Should Lucas really have been able to make money on even the bits he was talentless at?
Isn't that like saying, if I employ a coder in India to create my hugely successful mobile game, he should get a cut of my $billions instead of just being paid to produce what I employed him to produce? I rather think the economy would collapse if that were the case.
If you want privacy, don't use the service that's already linked to everything else you do publicly on the Internet.
No.. if I want privacy, I'll just use Firefox for my normal browsing and Chrome for G+ and Facebook. That's what I do. My G+ account (used in Chrome) is separate to my Calendar/Gmail account (used in Firefox). Neither Facebook nor G+ is my real name. My friends know who I am.
So there you go. Using the services and getting the level of privacy I want. Two browsers windows open, but who cares. I know one is my normal browser and the other one is my "social" browser, for FB, G+ and Twitter. And never the twain shall meet. To hell with being "tracked".
I'm glad I created my G+ account with a faux name that sounds like a real name if this is the way they are going to be.
Exactly. That's what I did. It seems counter-productive for Google, if they're encouraging people to think up real-sounding fake names. You'd think it's better to know it's a nickname, than not know at all, and have to tell your precioussss advertisers you can't tell them if names are real or not.
I also created a G+ account which is separate from my normal google account. I don't think they'd want to encourage that either, but I imagine lots of ppl are doing that.
People seem to want social security because they've paid into it their entire lives without having an alternative of opting out.
You will have to back that reasoning up. It's possible they "want it" because it's not working as it is. Without private cover, it's hard to get many treatments. People would be happy to pay for it if it worked.
If you break something people pay their taxes for, of course they'll start to question the value of paying for it. Make it work, and they'll be happy to pay for it.
'When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. [...] 'Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.'
That makes no sense at all. Obviously it has to be below 10 percent to get to 10 percent, unless you're talking about a number of people spontaneously having the same idea at the same time.
I think think it's weird to put my real name on the net. I come from the olde worlde, when the internet began, and nobody used their real name, everyone was happy to correspond with pseudonyms.
This "real name" thing is Facebook's fault, but I do have a FB account with a pseudonym. I don't like being forced to use my real name, as Google is indicating. I don't see the value in it for me.
People I don't know, I don't care if they're called Frank Johnson or Petal Fruitwisp. My friends, I know what name they use because they're my friends. I don't need to "find" them.
And I don't want people to "find" me. I don't want something I join or do or say on the internet being misinterpreted by an employer or whatever.
Pseudonyms are a mark of personality after all, which is what a social profile is all about. It should be a choice, not a requirement. Anonymity was what the internet was all about, until fucking Facebook came along and demanded accurate demographics for their precious advertisters.
That's what social services are all about, advertising, otherwise they wouldn't be developing them on such a scale. I resent having my choices curtailed to please corporates. That's what real life has been about, while the internet has been a haven away from all that.
But now, thanks to huge companies running increasingly integrated, coalescing services, we will end up with no choices anymore but what they choose to give us. Apple's iUbiquity is an example of that. They want to know everything about us, crying foul if we protest, while themselves remaining unanswerable.
Whether it's Rupert Murdoch, Sony, Apple or Google, powerful institutions should not demand we be transparent to them. That is far too much knowledge and power to give to people who are driven mainly by the profit motive.
You can't compare Montoneros & Shinning Path with Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Montoneros was a single small group, around for only a few years, and had a specific political goal. Perhaps more like the Red Shirts in Thailand, but of course much more militant. They just wanted their leader to come back.
Shining Path, around for about 10 years, was also provincial in its concerns, regardless of the "global" rhetoric. They collapsed after the capture of 2 main leaders, so also did not have a strong foundation. Also, contrary to your statement, "Shining Path" is still around and have bombed here and there - although it can be argued those using the same are not the same organisation.
Al Qaeda and Taliban, on the other hand, are *religious* movements and so completely different animals. They stem from religious fundamentalism and so will probably always be around in one form or another. Al Qaeda and Taliban are just recent manifestations of things which have been taking place for hundreds of years, or probably as long as religion itself has been around.
