Age may well play a role for some people. I wasn't commenting on that. I was commenting on the assumption that that was what was happening, with no evidence at all to indicate that that was the case. That and the tone of the comment combined to look like bigotry to me - and there is a lot of "ageism" on/.
Also I suspect a good portion of those people were old and probably wasted a lot of time saying, "Where's the damn next button on this newfangled gadget?"
Wow, there's a bit of bigotry snatched out of thin air. Unfortunately one that is not at all uncommon on/.
It is unfortunate that you have chosen to simply ignore what I have said in order to simply chant "there was no conspiracy" and present your opinions as if they were fact.
the conclusions of scientists about the research in their own field is the best conclusion the rest of us have to go on
Yes I got the meaning you intended for "respect" I just don't think it is necessarily a good idea to respect the conclusions of scientists more than any other group in their field. Mmmm maybe respect is not the best word. We shouldn't take the results of "the establishment" in any field and imbue them with an aura of infallibility or consider them sacrosanct in any manner - and this is what it feels like is happening in this particular case. I'm sure you've seen it here in/. - saying anything of a sceptical nature about the claims of "the climate scientists" results in instant hostility. IMHO not a very healthy atmosphere, both in general and, in this case, for the future of the human race.
It has long been acknowledged that people in groups act very differently than they do as individuals. I don't think groups of scientists are exempt from this phenomenon. And as I started mentioning in my previous post there are all sorts of forces relating to human nature that can come into play here. One further example would be that "scientists" (group tag) are not well regarded by society in general and actually are disrespected a fair bit. Now suddenly people are paying attention to them and they are getting their 15 minutes. It's hard not to see human nature having some influence, let's be generous and say an unconscious influence, to want to perpetuate that.
I'm also sceptical of the ability of the peer review process and professional associations to maintain, mmm let's say quality control. I wish I could remember the guy's name but there was a famous case a few years back of a physicist synthesising a paper in IIRC Sociology and getting it published in a peer reviewed journal. The problem being of course that he had just filled the paper with gobbledygook. Now some will say that it wasn't a peer review by scientists but I don't think Scientist humans are all that different than Sociologist humans or that the peer review processes are that fundamentally different.
I'm glad you accept my second point. We never escape the problem that unqualified people will have to make decisions about things they can't really understand. I do think there is at least a palliative for this though, and that is a much more highly educated populace and specifically one that is trained in logic, debate etc. and encouraged to practice scepticism in general. And perhaps most importantly of all, trained to practice self-doubt on a regular basis.
As for people rejecting "the science" because they don't like what the inevitable result would be, in this case the policy decisions, that is certainly my take on human nature as well. When cherished belief and fact collide it is almost always fact that loses. Some people realize this and respond by shading their cases, exaggerating, making allies of the ignorant etc. etc. in order to try and leapfrog this hurdle. I see this all the time and especially so in most political processes. I view that sort of behaviour as one of the greatest problems facing humanity.
All the above aside I think what most disquiets me about this particular issue is the volume of the chanting. Others here have made statements amounting to not seeing any problem with this or disingenuously agree it is a problem but only with regards to "the other side". I think anytime you lower the S/N you are in trouble.
ok, well yours is a thoughtful post which deserves a thoughtful answer - I hope I get time to do that later on. For now I just have to respond to the idea that academic degrees and scientific institutions are good indicators of something. There are many hacks with scientific degrees. And it seems to me that in many, perhaps most or even all, fields it has been getting easier and easier to get a Ph.D. And as for scientific institutions... just to pick one example off the top of my head, didn't the APA or AMA designate (scientifically of course) that homosexuality was a mental disease?
And we must ask ourselves this question (I am not suggesting any particular answer): in the way that they practice their field are climate scientists closer to physicists or statisticians (or something else)?
How is parroting what someone else has said - something you are not equipped to accurately evaluate yourself - a reasonable contribution to a conversation?
