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bluedanieruon EA “Gives Away” 1000s Of Free Games Due To No Server-Side Validation

Dragon Age 1 and Mass Effect 1 & 2 are still available on Steam. Interestingly, they pulled Crysis 2 then a few months later added Crysis 2 Maximum Edition.

For Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3, I agree with their reasoning. Steam doesn't allow in-app purchases that circumvent their distribution system, and that's a load of crap.

bluedanieruon US ambassador: Internet fee proposal gaining momentum

Devil-you-know. I don't like US control of the Internet either (said as much in my post in fact). But that doesn't mean I think we should hand it over to the UN.

bluedanieruon The Lie Factory: How politics became a business

> The parent didn't say that and nobody outside of the former Paul campaign has ever suggested. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

It's implied. It's what always comes after that part. I nipped it in the bud. You're welcome.

> Stop using month-old Democratic tal...

You're an idiot.

> But yes, because it works for 62 million Britons, clearly if someone doesn't think it will work for 312 million Americans they (a) are racist; (b) are stupid; (c) hate poor people; (d) all of the above.

I agree.

bluedanieruon US ambassador: Internet fee proposal gaining momentum

Can you make the case that it's better off under the control of the UN? I'm not too keen on the stewardship of the US especially with regards to copyright, and this "promote a global Internet free from government control" Congressional resolution is double-speak bullshit as they are trying their hardest to do the exact opposite. But I can't say allowing countries like Iran, China, North Korea, etc., any say at all in the functioning of the Internet at a global level sounds any more appealing.

Ideally we just need an Internet that is inherently unmanageable at the most basic levels. Wireless (or wireless enough, anyway), distributed DNS, end-to-end encryption, onion routing, etc.

bluedanieruon The Lie Factory: How politics became a business

So we should do away with all regulation then? That way there's nothing left for the powerful to co-opt? (I'm sure that there's nothing left to stop them either is inconsequential, as the marketplace or something will just magically save us from that, I mean if you don't like working for 40 years and then being left for dead you can always get another job. Anyway we can sort out the details later, uh, after the election.)

This is rubbish. Plenty of nations (i.e. all first world nations) have implemented national schemes of some sort, and none of them suffer from the stuff that you read about coming from the right's bullshit machine. Maybe you're right though, maybe the fact that the US is one of the most corrupt nations on Earth and that its citizens are remarkably comfortable with this fact, means they can't do health care. That's got nothing to do with the concept of nationalized health care and definitely not with regulation in general, but is rather a consequence of an irresponsible citizenry and their terrible social organization.

bluedanieruon Federal Circuit reexamining whether software is patentable

It seems whether the ruling sets a precedent or not is irrelevant, since the Federal Circuit will just ignore it anyway.

bluedanieruon Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School

Aren't racetams a superior alternative anyway, and more easily available?

bluedanieruon Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week

This is a really dumb way of looking at it. Capital markets are a tool - they are a means, not an end. They are a tool society uses to allocate resources in a sane, equitable, and efficient way. To the extent they accomplish this (and they generally do a rather great job at it), they are a useful tool. To the extent they don't, we are justified in altering the way they function so as to achieve the results we desire. They are an organizational strategy, nothing more.

What they are certainly not, is some higher order of intelligence or ideal that we humans just have to learn to live with, or else. The stock market may not owe me anything, but it certainly owes us something, or we wouldn't use it.

bluedanieruon The Windows ecosystem reboot is bad news if you plan to move country

I don't think it's quite that bad. It's more that implementing a system that will be convenient for users while simultaneously keeping the copyright cartels shut the fuck up, is difficult at best, from a legal and technical point of view (practically, impossible, since the copyright cartels never shut completely the fuck up).

But seriously, neither Microsoft, nor Apple, nor Google think of you as sheep. Facebook? Maybe.

bluedanieruon 3D printing: The PC all over again?

I'm similar, except replace 'Nerf N-Strike Elite Hail Fire' with '3D printer' (and I'm a bit more flexible on raw materials cost).

bluedanieruon Perl Regex Removed From Grep in Mountain Lion

I'm not saying it's a thing that's going to happen, just that you shouldn't have some blind faith that it won't ("I trust they won't do such a thing"). I'm pretty sure RMS would agree with the sentiment.

bluedanieruon The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)

Stop electing assholes to public office.

bluedanieruon Perl Regex Removed From Grep in Mountain Lion

Well it's more likely than you might think over a span of a couple decades...

