The majority of software development is maintenance. Source code is not actually instructions for a machine (for that you use machine code), it is really a communication from programmer to programmer about what this software should do and how it should work. Without programmers the source code is useless and Apple has taken away a whole bunch of the programmers. What good is a source file... if you're unable to compile?
Moreover, it's taken away the FreeBSD project's moral cover. None of the guys who went to Apple has put in any effort to make sure that the FreeBSD user interface keeps up with the level of Apple's. Before they were these great computer scientists bringing forward a clean system which the whole world could build on. Now we see that they were just a bunch of hacks trying to the original work of Berkley and the work of their friends and use that to get a better paid job somewhere at those other people's expense.
The whole anti-GPL thing is now clear. It was nothing to do with them wanting to contribute to humanity. It was all about them being able to steal the bread from their friends.
No, it doesn't. The "free market" does not depend on people copying the works of others.
That depends. The free market for corn, for example, very much depends on farmers being able to make copies of plants developed many years ago. The free market for Leaning Tower of Pizza souvenirs depends on people being allowed to copy the Leaning Tower of Pizza. That is the reason why there is no free market for Pompidou Centre models.
In this case the free market for Android clones depends on the right to copy Android. There is no true free market for Mobile Phones since a cartel of patent holders arranges to charge an entry fee to the club of mobile phone manufacturers.
Probably you want to argue "there could theoretically be a free market for mobile phones even if nobody but Google could copy Android" but that's a very hypothetical discussion and I don't see how it can be very interesting in real life?
BTW, isn't it funny that "something not nice" to competitors equals "Oh, noes! Google is evil!"
Totally. Though, just to be clear, in this case I object to their doing things to me and other people who might want to contribute to mainline Android and/or things like Cyanogenmod. I am not (in my opinion) either Google's competitor or partner. I kind of like the fact that they have "don't be evil" as a company moto and that they withdrew from China rather than help torture bloggers like Microsoft. On the other hand, if it wasn't for the fact that Facebook is more evil and scary and needs to be seriously tackled long before we even start discussing Google, I would kind of find Google's control of the world's data very scary.
Google trying to NOT let slimeballs like Amazon get away with it too easily, is a good thing. We need less jails, not more.
True, but there are simple, moral ways for Google to do this (put the whole of Android under the AGPLv3 and level the playing field for everyone - give commit access to the main repositories, if not the actual mainline, to people like Cyanogenmod who do serious Android development). Instead, because of their rabid internal hatred of the GPL they are ending up screwing over the very Android developers who might help them.
Apple choosing another OS would probably be better for BSD.
This is exactly the trick. For the individual FreeBSD authors who went to Apple it was probably better. However for all the ones who didn't get a job with Apple, they ended up working much more pointlessly on an obscure operating system. There is a reason why Linux kernel developers are pretty much all getting money and they aren't. That reason is that if a commercial company invests in FreeBSD, it's very likely that soon another one will come along and take that investment and the developers involved proprietary. The company that invested ends up losing out to its competitor. That's exactly what has happened to all the companies which tried to make FreeBSD a commercial success and ended up with Apple stealing their lunch.
It impacts people who care about principle the software they use is based upon.
Freedom is not (just) a matter of principle. The reason that people take your freedom away from you is because they want, later at their option, to be able to take other things from you that would naturally be yours. Microsoft locks people into proprietary licenses because they know that, after a few years of using the OS they buy from them you will need a new computer and a new system, either because your old one broke or because an associate wants to do the same things as you do already. Normally, if you were allowed your natural right to copy things you own, you would just be able to copy the old one and that would work fine. By taking away that freedom, Microsoft is able to take away your money from you again later for nothing more than you could easily have done yourself if they didn't interfere with your copying.
