By "limited resource that a lot of people have access to", I am not referring to a tragedy of the commons situation. I am referring to a situation, say, where there are finite quantities of helium deposits within the United States, and each of these deposits is held by private ownership.
Currently, there is clear ownership, there is no significant government oversight, yet what is the net result going to be if left to the market? The helium reserves (according to the article, and I will proceed with its assumptions, as I have no view of my own on this matter) will be mostly depleted relatively shortly.
What's the cause of this? It's true, owners have an incentive to leave it in the ground if it'll become valuable in the future. However, this only works perfectly in a world of perfectly rational abstracted actors. In the real world, owners also have an incentive to eat today, rather than starving now on the hope of a big payday in the future. Once the large capital investment has been made to install helium extractors, infrastructure, etc. on the wells, it is highly improbable an owner would let that all depreciate into nothing as you wait for a highly speculative payday in the future. It is only when the shortage is actually imminent, and the payday less speculative, that owners will realistically start holding off on pumping. It would be more realistic in the real world that owners would let it stay in the land if they hadn't already tapped it, but it does not appear from the article that this is the case.
Regarding your quibble about my use of the word externality, as I understand it, an externality is an impact upon a party not involved in a given transaction, and this understanding is supported by Wikipedia. Here, the transactions in question are between helium extractors and helium buyers. Yet the negative impact is felt by future generations, who are not current parties to this, yet will have to live in a world with insufficient helium for scientific and engineering usages, if the premise of the article is to be believed. Hence, negative externality.
This is a great example of the concept of market failure for all those libertarians on Slashdot who blindly follow the church of the invisible hand.
In a well-functioning market for a limited resource that a lot of people have access to, what is the result that pure capitalism creates? A race to the bottom competition in prices, which normally is great and one of the main advantages of capitalism, but in cases of limited resources might not be. It may well be that the most rational overall response would be to conserve the non-renewable resource, but humans value an immediate benefit over a distant one, and would rather feed themselves today than their children tomorrow.
As a result, as soon as a few helium sellers lower their prices, then the entire market would have to follow, until soon the price of helium is based upon the current cost of extraction, rather than a higher, rational cost to society that maybe should be being imposed to preserve a non-renewable resource.
This is a negative externality, something that without that bogeyman of government intervention stepping in, capitalism is unable to deal with effectively. The negative effects are felt by future generations, but the benefits are enjoyed by the current generations. Pure capitalism and market forces encourage the imposition of negative externalities, to the net detriment of all.
In the long run, the result of the pure market system advocated by some here is that once supplies start running short, prices will increase as the supplies become scarce relative to demand. However, at that point we will already have frittered away 99% of our helium reserves, and it may be that many worthwhile usages will no long be economically feasible, despite being more efficient usages than the original wasteful usages that reduced the supply.
Maybe this is a little redundant when discussing Wikipedia, but I'm a little surprised that apparently every episode of DS9 has its own entry on Wikipedia (for example, linked in article summary above), while entries on webcomics that have a number of fans "only" numbering in the thousands is considered not significant enough to merit an article.
The comic was making fun of the people who do the full motions when only small motions is necessary. You totally missed it's point.
I do so enjoy it when people who are unnecessarily sarcastic and mean on the internet get their comeuppance. It is you who totally missed the point of the comic, and did not bother to verify before posting.
Quote Tycho, in his news post explaining the comic:
"As regards the comic, yes: I fear that Toolbox Syndrome will run rampant on the new system. If you're by yourself in your basement, conserving your energy for marathon Metroid sessions or whatever is a noble tactic. But WiiSports Tennis in particular is vastly improved by a willingness to truly own one's play experience."
What he is saying is that the people who are not willing to truly "own one's play experience" are the toolboxes, not the people who are "conserving [their] energy".
Without a doubt, the results of this study depend heavily on the methodology of how they had players play. This study got a total of eleven individuals in order to reach this conclusion.
There are two ways to play the Wii, especially Wii sports:
You can really get into it, swinging yours arms and making big motions and make it exercise (while having more fun in my opinion).
Or you can play it like a video game, and just twitch the controller around. Of course, as Tycho and Gabe put it so eloquently, that makes you a toolbox: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13
In reaching the conclusion that Wii is only a 2% increase in calorie burning over 360 games, I'm sure the kids were only moving their wrists. Then, the difference breaks down to 360 = twitching thumbs, Wii = twitching wrists. I could believe that twitching wrists instead of just thumbs is a 2% increase in calories burnt over the 360.