The day I start hearing statements like "I understand most climate scientists think that global warming is occurring and that it is the result of the activities of mankind, but I am not equipped to really know if they are right or not." instead of "It's a proven fact global warming is man made." is the day I'll start thinking about changing my mind on the commentary of most people involved in the public "debate".
Until then it is largely two groups of people trying to out shout each other. And, personally, I don't think that the accuracy of a theory is determined by the number of people, expert or not, who agree with it. But maybe that's just me. Maybe it's just Friday afternoon and I'm cranky, but I can't think of too many scientific fields where everyone is in complete agreement... yet that is essentially what people are claiming for climate science - and it's a field that is largely statistical in nature to boot.
I see no problem with respecting science. I think scientists are no more deserving of respect than any other group of people (and I'm speaking as a scientist). Science has fads, popularity contests, publication pressures, funding pressures etc. etc. and to act like scientists are immune, either singly or as a group, to such pressures would be naive.
And even if scientists were all pure and noble what happens with the information they present? Is it just given to politicians to act upon as they see fit? Then we are back at the ignorant making decisions about science. Or do we let the populace at large vote on the scientific recommendations? Same problem there as with politicians. Or are we to also have scientists unilaterally dictate what action must be taken as well?
And what on earth are we to do with statements such as "Scientists are 90% certain that global warming is occurring as a result of the activities of mankind."?
And btw "Scientific Consensus", if there is any such thing, has nothing to do with it - the average person has no way of determining what scientific consensus is on any issue. They're just exercising faith in the person who told them it's "this". And that person may be doing the same thing... and so on, and so on, and so on...
And the "it's ok for our side to keep chanting the same thing because we know that we're right even if most of our chanters don't" folk need to give it a rest and consider the ramifications of such a position in general and not just with this one issue.
But climate-gate wasn't about self-published papers it was about a conspiracy. And this has nothing to do with the existence of the internet or not. My point was that it is circular logic, and therefore faulty, to claim that if there were no "for Side X" peer reviewed papers published in the major journals then that is proof that there was no conspiracy to prevent the publication of articles "for Side X" in those journals. That was my main point.
Was there a conspiracy? I don't have a clue. But I have seen some pretty wacky, self-serving, nasty, virulent etc. etc. behaviour by academics - both singly and in groups - so I wouldn't discount the idea out of hand. That was my implied secondary point. And the supporters of both sides both seem irrational, e.g. employing faulty logic, so their comments are of less than no use, which was my tertiary point.
We call movies art. We call literature art. We call silence art. We call a single color art. Hell, we even call graffiti art. The crudest symbols our kind could muster gets to be called art. But, goddammit, for some strange reason the second you express yourself through a series of complexly arrange ones and zeros interacting with the viewer, you can't call it art.
I think we should consider where the art would lie. Is it the images the player sees? Or is it the algorithm running the experience received by the player? Or both, or something else entirely?
Not to mention you have right-wing pundits who don't understand*** the science, the statistics, or the processes involved, and when something like "Climategate" comes along, they don't understand the context or what the "scandal" really is. Suddenly everyone is a scientist and they can all understand things they've never even been interested in studying before.
Absolutely! Not only that but you have left-wing pundits who don't understand the science, the statistics, or the processes involved, and... Suddenly everyone is a scientist and they can all understand things they've never even been interested in studying before.
And the sad thing is, people who believe everything these people say (like my mom and several of my neighbors), go out and forcefully repeat it all anytime something tangentially related comes up in a conversation.
I find it absolutely believable, and sad, and generally human nature, that your mom and your neighbours go out and forcefully repeat it all anytime something tangentially related comes up in a conversation. I bet it works exactly the same with those people who are sceptical of global warming too! Oh wait... those were the people you were railing against... hmmm see your statements apply equally as well to 99.999% of the people in the "other" camp too.
Or is it ok for people to mindlessly repeat "facts" just as long as they are the same things you take as facts?
It's weird how people think they can add to a debate with experts while being absolute non-experts themselves.
