Messages

1

General Software Discussion / Re: You can now run Android apps on a Mac or PC with Google Chrome

« on: April 22, 2015, 04:34 AM »

Interesting.

As for Google being evil, our hands are tied. We have to follow our client, and they use MS and Android.

I never got chance to develop for Mac or IOS, though I can not say Apple is nor evil. Even Facebook is turning evil, but we developers can not ignore them.

-anandcoral (April 04, 2015, 05:05 AM)

The way I can describe Apple experience is, Imagine FaceBook, Google and M$ evil parts condensed into perfection.

2

Living Room / Re: The conflict of interest that is Google

« on: April 01, 2015, 09:51 AM »

Lord Acton was right... "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

-CodeTRUCKER (November 19, 2010, 06:23 PM)

Almost right.

Power corrupts, but blind obedience corrupts the most.

Stalin was just one man after all. Nothing without the useful idiots.  There is even a study on how 9 out of 10 people will obey an order to harm someone else if an authority figure tells them to do so. And the experiment was further corroborated by others, so pretty much is scientific proof that the majority of people act like sheep. And the sheep mentality is what enables the biggest evils in the world. Ranging to the "we where just following orders" crew. To the "I will not do shit and let evil thrive because Jesus will come for me" crew. And the all popular rational coward crew "I know that is wrong, but I will get affected if I do not obey".

I would say that less than 10% of the people goes into the. "I do not care if is convenient or not, or any threats you make, wrong is wrong and I will have no part of it." And less than 1% would say this is wrong, and I will fight you no mater the cost. Victory or Sovngarde (Those who played Skyrim know the reference).

The not so funny thing is that the majority of the sheep will help the tyrant send that 1% to Sovngarde. So the main threat is the sheep not the tyrant. The "let's help the tyrant extort more resources, spend 90% of them on himself so he will throw us a bone." crew.

In the case of Google, they are corrupt. But the problem is not their corruption, the power is the corruption of those who blindly follow Google. Without people taking the search engine seriously, they are nothing. Without the people accepting their policies they are nothing.

3

Living Room / Re: The conflict of interest that is Google

« on: March 31, 2015, 09:18 PM »

With Apologies to Murphy.

If something can be abused, it will.

Google new motto should be in the lines of
"Do not GET CAUGHT while doing evil."

4

General Software Discussion / Re: uTorrent has gone rogue

« on: March 08, 2015, 09:52 PM »

I really despise the way developers add garbage to their applications and then make it so that the default is to install the garbage. This is a show of bad faith.

To all developers. I understand you got to eat, thus include garbage with your applications. But this is acting in bad faith. Please, make the default to NOT TO INSTALL the garbage instead of installing it. If a user wants to install the garbage it will do so.

The practice reminds me of banks when they change policies without you agreeing to them. They send you a letter telling you that if you do not respond you are agreeing to it. An act of bad faith. The default should be instead, if you do not respond, then you keep the same conditions that we agreed to when you signed.

5

General Software Discussion / Re: Vivaldi, the new Web browser for power users

« on: March 08, 2015, 09:44 PM »

It's no accident that Vivaldi offers most of what Opera 12 offered. Vivaldi's CEO is Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and former CEO of Opera. Von Tetzchner's primary goal for Vivaldi is to rebuild the browser that Opera once was—the power user's browser.

Now I understand what happened at that company, it changed leadership.

I will give Vivaldi a try. I really liked Opera 12, but despise the new O-Chromium with a passion. It made me go to WaterFox and different other programs Never liked the way Chrome and all Chromium based browsers (including the new Opera)sends information behind your back.

6

Living Room / Re: Nice essay on the Prisoner's Dilemma Tournaments

« on: March 07, 2015, 11:16 PM »

A lot of oversimplification. It assumes that what drives an organism is only its rewarding itself.

For most the nearby pack is as important as themselves. They are your family. Thus your reward is having a stronger family.

Assume the classical prisoner dilemma:
If A and B decided not to talk, then A and B gets 1 year of other charges.
If A and B decided not to talk, then A and B get 10 years.
If A decides to talk, and B does not A gets free, B gets 20
If B decides to talk, and A does not B gets free, A gets 20


But what if your organization is important to you? Or what if deciding to talk means that you will get wacked by the other members of the organization? In real life this happens.

If your son is going to go to jail and you can prevent it by taking the blame? Many people will choose to help their son. The survival of the fittest model is flawed, as it does not take into account that not all that drives a living being is their own survivability. Sometimes the survivability of those around you (aka your family) means more to you.

7

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Logitech G910 Keyboard Review

« on: February 25, 2015, 01:45 AM »

Great, now I want one.  

