Information can't set someone free; it is inanimate

”He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future."

Orwell, amongst other political commentators, observed that the control of information allows the few to control the many. It is undeniable that freedom of communication (and therefore information) makes it increasingly difficult for a powerful individual or a state to filter that information in order to influence people.

Whilst a state can use the flow of information to profile its population, this isn't much use if a large proportion of your population is gaining access to precisely the kind of information which you dan't want them to have.

Ultimately, the increasing freedom of access to information, opinion and likeminded individuals will always be a force of good.

Oh Dear

Matthew, Matthew, Matthew. The possibilities and applications for of HTML 5 have sailed right over you head haven't they?

This is about HTML5 APPLICATIONS - not static websites - lots of client side rich UI, local caching of data, local databases, etc, etc. Performance is quite important here, you see. It means you can do stuff like offline rich document editing, spreadsheets, databases, games.

Maybe "tech nerds" are the only ones who care about how the performance is delivered, but end users will appreciate the functionality that it brings with it.

OK then. What about age discrimination?

How do you fancy paying as the same amount for your car insurance (minus no claims) as a 19 year old male?

As for the general priniciple of providing targetted services for different class / education / gender /ethnic / age groups based up statistical analysis of historical data... I'm starting to wonder why we're bothering with a national census AT ALL in this country if this kind of idea is fundamentally bad.

well, sort of....

The most important factor in the sonic qualities of a solid body electric guitar is the rigidity and resonance (or lack thereof) of the whole. In fact, a more dense and rigid, less resonant guitar will tend to have more sustain because of the knock on effect of not absorbing too much of the string's energy, and not trasnmitting any of the vibration to the pickups, where such vibration would compromise the electromagnetic process of picking up the strings note.

This is why carbon fibre, through neck guitars such as the tiny cricket bat shaped Steinberger guitars tend to sound closer to a big chunky Les Paul, for example. And why big body semis actually have quite a boxy, reedy sound by comparison.

If the construction techniques and rigidity of the materials in this guitar are suitable, the actual size and shape of the thing doesn't mean a damn.

I for one am more than a litle curious.

Agreed

That's why we all should keep up to date with our patches. The patching process exists to fix both publicly known bugs and internally identified bugs.

Why disclose a security vulnerability that you've already fixed? All that does is expose people who haven't patched yet.

It also ties up your internal developers with the job of constantly documenting every fix in the public domain, reducing the amount of time they can spend actually FIXING stuff.

Wonderful

Like a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and William Borroughs. Wonderful.

That would be William Shakespeare

And it was the name of a play.

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

:P

An epic demonstration of missing the point

This is kinda the whole point... and it has sailed right over your head.

Lets disregard the fact that this user DID have a backup of his photos. That's no the point either.

The point is that world+dog is talking about could storage and productivity / thin client solutions as replacement for conventional desktop smart client. If this is to have ANY value at all, we have to be able to trust such large cloud providers (such as Yahoo, for example) to properly backup and secure our data. And to restore it quickly when they screw up.

If they can't, then cloud is ultimately useless.

FWIW, I can guarantee than any decent cloud provider will have a much more robust and resilient data safety and backup strategy than the overwhelming majority of home users. Furthermore, I'd be prepared to bet that many times more users have lost their photo data from their desktop machines due to disk & backup failure / computer theft, than have ever lost photo data stored on Flickr.

Yahoo obviously have a decent backup strategy. The only problem is that it took the user to kick up a stink in the public press before they restored that backup. Which is a bit worrying.

Educational video

Arguably NSFW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2de9f8H5R9U

... and of course:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

Standards and patented tech

"Supporting H.264 means supporting a de facto requirement for patented technology to creep into the open specs of the Internet or risk compliant video failing to play in compliant browsers."

<- THIS

This is precisely the point. Furthermore, if somebody with influence doesn't act, we'll be looking another generation of open source platforms / browsers that are locked out of HTML 5 video by simple merit the the fact that Apple and MS have used their influence to ensure that a patented codec is in widespread use, rather than an open one.

I applaud Google for have the balls to do this. As has been pointed out, it is in their interests, as they have Android and Chrome OS to consider, both of which will really need to default to WebM if their are going to remain open and also natively support HTML5 video.