Yup. Of course by that measure 99.9% of people posting about this in/. should not be posting. And 99.999% of the public who are voicing opinions about global warming (most of them supporting the hypothesis) shouldn't be saying anything either. And virtually all politicians shouldn't say anything about it either.
The more respected global warming papers have been published and accepted in peer reviewed journals. Point out any global warming denialist papers that have done the same.
Ummm you do realize that if part of the claim of "climate-gate" is that peer reviewed journals, or the reviewers of said journals, were discriminating against contradictory papers then stating that no contradictory papers have been published in those journals isn't exactly proof that there was no conspiracy? It doesn't matter where you land in all this, that just seems like bad logic. And BTW the peer review process in general isn't all it's cracked up to be either.
I don't know how you came up with such an idea but I'm afraid I have to disagree. Having done my Ph.D. in CS, and been published in both conference proceedings and journals I think I'm qualified to say that the journals are harder than conferences and carry more prestige.
For example ACM TOGS is harder than Siggraph. JACM is both harder and covers a wider scope than any conference I can think of. There was a time when CACM would have ranked up there too but now it is more a magazine. Conference papers tend to be about more ephemeral stuff, preliminary results etc. Here is the description of JACM:
"We publish original research papers of lasting value in computer science. To be accepted, a paper must be judged to be truly outstanding in its field and to be of interest to a wide audience. We are particularly interested in work at the boundaries, both the boundaries of subdisciplines of computer science and the boundaries between computer science and other fields."
I bet a publication in JACM counts for a lot more to the tenure committee than a conference paper.
FWIW: I only had time to quickly skim a bit of the article but it seems similar to a system I saw at a Siggraph conference about 25 years or so ago which iirc used a speaker covered with reflective Mylar to bounce a laser in the right direction to produce a 3D display. The speaker was used to modulate the surface of the Mylar film. There may also have been a spinning mirror involved to direct the beam to particular parts of the mylar - it's been too long to remember and I don't have my proceedings handy and it may have been a demo not a paper.
If you haven't even read a complete paper first then it is unlikely you will get your own paper published simply because journals have some expectations of how the material is to be presented (including how much history to include, relating to the wok of others etc.), proper methods of citation, and so on. This has nothing to do with the merit of your idea or the results it is simply that if you want to present in a particular forum then you need to know the rules and expectations of the forum.
Unless you are going to publish as a conference paper (the easiest way and usually the lowest bar for refereed papers) you can expect that it may takes years before it is reviewed, returned to you with the comments of the referees, resubmitted, and then finally published. So you might want to get it out on a website somewhere just to stake claim to having thought of the idea first.
Another alternative is to do a poster at a conference - it is much easier to get accepted for that, the amount of work putting your stuff into the expected form is much less etc. etc. It doesn't count as a refereed paper but if you aren't interested in academic points then so what?
Also (you may find this surprising) many academic journals expect you to pay them to publish your paper.
Because carriers like Wind Mobile still discount the phone a little bit, or sell it at their cost, in order to entice customers to buy the phone from them.
Retailers do this all the time... they don't generally seem to get any special legislative protection from the results of the practice.
What people were doing was buying unlocked phones from Wind Mobile, and selling them on eBay the next day, and turning a profit. So Wind mobile had to start locking their phones so that people wouldn't use Wind Mobile as a supplier of mobile phones.
So if people buy loss leaders from WalMart and turn around and sell them on ebay for a profit then WalMart should get legislative protection to help prevent people from doing that for several months after each purchase?
Your selective quoting and attempted sarcasm are rather pointless since I was merely pointing out the flaw in the suggestion I received. But your attempt at wit is noted.
As for your analogy, it is not apt. Let me fix it for you:
"If you want to get to the library, go down Main Street and take a left at the house that has a big screen TV and large leather couch in the living room."
Either you get that privacy is being increasingly encroached upon and that encroachment is a problem, or you don't. You don't seem to get that so I really see no point in further "discussion" with you (and wouldn't anyway since you seem to need to massage your ego by attempted wit and sarcasm). If it will make you feel better go ahead and have the last word. Make it a four letter one if you like.
