jeffool

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand your comment. iMessage uses SMS/MMS. People with Apple phones can send texts and media files to non-Apple phones just fine. (And iPhones are a third of the market. That hardly makes you "one of few".)

Absolutely; I wouldn't WANT anyone to have to special case me. It's silly, and no one should have to. That's why I think Google (and anyone wants to get into the phone-number game) should be handling that behind the scenes like I presume Apple's iMessages does.

Really? You've never had anyone send a picture or video to your phone?

Maybe it's that I live in southern Georgia (though in a city of 77k) but I tried explaining to people a few times that "if you're going to send a picture or video, send it to my email." The reply was usually the same, and hostile.

"I don't know how to send things to email on my phone!"

"You just type in my email. Or choose it from the contact list you chose my number from."

"Nevermind. I don't know why you have to make it complicated." And this is from 26 year olds who grew up with computers and use them daily.

I love Google Voice; I do. It may not be smart, but I put it on my resume and as my primary contact info. But at the same time, that you can't receive mms is just crazy. I mean, forward it to my email even. I'm fine with that.

Partial sidenote: If I were, say, Yahoo, and looking to do a few big projects, this is one I'd tackle. Google has shown people will use it if it's simple, but there's not wide adoption. Yahoo Phone could supplant GVoice and things like SnapChat in one fell swoop.

I think the difference is when a person is charged, they're charged regardless of if 'they' did the downloading or not, because it's their Internet connection. Logic would dictate that Warner Brothers would be responsible for anyone using theirs to pirate. We won't, and I'm sure we agree, ever see that.

In fact, it's often argued any party to find this MUST sue infringing parties, for fear of otherwise losing their copyright. That magically seems a non-issue in these cases. It's not anyone else's cognitive dissonance about the morality of piracy or inferring Warner Brothers is any more guilty than an individual accused of the same. It's a sense of anger because they preach about responsibility and issue lawsuits under the guise of curbing illegal activity, while letting others off because...

Why do they let Warner Brother's off again? Oh yes, because they're also a giant media company on equal footing and their own lawyers and things like copyright protection, moral responsibility, and curbing piracy are all bullshit. And given I imagine they know that such cases happen, one has to assume they know it's bullshit. That's why people use "caught". They regularly say a litany of things, none of which seem true given what's actually happening.

Don't all animals "know" to some degree? After all, they "know" they're attracted to mates of the same type. Though I guess sometimes a dog humps a leg.

K, T, X, and Y are also tough at a glance. But I must admit, I do love the notion. There just has to be a better implementation.

I think that if Colbert did approach it seriously, his apparently genuine sincerity (which I agree with you on, is heartening and rare), would wear thin on most people. Especially his guests. I think before long they just would avoid his show or people's cynicism would harden them to it. I think this is why when he or Stewart do lash out with an honest emotion, it's so stark to everything else they do, and everything everyone else does.

No, I think Stewart and Colbert are best where they are, at least for now, as biting satire that reveals the shallowness of the news and pundits they mock. Hopefully the constant razing leaves the ground ripe for a new growth of journalism with less weeds.

And I say this as someone who previously worked in local news, and hopes to return very soon. I sometimes think that if you watch the news without giving serious thought to it, there's a very real possibility you're doing yourself more harm than good.

While I do think Colbert is the smartest funny man (And Stewart the funniest smart man) around, and love to watch them both, I think you're right Luke. His being in character and using comedy generally lets him take the interview in directions and to places that he couldn't otherwise. And I think sometimes that he can come from such an odd place, his questions elicit answers that may not be otherwise given.

Sorry, "The". Swype kills me sometimes and I never notice.

Tvs option still exists. The "safe search" option will have a check mark beside it if on. The problem is that if you turn it off... If you explicitly ask Google to not filter your searches on the basis of explicitly sexual content, and then search for "blowjob", it thinks you want funny pictures in the "thick bordered meme" template.

So, you have the option, Google just doesn't care so much if you exercise it.

I'm fairly certain the director has a LinkedIn profile that's updated. (There are a few with the same name that aren't.) There's also a Twitter account with that name, but it's been inactive for about a year. Any "web sleuth" with a Linked In paid membership could toss him an email if they were so inclined.

I've asked two people on Twitter if they were the writers listed on the Facebook ad. One Lorenzo Faggi replied no. Others with that name are rather inactive. I'm still waiting on the presumed Tomaso Walliser to answer.

I'd love to know just how many were done, what became of them, and if they're no longer interested in pursuing the project, if they would post the footage they did film for the public to tinker with.

I'm still genuinely surprised Valve hasn't launched a game streaming service. Then suggest developers offer Win, Linux, Mac, AND streaming, so they can stream to every platform (like this Steam Box) they can.

"Steam Cloud Stream?"

Thanks for confirming that. It seemed like something you'd hear. And given their views, I get how they'd come to that.

I think that can be taken further. I may well be wrong, but I don't find it hard to imagine many free market people would say "Why should a person's work EVER pass into the public domain?!"

>Maybe if the DNC were to implode at the same time.

