governments reach in areas of law and politics vs the rest of the world. If anything, it makes fun of American views of the rest of the world.
And I'd say it very much is life imitating art imitating life.
On the post: Police Chief: Not Wanting To Talk To Police Officers Is 'Odd'
Re:
While I don't know much about what happened, and I doubt, based on what I did read/watch that it was; there are times in which walking on the wrong side *is* a safety concern and thus may be an infraction. If the video shown on the news report of the location is correct, there is no sidewalk separating pedestrians from traffic, but also, it looks like a low-speed residential area (looks like a single lane of traffic with a lot of grass to walk on, so walking off the road shouldn't be much of a problem.)
If you are on a high-speed highway, with no shoulder and no sidewalk, walking on the same side of the road as traffic (the right side) is *extremely* dangerous. You cannot see traffic coming from behind and cannot react to get out of the way if traffic doesn't happen to see you. I know CAVC 21956 limits it solely to this situation, and thus you can walk on any side of the road you want unless you fit into this very specific situation. Of course, California is not Texas, and the rules are likely different. I am not sure how much help walking on the left side would have been in this case when the road is so narrow...cars driving the opposite way are easily visible no matter what side you are on, and cars behind you are going to be just as invisible.
On the post: Protests Mount Against Mexico's Proposed Telecommunications Law, Which Would Bring In Censorship, Allow Real-time Surveillance And Kill Net Neutrality
Re:
I cannot think of any country not at war against technology at the moment. Sure, Turkey and Mexico are up there, but just about every country out there seems to be scared of technology at the moment.
Can't say that I blame them...freedom *is* scary.
I don't know how the governments survived hundreds of years ago, when they weren't in control over every aspect of everyone's lives and people did a lot of stuff without the oversight and control of the government. The fear of those governments that people might be out there doing stuff that they couldn't control...must have kept them up every night.
On the post: Time Warner Cable's Contractual Loophole Allows It To Tell Local Politicians It Has Received Zero Complaints
Re: Re:
I wonder if they have an irate flag like AT&T land-line had. When I was a customer, I knew that I had the flag set for me, because whenever I'd call, I'd immediately get a supervisor (who would even be worse at handling me.) They couldn't seem to understand why I was so upset with them, but every time I called it was to complain about my modem line (which failed to meet the voice standards FCC had required for the company,) and would constantly try to up-sell me to their "business/modem" lines while ignoring the fact that I couldn't even get decent voice calls (I made it a point to call them using the phone line I was having problems with, so when they would tell me that there was nothing wrong with the line after telling me I was breaking up and they couldn't hear me very well with all the static, but they never seemed to catch on.)
If they have an irate flag, they had to have recorded something that would clue an auditor in to a problem.
On the post: Square Enix: DRM Is Here To Stay
Square Enix says DRM is here to Stay...
The only games I've purchased in the last three years with DRM came from Steam, and that was three years ago. Everything else has come from DRM-Free sites such as GoG. Square-Enix won't get any of my money.
I've been burned way too many times in the past on DRM. Games that wouldn't play on Virtualized Hardware, or on a different version of Windoze than they were expecting, or games that I purchased and was never able to install or run because of a bug in the DRM...they burned me once and I'll never give them the opportunity to burn me again.
On the post: Midwestern Town Of 7,000 Approves Military Surplus Armored Personnel Carrier For Its 12-Member Police Force
James T. Kirk
Oops, that is Riverside, Iowa, located right next door (well, slightly North and East of Washington.) Maybe they need the MRAP to keep all the Trekies in line?
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