Looking through windows is different because the windows are obscuring the contents of the house, making it reasonable to assume that those contents are private.
Ummm, excuse me? Windows are obscuring the contents of the house? I think you may have them confused with walls or perhaps curtains. The primary function of windows is to let light, i.e. radiation, i.e. signal, travel through them. By your lights anyone with windows who doesn't keep blinds constantly drawn (in which case what's the point of the windows) or have frosted/tinted/mirrored/etc. treatments is inviting people to look into their homes and publicise what they have in the home (and this - publication - is a major point which seems to be getting lost). Not knowing the access point name is like not knowing the brand of leather couch they see through the window. In either case they have still determined you have the couch/AP. And then they pass on that info to anyone who cares to know. No thank you sir.
I bet there are a lot of countries where it could be a problem for people if the government were able to simply query Google and see who has wireless AP's.
Privacy in society is being lost at breakneck speed and once it's gone it's gone. We should be guarding our privacy not allowing it to more easily be taken.
No, this is complaining that they are identifying that you have an access point at all and then (presumably) making that information publicly available. Setting the power so the signal doesn't escape the house - while still reaching all areas of the house - is not practical. It also puts the onus on you to "hide" rather than on them to obtain permission before publicizing information about you. As for your analogy, I think this is a better one: this is like them driving up beside your house and looking in the windows with binoculars and then publicising to the world the contents of your house.
I couldn't agree more that children should be taught critical thinking etc. but there also needs to be an awful lot of memorization that goes in there as well. The old chestnut that they can always look up the facts neglects that one can't be looking things up all the time, one actually has to have a relatively large amount of information in one's skull to be able to effectively employ those critical thinking skills.
I'm afraid I have to disagree with your assertion that
there just aren't any easy ways to measure that kind of performance
I accumulated a few years of teaching experience and it really isn't that hard to test reasoning ability. Although it is more time consuming to grade tests that measure those skills. And I think there is a huge amount of resistance from teachers to the prospect of having their performance measured, which in my experience is the usual source of claims that standardized tests only measure memorization.
Shouldn't you have some say as to whether your access point is published to the whole world?
It's always seemed ass-backwards to me that you have to take specific action and pay to not have your name and address published in a phone directory. This seems like the same sort of thing. Too hard to go and ask everybody for permission? Too bad - that's not an excuse for violating privacy.
I was just offering being a non-profit society as a counter-example since you said:
The only way a torrent site could offer its service with the prospect of no commercial gain would be if they didn't charge any membership fees, didn't ask for donations, and didn't run ads on the site.
and a non-profit society could run a torrent site and charge fees and ask for donations. As for whether the relevant tax authority would declare them a charitable organization I think the most interesting test would be if the Catholic Church started a torrent site.
Slashdot Mirror
Age may well play a role for some people. I wasn't commenting on that. I was commenting on the assumption that that was what was happening, with no evidence at all to indicate that that was the case. That and the tone of the comment combined to look like bigotry to me - and there is a lot of "ageism" on /.
Wow, there's a bit of bigotry snatched out of thin air. Unfortunately one that is not at all uncommon on /.
It is unfortunate that you have chosen to simply ignore what I have said in order to simply chant "there was no conspiracy" and present your opinions as if they were fact.
Yes I got the meaning you intended for "respect" I just don't think it is necessarily a good idea to respect the conclusions of scientists more than any other group in their field. Mmmm maybe respect is not the best word. We shouldn't take the results of "the establishment" in any field and imbue them with an aura of infallibility or consider them sacrosanct in any manner - and this is what it feels like is happening in this particular case. I'm sure you've seen it here in /. - saying anything of a sceptical nature about the claims of "the climate scientists" results in instant hostility. IMHO not a very healthy atmosphere, both in general and, in this case, for the future of the human race.