Google's aim here is to make life difficult for competitors such as Amazon and the Chinese Android clone makers (not that these will care). This allows them to interfere with the free market for their own benefit. For programmers reading Slashdot, that means that, instead of being four or more potential developers of mobile software you can work for, Amazon, Google, Apple and the Chinese, there may well only be two: Apple and Google. With the possible exception of Jolla and Ubuntu, there is almost nobody else in the market who could consider competing. For people buying mobile phones would mean that, instead of having widespread choice from different vendors, everything would go through Google or Apple.
This is one of the key reasons why licenses such as the AGPLv3 as well as free software foundations which can provide a neutral holder for coyprights are so important. Look at how FreeBSD development has been absorbed by Apple even though it was supposedly "Open Source". Without strong copyleft licenses the only choice will be which set of chains you wear. Once you are wearing those chains the only choice will be to give the mobile vendors what they want to take.
This work on Replicant is crucial and hopefully companies like Amazon which could gain from it will understand that and come out and support the project. Anyone who can contribute Android code should be working for the goals of Replicant wherever possible. Also you want to make sure that your code goes in to a neutral party under the AGPLv3 to make sure that you yourself will be able to get the benefit from it later.
BTW, isn't it funny the way all the "don't be evil" trolls suddenly shut up when we have an actual example of Google doing something not nice?
Does Microsoft seriously expect people to carry two phones, one to run Windows Phone applications and one to run existing applications for another platform, and pay for a separate voice and data plan for each?
I think that's the idea at least to start with. The hope is that your IT department will force you to have a Windows phone on "security grounds" and that you will carry both to start with. They hope that eventually, when WP37 finally catches up with Android 6 and IOS 7 you will give up on your own personal phone. This is an idea coming from the same people as lock your corporate computer down to only use Internet Explorer 6 because installing your own software would be "insecure". Go figure. Be very glad it seems to be failing deeply because a world with Microsoft in control would be a return to an Orwellian nightmare compared to what we have today.
I don't feel this is that balanced, partly due to my experiences with Google hangouts (admittedly Skype is currently my preferred platform here, but to say Google hangouts is solid is not the case in my experience).
Seems to me that this is all subjective. For me both work great but Skype eats battery like a rabid great white in a pool full of black pudding (I hope your imagination can stretch to that; but I couldn't think of anything realistic which would match the way Skype eats battery).
I guess the main message is that you should install both and only switch on Skype if hangouts fail. Google talk chat always seems to work fine for me even if other things aren't fully working and I've never had battery problems because of it.
Just guessing from the audience; the last thing any of us here need is another thing with a keyboard to join the five or so surrounding us. Tablets are for uses like a) in confined spaces like a plane seat and b) when you don't want to pick up something heavy c) when consuming media in bed / on the couch etc. e) when walking around. In none of those situations is a laptop a solution and adding a keyboard to a tablet would just show the designer had no idea what his product was for.
These aren't the best thought out solutions, but that's not the complainant's job. He's giving us his idea of what is wrong with what he has already. I would hate the idea of the weight and space of full sized USB ports. On the other hand, direct mini/micro-USB to micro-USB cables to connect cameras to my tablet would be great and would eliminate a big pile of different adapters and mess. What is most needed is a real agreed standard for small connectors which both Apple and the Android vendors buy into together and get rid of large USB entirely. Alternately just make everything work wirelessly over some faster short range network.
You should ask for all the money back that you paid them to host your video. Oh, wait...
'cmon... The service allows you to use it for free in return for the advertising revenue. You put in effort in order to use the service. There is a pretty much explicit (social?) contract here though enforcing it against big companies is really difficult.
This is absolutely right. Before Gmail there were plenty of commercial services charging for email. Most of these have now evaporated. People get really reliant on services like Facebook. There are some people, with difficult to market word of mouth services, who would not be able to market their work without social networks. In more primitive countries those people might end up unable to pay for visits to the doctor and die if their Facebook account got cut off. The case of search engines can be even more obvious.
Whilst it's pretty obvious that your demands should be limited, just because Google's service (or any other companies) is free doesn't give them a pass from acting responsibly. They chose the price; they should have to live with it. Basic fairness and an appeals process for people who have been seriously damaged is a fundamental.