I know that when playing Wii boxing and making real punching motions, my arms get physically tired and I can work up a sweat after long enough. I am sure if someone wanted to, they could run another study and grab another headline by stating something like Wii Burns As Many Calories as Real Workout.
Could anyone who has an ebook reader capable of displaying PDFs comment on how capable they are at displaying PDF's? I would imagine it's a big pain because most PDFs are designed for 8.5x11 paper, whereas these readers are tiny. Is it possible to read scanned pages? I would also imagine that the background smear on badly scanned documents might be a problem because the e-ink displays can only display a few shades of grey. Can anyone comment?
Of all the readers out there, the only one that has me really interested is the Iliad (discussed briefly in a comment above), but the high price tag is making me a bit reluctant to jump. The price of the current Hanlin is much more reasonable, and I've been dying for an eReader with a big screen for me to read technical PDFs and RTFs on.
I don't think your response addresses the issue with the secret mailing list at all. It's not the fact that the list exists which is the issue, it's what goes on in the list, i.e. the fact that it is actually a sort of behind the scenes steering committee that the administrators with power on Wikipedia use to plot against and lash out against their enemies out of sight of the public and other editors.
The claim is that instead of jumping on them immediately like a pack of ravenous open-source wolves less than a month after they launch their Linux-running product, maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt that they intend to do the right thing but just haven't had time yet to post the code.
Wikipedia is the enemy in the sense that as long as its around, no competitor stands a realistic chance of taking over. It's similar to how even if an OS better than Windows were to come along, it's still unlikely to gain a significant amount of market share, because its a product whose value is based entirely on the size of its userbase.
Wikipedia as is is pretty good, but just not there yet, and there are many problems with it, such as this deletion issue, which stand no realistic chance of being fixed as long as the people who are in charge remain in charge.
Given that there is no realistic chance of reform at the current Wikipedia, boycott and hoping it starves is about the best hope that reformers have.
Yeah, there's no evil lawyers quite like the NY Attorneys General. I'm sure they're just out to make a quick buck at the expense of Verizon's customers.
Maybe as others have pointed out $1 million isn't a whole lot to $88 billion dollar revenue Verizon, so does that mean that wrongdoings shouldn't be punished just because you're not capable of inflicting much damage? Or is it that wrongdoings shouldn't be punished when the people principally responsible for causing them to be punished (the lawyers in class action suits) are being rewarded through capitalism to encourage them to do so? The principal purpose of the class action mechanism is to motivate lawyers out there to punish the companies doing wrong.
In this case, $1 m out of $88b isn't a whole lot, but a lot of class actions come in a lot heavier. It's simply cherry picking facts to support your preconceived notions to argue that just because the payment isn't huge this time that there is no effect in discouraging the companies in the future.
I've got a phone, that I have hacked to unlock its true capabilities. It is a thin clam-shell phone in the same form factor as a RAZR. A small, stylish and excellent phone.
Besides that I can also use software built on synergy whose capabilities are unmatched by any single function devices that you seem to favor. It can use its built in GPS to automatically center on my location, and then find the nearest Chinese restaurants, listed in order of distance from me. From there I can link into always up to date information on the restaurants, which is downloaded over the high speed network connection, and click a link on the description to automatically initiate a call to check when they're open until for dinner.
You can keep your phone that does one thing, and does it well. I'll take my phone that does a lot of things well thank you very much. The sad thing is this would be every phone if only phones weren't locked to hell by the providers.
Running Vista on this machine is likely crippling it so that 1GB RAM might indeed be insufficient.
I think you're confusing Vista Basic which doesn't come with Aero and runs on hardware comparable to XP, with the other versions of Vista, which come with a fancy-pants new UI that sucks the resources.
I can explain to you why you don't understand why people feel Office is much better with regards to compatibility.
You see compatibility from a technical point of view, where OpenOffice surely does a better job opening Office documents than Office does opening OpenOffice documents.
People who use Office as a tool for business see compatibility from a social point of view. Office can open 99.99% of documents that are sent to them. Open Office can only open 90%. And that's really the end of the story.