It has long been acknowledged that people in groups act very differently than they do as individuals. I don't think groups of scientists are exempt from this phenomenon. And as I started mentioning in my previous post there are all sorts of forces relating to human nature that can come into play here. One further example would be that "scientists" (group tag) are not well regarded by society in general and actually are disrespected a fair bit. Now suddenly people are paying attention to them and they are getting their 15 minutes. It's hard not to see human nature having some influence, let's be generous and say an unconscious influence, to want to perpetuate that. I'm also sceptical of the ability of the peer review process and professional associations to maintain, mmm let's say quality control. I wish I could remember the guy's name but there was a famous case a few years back of a physicist synthesising a paper in IIRC Sociology and getting it published in a peer reviewed journal. The problem being of course that he had just filled the paper with gobbledygook. Now some will say that it wasn't a peer review by scientists but I don't think Scientist humans are all that different than Sociologist humans or that the peer review processes are that fundamentally different.
I'm glad you accept my second point. We never escape the problem that unqualified people will have to make decisions about things they can't really understand. I do think there is at least a palliative for this though, and that is a much more highly educated populace and specifically one that is trained in logic, debate etc. and encouraged to practice scepticism in general. And perhaps most importantly of all, trained to practice self-doubt on a regular basis.
As for people rejecting "the science" because they don't like what the inevitable result would be, in this case the policy decisions, that is certainly my take on human nature as well. When cherished belief and fact collide it is almost always fact that loses. Some people realize this and respond by shading their cases, exaggerating, making allies of the ignorant etc. etc. in order to try and leapfrog this hurdle. I see this all the time and especially so in most political processes. I view that sort of behaviour as one of the greatest problems facing humanity.
All the above aside I think what most disquiets me about this particular issue is the volume of the chanting. Others here have made statements amounting to not seeing any problem with this or disingenuously agree it is a problem but only with regards to "the other side". I think anytime you lower the S/N you are in trouble.
ok, well yours is a thoughtful post which deserves a thoughtful answer - I hope I get time to do that later on. For now I just have to respond to the idea that academic degrees and scientific institutions are good indicators of something. There are many hacks with scientific degrees. And it seems to me that in many, perhaps most or even all, fields it has been getting easier and easier to get a Ph.D. And as for scientific institutions... just to pick one example off the top of my head, didn't the APA or AMA designate (scientifically of course) that homosexuality was a mental disease?
And we must ask ourselves this question (I am not suggesting any particular answer): in the way that they practice their field are climate scientists closer to physicists or statisticians (or something else)?
How is parroting what someone else has said - something you are not equipped to accurately evaluate yourself - a reasonable contribution to a conversation?
The day I start hearing statements like "I understand most climate scientists think that global warming is occurring and that it is the result of the activities of mankind, but I am not equipped to really know if they are right or not." instead of "It's a proven fact global warming is man made." is the day I'll start thinking about changing my mind on the commentary of most people involved in the public "debate".
Until then it is largely two groups of people trying to out shout each other. And, personally, I don't think that the accuracy of a theory is determined by the number of people, expert or not, who agree with it. But maybe that's just me. Maybe it's just Friday afternoon and I'm cranky, but I can't think of too many scientific fields where everyone is in complete agreement... yet that is essentially what people are claiming for climate science - and it's a field that is largely statistical in nature to boot.
I see no problem with respecting science. I think scientists are no more deserving of respect than any other group of people (and I'm speaking as a scientist). Science has fads, popularity contests, publication pressures, funding pressures etc. etc. and to act like scientists are immune, either singly or as a group, to such pressures would be naive.
And even if scientists were all pure and noble what happens with the information they present? Is it just given to politicians to act upon as they see fit? Then we are back at the ignorant making decisions about science. Or do we let the populace at large vote on the scientific recommendations? Same problem there as with politicians. Or are we to also have scientists unilaterally dictate what action must be taken as well?
And what on earth are we to do with statements such as "Scientists are 90% certain that global warming is occurring as a result of the activities of mankind."?
Ummm I think you're missing my point.