I'm not sure you are getting this. Google suing should be the least of these people's worries. From AFA linked from TFA:
Google says that these companies violated its terms of services, which prohibits automated methods of inflating view counts
If they have been faking 1/8th of their viewership, then that was artificially increasing their apparent influence and so share price. The SEC should be coming around damn soon now if a shareholder would just make a complaint.
Welcome to the world of Google. Don't be evil (if you're not us).
You guys would be a bit more convincing if you posted with real examples. Most times when I follow up on this kind of thing I find that actually, in fact, the person obviously was doing whatever Google accused them of. In the few exceptional cases they seem to get their stuff back. There is nothing going on like Microsoft handing over blogger names to the Chinese authorities so that they get tortured into silence. Please feel free to convince us otherwise with evidence other than the stuff Facebook faked to try to discredit Google.
N.B. I'm not saying Google is particularly good. They just seem to be another bunch of normal people trying to muddle it through.
The work to get this fixed - build an emulation system which intercepts Android IPC and runs it in user space on a stock kernel; make wrappers for the drivers which make glibc work on top of them - would probably be less than doing the work on Surface. People who want to hack Surface should put in effort somewhere where it will be useful instead.
Remember the big mistake was not in the code. The big problem was the suggestion that if would be okay to break user space code. That's one of the big Linux promises so Linus has to be seen to react publicly.
Correct. but back when Microsoft could at least get the "give the customer what they ask for even if it's wrong" part right they had Bill Gates in the aggressive asshole role. Joel on software has an article on meeting him which is pretty instructive.
If you want to kill a lot of people, making guns illegal isn't going to stop you.
That depends, however it will almost certainly reduce the number of people you kill.
They are simply the most accessible means right now.
Guns are the best easily accessible means. Knives are even more available and people even do go on rampages with them. The only difference is that few people end up dead.
Make them less accessible and he would have picked up a truckload of fertilizer and diesel fuel
And probably got the mixture wrong. Or put it in the wrong place or etc. etc. Alternatively someone would have noticed.
She didn't even have to give up her guns. Just having them all locked in a gun safe whenever they weren't actually on her person would probably have saved many people. Requiring, by law, everyone with a gun to have a gun safe and use it when appropriate would be a very simple start.
The thing is it's fucking funny when the shills can say:
Once Microsoft drops support for Windows 7, you will be upgrading. Trust me. Or get left behind by the business community
Basically a straight out threat to their own customers. Or in other words;
Just be clear: you are renting. That's not your IT infrastructure it's ours. Next renewal comes around and everything you saved is coming straight back out.
If I was a CIO I'd be willing to pay almost any price to get rid of a supplier with an attitude like that. No wonder Google Apps migrations are taking off.
Have a look in the history of every article in the last year which matches the string "Google". You will find that either as first post, or very soon afterwards there is a post which puts up lines like "Google is the worst privacy violator" "Google has become worse than Microsoft" etc. etc. In response to those posts will be many posts which completely refute your points. This has been repeated so often it's not funny. I have even posted in some of those discussions myself. For us to repeat those discussions would be "redundant" and I would hate that.
One of the biggest and most common examples of these accusations of Google becoming 'just as bad' is that their buying up patents is a sign they will become just as bad as Microsoft, which is using stupid patents like the one on the FAT filesystem to attack smaller developers (have a look at this Slashdot discussion about TomTom for example). However, we have not yet seen any evidence of this. Google still hasn't sued any small developer companies. However, this is relevant to our topic of discussion because Google working with Apple is new.
Do you think that now that Google has teamed up with Apple it is a sign that they want to join Apple's attacks on competitors? Maybe instead you think that this is a sign that Apple has come to its senses and realised that Microsoft is still a threat to our chances of a standardised mixed computing environment where Google just wants that system to exist so they can continue to have a chance to provide search and advertising?
