But I think the most important lesson is that neither the nuclear power industry nor the regulators of that industry can be trusted to be at all truthful about the scope and scale of problems. They both have strong incentives to minimize the perception of such. This, more than anything, is the biggest and most important lesson that has broad applicability to almost any regulated industry.
I think Google has a responsibility to do as much as they can to avoid having their algorithm gamed. But I don't think the responsibility is a legal responsibility in any way. It's a moral responsibility. And ultimately, it's something they need to do in order to maintain their edge in search quality, so it's a fiduciary responsibility as well. But it's not a legal responsibility.
I don't think your power pole analogy as very apt. Google has a lot more to do with the message getting out than the power company does. I think a better analogy would be if your neighbor figured out how to send signals down the power line that blew out your gadgets. The power company should keep that from happening, but it's not their fault from a civil or criminal legal liability standpoint.
Libel laws are not 'new' laws. But yes, I should've mentioned them in my original post. It tends to be really hard to get a libel charge to stick. I don't know enough about this case to know if it will be easy or not.
I think the key is that she offered to change it all for money. I think that's the part that should be illegal, not posting all that stuff in the first place. And threatening to post it unless you get money should be treated very similarly.
Lastly, this, in a small way, Google's fault. Their algorithm is fooled by stuff the human curating process would've had a much harder time being fooled by.
But I don't think we need any restraints on speech to handle this issue.
I agree that Open Source is no different. But I think it's harder to get away with it because it's harder to hide what you're doing. And even if you do for a time, someone will come along and fix it, and if you don't accept their fix you'll lose your users to the fork.
I think Google has very similar perverse incentives, though they have structured themselves in some ways to be more resistent.
I've actually grown rather disenchanted with Google over the last year. I feel like they've changed direction in a way that's ultimately harmful for everybody, including them, though it's beneficial in the short term.
Proprietary software vendors cannot be trusted to put your interests first. If they can get away with it they will always put their interests first. But, of course, their interests will remain well protected.
*chuckle* Well, yeah, sort of. I thought of his solution and set it aside in the hopes something earth-based could work.
But it sounds like a collimated beam with less than a meter of divergence over gigameters is beyond current technology, and certainly not possible from an earth-based station.:-/ *sigh* That shoots (pun intended) that idea down.
I guess getting them to the asteroid isn't too hard once they're in orbit. But it would still take a lot of time, likely months or years (even with clever stealing of momentum from planets and moons with gravity slingshots). Whereas sniping them from gigameters away would only take minutes.:-)
And, if you're fairly close, you can just use the sun. Fry that tiny point like an ant under a magnifying glass.
I wonder if the spacecraft actually have to get close to the asteroid for this to work. I mean, once you're in orbit, you're more than half way to anywhere you want to go, but I still wonder if a system like this wouldn't be more responsive and easier to maintain if we kept it in earth orbit? Do we have lasers that won't diverge more than a meter over a few gigameters of distance?
No, they aren't (usually). I was talking about the case in which they were being forced to. I, for example, am a bit on the fence about Foxconn, bordering on thinking they're doing fine. I think most of the anxiety people have is over how they are ever going to compete with those workers in other countries.
I wanted to think of a better example where large numbers of people make a decision that seems to be in their own self-interest that's actually harmful to themselves and a whole lot of other people in the long run.
I can download software that I know doesn't cheat me, and it usually has really excellent documentation. I wish a structure were in place whereby I could conveniently encourage the people who make such software to make more of it.
If RedHat or Ubuntu start acting against my best interests I'm not nearly so trapped into my choices. I could, relatively easily, switch all of stuff I use at home to Debian if I so chose.
The incentives for companies that make close-source software are all wrong. Their every incentive is to act against the interests of their customers in important and major ways. Network effects then conspire to make the choices of all of those duped customers make life more difficult for me as they expect me to do things in a way that's compatible with the software that traps them into the cycle.
Yes, large multinationals have a strong tendency to act against the interests of their customers and the public. And that's why I prefer to do business with large multinationals that have an incentive structure that inspires my trust.
