ttt_

That's a valid point only if it could somehow auto-engage on 'drive-mode' and disallow any other function.

The burden would be on the maker to ensure that.

Otherwise, it maybe could allow for safer driving, but it sure would allow reckless facebook/driving.

Do we really need to have data on several hundred or thousand injury, maiming and death records for each new type of gadget that comes out?

If X requires your attention, it will cause accidents. We already have enough data on that.

“Look, NSA has platoons of lawyers and their entire job is figuring out how to stay within the law and maximize collection by exploiting every loophole,”

Interesting how agencies, corporations and alike have the collective maturity of children. A grown up will say to a kid "you can't play with fire with your friend" and the kid immediately will think "he didn't say I can't play with fire with my other friend".

> Does anyone honestly believe the Germans aren't regularly trying to figure out ways to listen to American officials' communications?

Your statement seems to equate "it's usual to spy" with "it's alright to spy". Spying on close allies only pays off if you are not caught. It's risky to do it and I expect each Nation State weights that in when deciding to do it or not. If the Germans do try to spy on US and they get caught, there will be fallout on relations.

The US got caught spying on several allies. They took the risk. There will be repercussions on diplomatic relations. There will be repercussions on public image and trust.

Apparently from the leaked memo, the intelligence gained didn't really pay off this time around, and since they got caught, all they did was break the trust.

Was it a good trade off?

I agree. While reading the article I can't help but, sort of, empathize with modern AI programs. Me and Watson are very similar, Watson can win Jeopardy but has no understanding why, I can recognize a handwritten 'a' and I too have no understanding why.

When I look at my daughter developing, from baby to infant to child. Hasn't that been a constant, intensive training? As she recognizes stuff, I give feedback. After a while she starts correlating stuff, and signals for me to give feedback. By the time she's an adult, she will have full control of her intelligence, but also no understanding.

Maybe what we are missing is just the algorithm for information storage and retrieval. If we can master Genetic Algorithms, why not Celular Databases? Or Chemical Procedures?

Business such as this is what makes us have to raise our consumer shields up 100% of the time.

I'm so very fucking tired of this.

We also have a cronic underdog syndrome perpetuated by countless broad opinions such as this. That only helps to undermine any kind of effort to change the culture of low self-esteem into a culture of excellence.

Feel free to demand more, but please do not undervalue every thing.

> Most of my friends had access since they were 10 or 11. We turned out fine.

Much akin to "when we were kids we rode in the front seat without seat belts on, we turned out fine", and several other versions of that phrase.

I don't think it's a valid argument at all.

Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue.

In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration:

1) make his own assesment and check against the test score,

2) realize that the test is supposedly validated against a sample, and if the candidate falls out of that sample (non-native english speaker), the test should probably be disregarded.

Carefull when disregarding a whole field based on preconceptions. All fields have different branches and disagreements. True some fields like psychology have a harder time producing great professionals, in my assesment. I think it's because of it being a young field and it's hard to agree on what the standards are to measure good/bad practice.

The State is the one that must have no expectations of privacy and in fact be held to rigorous transparency an independent audit, not the other way around.

Like in software, security that relies on closed source is in fact more vulnerable.

You still see absorb the advertisement passively.

Good thing I have control of my software and can opt out.

I'm already assaulted at the senses all day long in different forms. The whole concept of advertising I find abhorrent. A service should only offer itself to me when I want it, otherwise they are just imposing themselves and I will dislike them for that.

Any way that I can opt-out of ads I will make use of.

Services that rely on just this business model should adapt or fail, simply. If the service is relevant it will come again from a different source with a more acceptable model.

" If subjects do not obey, rulers have no power."

I can almost picture NSA analysts vulturing all over the private data collected of these enemies of the state.

How soon utnil they send out the drones into the foreign lands where they have not so great a political strongarm?

"Drone bombing in brazilian airport kills dozens"

"Sadly it was necessary as one of the passangers carried terrorist intel that would put our free world at risk"

> If enough people move to services outside of the States

What service can we trust at this point?

After the Evo Morales flight debacle, it's pretty clear that their five dollar wrench works equally well on other nations as well.

The internet is broken, everywhere.

The internet is imploding.

Colateral damage aside, doesn't bombing rescuers and funerals classify as terrorism?

Seriously...