This discussion thread was about the accusation that Google is "the web's LARGEST PRIVACY VIOLATION" and that we "SUPPORT THEM?"
Google is a pioneer of techniques, a number of them patented, which allow them to hold data about you whilst ensuring that it is anonymized even to their own employees, let alone to outside advertising agencies.
Facebook, on the other hand, directly shares your full profile including your PII with it's partners in advertising and apps. That clearly makes them a larger "PRIVACY VIOLATION" than Google and makes them 100% on topic in this particular thread which has, for some reason, been voted up extremely high.
I wonder if the reason that Facebook vilolates privacy so much more strongly than Google is because they fear Google's patents? That would be strange when Google never initiated patent action against anyone yet. Maybe it's because that's a missing element in Microsoft's portfolio and that's what attracted Microsoft to invest so heavily in Facebook? Do you think Google's increasing patent portfolio will increase or decrease privacy on the internet?
Someone manages to get a huge long first post. That post repeats the standard Microsoft / Facebook trolling line that Google has gone downhill. That post SHOUTS and SCREAMS. The post mentions privacy violation without mentioning Facebook, about the only company willing to sell on fully identifiable material about any user on to almost anybody who signs up as a "developer".
Worst of all, the job of the "Troll" is to hijack the conversation and direct it elsewhere. In my case back to the topic on hand. We are discussing about which company has the worst privacy record which is completely offtopic; you are discussing meta issues as old as the hills (I am sure there one early comment on Slashdot: "Slashdot has gone downhill since comments started started last week"). Why aren't we discussing:
Why the hell are Google being forced to spend money on supporting Lawyers and the legal system instead of putting that money into development and "innovation"?
Are these legitimate patents on a real "inventions" or are they unconstitutional and illegal attempts to control freedom of thought and expression by using the USPTO to circumvent the first amendment and the US constitutions restrictions on patenting mathematics?
Is it just software patents that are broken, or is has the entire patent system become outdated? Is this maybe an example of the patent system working to protect the Kodak pensioners? Do you deserve money if your company fails to put it's invention out to real customers?
Don't forget, NVidia are great for supporting older hardware... [etc...]
Both you and the grandparent are missing two crucial things. Firstly, the purely selfish thing. Debugging of other hardware on a system with a proprietary driver is often much more difficult than debugging on a pure open system. Some call or other sends data into the proprietary module, another call brings it out. You don't know the relation between the two, so it's difficult to spot when the first call was causing wrong data in the second call. This problem is so bad that there is even a special mechanism (tainting) which gives a warning to kernel developers when a fault report (kernel oops) comes from a system with a proprietary module. Fault reports from such systems are by default thrown away without being examined.
This first problem means that other hardware that is normally put together with NVidia becomes less reliable than it would normally be since bugs in the drivers are fixed less quickly. For example, your hard disk may corrupt your data, and when you change it the problem stops. You think the problem is the hard disk driver and that's true, but that problem would have been already solved if your system didn't have an NVidia chip. Your NVidia chip is causing your system as a whole to be more unreliable.
The second, more community thing, is that of course there are some situations where kernel developers do have to work on proprietary drivers and binary blobs. This has been described quite well in the video binary blobs attack. Basically, when this happens, a kernel developer who could normally have fixed four problems or worked on a new feature instead ends up spending the same time to fix one problem. What this means is that Linux overall develops more slowly because you some Linux users buy things like NVidia chips with proprietary software attached.
Simply put. Avoid where binary blobs and proprietary drivers where possible. If it allows you to get a system going where you wouldn't otherwise, then go for it. If you are buying a new system, then aim to avoid them.
Megaupload sent a copy of Men in Black 3 to an IP address in the US after being ordered to by the MPAA
200 people employed by the Universal Music Group in an entrapment operation shared born this way on Megaupload
Two employees of Megaupload knew about music sharing but agreed to make sure Kim Dotcom never finds out because he keeps insisting on deleting everything for legal reasons.