*shrug* I don't really care what you think I should do or what you think is grown-up behavior. And really, I thought the OP was asking a general cross-platform question.
I liken someone who insists on continuing to use Windows to someone who insists on their toy without caring that someone in some third world country was worked to death to make it. Using software like that only encourages the people who make it to make more of the same kind of thing. It's pollution that says that robbing people of freedom is just fine as long as the toy is shiny enough.
No, it's because the 'buy an application' model is completely broken. It barely works for walled gardens like Apple's app store. The idea that software is a 'product' you can put in a box and sell is the wrong way to be thinking about the world and creates an incentive system for thousands of scammers.
If people insisted that the source be available for any software they installed on their machines this kind of garbage would be much less likely. The incentive system is up-ended.
I really wish Red Hat or Ubuntu had an 'app store' in which only Open Source software appeared to be sold. And I wish Android Marketplace allowed filtering according to license. I bite my nails with every app I install from Marketplace because most of the time I really have no clue if I can trust the app maker at all.
GNOME 3 only has one monitor be a virtual desktop in the default configuration. It would be nice if each were an independent one. I'm sure someone could do it with a shell extension.
It makes as many as I want. I find the way it works sort of irritating. But sometimes it's extremely convenient.
Also, it only makes multiple desktops on one of my monitors. And I find that behavior extremely convenient as well. Though it seems kind of inconsistent and results in strangeness sometimes if I disconnect a monitor. It's also sometimes irritating (but much less often irritating than the 'desktops on demand' feature).
And why Windows users have such reputations for being incredulous noobs. I mean, why else do you think so much blatant malware and scamware is made for that platform anyway?
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But I think the most important lesson is that neither the nuclear power industry nor the regulators of that industry can be trusted to be at all truthful about the scope and scale of problems. They both have strong incentives to minimize the perception of such. This, more than anything, is the biggest and most important lesson that has broad applicability to almost any regulated industry.
I think Google has a responsibility to do as much as they can to avoid having their algorithm gamed. But I don't think the responsibility is a legal responsibility in any way. It's a moral responsibility. And ultimately, it's something they need to do in order to maintain their edge in search quality, so it's a fiduciary responsibility as well. But it's not a legal responsibility.
I don't think your power pole analogy as very apt. Google has a lot more to do with the message getting out than the power company does. I think a better analogy would be if your neighbor figured out how to send signals down the power line that blew out your gadgets. The power company should keep that from happening, but it's not their fault from a civil or criminal legal liability standpoint.
Libel laws are not 'new' laws. But yes, I should've mentioned them in my original post. It tends to be really hard to get a libel charge to stick. I don't know enough about this case to know if it will be easy or not.
I think the key is that she offered to change it all for money. I think that's the part that should be illegal, not posting all that stuff in the first place. And threatening to post it unless you get money should be treated very similarly.
Lastly, this, in a small way, Google's fault. Their algorithm is fooled by stuff the human curating process would've had a much harder time being fooled by.
But I don't think we need any restraints on speech to handle this issue.
I agree that Open Source is no different. But I think it's harder to get away with it because it's harder to hide what you're doing. And even if you do for a time, someone will come along and fix it, and if you don't accept their fix you'll lose your users to the fork.
I think Google has very similar perverse incentives, though they have structured themselves in some ways to be more resistent.
I've actually grown rather disenchanted with Google over the last year. I feel like they've changed direction in a way that's ultimately harmful for everybody, including them, though it's beneficial in the short term.
Proprietary software vendors cannot be trusted to put your interests first. If they can get away with it they will always put their interests first. But, of course, their interests will remain well protected.
Yeah, it's easy to make a lot of money when you trade the freedom of your users for cash in your pocket.
*chuckle* Well, yeah, sort of. I thought of his solution and set it aside in the hopes something earth-based could work.
But it sounds like a collimated beam with less than a meter of divergence over gigameters is beyond current technology, and certainly not possible from an earth-based station. :-/ *sigh* That shoots (pun intended) that idea down.
