I'm really fed up with "/B/" references leaking onto the wider Internet. It's like witnessing a day release programme for chronic matsturbators: you know they're just going to leave little messes everywhere which no-one wants to clear up. What's worse, they think it's clever, convinced they're part of some hep in-crowd just because they can repeat childish catchphrases (remember that word? before the Internet beat a stake through everyone's dictionaries, we didn't call everything appearing more than once on the Internet a "meme").
As devoid of wit or insight as the underlying idea, the "Candlejack" incantation has pollut
Buggers Broadcasting Communism was the old Tory cry.
They are unquestionably racist, patronising various minorities via national policy intended to display the range of fashionable backgrounds rather than be nationally and regionally representative. Then you have whole channels dedicated to special needs: BBC 3 caters entirely for the idiot, and BBC 4 to the significant minority suffering from chronic bluffers' syndrome.
Chairmen remain rich white men. The BBC is a sad game to pat people on the head and make them feel more relevant than they really are. Which brings us to H2G2.
Don't forget to do it without judicial oversight, to infiltrate protest groups and cyber with legitimate members, and to incite violence. It's OK because when you're working for the government you are in the right by definition, right?
Indeed. Google have no right to invade property or privacy, while the police have a right when they have gone through arduous democratically approved processes.
Flying a drone over your house to take photos is no different from using an infrared camera and sensitive microphone from the street... say, to watch your daughter in the shower.
It's time Americans stopped taking it up the ass while they quibble over "rights of corporations" vs "rights of government". Whenever there's a massive power imbalance, the more powerful party needs careful oversight and should not be allowed to take advantage of you, only serve you (government/charity/mutual) or trade for mutual benefit (private party). No exceptions.
Great, a series of statements about Facebook by some people not speaking on behalf of Facebook corrected by one person claiming to be from Facebook but not speaking on behalf of Facebook. Who knew Facebook engineers and fanboys were as capricious and unwilling to understand boundaries as the users?
...that they have very poor/disorganised engineering practice, and they're trying to sell a bug in their methodology as a feature. It's like when Google suddenly fluffs something up with your search results momentarily, and you think "huh, that's weird," but actually they're just testing (or think they're testing... in reality, they're just annoying you).
Since there's nothing technically interesting or requiring resilience about anything Facebook has to offer, they can get away with it.
Since I can check my bank balance every day on my phone, I have a much better grasp of my finances.
What are you doing with your finances that means you need to check your bank account to find your balance? Aren't you aware of your incomings and outgoings?
The only argument I can come up with is that you want to check for bank error, which is fair enough, but if you feel the need to do that daily then you probably need another bank.
It's the old "then they came for me" thing. Even if Facebook users are insufferable cunts, they are the cool crowd and any legislation or standard corporate policy (but I repeat myself) concerning privacy will be determined by how they react to what might hitherto have been regarded as an offensive breach of privacy.
IOW, if Facebook is allowed to continue behaving like this, people will just go, "oh you don't have any privacy anyway, get over it!" with your viewpoint being drowned out. In fact, I've heard a lot of younger people say this. (And a small subset of older guys who always end up having been involved in some way in their employment history with processing large amounts of personal data.)
I've got a fair few friends who ONLY have a smart phone, and this smart phone is their entire life line to the world.
At the risk of receiving another angry response from you, would you perhaps consider advising your friends that having a smartphone as your "entire life line to the world" is an unnecessary and fairly dangerous risk? If you're travelling around remote locations, you'd be well advised to carry multiple means of communication - particularly equipment which does not rely on terrestrial infrastructure. A satellite 'phone is an option, as are transceivers for the CB or amateur radio services.
they're continually moving around in rural Australia, that they can't get a good internet connection
Ah, the rare exception to prove the rule gambit. Yes, I'm sure there are at least a couple of dozen Westerners who must travel light for months on end in the middle of nowhere. I'm sorry for making a point which considers almost everyone except these guys, for whom the rule about not using shiny gadgets as a substitute for organisation still applies but for whom the detail of application differs slightly.
Out of interest, what are these friends actually doing? The only people I've known who have genuinely spent weeks trekking across Australia without any sophisticated contact with civilisation have done it for leisure.
often 3G won't cut it. So they use their phones for all net stuff, and it works well.
That's weird. I've used laptops to connect to the Internet via mobile 'phones since about 1998, before 3G was deployed.
By default you have privacy and property ownership: the Wireless Telegraphy Act in the UK, for example, doesn't let you intercept messages without the consent of the sender. Just because it's "on the Internet", laws don't suddenly stop applying. So, unless your contract stipulates otherwise, standard laws apply - and the AUP specifies the limit on what you're allowed to do with someone else's system. Make sense?