Sounds just about as fair as convicting people based on secret evidence discovered during torture at Guantanamo.
Slashdot Mirror
What a nice long rant you've got there, pity it's all FUD..........
Yes, not to mention that he's giving talking points about the licenses being transferable which have already been refuted by other posters.
The majority of software development is maintenance. Source code is not actually instructions for a machine (for that you use machine code), it is really a communication from programmer to programmer about what this software should do and how it should work. Without programmers the source code is useless and Apple has taken away a whole bunch of the programmers. What good is a source file... if you're unable to compile?
Moreover, it's taken away the FreeBSD project's moral cover. None of the guys who went to Apple has put in any effort to make sure that the FreeBSD user interface keeps up with the level of Apple's. Before they were these great computer scientists bringing forward a clean system which the whole world could build on. Now we see that they were just a bunch of hacks trying to the original work of Berkley and the work of their friends and use that to get a better paid job somewhere at those other people's expense.
The whole anti-GPL thing is now clear. It was nothing to do with them wanting to contribute to humanity. It was all about them being able to steal the bread from their friends.
s/Pizza/Pisa/ - damn that's Freudian. I really am that hungry.
No, it doesn't. The "free market" does not depend on people copying the works of others.
That depends. The free market for corn, for example, very much depends on farmers being able to make copies of plants developed many years ago. The free market for Leaning Tower of Pizza souvenirs depends on people being allowed to copy the Leaning Tower of Pizza. That is the reason why there is no free market for Pompidou Centre models.
In this case the free market for Android clones depends on the right to copy Android. There is no true free market for Mobile Phones since a cartel of patent holders arranges to charge an entry fee to the club of mobile phone manufacturers.
Probably you want to argue "there could theoretically be a free market for mobile phones even if nobody but Google could copy Android" but that's a very hypothetical discussion and I don't see how it can be very interesting in real life?
BTW, isn't it funny that "something not nice" to competitors equals "Oh, noes! Google is evil!"
Totally. Though, just to be clear, in this case I object to their doing things to me and other people who might want to contribute to mainline Android and/or things like Cyanogenmod. I am not (in my opinion) either Google's competitor or partner. I kind of like the fact that they have "don't be evil" as a company moto and that they withdrew from China rather than help torture bloggers like Microsoft. On the other hand, if it wasn't for the fact that Facebook is more evil and scary and needs to be seriously tackled long before we even start discussing Google, I would kind of find Google's control of the world's data very scary.
Google trying to NOT let slimeballs like Amazon get away with it too easily, is a good thing. We need less jails, not more.
True, but there are simple, moral ways for Google to do this (put the whole of Android under the AGPLv3 and level the playing field for everyone - give commit access to the main repositories, if not the actual mainline, to people like Cyanogenmod who do serious Android development). Instead, because of their rabid internal hatred of the GPL they are ending up screwing over the very Android developers who might help them.
Apple choosing another OS would probably be better for BSD.
This is exactly the trick. For the individual FreeBSD authors who went to Apple it was probably better. However for all the ones who didn't get a job with Apple, they ended up working much more pointlessly on an obscure operating system. There is a reason why Linux kernel developers are pretty much all getting money and they aren't. That reason is that if a commercial company invests in FreeBSD, it's very likely that soon another one will come along and take that investment and the developers involved proprietary. The company that invested ends up losing out to its competitor. That's exactly what has happened to all the companies which tried to make FreeBSD a commercial success and ended up with Apple stealing their lunch.
It impacts people who care about principle the software they use is based upon.
Freedom is not (just) a matter of principle. The reason that people take your freedom away from you is because they want, later at their option, to be able to take other things from you that would naturally be yours. Microsoft locks people into proprietary licenses because they know that, after a few years of using the OS they buy from them you will need a new computer and a new system, either because your old one broke or because an associate wants to do the same things as you do already. Normally, if you were allowed your natural right to copy things you own, you would just be able to copy the old one and that would work fine. By taking away that freedom, Microsoft is able to take away your money from you again later for nothing more than you could easily have done yourself if they didn't interfere with your copying.