6) Japanese people may not talk about politics with YOU, but you can't necessarily misconstrue this as a lack of interest (especially on the part of older people). Voter turnout in Japan is consistently higher than in America. 67.5% in 2005, 56.4% in 2004.
I'm not sure what you basis your perception of Japan upon, but I would not translate the higher voter turnout to Japanese people talking/caring more about politics. In fact I'd agree with the grandparent, Japanese people don't talk or care much about politics. After all, why bother? The politicians will be corrupt, and you can't change anything, just keep your head down and hope they don't bother you. Shou ga nai.
Why is it that all of a sudden that all articles that deal with matters of concern in the real world are getting tagged as slownewsday? Seems like a pretty deal to me that Russia is claiming part of the North Pole, or that the Supreme Court dramatically changed price fixing rules.
The problem with your idea is that the very idea of a MMORPG is based around avatar capital. They are actually very simple games, that can be boiled down a surprisingly large amount and still retain their addictiveness. Psychologists have found if you rig up a button that gives rewards every, or almost every, push, people will get bored with it after a while and only get the rewards when they need it. If it never, or almost never gives rewards, people will get bored with it. However, if it gives rewards occasionally, especially somewhat randomly, then it becomes addictive, and every time the reward pops out it trains the brain to want to push it more to get more. This is the entire diabolical purpose behind MMORPGs, giving the reward often enough that to keep the interest, but not so often as to break the addiction. You take out the grind, and the money machine that is the MMORPG breaks down.
I think you are being too conclusive on this, it's easy to say you're not being forced to buy, but in the real world sometimes you will now be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
What are you going to do when Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile, the evil oligopoly of cellular phone providers all enforce minimum set prices on their cellular phones. Well, now everywhere you go you'll have to pay the same jacked up prices as in their own overpriced company stores. This could literally be the end of 3rd party competition and mom and pop stores in cellular phones, taking away their ability to even move old stock by putting them on sale.
Before you point out that the magical invisible hand of the free market could solve this problem through competition, take a moment to note that the magical invisible hand has pretty much already totally failed in this arena. Even if the big 4 didn't get together and decide to all have really shitty customer service, and unconscionable contractual terms, the fact of the matter is that they all magically "decided" to do this simultaneously, leaving customers with no real choice.
And just to head off a potential reply, for most people not having a cellular phone is not a legitimate response to this problem. This is only a response for that.01% of the population for which this rises to the level of a hot button issue that is worth fighting over. For the rest of the US, we just have to put up with the shitty prices and shitty service and move on with the parts of our life that are important to us. Only now things are probably going to become ever so slightly more shitty.
I definitely agree with you. The Biosphere II failed (among other reasons) because ants somehow found a way through cracks in concrete and broke the closed eco-system. At first they thought they were riding in on worker's bodies, but it quickly became apparent that they were simply walking in through tiny openings like ants are wont to do.
Because your experience on a site will be a lot better the closer your browser set-up is to how the company tests functionality/usability.
This is true if and only if you accept the assertion that your interests are lined up with that of the company. I can tell you right now, that my interests and those of Doubleclick, actually do not run in parallel.
What pushed me over the line is when flash ads started appearing everywhere. We as consumers hated pop-ups, so companies responded by making new and even more obnoxious pop-ups, now with not easily blocked flash. That's when I finally couldn't take it anymore and switched to using Ad-block. I can tell you, my experience on sites has improved considerably since then.
This is an extremely Slashdot reader type of reply. Modded up to boot. You see the world much too black & white, from a very engineering guy sorta perspective.
If a company is not willing to overlook a simple drunken pirate situation you didn't want to work for them anyways? For most people this is not a mater of principle on which to draw the line in the sand. They just want to be able to keep their jobs. Maybe they really want to work at the company other than that, and they'd like to just keep their private lives separate from their work lives. Maybe they work in a profession (like teaching) where society as a whole is so conservative that this might be an issue of being able to get a job at all.
This is far from being hypocritical, but simply having a difference between the way you act at work and the way you act at home, which is really just natural and proper. There is a time and place for formality and a time and place for fun. By damning those who act differently in front of their boss from when they're hanging out with their friends, you're damning about 99% of the population. Maybe you're not the type to go to parties, but for those who are, do you think they'd have as much fun if at every party they went their boss was always standing behind them watching what they do? Well having some guy you barely know post pictures of you from that party and intermingling your work and private lives isn't a ton of fun.