And btw "Scientific Consensus", if there is any such thing, has nothing to do with it - the average person has no way of determining what scientific consensus is on any issue. They're just exercising faith in the person who told them it's "this". And that person may be doing the same thing... and so on, and so on, and so on...
And the "it's ok for our side to keep chanting the same thing because we know that we're right even if most of our chanters don't" folk need to give it a rest and consider the ramifications of such a position in general and not just with this one issue.
But climate-gate wasn't about self-published papers it was about a conspiracy. And this has nothing to do with the existence of the internet or not. My point was that it is circular logic, and therefore faulty, to claim that if there were no "for Side X" peer reviewed papers published in the major journals then that is proof that there was no conspiracy to prevent the publication of articles "for Side X" in those journals. That was my main point.
Was there a conspiracy? I don't have a clue. But I have seen some pretty wacky, self-serving, nasty, virulent etc. etc. behaviour by academics - both singly and in groups - so I wouldn't discount the idea out of hand. That was my implied secondary point. And the supporters of both sides both seem irrational, e.g. employing faulty logic, so their comments are of less than no use, which was my tertiary point.
I think we should consider where the art would lie. Is it the images the player sees? Or is it the algorithm running the experience received by the player? Or both, or something else entirely?
Absolutely! Not only that but you have left-wing pundits who don't understand the science, the statistics, or the processes involved, and ... Suddenly everyone is a scientist and they can all understand things they've never even been interested in studying before.
I find it absolutely believable, and sad, and generally human nature, that your mom and your neighbours go out and forcefully repeat it all anytime something tangentially related comes up in a conversation. I bet it works exactly the same with those people who are sceptical of global warming too! Oh wait... those were the people you were railing against... hmmm see your statements apply equally as well to 99.999% of the people in the "other" camp too.
Or is it ok for people to mindlessly repeat "facts" just as long as they are the same things you take as facts?
Yup. Of course by that measure 99.9% of people posting about this in /. should not be posting. And 99.999% of the public who are voicing opinions about global warming (most of them supporting the hypothesis) shouldn't be saying anything either. And virtually all politicians shouldn't say anything about it either.
Ummm you do realize that if part of the claim of "climate-gate" is that peer reviewed journals, or the reviewers of said journals, were discriminating against contradictory papers then stating that no contradictory papers have been published in those journals isn't exactly proof that there was no conspiracy? It doesn't matter where you land in all this, that just seems like bad logic. And BTW the peer review process in general isn't all it's cracked up to be either.
I don't know how you came up with such an idea but I'm afraid I have to disagree. Having done my Ph.D. in CS, and been published in both conference proceedings and journals I think I'm qualified to say that the journals are harder than conferences and carry more prestige.
For example ACM TOGS is harder than Siggraph. JACM is both harder and covers a wider scope than any conference I can think of. There was a time when CACM would have ranked up there too but now it is more a magazine. Conference papers tend to be about more ephemeral stuff, preliminary results etc. Here is the description of JACM:
"We publish original research papers of lasting value in computer science. To be accepted, a paper must be judged to be truly outstanding in its field and to be of interest to a wide audience. We are particularly interested in work at the boundaries, both the boundaries of subdisciplines of computer science and the boundaries between computer science and other fields."
I bet a publication in JACM counts for a lot more to the tenure committee than a conference paper.
FWIW: I only had time to quickly skim a bit of the article but it seems similar to a system I saw at a Siggraph conference about 25 years or so ago which iirc used a speaker covered with reflective Mylar to bounce a laser in the right direction to produce a 3D display. The speaker was used to modulate the surface of the Mylar film. There may also have been a spinning mirror involved to direct the beam to particular parts of the mylar - it's been too long to remember and I don't have my proceedings handy and it may have been a demo not a paper.
If you haven't even read a complete paper first then it is unlikely you will get your own paper published simply because journals have some expectations of how the material is to be presented (including how much history to include, relating to the wok of others etc.), proper methods of citation, and so on. This has nothing to do with the merit of your idea or the results it is simply that if you want to present in a particular forum then you need to know the rules and expectations of the forum.