As long as religion is around, fundamentalism will also.
I'm Australian and was a bit dismayed to read this bit:
"Just stating facts, guys," Lekha began, as we scribbled notes, "Australia is known as the dumbest continent. Literally, college was unknown there until recently. So speak slowly." Next to me, a young man in a turban wrote No college in his notebook.
"Technologically speaking, they're somewhat backward, as well. The average person's mobile would be no better than, say, a Nokia 3110 classic." This drew scoffs from around the room.
"Australians drink constantly," Lekha continued. "If you call on a Friday night, they'll be smashedâ"every time. Oh, and don't attempt to make small talk with them about their pets, okay? They can be quite touchy about animals."
"What kind of people are there in Australia?" a trainee asked. "What are their traits?"
"Well, for one thing," Lekha said, "let's admit: They are quite racist. They do not like Indians. Their preferred term for us isâ"please don't mind, ladiesâ"'brown bastards.' So if you hear that kind of language, you can just hang up the call."
So, I assume that you have no concerns about being considered a fool in public?
Is that a question? I assume the answer is yes, unless you're unsure - in which case no, you don't.
You may however assume it doesn't concern me in this particular instance. And you may need to explain the basis for expressing your personal opinion as a broad generalisation, as if it is shared by a whole lot of other people who, for some reason, have chosen to remain silent, content with you as their spokesperson. Or you are legion. I think that's caused by legionellosis. Or is that lesions?
Anyway, I mean perhaps phrasing it in that way, as if you're in concurrent company, makes you feel better about being grumpy. Though with so many people on your side, one would think grumpiness would give way to a kind of warm sense of togetherness and community. But then there'd be no need to be grumpy, which may be a paradox. Unless of course having everyone agree with you makes you grumpy. That happens, I hate that too. But hey I don't know you, so I'm just guessing here. Which I suppose highlights how pointless it is to draw conclusions about people from 2 lines of text.
Blogger and Picasa are good names: concise, searchable, and trademarkable.
True. But a worse thing is the new oppressive black armband of a menu they're introducing. Google was always light blueness and easy on the eye.
I actually went to the extreme of installing UAControl for Firefox, setting it up to tell Google I'm still running Firefox v2. The upshot of that is I get standard old Google interface, and as a bonus the standard old image search not the new fangly one. Winning!
Kind of, but not quite. The *connections* are the product. Between you and your friends/pages/groups/interests/etc. Not you per se, but what you say about yourself.
This is why it's dumb to friend all those useless interest pages. People love having "I like fruit loops" on their profile, even though it ads absolutely nothing to their interaction with others, unless it is a group with activities or conversation they want to keep up with.
Yet groups, community & social stuff, doesn't give Facebook marketing much value. The value is in anything you like which can be turned into market metrics. Real communication and community interaction which is personally valuable is exactly what FB doesn't find valuable at all.
In that sense, the "social network" aspect of FB is ironically kind of beside the point.
It all wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Facebook built up it's userbase around taking information from things like MSN, your e-mail contacts and so forth.
Why doesn't Google+ just ask for your Facebook password, the way FB asked everyone for the Yahoo/Gmail/etc password? Seems a fair exchange.
Every app asked for every other app's password would be a rather amusing situation.
If China introduces "regulation" that would stunt their free market, the free market simply circumvents it one way or another. It's the story time and time again in China
Good points all but, for the sake of fairness, this sort of thing happens all over, it's not an Asian phenomenon. Western companies set up anywhere they can to avoid regulations and indeed taxes. The US has a huge problem with corporate tax going overseas. And BP, as we know, had registered Deepwater Horizon in the Marshall Islands specifically to avoid those costly safety regulations.
So just saying, not much point focussing on China when it's the business mentality, wherever business happens, to do anything legally possible to reduce costs. "Legally", meaning the buck stops with government. The underlying problem is the culture of political influence via donations and so forth, that tilts the game.
Otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Government would have just said "don't do that" and let those talented business minds sort out how to make money in a world where you can't pollute. There's no doubt they'd find a way. But it's too late now. Their hooks are in deep, and most efforts to regulate are met with threats to pull campaign funding.
No, they were banned because if fat, Dorito-munching Americans thought they could get girlfriends, they wouldn't be sitting in front of the TV watching the Superbowl.
The fact here is: Someone in the US Government told Visa and Mastercard to get rid of this customer.
Hows does anything you said prove (ie. "fact" infers you have proof) that the government told them to block Wikileaks? You actually said it was Wikileaks' fault.
What are you Australians thinking? How do you let your politicians get this kind of power?
Hi, I'm an Australian. We live in a democracy here. It's a system wherein public awareness of every item of legislation is not deemed important, indeed in many cases undesirable. Issues of which citizens are aware, are so twisted and misrepresented by the two incumbent parties - each bent on destroying the other at any cost to decent, truthful or even legible political discourse - that anything which could be called public consultation is problematic.
Indeed most of the time, particularly during the slagging match we call elections, where the public choose which of two parties will have the least negative impact on petrol and grocery prices, the agenda is set by politicians as opposed to the public and largely dominated by propaganda and disinformation.
I'm curious what country you hail from, where obviously the political situation is vastly improved. And where I can download the immigration forms.
How about a Google Classic page, just the little friendly box that we type our queries into, hit enter, and get our results. Nothing else.
Too easy. Do what I did - save the search page to a html file, edit it till you have what you want and bookmark it. Best of all worlds. Comes up instantly, no wait.
Why not just type it in either the search engine bar or super bar in FF/IE or the address bar in Chrome? There's no reason to go to Google.com with modern browsers.
Oh yes there is.
a) it's not big enough,
b) the typing-history dropdown mixes all search tools together - dictionary, thesaurus, etc.
Completely useless for serious searches.
My awesome solution: go old school. Save the google search page as a html file. Strip out all the funky javascript, except for initial text box focus. With a keystroke it pops up instantly - why wait for it to download? The form text box shows all my history. And I'm immune to redesigns!:) Perfection.
When it comes to email, reliability and functionality is FAR more important then any new features.
This is why I've been on Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 all this time. Updates turned off, I completely ignore new releases. It works great, happy with the plugins I have. I don't need tabs in my email. Oh and I still use XP and office 2003. I probably get more work done sticking with the same versions than upgrading.:)
Government has the job of providing a regulated market. Such regulations are very minimal - the very least that we can have and still have a functioning market. As much as possible is done by private organizations. As much as possible is governed locally. That's it. The rest is details worked out by individuals acting in their own self-interest.
Perhaps that's what we already have. Individuals always (rare exceptions) act in their self interest. The shape of both government and private enterprise as it stands right now is the result of lots of people acting in their self interest.
The trick about change is convincing people in positions of influence that doing things differently will be just as much, if not more, in their self interest as the things they do now. The problem with that proposition of course is that people don't like to change things that are already working for them. Thus a society's status quo maintains a great deal of inertia and is very slow to change.
Minimal regulation is easy of course - if you mean industrial regulation as opposed to civic - because business hates to be regulated, and business has influence on policy. But when you start asking questions like: "does the 4th Amendment apply to companies being able to search my private info online, or my health/DNA records?" then you're asking whether regulation is needed. An interesting quandary, but if you think about it the Constitution is fraught with such contradiction.
Slashdot Mirror
Should Lucas really have been able to make money on even the bits he was talentless at?
Isn't that like saying, if I employ a coder in India to create my hugely successful mobile game, he should get a cut of my $billions instead of just being paid to produce what I employed him to produce? I rather think the economy would collapse if that were the case.
If you want privacy, don't use the service that's already linked to everything else you do publicly on the Internet.