What you're basically saying is that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear. And the response to that is that everyone has something to hide, whether they want to admit it or not. I am sure even you can think of something that you did that there is somebody out there you would not want to see.
Also new is Microsoft's (yeah, yeah, boo, hiss) 3D view update to maps.live.com. Similar to Google Earth, but integrated directly into their website, albeit with plug-in. Shockingly, they even support Firefox with a separate plug-in I hear.
To try it just click 3D view on a major city. It really is quite beautiful once it's done loading, but it takes a helluva long time on my system to load. I think it's the bandwidth that's the limiting factor on it, since my computer is pretty up to spec.
Slashdot Mirror
By "limited resource that a lot of people have access to", I am not referring to a tragedy of the commons situation. I am referring to a situation, say, where there are finite quantities of helium deposits within the United States, and each of these deposits is held by private ownership.
Currently, there is clear ownership, there is no significant government oversight, yet what is the net result going to be if left to the market? The helium reserves (according to the article, and I will proceed with its assumptions, as I have no view of my own on this matter) will be mostly depleted relatively shortly.
What's the cause of this? It's true, owners have an incentive to leave it in the ground if it'll become valuable in the future. However, this only works perfectly in a world of perfectly rational abstracted actors. In the real world, owners also have an incentive to eat today, rather than starving now on the hope of a big payday in the future. Once the large capital investment has been made to install helium extractors, infrastructure, etc. on the wells, it is highly improbable an owner would let that all depreciate into nothing as you wait for a highly speculative payday in the future. It is only when the shortage is actually imminent, and the payday less speculative, that owners will realistically start holding off on pumping. It would be more realistic in the real world that owners would let it stay in the land if they hadn't already tapped it, but it does not appear from the article that this is the case.
Regarding your quibble about my use of the word externality, as I understand it, an externality is an impact upon a party not involved in a given transaction, and this understanding is supported by Wikipedia. Here, the transactions in question are between helium extractors and helium buyers. Yet the negative impact is felt by future generations, who are not current parties to this, yet will have to live in a world with insufficient helium for scientific and engineering usages, if the premise of the article is to be believed. Hence, negative externality.
This is a great example of the concept of market failure for all those libertarians on Slashdot who blindly follow the church of the invisible hand.
In a well-functioning market for a limited resource that a lot of people have access to, what is the result that pure capitalism creates? A race to the bottom competition in prices, which normally is great and one of the main advantages of capitalism, but in cases of limited resources might not be. It may well be that the most rational overall response would be to conserve the non-renewable resource, but humans value an immediate benefit over a distant one, and would rather feed themselves today than their children tomorrow.
As a result, as soon as a few helium sellers lower their prices, then the entire market would have to follow, until soon the price of helium is based upon the current cost of extraction, rather than a higher, rational cost to society that maybe should be being imposed to preserve a non-renewable resource.
This is a negative externality, something that without that bogeyman of government intervention stepping in, capitalism is unable to deal with effectively. The negative effects are felt by future generations, but the benefits are enjoyed by the current generations. Pure capitalism and market forces encourage the imposition of negative externalities, to the net detriment of all.
In the long run, the result of the pure market system advocated by some here is that once supplies start running short, prices will increase as the supplies become scarce relative to demand. However, at that point we will already have frittered away 99% of our helium reserves, and it may be that many worthwhile usages will no long be economically feasible, despite being more efficient usages than the original wasteful usages that reduced the supply.
Link
Maybe this is a little redundant when discussing Wikipedia, but I'm a little surprised that apparently every episode of DS9 has its own entry on Wikipedia (for example, linked in article summary above), while entries on webcomics that have a number of fans "only" numbering in the thousands is considered not significant enough to merit an article.
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=399268&cid=21824470
Quote Tycho, in his news post explaining the comic:
"As regards the comic, yes: I fear that Toolbox Syndrome will run rampant on the new system. If you're by yourself in your basement, conserving your energy for marathon Metroid sessions or whatever is a noble tactic. But WiiSports Tennis in particular is vastly improved by a willingness to truly own one's play experience."
What he is saying is that the people who are not willing to truly "own one's play experience" are the toolboxes, not the people who are "conserving [their] energy".
There are two ways to play the Wii, especially Wii sports: You can really get into it, swinging yours arms and making big motions and make it exercise (while having more fun in my opinion).
