joshes

As the video pointed out, only about half of government officials in Hong Kong are directly elected by the population. For the remainder, there is little pressure or incentive to get anything done in this regard.

I'm not entirely sure, but he may have taken exception to the following from your piece:

>Of course, you and I know that the latter is just a general form of the former, but somebody whose educational attainments have qualified them to sit behind a desk stamping passports doesn’t.

Could this be an April Fools gag?

I wish I had screencapped it, but at one point I found myself in the middle of the screen, watching four swarm-like quadrants of fellow ships (top-left, top-right, bottom-left and bottom-right) all moving in relative unison. Anytime a swarm started to get close to me, I would inch away for a few seconds before the swarm turned back. I was able to stay in this middle, peaceful area for an extremely long time before random stray fire eventually finished me off.

Admittedly I know nothing of the regulations surrounding such a proposal, but what of some sort of revenue sharing? Donating to the project guarantees you a share in the village's revenue, where your cut is relative to your investment size? I fully understand how crazy of an idea this must sound.

It would be interesting to see a Kickstarter project devoted to this. It would need to get big fast (Friday deadline to submit an offer), and would need both the $440,000 minimum to purchase the village and ample money on top of that for renovation. It might be a hard sell for people who have no desire or ability to relocate to the village, but I am sure smarter folk than I could think of some sort of angle to generate attention to the project. Perhaps?

Dinosaur Comics has a nice one: http://qwantz.com/index.php

Which of his statements do you find to be factually inaccurate?

>Interestingly enough, Jobs himself was also considered for knighthood by the Queen of the United Kingdom, but the proposal was blocked by a former Prime Minister because Jobs declined to speak at a Labour Party conference.

That's fascinating to me. As an American who has never paid much attention to British knighthood, I am not knowledgeable about the process for selecting whom becomes a British knight. Could someone with the requisite knowledge perhaps elucidate on whether or not ostensibly petty politics get in the way of these things with regularity?

It seems absolutely absurd that someone who is being considered for knighthood could be denied of that because of something as minuscule as declining to speak at a party conference.

I would imagine that the Washington DC Metro area (DC, Northern Virginia, Maryland) has a reasonably sized proportion of that "(Rest of the) United States" total. The startup scene, and tech scene in general (largely thanks to defense contractors), are quite active here.

It would be helpful if you could enumerate the ways in which his/her statement was naive. It seems to be a relatively logical conclusion that being told or influenced not to say something is restrictive of innate freedom of speech, no matter how seemingly innocuous a reasoning established social or cultural norms are (ie. don't criticize the recently deceased, it's tactless).

This may be a tad tangential, but this reminds me a great deal (in terms of the higher level concept) of Imaginawesome: http://imaginawesome.com/

tl;dr: give this guy a child's drawing, and he sprinkles "awesome dust" on it.

>I know a lot of you don’t understand why I can’t disclose all conflicts of interest. The answer is that if I did, not that many people would want to talk to me in the direct, honest way that I prefer. As a reader you must remain aware of the inherent bias in everything you read, and form your own opinions accordingly.

So at first he admits that he cannot disclose all conflicts of interest, then states that, as readers, his audience must remain aware of his inherent bias. How are we to remain aware of the nature of these biases if all conflicts are not disclosed? And, in turn, how are we to trust anything that he writes when it is known that he has a) biases and conflicts and that b) he will not disclose all of the?

I understand that everyone has biases and conflicts of interest, that they are impossible to avoid and that it is highly impractical to disclose each and every one. But it seems intriguing, to me, to caution us to "be aware" while also telling us that he will not give us the information require for full awareness.

The parent comment never passed judgment on this self-image, just merely asserted that it was pervasive among Americans.

I cannot really help this inescapable feeling that the new design is somewhat obnoxious. It's just... there's something about the design that I just cannot get past. This will only serve to further decrease my already declining viewership.

tl;dr: Arrington discusses how he (and others who break news) usually first contact the subject of a news piece before publishing the story in order to inform them, get their side, or whatever else. Arrington says he apologized to the CEO of AdMeld for not doing that earlier this month. He then says that some CEOs he just does not trust, however, and will thus forgo the call. He then mentions Caterina Fake (of Hunch) as an example and proceeds to detail how he had the scoop on her departure from Hunch but refused to post it without contacting her first because of their pre-existing relationship. He then mentions that on two separate occasions he tried to warn Caterina of an impending news story only for her to then blog about the story herself and out-scoop him. He then calls her a liar about the entire affair and says he still will not explain what really happened because it's not his business. But then says that with Caterina, and others that he no longer trusts, he will break news stories on them without warning.

Edit: Initially mistakenly worded the part about the CEO of AdMeld. Corrected with thanks to the comment below pointing out the mistake.

You managed to pack a great deal of trolling into this post. Kudos for this one.

Could have something to do with the fact that you can be shot from quite a bit greater distance than you can be stabbed with a knife, hit with a hammer, struck with a steel bar or cut with a broken bottle.

Exactly.

Leave it to an executive of the MAFIAA (Michael O'Leary) to contort basic civic principles to slander anyone who stands up against their ridiculous, rights-trouncing mode of operation.

Regardless of whether or not it is feasible to have 6,000 patent examiners perform this process, it still seems remarkably subjective: a given patent examiner, with all of his/her individual strengths, weaknesses, imperfections and idiosyncrasies, determines if s/he alone can solve the proposed problem and, if not, essentially says, "Aw shucks, this is patentable!"