 

Then again not, at least not until they get rid of their memory leaks.

8

Living Room / Re: Internet Lynch Mobs

« on: February 24, 2015, 06:43 AM »

Is interesting how academia can get away with fraud. Knowingly impersonating someone is fraud, irrelevant if the purpose is monetary or not.  As robots have no rights, and a robot impersonating a human is as much of a fraud like a man impersonating a woman. Why then isn't a law that requires an algorithm to identify itself as an algorithm? Why is coming from Academia a free pass to commit fraud without repercusion?

I know that SpyBook, aka Facebook can be abused. I closed my account years ago when they started to ask in my personal email information about other people. My information is my own, and I can share it freely, but they can go to hell if they expect me to give someone else information. Then it hit me that they must be doing the same with everyone else.

As for "consent" for a picture to be shown. Let me put it this way, they can change the flag any time in their database. Even if they do it on purpose, you would have no recourse in court. They can always say that it didn't have the flag. They can even attribute a computer glitch. And if everything fails they can always appeal to their end user agreement. So bottom line, do not post your pictures with them. When you are not the client (aka the one paying) is safe to assume that you are the product.

9

Living Room / Re: The Untold Story of the Invention of the Game Cartridge

« on: February 18, 2015, 09:56 PM »

I always wondered why computer upgrades where not designed this way instead of the painful open up the case way.

Assuming the computer is off:

Change the CPU? Take out the CPU cartridge and install a new one. (1 minute vs 20 minutes if you know what you are doing. 1 week if you don't  ).

Change Memory? Take out the memory cartridge and install a new one.

Change OS? Take out the solid state hard drive cartridge for the OS and place a new one. Data and settings could be on another hard disk cartridge. Want backup, place another cartridge and do a copy of the data.

Etc.

Always wonder why it didn't go that way. Maybe its a tech work issue (as most people could do the upgrades on their own).

10

Developer's Corner / Re: How The Most Expensive Game Jam In History Crashed And Burned In A Single Day

« on: February 18, 2015, 09:44 PM »

So basically they tried to screw up developers that where doing things for fun, and then wondered why they didn't participate?

I wouldn't want to play any game made by an idiot that signed that contract. Neither would I want to meet the idiot that made the contract.

11

Developer's Corner / Re: Long essay on the business of starting (feminist) collaborative publications

« on: February 18, 2015, 09:28 PM »

I get the use of the information in the link, but I never understood why people need to mix gender issues with technology. Ironically, doing so is SEXIST, as it serves no purpose but to further an agenda.

What exactly is "feminist tech"? What makes technology either feminist or MRA? Machines have no gender. Nor does the machine care about the users gender.

Which begs the question. Since machines have no gender. When the singularity comes:

How will the movement of genderless but sentient beings be called? ARA (Android Rights Activist) or Andronist? Maybe GRA (Genderless Rights Activist) or GRM (Genderless Rights Movement).

I'm sorry for the rant, but I still remember gamergate.

12

Living Room / Re: Code Combat!

« on: January 29, 2015, 11:08 PM »

Interesting and addictive game. Thanks for sharing the link.

13

Living Room / Re: Web Essay: Never trust a corporation to do a library's job

« on: January 29, 2015, 10:32 PM »

Don't depend on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine either. Two short lines of code saved to a file named robots.txt and placed in the root level folder for your domain will not only block IA's web crawler, it will also delete anything the crawler already placed into the Wayback Machine's archives. See here.

There's also the removal policy IA follows.

It has serious ramifications. See the British Library's article about how a political party stealthily removed its archive of speeches from its own website - and then got the IA to remove it from Wayback as well. Article here.

-40hz (January 29, 2015, 03:52 PM)

That's the internet equivalent to good old Book Burning 

14

Living Room / Re: Web Essay: Never trust a corporation to do a library's job

« on: January 29, 2015, 07:50 AM »

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. [John Maynard Keynes]

-eleman (January 29, 2015, 02:06 AM)

Alas if only corporations where man.
But corporations have no soul. They are entities whose only purpose is to eat until there is nothing else to eat.  Even if by accident a good person becomes CEO, the shareholders will do everything in their power to change it for the meanest hell spawn they can afford to hire.

15

Living Room / Re: Authorities suspect a shark tried to eat Vietnam's Internet

« on: January 25, 2015, 10:36 PM »

And sharks are lawyers... lawyers are Jews... Coincidence? I think not!

-Renegade (January 10, 2015, 09:37 AM)

I don't know, that shark looked like a Jihadist to me. Is Osama Bin Laden reincarnated after being thrown in the ocean.

16

DC Gamer Club / Re: One Chance: A game you can only play once

« on: September 17, 2014, 02:47 PM »

Depressing game.