Google's aim here is to make life difficult for competitors such as Amazon and the Chinese Android clone makers (not that these will care). This allows them to interfere with the free market for their own benefit. For programmers reading Slashdot, that means that, instead of being four or more potential developers of mobile software you can work for, Amazon, Google, Apple and the Chinese, there may well only be two: Apple and Google. With the possible exception of Jolla and Ubuntu, there is almost nobody else in the market who could consider competing. For people buying mobile phones would mean that, instead of having widespread choice from different vendors, everything would go through Google or Apple.
This is one of the key reasons why licenses such as the AGPLv3 as well as free software foundations which can provide a neutral holder for coyprights are so important. Look at how FreeBSD development has been absorbed by Apple even though it was supposedly "Open Source". Without strong copyleft licenses the only choice will be which set of chains you wear. Once you are wearing those chains the only choice will be to give the mobile vendors what they want to take.
This work on Replicant is crucial and hopefully companies like Amazon which could gain from it will understand that and come out and support the project. Anyone who can contribute Android code should be working for the goals of Replicant wherever possible. Also you want to make sure that your code goes in to a neutral party under the AGPLv3 to make sure that you yourself will be able to get the benefit from it later.
BTW, isn't it funny the way all the "don't be evil" trolls suddenly shut up when we have an actual example of Google doing something not nice?
Does Microsoft seriously expect people to carry two phones, one to run Windows Phone applications and one to run existing applications for another platform, and pay for a separate voice and data plan for each?
I think that's the idea at least to start with. The hope is that your IT department will force you to have a Windows phone on "security grounds" and that you will carry both to start with. They hope that eventually, when WP37 finally catches up with Android 6 and IOS 7 you will give up on your own personal phone. This is an idea coming from the same people as lock your corporate computer down to only use Internet Explorer 6 because installing your own software would be "insecure". Go figure. Be very glad it seems to be failing deeply because a world with Microsoft in control would be a return to an Orwellian nightmare compared to what we have today.
I don't feel this is that balanced, partly due to my experiences with Google hangouts (admittedly Skype is currently my preferred platform here, but to say Google hangouts is solid is not the case in my experience).
Seems to me that this is all subjective. For me both work great but Skype eats battery like a rabid great white in a pool full of black pudding (I hope your imagination can stretch to that; but I couldn't think of anything realistic which would match the way Skype eats battery).
I guess the main message is that you should install both and only switch on Skype if hangouts fail. Google talk chat always seems to work fine for me even if other things aren't fully working and I've never had battery problems because of it.
Just guessing from the audience; the last thing any of us here need is another thing with a keyboard to join the five or so surrounding us. Tablets are for uses like a) in confined spaces like a plane seat and b) when you don't want to pick up something heavy c) when consuming media in bed / on the couch etc. e) when walking around. In none of those situations is a laptop a solution and adding a keyboard to a tablet would just show the designer had no idea what his product was for.
These aren't the best thought out solutions, but that's not the complainant's job. He's giving us his idea of what is wrong with what he has already. I would hate the idea of the weight and space of full sized USB ports. On the other hand, direct mini/micro-USB to micro-USB cables to connect cameras to my tablet would be great and would eliminate a big pile of different adapters and mess. What is most needed is a real agreed standard for small connectors which both Apple and the Android vendors buy into together and get rid of large USB entirely. Alternately just make everything work wirelessly over some faster short range network.
You should ask for all the money back that you paid them to host your video. Oh, wait...
'cmon... The service allows you to use it for free in return for the advertising revenue. You put in effort in order to use the service. There is a pretty much explicit (social?) contract here though enforcing it against big companies is really difficult.
This is absolutely right. Before Gmail there were plenty of commercial services charging for email. Most of these have now evaporated. People get really reliant on services like Facebook. There are some people, with difficult to market word of mouth services, who would not be able to market their work without social networks. In more primitive countries those people might end up unable to pay for visits to the doctor and die if their Facebook account got cut off. The case of search engines can be even more obvious.