Or you can play it like a video game, and just twitch the controller around. Of course, as Tycho and Gabe put it so eloquently, that makes you a toolbox:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13
In reaching the conclusion that Wii is only a 2% increase in calorie burning over 360 games, I'm sure the kids were only moving their wrists. Then, the difference breaks down to 360 = twitching thumbs, Wii = twitching wrists. I could believe that twitching wrists instead of just thumbs is a 2% increase in calories burnt over the 360.
I know that when playing Wii boxing and making real punching motions, my arms get physically tired and I can work up a sweat after long enough. I am sure if someone wanted to, they could run another study and grab another headline by stating something like Wii Burns As Many Calories as Real Workout.
Could anyone who has an ebook reader capable of displaying PDFs comment on how capable they are at displaying PDF's? I would imagine it's a big pain because most PDFs are designed for 8.5x11 paper, whereas these readers are tiny. Is it possible to read scanned pages? I would also imagine that the background smear on badly scanned documents might be a problem because the e-ink displays can only display a few shades of grey. Can anyone comment?
Great tip, thanks. I was intrigued enough to go looking further:
http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/09/18/hanlin-ereader-v9-due-later-this-year-with-10-inch-e-ink-screen-new-vizplex-tech-included/
Of all the readers out there, the only one that has me really interested is the Iliad (discussed briefly in a comment above), but the high price tag is making me a bit reluctant to jump. The price of the current Hanlin is much more reasonable, and I've been dying for an eReader with a big screen for me to read technical PDFs and RTFs on.
I don't think your response addresses the issue with the secret mailing list at all. It's not the fact that the list exists which is the issue, it's what goes on in the list, i.e. the fact that it is actually a sort of behind the scenes steering committee that the administrators with power on Wikipedia use to plot against and lash out against their enemies out of sight of the public and other editors.
The claim is that instead of jumping on them immediately like a pack of ravenous open-source wolves less than a month after they launch their Linux-running product, maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt that they intend to do the right thing but just haven't had time yet to post the code.
Wikipedia is the enemy in the sense that as long as its around, no competitor stands a realistic chance of taking over. It's similar to how even if an OS better than Windows were to come along, it's still unlikely to gain a significant amount of market share, because its a product whose value is based entirely on the size of its userbase.
Wikipedia as is is pretty good, but just not there yet, and there are many problems with it, such as this deletion issue, which stand no realistic chance of being fixed as long as the people who are in charge remain in charge.
Given that there is no realistic chance of reform at the current Wikipedia, boycott and hoping it starves is about the best hope that reformers have.
Yeah, there's no evil lawyers quite like the NY Attorneys General. I'm sure they're just out to make a quick buck at the expense of Verizon's customers.
Maybe as others have pointed out $1 million isn't a whole lot to $88 billion dollar revenue Verizon, so does that mean that wrongdoings shouldn't be punished just because you're not capable of inflicting much damage? Or is it that wrongdoings shouldn't be punished when the people principally responsible for causing them to be punished (the lawyers in class action suits) are being rewarded through capitalism to encourage them to do so? The principal purpose of the class action mechanism is to motivate lawyers out there to punish the companies doing wrong.
In this case, $1 m out of $88b isn't a whole lot, but a lot of class actions come in a lot heavier. It's simply cherry picking facts to support your preconceived notions to argue that just because the payment isn't huge this time that there is no effect in discouraging the companies in the future.
I've got a phone, that I have hacked to unlock its true capabilities. It is a thin clam-shell phone in the same form factor as a RAZR. A small, stylish and excellent phone.
Besides that I can also use software built on synergy whose capabilities are unmatched by any single function devices that you seem to favor. It can use its built in GPS to automatically center on my location, and then find the nearest Chinese restaurants, listed in order of distance from me. From there I can link into always up to date information on the restaurants, which is downloaded over the high speed network connection, and click a link on the description to automatically initiate a call to check when they're open until for dinner.
You can keep your phone that does one thing, and does it well. I'll take my phone that does a lot of things well thank you very much. The sad thing is this would be every phone if only phones weren't locked to hell by the providers.
Cognitive dissonance is truly a funny thing. It's fascinating the lengths the human brain will go to in order to protect its version of reality.
I can explain to you why you don't understand why people feel Office is much better with regards to compatibility.
You see compatibility from a technical point of view, where OpenOffice surely does a better job opening Office documents than Office does opening OpenOffice documents.