17

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt - new and genuinely open project born to replace it

« on: July 06, 2014, 09:30 PM »

Under what license is the code? Can it be used on closed source, or only open source?

18

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« on: July 06, 2014, 09:21 PM »

My first question would be:
How much money are the true crypt developers getting to shutdown true crypt and sway people into Bit locker on an operating system that is knowingly compromised by the US government since 1995?

But then again, I am cynical nowadays.

19

General Software Discussion / Re: This week's episode of the suicide of Microsoft: Helping gov't exploit your pc

« on: July 05, 2013, 01:47 AM »

Why the surprise?

Remember the Windows 95 era in which Microsoft was facing a billion dollar fine becuase of its antitrust practices?
Remember how the 1 billon was forgiven? How many times have government forgiven you any fine?

Some kind of deal was made. Given the current information. I suspect that it was adding backdoors to Windows. So that governments can spy on their general population.

20

Living Room / Re: Can We Trust CNET...(News Article)

« on: January 22, 2013, 12:16 AM »

"In God We trust, all others we monitor." - NSA motto

21

Living Room / Re: Computer science student expelled for testing university software security

« on: January 21, 2013, 11:55 PM »

A classical punishing instead correcting lie of thought.

When a patient is sick, first you try to cure it. You do not shoot him. Thats what this university did. Instead of suspending his computer access to the university network, they choose to expel him.

To those defending the expulsion. Would you prefer if he would just keep the vulnerabilities secret and later he or someone else just abuse them? Because knowingly or not thats what you are advocating here.

22

Living Room / Re: Outing the Internet's worst troll.

« on: October 23, 2012, 04:08 AM »

Should a private organization be allowed to kick out people they don't want?

While people have the right of freedom of speech. Does that means that an entity should be forced to be the vehicle of the speech of others?

I don't care what the person wrote or not. And, as long as the pictures where not obtained illegally, there is nothing illegal on it.  Thus, unless you believe that freedom of speech should be abolished, its not our concern.

That said:
While a person right of freedom of speech should be uphold (irrelevant if you like it or not). The right of another person to ignore or even counter attack with their own speech should also be uphold. As well as the right for an organization no not be used as a medium of that speech.

Would it be ok for a guy to enter a synagogue dress on a gestapo uniform and ask to do a speech on how the Zionist are the scum of the earth and the Aryan race should rise again?

Yes.

However, the synagogue administration have the right to refuse and tell him to leave the premises. If he refuses, they can call the police, not because of the speech. But because he refused to leave a private property. Whoever owns the premises decides what can be done at it.

The same guy can do their speech on a conversion center where he rented 4 hours. And the conversion center does not have the right to say no once is rented (unless they placed in the contract beforehand). Why? Because for those 4 hours, the room is not theirs, is of the person that rented and is only bound for what is legal and whatever the rent contract stipulates.

So, unless the guy paid Redit to be able to post messages. They had the right to kick him out.

Freedom of speech does not means freedom to force someone else to be the medium of your speech.

23

General Software Discussion / Re: Fake Reviews: Amazon's Rotten Core

« on: August 30, 2012, 11:49 PM »

Whenever people can take an advantage of something, they will.

Lying is effective. More so if it comes accompanied by some truth.

Since the Internet has become the alternative to Mass Media. And mass Media is all about lying to get people to buy your clients products (so they can charge more to their clients), it follows that the Internet would have become a lying cesspool. And indeed, it has.

Heck, even Wikipedia has being found doing information manipulation, eliminating information that is against the believes of whoever is an op there while putting propaganda as the truth.

But this is not only a problem in the Internet. Lying have become the norm in courts. The trick is doing it in a way that the other party cannot prove that you lied. Bonus points if you buy the judge (far too many ways, not all based on money).

And politics. I wonder if one can make a candidate sign a contract in which if he/she does not makes good on his promises, they are automatically, and personally,  in debt for 1 million, per each incident. Is far too easy to lie and then do the exact opposite of what you said you would do.

24

Living Room / Re: Read this article before Apple makes them take it down! (hee-hee)

« on: August 30, 2012, 09:29 PM »

So basically an Apple Genius is a trained hypocrite.

Good to know.

25

Living Room / Re: Apple v Samsung Verdict is in

« on: August 26, 2012, 09:59 PM »

My intermediate thought was:
"Of that billion, How much was the judge paid?" There are MANY ways in which you can buy a judge. Some with money, some without. Some indirect, some direct.

Then I remembered: "Never blame evil that with stupidity can explain."

So instead of thinking that the judge was corrupt, I ended up thinking that the judge was just a useful moron.