On one side there is huge incentive to be social on the web, which paramounts to sharing stuff with others.

On the other side, no one will let you share their content.

If the world were a person, he would be right on track for schizophrenia.

As long as there isn't such a thing as PrinterSockets for the browser, Java Applets are the only way we can provide printing services for our clients, because a browser can only send documents for printing and not byte streams, which is what we need in order to use termic printers for adhesive labels.

Currently it's the best way to serve labels for thermic printers that our clients need.

There is no direct input to the printer as a byte buffer, the browser will always print a markup document. Unless HTML5 comes up with Printer Sockets, we are stuck with Applets in order to be granted hardware access to the client machine.

>> anyone using Instagram should have known that a change was coming and accepted that risk from the outset

The ability to perceive a business agenda should not be pre-requisite to use any kind of service that is being offered. Even if the service is free to the user and it implies that the business must get revenue somehow, most people don't get that, and it doesn't mean it's alright to take advantage of them.

Lots of people are ignorant, have low education or are plain naive. They are easy to manipulate, fool and con. Doing so is fine then?

One comment really caught my attention in there:

>> Man, this really blows. FB Purity helps me, a blind user, actually use Facebook more effectively than without it. sighs I do hope you continue to fight the power.

I'll be saying this as a user.

I wish most developers would turn to HTML5 today, like right now, and avoid native apps at all cost unless there is really no alternative.

Why?

Because I remember the browser wars and how much it was a terrible idea and the terrible experience it made for users who simply could not experience the internet from a single starting point. This time it's not simply a matter of downloading another browser, if there's content I want to consume and there's not a native app for my phone, what do I do? I buy a different one? What about the content that I already consume and that's not over there? Should I have multiple phones?

I could not care less if it's optimize to integrated well with the native environment or some whatnot, let the browser handle that with default behavior. I want the content, the feature, and not wait for companies to port over apps from one place to the next.

This platform cult is pretty meaningless to me, in fact I don't even want to buy any device right now because I'm pretty sure I'll get burned as a user either way. The only platform I'm betting my money on as a user is the upcoming Firefox OS. Hopefuly Mozilla will be able to undo the damage done in this fragmented mess, again.

Do you mind elaborating a bit on your solution that doesn't rely on Java?

We have a similar case though with printers.

> They probably didn't think they could actually kill someone.

In Brazil that would be true in the case of a regular car accident, it would be regarded as having no intent to kill.

If you are drunk however, brazilian law understands that you had intention to kill, because you know well enough that drinking will impair your driving and most likely kill someone.

However, an officer's statement is not enough to prove that you are drunk, you have to agree to take the test, and if you don't, than you can just throw money at the case up to the point where the final ruling is so late to the fact that the penalty has expired.

So you are saying that the right away to face the challenge of supporting multiple platforms is to outright not do it?

I can't respect a product/company whose future vision is less integration and not more.

I really dislike Apple as a brand, but I admit they bring a lot to the table and that means driving competing products to raise theirs standards, though if their answer to difficult problems is to throw in the towel, then their role may progressively decline in importance.

>> intelligence organisations in democracies

Democracy != immutable state.

How about a reddit-like ranking system as a portal do the darknet? It would easily categorize content in niches that would be curated socially. It could even help further ostracize the CP crowd to a marginalized role even in the darknet. It would enable anyone to flag out the abhorring niches and focus on the actual benefit of enjoying free exchange of information.

It doesn't get rid of them, but that's something that we wouldn't really be able to do (they all existed prior to the internet), but it would make the darknet usable.

>> You really want a source for the fact that his site was a piracy haven? Are you that naïve?

IANAL but I figure that for the law to be upheld in an unbiased manner it must be considered naive for all intents and purposes. Simply because that's really not an argument at all, no part in the process can just come up and say "you are being naive not to believe my allegations".

Naivete, common sense, good judgment... those are really just "recourse to infinity" type arguments that only serve the speaker and have no objective meaning whatsoever. They must have no place in applying the law.

>> And IE8 was the default browser on Windows 7.

Hasn't Microsoft decided to auto-update IE? In that case, most people who don't know what a browser is will already be using IE9 on Windows 7 by 2013 or is there reason to believe otherwise?

> the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations

Perhaps the whole point of their strategy? I can't see the US government and military as stupid, they seem to be making sure that the terrorist threat perpetuates.