No.. if I want privacy, I'll just use Firefox for my normal browsing and Chrome for G+ and Facebook. That's what I do. My G+ account (used in Chrome) is separate to my Calendar/Gmail account (used in Firefox). Neither Facebook nor G+ is my real name. My friends know who I am.
So there you go. Using the services and getting the level of privacy I want. Two browsers windows open, but who cares. I know one is my normal browser and the other one is my "social" browser, for FB, G+ and Twitter. And never the twain shall meet. To hell with being "tracked".
I'm glad I created my G+ account with a faux name that sounds like a real name if this is the way they are going to be.
Exactly. That's what I did. It seems counter-productive for Google, if they're encouraging people to think up real-sounding fake names. You'd think it's better to know it's a nickname, than not know at all, and have to tell your precioussss advertisers you can't tell them if names are real or not.
I also created a G+ account which is separate from my normal google account. I don't think they'd want to encourage that either, but I imagine lots of ppl are doing that.
People seem to want social security because they've paid into it their entire lives without having an alternative of opting out.
You will have to back that reasoning up. It's possible they "want it" because it's not working as it is. Without private cover, it's hard to get many treatments. People would be happy to pay for it if it worked.
If you break something people pay their taxes for, of course they'll start to question the value of paying for it. Make it work, and they'll be happy to pay for it.
'When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. [...] 'Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.'
That makes no sense at all. Obviously it has to be below 10 percent to get to 10 percent, unless you're talking about a number of people spontaneously having the same idea at the same time.
See the answer straight from the horse's mouth: https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/VJoZMS8zVqU.
I think think it's weird to put my real name on the net. I come from the olde worlde, when the internet began, and nobody used their real name, everyone was happy to correspond with pseudonyms.
This "real name" thing is Facebook's fault, but I do have a FB account with a pseudonym. I don't like being forced to use my real name, as Google is indicating. I don't see the value in it for me.
People I don't know, I don't care if they're called Frank Johnson or Petal Fruitwisp. My friends, I know what name they use because they're my friends. I don't need to "find" them.
And I don't want people to "find" me. I don't want something I join or do or say on the internet being misinterpreted by an employer or whatever.
Pseudonyms are a mark of personality after all, which is what a social profile is all about. It should be a choice, not a requirement. Anonymity was what the internet was all about, until fucking Facebook came along and demanded accurate demographics for their precious advertisters.
That's what social services are all about, advertising, otherwise they wouldn't be developing them on such a scale. I resent having my choices curtailed to please corporates. That's what real life has been about, while the internet has been a haven away from all that.
But now, thanks to huge companies running increasingly integrated, coalescing services, we will end up with no choices anymore but what they choose to give us. Apple's iUbiquity is an example of that. They want to know everything about us, crying foul if we protest, while themselves remaining unanswerable.
Whether it's Rupert Murdoch, Sony, Apple or Google, powerful institutions should not demand we be transparent to them. That is far too much knowledge and power to give to people who are driven mainly by the profit motive.
arresting all senior officers and the Board of Directors. The Buck stops THERE.
That's not what Rupert Murdoch says.
Maybe those drugs are just super expensive. A total number of consumers would be more useful.
This is exactly why I scroll down a few comments before RTFA. They're often invaluable in adding some context or simply rendering TFA redundant.
Firefox 8 about equal with Chrome 14?
How can version 8 be as good as version 14?
Seriously, we're in danger of the average person thinking that one day, to the detriment of software development in general. Madness.
You can't compare Montoneros & Shinning Path with Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Montoneros was a single small group, around for only a few years, and had a specific political goal. Perhaps more like the Red Shirts in Thailand, but of course much more militant. They just wanted their leader to come back.
Shining Path, around for about 10 years, was also provincial in its concerns, regardless of the "global" rhetoric. They collapsed after the capture of 2 main leaders, so also did not have a strong foundation. Also, contrary to your statement, "Shining Path" is still around and have bombed here and there - although it can be argued those using the same are not the same organisation.
