I'm finding less and less incentive to read comments I can't downvote (some of them x1000 - well, one can dream...) on a site where absolute, utter lunacy seems to be the norm in the comments. But hey, that's just me...
Aaaaaaand that is why I like DVDs so much. First - I did buy it, paid for it, sorry it's now legally mine to watch; second - old tech, hacked seven ways to hell, there's no way you get to ever stop me from watching it wherever, whenever and on whatever I freakin' feel like from now on till the day I die (and third - it looks perfectly fine with a bit of help from analogue aliasing native to a CRT; I care about the movie, not the number of pixels it comes with...)
keep doing this and you'll end up like YouTube's Thunderfoot who used to have a point, but is apparently just going for a good rant on one of his pet peeves instead of bothering with actually making sense more often than not these days. Also, there's that crying wolf too many times without the world actually ending thing.
In some sort of idyllic Whoville there would be no need for GDPR - but this is the real world 2018 edition, and what that city was doing was (and still is) a privacy disaster waiting to happen. The very least those willingly sticking their necks through the noose can do is acknowledge doing it on their own accord.
I will NOT. EVER. buy a car that has a data uplink - I'd sooner revert to riding a bike if I must (it's tons more fun anyway only a helluva lot less convenient). And yes, my phone's GPS is OFF 99.999% of the time. So are "location services". And apps that ask for location permissions unceremoniously get the boot. Yeah, my mobile carrier must have a fairly good idea where I go, not much I can do about that - others though... good luck.
So go on, ask me whether I would use this service...
Oh, you want mind-blowing? Get this: a hundred years ago we already knew space and time are relative, yet in spite of how ancient star-watching is we had not the foggiest idea that other galaxies existed...!
Learned long ago that all "loved it" reviews are utterly worthless; not even worth the time wasted reading them. I only read the "hated it" reviews - if multiple ones raise issues meaningful to me then the movie is probably utter shite indeed. If several of them fail to complain about anything I'd see as a problem, the movie might even be worth watching...
I have a few tiny repos on Github. Not for long. I don't give a crap whether MS will end up screwing it up or not. I don't care to stick around long enough to find out. Contributing to anything owned by those utter heinous bastards causes me literal physical discomfort, and life is too short for that kind of shit.
Is it perfect? Hell no. But I'll take it ANY TIME over the traditional alternative of "hahaha, let me mop the floor with you precious 'personal data', snowflake..."
What I'd like to know is when can we start calling conversations about the weather outside "weather channel piracy"...? This current freeloading is utterly outrageous...!
Except 99.9999% of Silicon Valley never gets anywhere close to doing anything of actual significance (for others than their shareholders and suite of CEOs, and that's IF they're lucky) let alone "changing the world". The few companies who truly managed doing that in the last few decades could be counted on one's fingers alone. So yeah, if you have a good idea, the determination to pursue it and the astonishing luck to not fail immediately you MIGHT actually end up changing the world - but setting out to do that on purpose is nothing but epic stupidity.
See, you can disagree all day if you want - go "set out" to win the lottery, we can talk about this again when you've done that; the choice is simply not ours. The only choice we get is whether to participate, but that has nothing to do with actually winning, beyond being a requirement. If "not winning" doesn't sound like a worthwhile experience to you, you've got no business playing. And the same applies to Silly Valley - in practical terms it's a certainty you'll fail to "change the world"; deal with it.
All this to-and-fro about how to force the ideal comment system into existence - so sad. It seems to me that many don't realize having to put up with trolls, idiots, sockpuppets and all the rest is the intrinsic reverse of the medal that has freedom of speech on its other side. Not that any private entity hosting a forum is obliged to observe that, obviously - but with that concept having been deemed worthy of being declared a human right a bunch of times and all that, one would think we all would want see it upheld (and even enforced) a lot more than we actually seem to.