But, I think if they were to go rogue it would be a matter of forking a GPL-licensed version of the software and continuing development on that under an open license.

bluedanieruon Meeting A Troll

What if, due to his incarceration, the terrorizing he does for the half of his life where he is not in prison, is twice that of the terrorizing he would have done over the course of his whole life, where he never imprisoned?

bluedanieruon The Pendulum Swings, Again

Android isn't really Linux

Huh? It's Linux. It's just not GNU/Linux.

bluedanieruon How Apple's Obsession with Google Is Hurting Apple

There was an article on here yesterday that they'd submitted it to the store. I'm not following this too closely other than listening to folks at work bitch about it. (And on HN.)

bluedanieruon How Apple's Obsession with Google Is Hurting Apple

And, they're releasing a maps app for iOS6 now, anyway.

bluedanieruon How Apple's Obsession with Google Is Hurting Apple

Counterpoint: iPhone is huge in Japan and led a minor revolution in phones here (prior to iPhone non-Japanese phones were unheard of here). Now you can't even get proper directions to some of the largest train stations, including the busiest one, Shinjuku. I don't know how it is in the States, but in Japan this isn't a regression or an inconvenience, it's a total removal of a heavily used feature. I can't think of a better way Apple could have fucked up the experience for Japanese users.

And they were doing so well here, too.

bluedanieruon Amazon search results in the Dash

Are power users such a small segment? The other two customers you're talking about here are very mythological in nature afaict. Enterprise? Where? Enterprise customers don't install the latest Ubuntu distro firmwide - they are just getting Windows 7 (maybe). They don't do Linux on the desktop by definition. And show me a 'regular user' whose Ubuntu install wasn't courtesy of some zealous grandson or nephew or boy/girlfriend or whatever.

Seriously, I want to know who these people are who have been using Windows their whole life, and who aren't technical, who at best could just barely grok that you can't run Windows apps on Linux, and who nevertheless are going ahead and installing this piece of shit. I want to meet one of these people and take their picture because, to me, it would like having my picture taken with a fucking unicorn. While you're at it, let's have a tablet running Unity that isn't someone's science project. Because all of this seems to figure a great deal in justifying the reasoning behind whatever wrong decision at Canonical folks are trying to justify this release.

Or, you know, every time Mark shits on the floor with this sort of thing we can try to figure out why it's actually not so bad after all.

Ubuntu was great back when Canonical was bringing innovation that benefited actual existing Linux users (your so-called 'power users') by smoothing the rough edges, with a view toward making it easier for people to make the switch to a Linux desktop. Somewhere along the way they lost the plot, and now it's just gimmicks and bullshit. Gimmicks and bullshit that are supposed to attract the layperson but haven't, and instead just piss off the people already using the thing (who are flocking to other distros btw).

bluedanieruon Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-Installed

That's very similar to many other distros except you don't need to run the command.

bluedanieruon Pandora doesn't hash their passwords

Okay, I have to take this back. It looks like they did finally implement this sometime between now and June (when I last checked). Better late than never.

bluedanieruon Apple Says Give Maps Time, The More You Use it The Better It Is

I didn't remember it because it didn't happen (parse the original sentence a little more carefully :-)

bluedanieruon Apple Says Give Maps Time, The More You Use it The Better It Is

I think I would have remembered that.

bluedanieruon Pandora doesn't hash their passwords

Neither does Hover, still, despite being outed here nearly 18 months ago and assurances by a Hover rep that they were working on tightening security and would have it completed by September (2011).

Some companies just do not give a shit about (your) security,

bluedanieruon Google has an iOS 6 Maps app awaiting approval

Yes, but what's anti-competitive depends on what your market position is.

bluedanieruon Is Freemium the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Valve is not a good example for anything. They do things other companies can't, or won't, and at any rate, don't. They are the exception that proves the rule, in most things. In the TF2 case, they went to that model as an experiment, after TF2 had already been paid software for a long time and had made a lot of money for Valve. So, you don't see much of the annoying 'monetization' bullshit that you see with other titles, because there wasn't any pressure to put it in. Instead, they sold things that people wanted without impacting core gameplay which is something that no other freemium developer seems able to pull off.

I haven't encountered other examples of freemium games of that type, that weren't utter garbage.

bluedanieruon Slashdot and SourceForge sold to Dice Holdings

Please hurry.

bluedanieruon Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say

This is as good a place to start as any:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

bluedanieruon Japan Commits to Eliminating Nuclear Power

I don't think you know what circular reasoning is.

Are you seriously suggesting that anything that isn't designed against every conceivable example of human incompetence, is a flawed design?

bluedanieruon Japan Commits to Eliminating Nuclear Power

Just to be clear, the handling of the Fukushima incident has been an absolute shit-show. The handling of the earthquake and the tsunami, in a broader sense, has been excellent.