it is hard to believe in Google's interest in our privacy
Not if they think there's a buck in it. Just like defense contractors are always saying they're all red, white and blue, Google will be all for the 4th Amendment if they think it'll help them get or keep customers. Various US network based companies have already taken a financial hit from this. Do you think Google wants to be next?
Yeah, security by obscurity has the tendency to bite you in the ass.
It think that's stretching the "security by obscurity is not security" mantra a bit far. How would you run a secret program without having some people aware of its existence?
mainstream media, which fell in love with Twitter a long time ago
Twitter is the ultimate in vapid communication. If there is a difference between a tweet and a brain fart, I don't know what it is. I've never used Twitter, any more than I've ever looked at Facebook.
From a business point of view though, it's clearly a handicap that I can't imagine anybody ever wanting something like this.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
It was an issue for me long before the Internet and smart phones. I'd read a word or name, understand it, remember how to spell it, but have no idea how to pronounce it. The other day my wife corrected my pronunciation of "truculent". Since writing has been invented, I think we should abandon verbal communication.
Acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations have long been widely used and accepted in English. However, bad spelling, punctuation and capitalization do not a dialect make.
Same experience here. The thing I missed most was electric lights (hard to read by candlelight) and a way to keep my food from spoiling. Everything else? Not so much.
Sure it does. See TheVelvetFlamebait's explanation of the evolution of the English language (above). I say we techies should embrace our inner Luddites!
Well, we now use "Luddite" more generally to refer to a person who opposes various, to use a politically neutral term, [technology related] "updates" to our lifestyle.
That's me. I love the irony of being a Luddite engineer.
Getting USB certification is like getting a pharmacist's license from a drug dealer. Perhaps it's improved somewhat (been a few years since I worked w/ it), but lots of stuff out there is/was certified but horribly non-compliant. Depending on what you were using it for, the biggest problem by far was getting your stuff to play nice w/ other stuff, even though your stuff is compliant, and the other "certified" stuff isn't. We used to have an entire lab setup just for testing that.
No, Luddites were complaining about their livelihoods being taken away by industrial machinery. The supposed trend of pushback isn't about being anti-technology, just not being plugged into it every waking moment. You may miss some vapid messages. Is that a bad thing?
Ah, because they fought each other it was therefore moral and legal to take their land, go to war against them
Nowhere did I say, or imply, that it was moral or legal. I'll state unequivocally that it wasn't. Neither were any of the historical events I mentioned. The GGP seems to want to rectify the situation though, and I was wondering how far back he wanted to take it. If you want to right the historical injustices of conquest, why limit it to European conquests?
Even our sloppy news media usually tries to maintain a spirit of "Presumed innocence" for thieves, murderers, pedophile rapists, fraudsters and other criminals/felons. And so, they typically have the word "alleged" associated with their crime until a trial by jury.
That's only relevant if you're referring to a specific person. Has anyone here done that? "Illegal aliens" refers to a group of people which exist, unless you believe that no one in this country is in violation of US visa and immigration laws.
It simplifies the hundreds of different problems and circumstances applying to millions of people who may have violated one or more elements of US immigration law and lumps them into a single category of criminal
You should brush up on your immigration law - being in the country illegally is in and of itself a civil violation. It's muddled thinking for you to call them criminals - a class of people who (surprise, surprise) have violated criminal law.
everyone who has been tagged as Illegal by the tea party, neo-facists
I'm no fan of the Tea Party myself, but I wouldn't group them in with neo-fascists the way you have. That's a serious prejudice you have there.
racist union thugs
Racist union thugs are now in favor of "reform". They're now in your camp, so maybe you should tone down the name calling.
It provides a focus for the xenophobia which is at the core of nearly every successful election campaign.
Including the campaigns where the candidate advocates "reform"? You should really be careful with those generalizations, as generalizing about groups is at the heart of prejudice.
Not quite. That's an extension of my option that "everyone just be stateless until such time as some country decides to grant them citizenship". The difference is that people would be permanently stateless, because granting them birthright citizenship would violate the principle that "accidentally been born somewhere shouldn't give you special privileges".
Yes, Snowden and Greenwald have a clear agenda. And it is the libertarian view that government is bad and should be defunded.
Please cite where either of them has said that, as opposed to abiding by the Constitution. If you think that libertarians are the only ones who respect that document, you couldn't be more wrong. If you think that defunding the government would help, I'll remind you that the NSA is but a tiny part of the federal budget. Eliminate the federal income tax and they'd still have plenty of money for it.
Yet another revelation from Snowden that reveals Top Secret American foreign intelligence activities that have no relation to the rights of Americans.
Given the underwhelming response by those who think the Constitution is just a piece of paper, a little foreign heat could only help.
When will people come to understand that his goal was not simply protecting the rights of Americans? Isn't it clear from who his Russian spokesman was?
Given the vicious response of his native country's government to his whistle blowing on 4th Amendment violations, he'd be a fool not to make allies of convenience. Worked for us in WWII.
Maybe they just wanted to know how many French cars would burn this year [nytimes.com], set ablaze by.....guess who?