What country? GCSE mathematics in the UK is a joke compared to O-level, and A-level has had the syllabus progressively reduced. More importantly, questions have turned from requiring ingenuity to being something the student will have already seen in the textbook (produced by the same publisher which happens to own the exam board).
As for the average level of education, it's true that more people can read, but learning specific technical skills is not the same as the exercise and application of imagination and ingenuity. Like Einstein said, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."
Your drunken post was very difficult to read. Are you countering by pointing out that some tech stock was overvalued? Maybe you're young/selfish enough that it's the sort of thing which you consider the height of importance, but perhaps you ought to concentrate on the freedoms and opportunities people enjoyed.
What about you is so disorganised or overcomplicated that you need to move money around your accounts while you're on the move?
or worse to the bank,
The richest people I know do precisely that. I don't. But there you go.
I have far more fun stuff I could be doing.
I'm not sure what's fun about needing to manage your bank accounts while travelling.
I remember the 90s it was just as bad as now except for air travel, that was better. Our government has not gotten better or worse.
Wow. Assuming you're in the UK, the USA or some Western European country, you really need to pay more attention to your country's legislative progress, even if you've never suffered the consequences of new laws. Government has gotten a lot worse.
It's generally true, but then some revolution or war or other instability comes along and shakes things up a bit. We've experienced too much stability to reinvigorate the new generation.
Also, school is fucking easy now. It's never been easier. The mass Western privatisation/unionisation (delete as inappropriate to your political prejudice) of education is unique to the last couple of decades. Contrast the 400 years of what counted as formal or informal higher education, or skip over the Dark Ages and contrast with Ancient Greek higher education.
The late '90s were a zenith of Western society, a fair balance of regulation and freedom; technology and tradition.
Now the government's breathing down everyone's neck while they're neatly distracted by thinking they're such a big deal that they need to be contacted at every minute of the day or night.
Minimise your shitty gadgets. Do only what needs doing. Relax a little. If you think you need to bank from your 'phone, you're doing life wrong.
You're missing the point entirely. The incentive in Wikipedia isn't to produce an encyclopedic information resource. Just because it's popular and large it doesn't mean it's achieved any of its stated goals.
Imagine me setting up a large room and filling it with cans of beer. I then declare the purpose of the room is for scientists to gather and find a cure for cancer. It's likely that room will be very popular for a while while everyone rushes in to drink beer and have a laugh. But at the end of the day all I'll have is a trashed room full of empty beer cans and piss, and no cure for cancer.
The alternative to Wikipedia is not Knol, it's the web as a whole, administered and edited by autonomous but (in the best cases) well-known individuals and orgsanisations with professional or hobbyist standing and reputations to maintain. And this wider web is still doing better than Wikipedia and would do even better without Wikipedia to distract well-meaning contributors and readers.
My name is Jimmy Wales. Ten years ago not a lot of people believed a second-rate day trader turned pornographer would be able to follow the Rand dream by exploiting thousands of people across the Internet into wasting their time writing a successful web site for him, the only purpose of which was to further his fame and bank account.
At that time it would have been silly to suggest that antisocial twenty-somethings would spend months - sometimes years - warring over some irrelevant fact to establish their bias in an atrociously written article covering some topic related to their political belief or esoteric interest. I would have been laughed at if I'd have suggested that people across the world wouldn't consider me bordering on racially exploitative if I suggested that people should donate toward this project to help the "child in Africa".
But it's 2011, guys, and, fuck me! I did it.
So, if you learnt just a little bit about how a lack of scruples and a solid cult of personality can earn a creepy middle aged man world-wide fame while diminishing the usefulness the world's most important information medium, why not donate at least £5/$5/€5? After all, if I can do it, maybe you can. Let me sell you a drop of the most pathological corruption of the capitalist dream. And that's why you're really donating, isn't it?
You'll find a list of resources used to support the article, which is nowhere near the same as finding an unbiased, exhaustive list of resources recommended by known individuals with a reputation to maintain.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm really fed up with "/B/" references leaking onto the wider Internet. It's like witnessing a day release programme for chronic matsturbators: you know they're just going to leave little messes everywhere which no-one wants to clear up. What's worse, they think it's clever, convinced they're part of some hep in-crowd just because they can repeat childish catchphrases (remember that word? before the Internet beat a stake through everyone's dictionaries, we didn't call everything appearing more than once on the Internet a "meme").
