The number of people using messaging apps (not sms) daily has skyrocketed in the last couple years, has it not? The shift is probably less recognizable because it's not a shift to messaging in general (text messaging represented that shift years ago), but a shift in platform from sms to messaging applications that innovators actually have some control over. Personally, i think it's a combination of that and the machine learning thing you mention. I'd wager that the amount of time the average person spends looking at/using a messaging app every day is very significant. Especially for something that has yet to be integrated very well or monetized.
Method 1: Purchase a copy of Maniac Mansion on eBay or such. Download a single copy of the data files. Load and play them in ScummVM.
Method 2: So, funny story. See how Day of the Tentacle Remastered is for sale above? It just so happens that the original Day of the Tentacle contained a computer that allowed one to play Maniac Mansion. The Remastered edition above ALSO contains that same computer with that same copy of Maniac Mansion. So if you buy Day of the Tentacle Remastered, then play up to the point where you reach that computer, you can play the original Maniac Mansion.
Yes --- there's a copy built in to Day of the Tentacle.
Go to Weird Ed Edison's room and use his computer, and it'll start up. Or, well, it used to. I've only ever played it on ScummVM, which didn't support that opcode, but it was trivial to haul out the data files and run them separately.
I have no idea whether the remastered version still contains this. I hope so (I've never finished Maniac Mansion).
Sad that the user is being lost in these discussions. I get that people are worried about a slippery slope and boundaries, but this is clearly a better user experience for someone who searched for Southwest Airlines. Put yourself in the position of a human being who just performed a search for Southwest Airlines, would you honestly be angry with that result? No, of course not.
It's ironic that every time one of these "omg, google is pushing organic search results off the page" posts comes up, it's the general public who's obsessed with dollars, whereas Google seems to be concerned for the user. Google makes a ton of money off of advertising because they know how to provide useful user experience. Which isn't surprising really, they have a lot more vested interest in making sure they provide such an experience than arstechnica do.
Sure they want to find ways to align their incentives with the user's incentives, but come on people: think of the people they saved clicking through to www.cheapair.com and www.insanelycheapflights.com
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you left out the step where a judge reviews the request to make sure it's not overly broad or based on flimsy reasoning.
Aside from that I'd say it's a very clear, and it's sad that there seems to be a pervasive inference that these companies are something something beyond what our elected law makers have forced them to do. Why isn't more angst directed at the politicians responsible for this?
A judge does review the request. Whether that judge "makes sure it's not overly broad or based on flimsy reasoning" is far from clear. The judge has been hand-picked by John Roberts and only hears the government's side of the case. The FISA court has rejected 0.03 percent of the government's requests. Now, maybe that's just an indication that 99.97% of the government's requests are reasonable, but here's the problem: we have no way of knowing, because it's all secret. THAT is the problem IMHO, more than the surveillance itself.
No, a judge does not see an individual request in a 702 order. This is the entire point of the 702 and PRISM -- NSA analysts no longer have to fill out paperwork to get data from Google/Facebook/Etc, so long as they are 51% sure the target is a foreigner. There is one court order per company per year. After that, it's "direct access" - e.g. analyst sends request directly to the company.
I see where it says in the caption "The supervisor must endorse the analyst's "reasonable belief," defined as 51 percent confidence, that the specified target is a foreign national who is overseas at the time of collection." But that's a caption written by the Post. What I don't see is any support for that statement in the actual slide itself, nor any of the other slides on that page.
But these companies do more than what is required by law. They do not by law have to provide API access, only to provide the data in some form. None of the smaller webmail hosts cooperate in PRISM.
And as for warrants, no they do not always need a warrant. They only need that if both parties in the communication are US citizens. If none of them are no warrant is needed at all and if just one party is US then they (according to the Wikipedia article on PRISM) can wiretap for up to a week without getting a warrant.
I think it's also worth noting that the intended audience of these slides wasn't the general public/press. It's possible the purpose of using wording like "directly from the servers" was simply to delineate the origin of the data from the data pulled off the wire, not the mechanism of retrieval (e.g. some backdoor outside of the existing legal procedure for acquiring such data). I just picture the person who wrote these slides and chose those words either laughing their ass off, or face-palming right now. The companies involved have been pretty explicit (at great risk I might add by putting their founders' names on the denials) that there isn't "direct access" or anything like it.
The real story here is the "Upstream" collection. Just horribly irresponsible behavior for a steward of much of the Internet's infrastructure. Shameful.
I don't think modifying already self-replicating seeds should give you a right to dictate what happens with subsequent generations of those seeds. Any such agreements should be rendered invalid (like non-compete agreements in California).
I realize this is an issue with the laws themselves and probably not within the purview of the Supreme Court, but I was kind of hoping they'd step in and end the madness.