And to me that is one of the many problems with (software) patents: it relies on an inherently biased, subjective process to determine whether this objective, rigorous piece of thought is worthy of a monopoly.

I think this will smack of the Streisand Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) over time. Facebook trying to call attention to privacy concerns over Google will, inevitably, as this piece exemplifies, call attention to their own privacy concerns. And the stigma of this hypocritical stance will also call attention to the overall maturity and sensibility of Facebook, as well.

Then again, the kind of people who are most likely to be affected by this entire affair are also the kind of people who already know this information about both companies. So maybe this will have little overall effect?

Media coverage is not necessarily indicative of the effect on the world produced by a given individual or group. Especially for an individual who is hated by many people in high places, be it for good reason or otherwise. To comment that there was more in the mainstream media about Assange's Swedish affair than about the information disclosed in the leaks does not mean that the leaks did nothing.

It is still a tad vague to me. "As long as the hardware allows" seems like it provides some wiggle room for carriers to squirm out of any responsibilities to honor this.

Additionally, it only says that the devices will receive the latest upgrades for 18 months after the device is first released, which is problematic in many regards. If you get a phone the day it releases and are forced into a two year contract (which you almost certainly will be if you are going with a carrier), then for the final six months, or 25%, of that contract period, the carrier is not required to allow for you to receive Android upgrades. That instantly devalues your device. And what if you get a new device, but not until six months after its release? Well, then your carrier is only required to permit the upgrades for the first year; the last year is back to same old, same old.

And it says nothing about how timely the upgrades are. As it currently reads, all it guarantees is that for a year and a half after the device is released, carriers must eventually allow your device to upgrade to the latest version of Android. It is not a long enough time to cover an entire contract period and it has a little clause that is open to interpretation by all parties involved.

Edit: I'm writing this from the perspective of an American consumer. I do not know anything about the way that carriers and their mobile contracts work elsewhere.

The tl;dr of it all is that, according to at least one Anon, this "Ryan" fellow was a former moderator of the IRC and was the legal owner of the AnonOps.ru and AnonOps.net domains. Apparently, two others, "Nerdo" and "Owen" (whom you may remember from the HBGary fiasco), revoked his IRC credentials. Ryan somewhat predictably responded by DDOS'ing (with help from 808chan) and essentially taking his domains and going home. Some Anons responded by getting "Ryan"'s docs and now it's all just a bunch of circle jerking.

Agreed. The problem with politicians (in places where they are democratically elected) is that they are concerned only with short term solutions because they are only concerned with getting re-elected and scoring political points. So when new and unique situations presents their selves and certain interest groups and parties feel threatened (especially those with any semblance of influence), the politicians apply older and inapplicable methods because it provides the image that they are "at least doing something" about the supposed threat.

The Internet is still a completely new, ever-changing landscape and politicians are stuck spinning their wheels in the mud as special interests (such as the MAFIAA) demand something, anything be done when the new model does not run parallel to their profit motive. So the easy solution is to just slap older laws and regulations over the top like an ill-fitting band-aid and hope it works. MAFIAA wins. Politician wins. Citizenry loses, as per usual.

>“The Presidency of the LEWP presented its intention to propose concrete measures towards creating a single secure European cyberspace,” according to brief minutes of the meeting. The secure European cyberspace would have a "virtual Schengen border", it adds, referring to the treaty that allows freedom of movement within the EU but imposes controls on entry to the bloc. There would also be “virtual access points" whereby “the Internet Service Providers would block illicit contents on the basis of the EU ‘black-list’”, the proposal says.

Wow. Not only is it a terrible-sounding idea when heard second hand, it is even worse when heard straight from the horse's mouth. "A single secure cyberspace" sounds an awful lot like "A single secure SOCIETY!" It's as if Emperor Palpatine and the MAFIAA elite got together to determine the most efficient way to deny people of their rights for the sake of greed and power. How can anyone possibly hear what they are saying in these plans and not recoil with horror and disgust? It runs counter to all ideals and freedoms that the West purports to stand for.

Sheer absurdity.

This is similar to how organizations tend to use phrases such as "we regret..." as opposed to one's such as "we're sorry...". This way they have their PR move without actually admitting to any wrongdoing on their part. Sort of a semantically plausible deniability, I think.

I would agree. I do think that corporations should not be treated in precisely the same way that individual persons are treated. Corporations have (arguably) far too much power as is.

But I think that the level of privacy that allows one to request to not be videotaped against their will extends to corporations in some circumstances. Unless there is something truly fishy happening here, and there is not much evidence that there is, I believe that Google is within their liberties to be upset over this.

> Let's face it, if they were doing something legal they wouldn't care if they were getting videotaped.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." It was a preposterous statement assuming that the only value of privacy is to protect one's self when they do something morally, ethically or legally wrong. It was remarkably incorrect and offensive and everyone (rightly) lambasted him for it.

Your statement is eerily similar. I'm not commenting on what Google has done here. But to say that they wouldn't care about being video taped if they were not doing something illegal does not make complete sense.

I think that the semantics behind the question implied end goal, as in is the ultimate goal of writing a bash script simply to write a bash script or is it something more, something beyond that? One would almost certainly reason that the answer must be the latter, yes?

Recent rumors peg Sony's and Microsoft's next efforts at 2014, with announcements around mid-2012.