As devoid of wit or insight as the underlying idea, the "Candlejack" incantation has pollut
No, we shouldn't. We should improve the BBC.
Buggers Broadcasting Communism was the old Tory cry.
They are unquestionably racist, patronising various minorities via national policy intended to display the range of fashionable backgrounds rather than be nationally and regionally representative. Then you have whole channels dedicated to special needs: BBC 3 caters entirely for the idiot, and BBC 4 to the significant minority suffering from chronic bluffers' syndrome.
Chairmen remain rich white men. The BBC is a sad game to pat people on the head and make them feel more relevant than they really are. Which brings us to H2G2.
The BBC World Service, for example, is funded by separate bureaucracy.
Don't forget to do it without judicial oversight, to infiltrate protest groups and cyber with legitimate members, and to incite violence. It's OK because when you're working for the government you are in the right by definition, right?
Indeed. Google have no right to invade property or privacy, while the police have a right when they have gone through arduous democratically approved processes.
Flying a drone over your house to take photos is no different from using an infrared camera and sensitive microphone from the street... say, to watch your daughter in the shower.
It's time Americans stopped taking it up the ass while they quibble over "rights of corporations" vs "rights of government". Whenever there's a massive power imbalance, the more powerful party needs careful oversight and should not be allowed to take advantage of you, only serve you (government/charity/mutual) or trade for mutual benefit (private party). No exceptions.
What's the name of the fallacy in which secunda requires prima to reveal that prima is Gandhi before prima may criticise Mussolini?
Like Google, unlike Apple.
I don't mind a professional engineer for a boss, but any which displays the traits celebrated by xkcd would be absolutely unbearable.
Great, a series of statements about Facebook by some people not speaking on behalf of Facebook corrected by one person claiming to be from Facebook but not speaking on behalf of Facebook. Who knew Facebook engineers and fanboys were as capricious and unwilling to understand boundaries as the users?
and if you laugh at me for getting that warm feeling in my pants, you're clearly on the wrong website
You are on the wrong web site. The nerd doesn't care about "an enterprise [...] big and powerful".
Careful now. Some of the dot-bomb programmers have managed to hang onto their employment and they regard their wage as proof of competence.
...that they have very poor/disorganised engineering practice, and they're trying to sell a bug in their methodology as a feature. It's like when Google suddenly fluffs something up with your search results momentarily, and you think "huh, that's weird," but actually they're just testing (or think they're testing... in reality, they're just annoying you).
Since there's nothing technically interesting or requiring resilience about anything Facebook has to offer, they can get away with it.
Since I can check my bank balance every day on my phone, I have a much better grasp of my finances.
What are you doing with your finances that means you need to check your bank account to find your balance? Aren't you aware of your incomings and outgoings?
The only argument I can come up with is that you want to check for bank error, which is fair enough, but if you feel the need to do that daily then you probably need another bank.
It's the old "then they came for me" thing. Even if Facebook users are insufferable cunts, they are the cool crowd and any legislation or standard corporate policy (but I repeat myself) concerning privacy will be determined by how they react to what might hitherto have been regarded as an offensive breach of privacy.
IOW, if Facebook is allowed to continue behaving like this, people will just go, "oh you don't have any privacy anyway, get over it!" with your viewpoint being drowned out. In fact, I've heard a lot of younger people say this. (And a small subset of older guys who always end up having been involved in some way in their employment history with processing large amounts of personal data.)
I've got a fair few friends who ONLY have a smart phone, and this smart phone is their entire life line to the world.
At the risk of receiving another angry response from you, would you perhaps consider advising your friends that having a smartphone as your "entire life line to the world" is an unnecessary and fairly dangerous risk? If you're travelling around remote locations, you'd be well advised to carry multiple means of communication - particularly equipment which does not rely on terrestrial infrastructure. A satellite 'phone is an option, as are transceivers for the CB or amateur radio services.
they're continually moving around in rural Australia, that they can't get a good internet connection
Ah, the rare exception to prove the rule gambit. Yes, I'm sure there are at least a couple of dozen Westerners who must travel light for months on end in the middle of nowhere. I'm sorry for making a point which considers almost everyone except these guys, for whom the rule about not using shiny gadgets as a substitute for organisation still applies but for whom the detail of application differs slightly.
Out of interest, what are these friends actually doing? The only people I've known who have genuinely spent weeks trekking across Australia without any sophisticated contact with civilisation have done it for leisure.
often 3G won't cut it. So they use their phones for all net stuff, and it works well.
That's weird. I've used laptops to connect to the Internet via mobile 'phones since about 1998, before 3G was deployed.