The thing is, regardless of what means one conceives of to discard some part of a discussion, all one will get is a discourse tuned to the specific likes and dislikes of the specific person, system or algorithm employed - paying with lost opportunity to have an idea challenged, in a potentially relevant manner regardless of the tone the challenge is delivered in*, for the convenience of not having to hear what one would prefer not to. It's paring speech down to the specific likes and dislikes of the one gate-keeping entity, human or automated, and as such it's a failure by design, with no exceptions, because a single entity's criteria for what is positive and what is negative could never - and absolutely should never - be substituted for the individual judgement of each participant. Not even the "hive mind" is a suitable entity for such a task, unless one's ambitions in life amount to, putting it bluntly, being a sheep.
To be perfectly clear: yes, that means having to trawl through the arbitrary (but generally large) percentage of lesser discourse not really worth reading and all the requisite unsavory bits yourself - the whole point is that only you are qualified to decide which part is that.
Except of course what most of us would really prefer are echo chambers full of yes-men considering they make you feel good about yourself, do not require the non-negligible effort of constructing a valid argument - or potentially changing one's own views which is something basically nobody ever is willing to do - and they definitely save you the almost certain frustration of being verbally abused to hell and back. Then again, we do live in a delusional world these days where we think we can magically have all the good bits of most everything without having to put up with any of the unpleasant ones. From the entitled commoner so sure that anything bad happening to them must be _someone's_ fault who needs to be promptly sued, all the way up to our benevolent masters apparently so sure that encryption can be both secure and backdoored - this seems to be happening on every level. So I suppose "yay for our benign censors who will deliver us from anybody we don't like" it has to be - and like it or not, even the system described above is nothing but one further step in that direction...
*No, I'm no fan of verbal abuse. But there's a time for calling an idiot by its name, and I will absolutely not accept that manner detracts from the validity of the argument put forward, assuming it had any in the first place. Admittedly it's a somewhat contrived parallel, but I do think a certain mr. Torvalds seems to agree at least to some extent.
...we used to dream about America as a bastion of freedom and All That Is Good. Well, that was then. There's no amount of money you could possibly pay me to convince me to move from my miserable post-communist hellhole to "the land of the free". NO THANKS.
Well, that's one way to look at it. Another one might be that since times immemorial every single ruler with any power worth a damn chose to follow the policy "I don't care what I said, do anything that pisses me off and I'll make sure you'll regret it!"
Only goes to confirm that anybody, absolutely anybody with any power sooner or later ends up abusing it - even the maker of a "secure" phone itself. That backdoor should NEVER have been there in the first place. If a device is supposed to be impenetrable for everyone except its owner then THAT INCLUDES YOU TOO, APPLE! WHY DO THOSE IN POWER _ALWAYS_ CONSIDER IT SELF-EVIDENT THAT _THEY_ ARE OF COURSE ABOVE THE RULES?!?
On the post: Facebook Ups Surveillance Of Users To Keep Tabs On People Who Don't Like Facebook
I'm finding less and less incentive to read comments I can't downvote (some of them x1000 - well, one can dream...) on a site where absolute, utter lunacy seems to be the norm in the comments. But hey, that's just me...
On the post: Hollywood's Kinder, Gentler DRM Didn't Even Last A Decade... And Is Still Screwing Over Movie Fans
Aaaaaaand that is why I like DVDs so much. First - I did buy it, paid for it, sorry it's now legally mine to watch; second - old tech, hacked seven ways to hell, there's no way you get to ever stop me from watching it wherever, whenever and on whatever I freakin' feel like from now on till the day I die (and third - it looks perfectly fine with a bit of help from analogue aliasing native to a CRT; I care about the movie, not the number of pixels it comes with...)
On the post: How The GDPR Nearly Ruined Christmas
Dear Mike,
In some sort of idyllic Whoville there would be no need for GDPR - but this is the real world 2018 edition, and what that city was doing was (and still is) a privacy disaster waiting to happen. The very least those willingly sticking their necks through the noose can do is acknowledge doing it on their own accord.
Also: Merry Christmas...!
On the post: As A Final Fuck You To Free Speech On Tumblr, Verizon Blocked Archivists
"By playing this video you agree to Twitter's use of cookies
This use may include analytics, personalization, and ads."
...which I absolutely don't, so I absolutely won't.