Al Qaeda and Taliban, on the other hand, are *religious* movements and so completely different animals. They stem from religious fundamentalism and so will probably always be around in one form or another. Al Qaeda and Taliban are just recent manifestations of things which have been taking place for hundreds of years, or probably as long as religion itself has been around.
As long as religion is around, fundamentalism will also.
I'm Australian and was a bit dismayed to read this bit:
"Just stating facts, guys," Lekha began, as we scribbled notes, "Australia is known as the dumbest continent. Literally, college was unknown there until recently. So speak slowly." Next to me, a young man in a turban wrote No college in his notebook.
"Technologically speaking, they're somewhat backward, as well. The average person's mobile would be no better than, say, a Nokia 3110 classic." This drew scoffs from around the room.
"Australians drink constantly," Lekha continued. "If you call on a Friday night, they'll be smashedâ"every time. Oh, and don't attempt to make small talk with them about their pets, okay? They can be quite touchy about animals."
"What kind of people are there in Australia?" a trainee asked. "What are their traits?"
"Well, for one thing," Lekha said, "let's admit: They are quite racist. They do not like Indians. Their preferred term for us isâ"please don't mind, ladiesâ"'brown bastards.' So if you hear that kind of language, you can just hang up the call."
Bloody Aussies. :)
But I *am* a grumpy bastard
Fair enough. :)
So, I assume that you have no concerns about being considered a fool in public?
Is that a question? I assume the answer is yes, unless you're unsure - in which case no, you don't.
You may however assume it doesn't concern me in this particular instance. And you may need to explain the basis for expressing your personal opinion as a broad generalisation, as if it is shared by a whole lot of other people who, for some reason, have chosen to remain silent, content with you as their spokesperson. Or you are legion. I think that's caused by legionellosis. Or is that lesions?
Anyway, I mean perhaps phrasing it in that way, as if you're in concurrent company, makes you feel better about being grumpy. Though with so many people on your side, one would think grumpiness would give way to a kind of warm sense of togetherness and community. But then there'd be no need to be grumpy, which may be a paradox. Unless of course having everyone agree with you makes you grumpy. That happens, I hate that too. But hey I don't know you, so I'm just guessing here. Which I suppose highlights how pointless it is to draw conclusions about people from 2 lines of text.
Ah.. Damn.
Blogger and Picasa are good names: concise, searchable, and trademarkable.
True. But a worse thing is the new oppressive black armband of a menu they're introducing. Google was always light blueness and easy on the eye.
I actually went to the extreme of installing UAControl for Firefox, setting it up to tell Google I'm still running Firefox v2. The upshot of that is I get standard old Google interface, and as a bonus the standard old image search not the new fangly one. Winning!
people are Facebook's product
Kind of, but not quite. The *connections* are the product. Between you and your friends/pages/groups/interests/etc. Not you per se, but what you say about yourself.
This is why it's dumb to friend all those useless interest pages. People love having "I like fruit loops" on their profile, even though it ads absolutely nothing to their interaction with others, unless it is a group with activities or conversation they want to keep up with.
Yet groups, community & social stuff, doesn't give Facebook marketing much value. The value is in anything you like which can be turned into market metrics. Real communication and community interaction which is personally valuable is exactly what FB doesn't find valuable at all.
In that sense, the "social network" aspect of FB is ironically kind of beside the point.
It all wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Facebook built up it's userbase around taking information from things like MSN, your e-mail contacts and so forth.
Why doesn't Google+ just ask for your Facebook password, the way FB asked everyone for the Yahoo/Gmail/etc password? Seems a fair exchange.
Every app asked for every other app's password would be a rather amusing situation.
If China introduces "regulation" that would stunt their free market, the free market simply circumvents it one way or another. It's the story time and time again in China
Good points all but, for the sake of fairness, this sort of thing happens all over, it's not an Asian phenomenon. Western companies set up anywhere they can to avoid regulations and indeed taxes. The US has a huge problem with corporate tax going overseas. And BP, as we know, had registered Deepwater Horizon in the Marshall Islands specifically to avoid those costly safety regulations.