Whilst it's pretty obvious that your demands should be limited, just because Google's service (or any other companies) is free doesn't give them a pass from acting responsibly. They chose the price; they should have to live with it. Basic fairness and an appeals process for people who have been seriously damaged is a fundamental.
I'm not sure you are getting this. Google suing should be the least of these people's worries. From AFA linked from TFA:
If they have been faking 1/8th of their viewership, then that was artificially increasing their apparent influence and so share price. The SEC should be coming around damn soon now if a shareholder would just make a complaint.
Now that would be sweet.
Welcome to the world of Google. Don't be evil (if you're not us).
You guys would be a bit more convincing if you posted with real examples. Most times when I follow up on this kind of thing I find that actually, in fact, the person obviously was doing whatever Google accused them of. In the few exceptional cases they seem to get their stuff back. There is nothing going on like Microsoft handing over blogger names to the Chinese authorities so that they get tortured into silence. Please feel free to convince us otherwise with evidence other than the stuff Facebook faked to try to discredit Google.
N.B. I'm not saying Google is particularly good. They just seem to be another bunch of normal people trying to muddle it through.
The work to get this fixed - build an emulation system which intercepts Android IPC and runs it in user space on a stock kernel; make wrappers for the drivers which make glibc work on top of them - would probably be less than doing the work on Surface. People who want to hack Surface should put in effort somewhere where it will be useful instead.
Remember the big mistake was not in the code. The big problem was the suggestion that if would be okay to break user space code. That's one of the big Linux promises so Linus has to be seen to react publicly.
He said Microsoft, you're talking about Apple.
Correct. but back when Microsoft could at least get the "give the customer what they ask for even if it's wrong" part right they had Bill Gates in the aggressive asshole role. Joel on software has an article on meeting him which is pretty instructive.
If you want to kill a lot of people, making guns illegal isn't going to stop you.
That depends, however it will almost certainly reduce the number of people you kill.
They are simply the most accessible means right now.
Guns are the best easily accessible means. Knives are even more available and people even do go on rampages with them. The only difference is that few people end up dead.
Make them less accessible and he would have picked up a truckload of fertilizer and diesel fuel
And probably got the mixture wrong. Or put it in the wrong place or etc. etc. Alternatively someone would have noticed.
She didn't even have to give up her guns. Just having them all locked in a gun safe whenever they weren't actually on her person would probably have saved many people. Requiring, by law, everyone with a gun to have a gun safe and use it when appropriate would be a very simple start.
Basically a straight out threat to their own customers. Or in other words;
Just be clear: you are renting. That's not your IT infrastructure it's ours. Next renewal comes around and everything you saved is coming straight back out.
If I was a CIO I'd be willing to pay almost any price to get rid of a supplier with an attitude like that. No wonder Google Apps migrations are taking off.
Guess you just took a walk of life in the wrong direction.
You did not refute a single one.
Have a look in the history of every article in the last year which matches the string "Google". You will find that either as first post, or very soon afterwards there is a post which puts up lines like "Google is the worst privacy violator" "Google has become worse than Microsoft" etc. etc. In response to those posts will be many posts which completely refute your points. This has been repeated so often it's not funny. I have even posted in some of those discussions myself. For us to repeat those discussions would be "redundant" and I would hate that.
One of the biggest and most common examples of these accusations of Google becoming 'just as bad' is that their buying up patents is a sign they will become just as bad as Microsoft, which is using stupid patents like the one on the FAT filesystem to attack smaller developers (have a look at this Slashdot discussion about TomTom for example). However, we have not yet seen any evidence of this. Google still hasn't sued any small developer companies. However, this is relevant to our topic of discussion because Google working with Apple is new.