People who use Office as a tool for business see compatibility from a social point of view. Office can open 99.99% of documents that are sent to them. Open Office can only open 90%. And that's really the end of the story.
Why is it that all of a sudden that all articles that deal with matters of concern in the real world are getting tagged as slownewsday? Seems like a pretty deal to me that Russia is claiming part of the North Pole, or that the Supreme Court dramatically changed price fixing rules.
The problem with your idea is that the very idea of a MMORPG is based around avatar capital. They are actually very simple games, that can be boiled down a surprisingly large amount and still retain their addictiveness. Psychologists have found if you rig up a button that gives rewards every, or almost every, push, people will get bored with it after a while and only get the rewards when they need it. If it never, or almost never gives rewards, people will get bored with it. However, if it gives rewards occasionally, especially somewhat randomly, then it becomes addictive, and every time the reward pops out it trains the brain to want to push it more to get more. This is the entire diabolical purpose behind MMORPGs, giving the reward often enough that to keep the interest, but not so often as to break the addiction. You take out the grind, and the money machine that is the MMORPG breaks down.
I think you are being too conclusive on this, it's easy to say you're not being forced to buy, but in the real world sometimes you will now be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
.01% of the population for which this rises to the level of a hot button issue that is worth fighting over. For the rest of the US, we just have to put up with the shitty prices and shitty service and move on with the parts of our life that are important to us. Only now things are probably going to become ever so slightly more shitty.
What are you going to do when Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile, the evil oligopoly of cellular phone providers all enforce minimum set prices on their cellular phones. Well, now everywhere you go you'll have to pay the same jacked up prices as in their own overpriced company stores. This could literally be the end of 3rd party competition and mom and pop stores in cellular phones, taking away their ability to even move old stock by putting them on sale.
Before you point out that the magical invisible hand of the free market could solve this problem through competition, take a moment to note that the magical invisible hand has pretty much already totally failed in this arena. Even if the big 4 didn't get together and decide to all have really shitty customer service, and unconscionable contractual terms, the fact of the matter is that they all magically "decided" to do this simultaneously, leaving customers with no real choice.
And just to head off a potential reply, for most people not having a cellular phone is not a legitimate response to this problem. This is only a response for that
I definitely agree with you. The Biosphere II failed (among other reasons) because ants somehow found a way through cracks in concrete and broke the closed eco-system. At first they thought they were riding in on worker's bodies, but it quickly became apparent that they were simply walking in through tiny openings like ants are wont to do.
This is true if and only if you accept the assertion that your interests are lined up with that of the company. I can tell you right now, that my interests and those of Doubleclick, actually do not run in parallel.
What pushed me over the line is when flash ads started appearing everywhere. We as consumers hated pop-ups, so companies responded by making new and even more obnoxious pop-ups, now with not easily blocked flash. That's when I finally couldn't take it anymore and switched to using Ad-block. I can tell you, my experience on sites has improved considerably since then.
This is an extremely Slashdot reader type of reply. Modded up to boot. You see the world much too black & white, from a very engineering guy sorta perspective.
If a company is not willing to overlook a simple drunken pirate situation you didn't want to work for them anyways? For most people this is not a mater of principle on which to draw the line in the sand. They just want to be able to keep their jobs. Maybe they really want to work at the company other than that, and they'd like to just keep their private lives separate from their work lives. Maybe they work in a profession (like teaching) where society as a whole is so conservative that this might be an issue of being able to get a job at all.
This is far from being hypocritical, but simply having a difference between the way you act at work and the way you act at home, which is really just natural and proper. There is a time and place for formality and a time and place for fun. By damning those who act differently in front of their boss from when they're hanging out with their friends, you're damning about 99% of the population. Maybe you're not the type to go to parties, but for those who are, do you think they'd have as much fun if at every party they went their boss was always standing behind them watching what they do? Well having some guy you barely know post pictures of you from that party and intermingling your work and private lives isn't a ton of fun.
What you're basically saying is that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear. And the response to that is that everyone has something to hide, whether they want to admit it or not. I am sure even you can think of something that you did that there is somebody out there you would not want to see.
To try it just click 3D view on a major city. It really is quite beautiful once it's done loading, but it takes a helluva long time on my system to load. I think it's the bandwidth that's the limiting factor on it, since my computer is pretty up to spec.