So just saying, not much point focussing on China when it's the business mentality, wherever business happens, to do anything legally possible to reduce costs. "Legally", meaning the buck stops with government. The underlying problem is the culture of political influence via donations and so forth, that tilts the game.
Otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Government would have just said "don't do that" and let those talented business minds sort out how to make money in a world where you can't pollute. There's no doubt they'd find a way. But it's too late now. Their hooks are in deep, and most efforts to regulate are met with threats to pull campaign funding.
heh. Perhaps, but that's better than sounding like a grumpy douchebag in public. :)
I'm not sure a mining operation at that depth is feasible, or at least, cost effective.
Just don't get BP onto it, we don't want megagallons of rare earth spilling out into the ocean.
The banned superbowl commercials for example
No, they were banned because if fat, Dorito-munching Americans thought they could get girlfriends, they wouldn't be sitting in front of the TV watching the Superbowl.
The fact here is: Someone in the US Government told Visa and Mastercard to get rid of this customer.
Hows does anything you said prove (ie. "fact" infers you have proof) that the government told them to block Wikileaks? You actually said it was Wikileaks' fault.
What are you Australians thinking? How do you let your politicians get this kind of power?
Hi, I'm an Australian. We live in a democracy here. It's a system wherein public awareness of every item of legislation is not deemed important, indeed in many cases undesirable. Issues of which citizens are aware, are so twisted and misrepresented by the two incumbent parties - each bent on destroying the other at any cost to decent, truthful or even legible political discourse - that anything which could be called public consultation is problematic.
Indeed most of the time, particularly during the slagging match we call elections, where the public choose which of two parties will have the least negative impact on petrol and grocery prices, the agenda is set by politicians as opposed to the public and largely dominated by propaganda and disinformation.
I'm curious what country you hail from, where obviously the political situation is vastly improved. And where I can download the immigration forms.
How about a Google Classic page, just the little friendly box that we type our queries into, hit enter, and get our results. Nothing else.
Too easy. Do what I did - save the search page to a html file, edit it till you have what you want and bookmark it. Best of all worlds. Comes up instantly, no wait.
Why not just type it in either the search engine bar or super bar in FF/IE or the address bar in Chrome? There's no reason to go to Google.com with modern browsers.
Oh yes there is. a) it's not big enough, b) the typing-history dropdown mixes all search tools together - dictionary, thesaurus, etc. Completely useless for serious searches. My awesome solution: go old school. Save the google search page as a html file. Strip out all the funky javascript, except for initial text box focus. With a keystroke it pops up instantly - why wait for it to download? The form text box shows all my history. And I'm immune to redesigns! :) Perfection.
When it comes to email, reliability and functionality is FAR more important then any new features.
This is why I've been on Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 all this time. Updates turned off, I completely ignore new releases. It works great, happy with the plugins I have. I don't need tabs in my email. Oh and I still use XP and office 2003. I probably get more work done sticking with the same versions than upgrading. :)
Government has the job of providing a regulated market. Such regulations are very minimal - the very least that we can have and still have a functioning market. As much as possible is done by private organizations. As much as possible is governed locally. That's it. The rest is details worked out by individuals acting in their own self-interest.
Perhaps that's what we already have. Individuals always (rare exceptions) act in their self interest. The shape of both government and private enterprise as it stands right now is the result of lots of people acting in their self interest.
The trick about change is convincing people in positions of influence that doing things differently will be just as much, if not more, in their self interest as the things they do now. The problem with that proposition of course is that people don't like to change things that are already working for them. Thus a society's status quo maintains a great deal of inertia and is very slow to change.
Minimal regulation is easy of course - if you mean industrial regulation as opposed to civic - because business hates to be regulated, and business has influence on policy. But when you start asking questions like: "does the 4th Amendment apply to companies being able to search my private info online, or my health/DNA records?" then you're asking whether regulation is needed. An interesting quandary, but if you think about it the Constitution is fraught with such contradiction.