Do you think that now that Google has teamed up with Apple it is a sign that they want to join Apple's attacks on competitors? Maybe instead you think that this is a sign that Apple has come to its senses and realised that Microsoft is still a threat to our chances of a standardised mixed computing environment where Google just wants that system to exist so they can continue to have a chance to provide search and advertising?
This discussion thread was about the accusation that Google is "the web's LARGEST PRIVACY VIOLATION" and that we "SUPPORT THEM?"
Google is a pioneer of techniques, a number of them patented, which allow them to hold data about you whilst ensuring that it is anonymized even to their own employees, let alone to outside advertising agencies.
Facebook, on the other hand, directly shares your full profile including your PII with it's partners in advertising and apps. That clearly makes them a larger "PRIVACY VIOLATION" than Google and makes them 100% on topic in this particular thread which has, for some reason, been voted up extremely high.
I wonder if the reason that Facebook vilolates privacy so much more strongly than Google is because they fear Google's patents? That would be strange when Google never initiated patent action against anyone yet. Maybe it's because that's a missing element in Microsoft's portfolio and that's what attracted Microsoft to invest so heavily in Facebook? Do you think Google's increasing patent portfolio will increase or decrease privacy on the internet?
There is no reason for you to be marked "Troll."
Someone manages to get a huge long first post. That post repeats the standard Microsoft / Facebook trolling line that Google has gone downhill. That post SHOUTS and SCREAMS. The post mentions privacy violation without mentioning Facebook, about the only company willing to sell on fully identifiable material about any user on to almost anybody who signs up as a "developer".
Worst of all, the job of the "Troll" is to hijack the conversation and direct it elsewhere. In my case back to the topic on hand. We are discussing about which company has the worst privacy record which is completely offtopic; you are discussing meta issues as old as the hills (I am sure there one early comment on Slashdot: "Slashdot has gone downhill since comments started started last week"). Why aren't we discussing:
Why the hell are Google being forced to spend money on supporting Lawyers and the legal system instead of putting that money into development and "innovation"?
Are these legitimate patents on a real "inventions" or are they unconstitutional and illegal attempts to control freedom of thought and expression by using the USPTO to circumvent the first amendment and the US constitutions restrictions on patenting mathematics?
Is it just software patents that are broken, or is has the entire patent system become outdated? Is this maybe an example of the patent system working to protect the Kodak pensioners? Do you deserve money if your company fails to put it's invention out to real customers?
Don't forget, NVidia are great for supporting older hardware... [etc...]
Both you and the grandparent are missing two crucial things. Firstly, the purely selfish thing. Debugging of other hardware on a system with a proprietary driver is often much more difficult than debugging on a pure open system. Some call or other sends data into the proprietary module, another call brings it out. You don't know the relation between the two, so it's difficult to spot when the first call was causing wrong data in the second call. This problem is so bad that there is even a special mechanism (tainting) which gives a warning to kernel developers when a fault report (kernel oops) comes from a system with a proprietary module. Fault reports from such systems are by default thrown away without being examined.
This first problem means that other hardware that is normally put together with NVidia becomes less reliable than it would normally be since bugs in the drivers are fixed less quickly. For example, your hard disk may corrupt your data, and when you change it the problem stops. You think the problem is the hard disk driver and that's true, but that problem would have been already solved if your system didn't have an NVidia chip. Your NVidia chip is causing your system as a whole to be more unreliable.
The second, more community thing, is that of course there are some situations where kernel developers do have to work on proprietary drivers and binary blobs. This has been described quite well in the video binary blobs attack. Basically, when this happens, a kernel developer who could normally have fixed four problems or worked on a new feature instead ends up spending the same time to fix one problem. What this means is that Linux overall develops more slowly because you some Linux users buy things like NVidia chips with proprietary software attached.
Simply put. Avoid where binary blobs and proprietary drivers where possible. If it allows you to get a system going where you wouldn't otherwise, then go for it. If you are buying a new system, then aim to avoid them.
You mean like:
Sounds just about as fair as convicting people based on secret evidence discovered during torture at Guantanamo.