By default you have privacy and property ownership: the Wireless Telegraphy Act in the UK, for example, doesn't let you intercept messages without the consent of the sender. Just because it's "on the Internet", laws don't suddenly stop applying. So, unless your contract stipulates otherwise, standard laws apply - and the AUP specifies the limit on what you're allowed to do with someone else's system. Make sense?
What country? GCSE mathematics in the UK is a joke compared to O-level, and A-level has had the syllabus progressively reduced. More importantly, questions have turned from requiring ingenuity to being something the student will have already seen in the textbook (produced by the same publisher which happens to own the exam board).
As for the average level of education, it's true that more people can read, but learning specific technical skills is not the same as the exercise and application of imagination and ingenuity. Like Einstein said, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."
Your drunken post was very difficult to read. Are you countering by pointing out that some tech stock was overvalued? Maybe you're young/selfish enough that it's the sort of thing which you consider the height of importance, but perhaps you ought to concentrate on the freedoms and opportunities people enjoyed.
If you have to drive
Why would I have to drive?
home
Why is the alternative to go home?
to move money,
What about you is so disorganised or overcomplicated that you need to move money around your accounts while you're on the move?
or worse to the bank,
The richest people I know do precisely that. I don't. But there you go.
I have far more fun stuff I could be doing.
I'm not sure what's fun about needing to manage your bank accounts while travelling.
I remember the 90s it was just as bad as now except for air travel, that was better. Our government has not gotten better or worse.
Wow. Assuming you're in the UK, the USA or some Western European country, you really need to pay more attention to your country's legislative progress, even if you've never suffered the consequences of new laws. Government has gotten a lot worse.
It's generally true, but then some revolution or war or other instability comes along and shakes things up a bit. We've experienced too much stability to reinvigorate the new generation.
Also, school is fucking easy now. It's never been easier. The mass Western privatisation/unionisation (delete as inappropriate to your political prejudice) of education is unique to the last couple of decades. Contrast the 400 years of what counted as formal or informal higher education, or skip over the Dark Ages and contrast with Ancient Greek higher education.
The late '90s were a zenith of Western society, a fair balance of regulation and freedom; technology and tradition.
Now the government's breathing down everyone's neck while they're neatly distracted by thinking they're such a big deal that they need to be contacted at every minute of the day or night.
Minimise your shitty gadgets. Do only what needs doing. Relax a little. If you think you need to bank from your 'phone, you're doing life wrong.
You're missing the point entirely. The incentive in Wikipedia isn't to produce an encyclopedic information resource. Just because it's popular and large it doesn't mean it's achieved any of its stated goals.
Imagine me setting up a large room and filling it with cans of beer. I then declare the purpose of the room is for scientists to gather and find a cure for cancer. It's likely that room will be very popular for a while while everyone rushes in to drink beer and have a laugh. But at the end of the day all I'll have is a trashed room full of empty beer cans and piss, and no cure for cancer.
The alternative to Wikipedia is not Knol, it's the web as a whole, administered and edited by autonomous but (in the best cases) well-known individuals and orgsanisations with professional or hobbyist standing and reputations to maintain. And this wider web is still doing better than Wikipedia and would do even better without Wikipedia to distract well-meaning contributors and readers.
Sir,
My name is Jimmy Wales. Ten years ago not a lot of people believed a second-rate day trader turned pornographer would be able to follow the Rand dream by exploiting thousands of people across the Internet into wasting their time writing a successful web site for him, the only purpose of which was to further his fame and bank account.
At that time it would have been silly to suggest that antisocial twenty-somethings would spend months - sometimes years - warring over some irrelevant fact to establish their bias in an atrociously written article covering some topic related to their political belief or esoteric interest. I would have been laughed at if I'd have suggested that people across the world wouldn't consider me bordering on racially exploitative if I suggested that people should donate toward this project to help the "child in Africa".
But it's 2011, guys, and, fuck me! I did it.
So, if you learnt just a little bit about how a lack of scruples and a solid cult of personality can earn a creepy middle aged man world-wide fame while diminishing the usefulness the world's most important information medium, why not donate at least £5/$5/€5? After all, if I can do it, maybe you can. Let me sell you a drop of the most pathological corruption of the capitalist dream. And that's why you're really donating, isn't it?
Sincerely,
Jimmy Wales
Sole Founder
Wikipedia.org
A field of turds neither loses its foul smell nor becomes my fault just because I have neither the time nor the inclination to clean it up.
You'll find a list of resources used to support the article, which is nowhere near the same as finding an unbiased, exhaustive list of resources recommended by known individuals with a reputation to maintain.