Unless you are going to publish as a conference paper (the easiest way and usually the lowest bar for refereed papers) you can expect that it may takes years before it is reviewed, returned to you with the comments of the referees, resubmitted, and then finally published. So you might want to get it out on a website somewhere just to stake claim to having thought of the idea first.
Another alternative is to do a poster at a conference - it is much easier to get accepted for that, the amount of work putting your stuff into the expected form is much less etc. etc. It doesn't count as a refereed paper but if you aren't interested in academic points then so what? Also (you may find this surprising) many academic journals expect you to pay them to publish your paper.
Retailers do this all the time... they don't generally seem to get any special legislative protection from the results of the practice.
So if people buy loss leaders from WalMart and turn around and sell them on ebay for a profit then WalMart should get legislative protection to help prevent people from doing that for several months after each purchase?
The existence of privacy is a matter of choice. And it's a damn good choice.
Your selective quoting and attempted sarcasm are rather pointless since I was merely pointing out the flaw in the suggestion I received. But your attempt at wit is noted.
As for your analogy, it is not apt. Let me fix it for you:
"If you want to get to the library, go down Main Street and take a left at the house that has a big screen TV and large leather couch in the living room."
Either you get that privacy is being increasingly encroached upon and that encroachment is a problem, or you don't. You don't seem to get that so I really see no point in further "discussion" with you (and wouldn't anyway since you seem to need to massage your ego by attempted wit and sarcasm). If it will make you feel better go ahead and have the last word. Make it a four letter one if you like.
Ummm, excuse me? Windows are obscuring the contents of the house? I think you may have them confused with walls or perhaps curtains. The primary function of windows is to let light, i.e. radiation, i.e. signal, travel through them. By your lights anyone with windows who doesn't keep blinds constantly drawn (in which case what's the point of the windows) or have frosted/tinted/mirrored/etc. treatments is inviting people to look into their homes and publicise what they have in the home (and this - publication - is a major point which seems to be getting lost). Not knowing the access point name is like not knowing the brand of leather couch they see through the window. In either case they have still determined you have the couch/AP. And then they pass on that info to anyone who cares to know. No thank you sir.
I bet there are a lot of countries where it could be a problem for people if the government were able to simply query Google and see who has wireless AP's.
Privacy in society is being lost at breakneck speed and once it's gone it's gone. We should be guarding our privacy not allowing it to more easily be taken.
No, this is complaining that they are identifying that you have an access point at all and then (presumably) making that information publicly available. Setting the power so the signal doesn't escape the house - while still reaching all areas of the house - is not practical. It also puts the onus on you to "hide" rather than on them to obtain permission before publicizing information about you. As for your analogy, I think this is a better one: this is like them driving up beside your house and looking in the windows with binoculars and then publicising to the world the contents of your house.
Then the curriculum needs to be set to prevent such warping. A good education and standardized tests are not innately mutually exclusive.
I couldn't agree more that children should be taught critical thinking etc. but there also needs to be an awful lot of memorization that goes in there as well. The old chestnut that they can always look up the facts neglects that one can't be looking things up all the time, one actually has to have a relatively large amount of information in one's skull to be able to effectively employ those critical thinking skills.
I'm afraid I have to disagree with your assertion that
I accumulated a few years of teaching experience and it really isn't that hard to test reasoning ability. Although it is more time consuming to grade tests that measure those skills. And I think there is a huge amount of resistance from teachers to the prospect of having their performance measured, which in my experience is the usual source of claims that standardized tests only measure memorization.
Shouldn't you have some say as to whether your access point is published to the whole world?
It's always seemed ass-backwards to me that you have to take specific action and pay to not have your name and address published in a phone directory. This seems like the same sort of thing. Too hard to go and ask everybody for permission? Too bad - that's not an excuse for violating privacy.
and a non-profit society could run a torrent site and charge fees and ask for donations. As for whether the relevant tax authority would declare them a charitable organization I think the most interesting test would be if the Catholic Church started a torrent site.