Right? It seems that's why neither party will ever lessen. It's like an arms race in which parties will never intentionally weaken their numbers by any means. It's led to piecemeal parties that would probably be better as separate-but-aligned than being a small voice in a large party.

I just can't imagine anything to begin such a split at the same time. If, say, fiscal conservative/social liberal people all actually made the jump to Libertarian (or another party), maybe a further left liberal faction of Democrats party might follow, but probably not. I just can't imagine anything that would incite a sizable group to give up that balance.

Shame. If large enough, and they pulled a few members from the other side, there's the potential they would become king-makers.

2. Overcome loud opposition to the idea of interfering with Mars until we study it further.

Mind you, I'm not advocating that position, but I certainly expect it.

This isn't a reply directly to you, Winthrowe. But more to this line of thread.

The wrongs of Paypal have been mentioned, but most account blocking happens when a user violates Steam's TOS. Being an abusive jerk online while logged in and playing games. Or cheating.

Now, I think that's bullshit. You still paid for those games. I think you should own them. Completely. At most they should block you from their servers and their online play.

But with Steam you can easily download any title you own as many times as you like. Steam has its own problems, but this they got right. You can even back them up quite easily. (Man, that used to be a broken tool, but even it's good now.)

While I can't speak to the DRM issues here, I can say that it's definitely silly to me. Valve lets me download games and films for gigs as much as I like. The idea that I could do that with ebooks? Why, I could rack up... Megabytes of bandwidth for them! Maybe even a Gigabyte!

Okay, maybe that's a bit assholish of me to phrase it that way, but it really does seem like an odd decision to me as a user.

I have to admit, despite generally being a Google fan, I find a little humor in the fact that my Android phone can't read half their Google blogs. They open, but they won't let me scroll down. I have to stop a page before it loads completely (before it loads SOME element) if I want to be able to scroll. Makes me glad Blogspot is irrelevant to me.

It's A Wonderful Life entered the public domain and was taken back from us. The rights holder forgot to apply for an extension. After it lapsed they argued that done they held the rights to the story it was based on, the rights to derive from that story, the score, etc., they should have the film too.

I can not, with humor, get across how dumb that sounds to me. So I'll state it plainly. That's amazingly stupid. And it worked.

Well we've got a solid one now, at least! Very clear.

But I totally get the judgement of the previous editor as well. When in doubt, and given a poor headline (nah, it didn't say .com), go with the headline of the article that is linked. It's a good rule of thumb, and this was the exception.

Thanks for rolling with the punches, whoever is pulling strings.

Speaking on cultural differences and American willingness to discuss bathroom culture...

I, personally, don't like the idea of a warm seat. All I'll be thinking about is "someone else just used this toilet".

Maybe one day I'll use one and it'll change my outlook completely, like the George Foreman grill nudged my outlook on the validity of infomercial products. But, until that happens? Nope, no thanks.

Oh I agree completely; I certainly don't think saket123 meant to mislead people at all. It was just an unfortunate choice of words causing a little bit of a dust up. Maybe now any relevant conversation can happen!

So let's all go answer or up-vote philp's comment!

Because the title doesn't say "the website" was taken offline. It suggests CyanogenMod itself is no longer available from the developer.

Imagine the headline "LA Lakers Closes!" That tells me the basketball team is no more. But, if instead their website was closed for a planned relaunch, then the headline should read "LA Lakers' Website Closes!" or "LALakers.com Closes!"

Just reading the title, I was under the impression that CyanogenMod itself was no longer available from the developer, not just the website. I'm not sure if "sensationalist" is the right word, but, it wouldn't pass an editor's muster.

I think most people just swallowed it. Sure, some went exclusively PC/PS3, but I don't think that many quit because of it.

Personally, I dropped XBL years ago because I was tired of children eager to sling racial and homophobic slurs. Playing games online just wasn't fun to me. I went on to play a lot of TF2, but virtually no one there uses headphones mics either. That, to me, was the appeal of Xbox Live. Everyone had a mic. We were to communicate and make the games fun on a whole new level. Instead, well, no. That didn't happen.

Oh, it's definitely still bullshit. You're right, it can ruin games directly, and even indirectly as others may assume you have an advantage because you're the host and quit. Dedicated servers are indeed simply better on games with more than two players.

I just meant the outrage over it seems to be much less a thing now. Now it's just accepted that this is how it should be done. I think like afterburner suggested in the sister comment to this one, those who were seriously offput by it have left and that's that.

I don't think people will care until those places can do awesome things we can't do. If they can buy a $500 TV that does everything their computers do (stream UHDTV films, games, etc.) then maybe they'll care. But, until then, so what?

And really, even then, so what? People's hearts just don't seem to be in that contest anymore. I think they're more likely to care about beating their friends in fashion than another nation. And if their friends don't have it, then they don't care much either. Hopefully this is here something like Google Fiber makes a difference. But then, without software to make it stand out...

I think it'll take true spectacle to get people really interested. As much as you or I would like this kind of thing, I just don't know what would sell it to the average person without requiring the purchase of additional tech as well.

That's how most Xbox games work. There was a bit of a uproar about it when the service started. Players were miffed of paying to play games they already bought, and not even getting dedicated servers. That quickly died down.