I guess getting them to the asteroid isn't too hard once they're in orbit. But it would still take a lot of time, likely months or years (even with clever stealing of momentum from planets and moons with gravity slingshots). Whereas sniping them from gigameters away would only take minutes. :-)
And, if you're fairly close, you can just use the sun. Fry that tiny point like an ant under a magnifying glass.
This sounds like an idea I had recently.
I wonder if the spacecraft actually have to get close to the asteroid for this to work. I mean, once you're in orbit, you're more than half way to anywhere you want to go, but I still wonder if a system like this wouldn't be more responsive and easier to maintain if we kept it in earth orbit? Do we have lasers that won't diverge more than a meter over a few gigameters of distance?
This sounds a bit like Sundog. I loved that game for the Atari ST.
No, they aren't (usually). I was talking about the case in which they were being forced to. I, for example, am a bit on the fence about Foxconn, bordering on thinking they're doing fine. I think most of the anxiety people have is over how they are ever going to compete with those workers in other countries.
I wanted to think of a better example where large numbers of people make a decision that seems to be in their own self-interest that's actually harmful to themselves and a whole lot of other people in the long run.
I can download software that I know doesn't cheat me, and it usually has really excellent documentation. I wish a structure were in place whereby I could conveniently encourage the people who make such software to make more of it.
If RedHat or Ubuntu start acting against my best interests I'm not nearly so trapped into my choices. I could, relatively easily, switch all of stuff I use at home to Debian if I so chose.
The incentives for companies that make close-source software are all wrong. Their every incentive is to act against the interests of their customers in important and major ways. Network effects then conspire to make the choices of all of those duped customers make life more difficult for me as they expect me to do things in a way that's compatible with the software that traps them into the cycle.
Yes, large multinationals have a strong tendency to act against the interests of their customers and the public. And that's why I prefer to do business with large multinationals that have an incentive structure that inspires my trust.
*shrug* I don't really care what you think I should do or what you think is grown-up behavior. And really, I thought the OP was asking a general cross-platform question.
Yes, I should assume that people who ask to eat arsenic laden food are immune to arsenic poisoning too.
I liken someone who insists on continuing to use Windows to someone who insists on their toy without caring that someone in some third world country was worked to death to make it. Using software like that only encourages the people who make it to make more of the same kind of thing. It's pollution that says that robbing people of freedom is just fine as long as the toy is shiny enough.
Windows and Linux grew that feature at about the same time (Linux might've had it slightly earlier). I believe OS X had it before either of them.
Maybe they should stop doing that and helping to make the world a worse place. Or maybe they should run their windows in a VM.
No, it's because the 'buy an application' model is completely broken. It barely works for walled gardens like Apple's app store. The idea that software is a 'product' you can put in a box and sell is the wrong way to be thinking about the world and creates an incentive system for thousands of scammers.
If people insisted that the source be available for any software they installed on their machines this kind of garbage would be much less likely. The incentive system is up-ended.
I really wish Red Hat or Ubuntu had an 'app store' in which only Open Source software appeared to be sold. And I wish Android Marketplace allowed filtering according to license. I bite my nails with every app I install from Marketplace because most of the time I really have no clue if I can trust the app maker at all.
The grandparent didn't specify which OS.
GNOME 3 only has one monitor be a virtual desktop in the default configuration. It would be nice if each were an independent one. I'm sure someone could do it with a shell extension.
It makes as many as I want. I find the way it works sort of irritating. But sometimes it's extremely convenient.
Also, it only makes multiple desktops on one of my monitors. And I find that behavior extremely convenient as well. Though it seems kind of inconsistent and results in strangeness sometimes if I disconnect a monitor. It's also sometimes irritating (but much less often irritating than the 'desktops on demand' feature).
And why Windows users have such reputations for being incredulous noobs. I mean, why else do you think so much blatant malware and scamware is made for that platform anyway?
Yes, it is. I meant Unix variants that existed before OS X.