From a wider POV, it is in all our interests. What ON EARTH in the point of moving away from a closed proprietary plugin (Flash) for video, to a close proprietary codec which has somehow infiltrated its way into an open standard?

That's going from bad to worse, surely?

Also, thinking about it

If the banks shipped this client on a USB stick, this would also protect users from downloading trojanised versions of the client from dodgy phishing sites as well.

It would also allow the customer to use the client on any machine.

So rather than having to have one of those daft little keyring login key generators, or card chip reader, you would have a little USB stick, which when plugged into a machine and provided with your login details, allows you to login to your bank account.

Maybe it could even be based on a bootable mini linux VM, to protect it from any other malware on your host machine?

Defeated so easily?

"IF the US Government could run anything efficiently and UNDER budget, I would support a national healthcare system - but it cannot no matter which party is in control, they all talk out their ass."

I may be missing the point, but it strikes me that in inneficiently run, overbudget national healthcare system is better than none at all? You surely have to start somewhere. To argue that "the government will not deliver a perfect system" is a bit daft, given that the system you currently have is VERY far from perfect. To give up trying for such a system just because the healthcare corps interfere to block its proper implementation seem like a tragically defeatist attitude from a country that once prided itself on its inventiveness, entrepeneurship and aspirational qualities.

Maybe if the electorate actually all got behind the idea of improving national healthcare and providing a robust national healthcare system, then you'd get started on the road to creating one? Just putting your hands up and declaring defeat at the first hurdle is so utterly, hopelessy sad, that it strikes me as another syptom of the disease that will ultimately destroy US cultural and financial dominance.

Almost

Actually, the killer fix would be for banking institutions to produce a native client app for Windoze / Mac / iPad, whatever, and only allow you to login to their services using the app.

The app would be hardwired to an SSL webservice on a specific domain. It may even use $browser's rendering engine to render pages fetched to the native client via the webservice. Importantly, there would be NO browser based alternate login.

Said bank then advises clients that if they invited to login to a web site, they should NEVER do so. They should always use their native client.

For added convenience, the client may also hash some of their login details for instant recall, so they only need to use a simple username and password combo which ONLY WORKS ON THIER INSTALLATION to login. Hence keyloggers also become useless.

VR Glasses

No. VR glasses' day never came because they make you look a complete twunt.

For home consoling gaming, they make the whole experience very insular. Whilst this works for the hardcore of bedroom gamers, they don't work for social or casual gaming. They certainly don't work for ANY mobile application.

I'm sure if anybody thought they could actually SELL the damn things in any serious volume, they'd invest the R&D in finding ways to make it cheaper.

Obvious

I would have thought it was obvious how they knew this was perpetrated by an African group: I assume that they followed the stolen money as far they could, and that it ultimately ended up transferred to an African bank account.

Good point

Good point. With road usage tax, I'll be able to run a massive 5l V8, and pay the same as somebody else running a 1.6

Unless of course, there's going to be some elaborate and complex way of charging based upon engine size.

Oh wait, hang on, don't we already have this with FUEL DUTY?

As I say. Logic fail.

This whole idea is somewhere on the far side of daft.

Doh!

"No it isn't. That's a tax on the use of fuel. This isn't the same thing as road usage. A gas guzzler will need a lot more fuel to use as much road as a supermini, all other things being equal."

...So a bigger car (occupying more road space) will cost more?

Still sounds like a road use tax to me.

...And travelling a larger, faster, less congested road at higher average speed will cost less?

Yep. Still sounds more efficient way to charge for road usage than a huge network of cameras and ridiculous administrative / bureaucratic overhead.

Well said

••••APPLAUSE****

A well written and emotive response. Couldn't agree more.

I'm sorry we got involved in these wars. It wasn't helped by the fact that the incumbent in the White House was a war-mongering shitbag who didn't care about the lives of his own people, or those in Afghanistan & Iraq.

BUT. We're there now - and it is our DUTY to leave these countries in a stable condition. Abandoning them now makes us even worse. We've bombed them into the stone age, and now we're going to fuck off home? Sorry: that's just selfish, irresponsible and downright evil.

Assange has demonstrated that he has no interest in anything other than his own self promotion: these documents put real human beings at risk. Some of them allied forces, some of them Afghan citizens. Responsible journalism isn't about killing people just to get yourself some more publicity.