On the post: How Bike-Sharing Services And Electric Vehicles Are Sending Personal Data To The Chinese Government
Nope.
So go on, ask me whether I would use this service...
On the post: New GDPR Ruling In France Could Dramatically Re-shape Online Advertising
On the post: We Interrupt All The Hating On Technology To Remind Everyone We Just Landed On Mars
On the post: Police Officers At A Tactical Disadvantage Bravely Tase 87-Year-Old Woman Into Submission
"- I can't believe you stabbed me...!"
"- BRAVELY stabbed you!"
Classic...
On the post: Valve Decides To Get Out Of The Curation Business When It Comes To 'Offensive' Games
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Three Takes On Microsoft Acquiring Github
On the post: EU Parliament's Own Website Violates The GDPR
NOPE
On the post: Charter, Disney Execs Pledge To Crack Down On Streaming Password Sharing 'Piracy'
On the post: Dear Tech Guys: HBO's Silicon Valley Is NOT An Instruction Manual
See, you can disagree all day if you want - go "set out" to win the lottery, we can talk about this again when you've done that; the choice is simply not ours. The only choice we get is whether to participate, but that has nothing to do with actually winning, beyond being a requirement. If "not winning" doesn't sound like a worthwhile experience to you, you've got no business playing. And the same applies to Silly Valley - in practical terms it's a certainty you'll fail to "change the world"; deal with it.
On the post: How To Improve Online Comments: Test Whether People Have Read The Article Before Allowing Them To Respond
The thing is, regardless of what means one conceives of to discard some part of a discussion, all one will get is a discourse tuned to the specific likes and dislikes of the specific person, system or algorithm employed - paying with lost opportunity to have an idea challenged, in a potentially relevant manner regardless of the tone the challenge is delivered in*, for the convenience of not having to hear what one would prefer not to. It's paring speech down to the specific likes and dislikes of the one gate-keeping entity, human or automated, and as such it's a failure by design, with no exceptions, because a single entity's criteria for what is positive and what is negative could never - and absolutely should never - be substituted for the individual judgement of each participant. Not even the "hive mind" is a suitable entity for such a task, unless one's ambitions in life amount to, putting it bluntly, being a sheep.
To be perfectly clear: yes, that means having to trawl through the arbitrary (but generally large) percentage of lesser discourse not really worth reading and all the requisite unsavory bits yourself - the whole point is that only you are qualified to decide which part is that.
Except of course what most of us would really prefer are echo chambers full of yes-men considering they make you feel good about yourself, do not require the non-negligible effort of constructing a valid argument - or potentially changing one's own views which is something basically nobody ever is willing to do - and they definitely save you the almost certain frustration of being verbally abused to hell and back. Then again, we do live in a delusional world these days where we think we can magically have all the good bits of most everything without having to put up with any of the unpleasant ones. From the entitled commoner so sure that anything bad happening to them must be _someone's_ fault who needs to be promptly sued, all the way up to our benevolent masters apparently so sure that encryption can be both secure and backdoored - this seems to be happening on every level. So I suppose "yay for our benign censors who will deliver us from anybody we don't like" it has to be - and like it or not, even the system described above is nothing but one further step in that direction...
*No, I'm no fan of verbal abuse. But there's a time for calling an idiot by its name, and I will absolutely not accept that manner detracts from the validity of the argument put forward, assuming it had any in the first place. Admittedly it's a somewhat contrived parallel, but I do think a certain mr. Torvalds seems to agree at least to some extent.
On the post: Canada Post Drops Ridiculous Copyright Lawsuit Over Crowdsourced Postal Code
On the post: Homeowner Sues Police After Pursuit Of Shoplifter Leaves Him With No Home To Own
As an ex-communist-block resident...
On the post: Why The Growing Unpredictability Of China's Censorship Is A Feature, Not A Bug
On the post: Alternate Titles: Apple Now Looking To Close The Backdoor The FBI Discovered
Utterly disgraceful
On the post: ESPN Pretends It Saw Cord Cutting Coming, Says Departing Subscribers Old And Poor Anyway
On the post: Awesome Stuff: One Great Knob
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