According to the article you linked to, the "guess who" is the French.
I'm also an East Coast embedded developer. I've worked with some excellent people in SV, but agree that the average caliber is nothing to write home about. There are still some serious tech startups, but they seem to be overshadowed by all the over-hyped garbage. Is there money in social media? Sure, but there's probably more in parking garages (you have to have seen the Curious George movie to fully appreciate that reference).
SV's biggest export these days seems to be hype, and too many people, both there and elsewhere, actually believe it. This leads to SV provincialism, where SV denizens are unaware of anything outside of the Bay Area (except for India of course). They scream for more H-1B's, and in a new twist apparently, illegal aliens (I remember when they just did farm work). Bay Area zillionaires and their lackeys complain that they can't hire enough people there, and for all I know they're right. Try Pittsburgh, and any of at least a dozen other places in the country (I'm not in Pittsburgh, but thanks to CMU, it's an excellent place to find software talent). It's astounding how people who crow about how they've shrunk the world, can't seem to locate anything outside of a small radius. I admit the vineyards in Pittsburgh suck, and occasionally they have something called "snow", but if the locals can live with it, SV genyuses ought to be able to withstand a visit or two.
What I love is the compliant media. Zuck gets free op-ed space in WaPo, but as far as I know of, no serious criticism in the media. Any half-baked columnist could rip this guy a new one. Nice lapdog - nice, nice little doggy.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot to mention that you're a Wikipedia editor.
It was more about how, for a specific person, you can circumvent the "living person" policy.
The free market has determined that your organs are worth more than you as a whole.
Wikipedia has a "biography of living persons" policy
Sometimes the solution is right in front of you.
Switzerland is a more realistic choice. They have very strong data protection laws and don't have the shenanigans you see happening in the EU.
And would never get involved in money laundering either.
it is hard to believe in Google's interest in our privacy
Not if they think there's a buck in it. Just like defense contractors are always saying they're all red, white and blue, Google will be all for the 4th Amendment if they think it'll help them get or keep customers. Various US network based companies have already taken a financial hit from this. Do you think Google wants to be next?
Yeah, security by obscurity has the tendency to bite you in the ass.
It think that's stretching the "security by obscurity is not security" mantra a bit far. How would you run a secret program without having some people aware of its existence?
mainstream media, which fell in love with Twitter a long time ago
Twitter is the ultimate in vapid communication. If there is a difference between a tweet and a brain fart, I don't know what it is. I've never used Twitter, any more than I've ever looked at Facebook.
From a business point of view though, it's clearly a handicap that I can't imagine anybody ever wanting something like this.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
-- H. L. Mencken
It was an issue for me long before the Internet and smart phones. I'd read a word or name, understand it, remember how to spell it, but have no idea how to pronounce it. The other day my wife corrected my pronunciation of "truculent". Since writing has been invented, I think we should abandon verbal communication.
Acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations have long been widely used and accepted in English. However, bad spelling, punctuation and capitalization do not a dialect make.
Same experience here. The thing I missed most was electric lights (hard to read by candlelight) and a way to keep my food from spoiling. Everything else? Not so much.
Sure it does. See TheVelvetFlamebait's explanation of the evolution of the English language (above). I say we techies should embrace our inner Luddites!
Well, we now use "Luddite" more generally to refer to a person who opposes various, to use a politically neutral term, [technology related] "updates" to our lifestyle.
That's me. I love the irony of being a Luddite engineer.
Getting USB certification is like getting a pharmacist's license from a drug dealer. Perhaps it's improved somewhat (been a few years since I worked w/ it), but lots of stuff out there is/was certified but horribly non-compliant. Depending on what you were using it for, the biggest problem by far was getting your stuff to play nice w/ other stuff, even though your stuff is compliant, and the other "certified" stuff isn't. We used to have an entire lab setup just for testing that.
No, Luddites were complaining about their livelihoods being taken away by industrial machinery. The supposed trend of pushback isn't about being anti-technology, just not being plugged into it every waking moment. You may miss some vapid messages. Is that a bad thing?
Pushback starts by not reading Slashdot.
Ah, because they fought each other it was therefore moral and legal to take their land, go to war against them
Nowhere did I say, or imply, that it was moral or legal. I'll state unequivocally that it wasn't. Neither were any of the historical events I mentioned. The GGP seems to want to rectify the situation though, and I was wondering how far back he wanted to take it. If you want to right the historical injustices of conquest, why limit it to European conquests?
Even our sloppy news media usually tries to maintain a spirit of "Presumed innocence" for thieves, murderers, pedophile rapists, fraudsters and other criminals/felons. And so, they typically have the word "alleged" associated with their crime until a trial by jury.
That's only relevant if you're referring to a specific person. Has anyone here done that? "Illegal aliens" refers to a group of people which exist, unless you believe that no one in this country is in violation of US visa and immigration laws.
It simplifies the hundreds of different problems and circumstances applying to millions of people who may have violated one or more elements of US immigration law and lumps them into a single category of criminal
You should brush up on your immigration law - being in the country illegally is in and of itself a civil violation. It's muddled thinking for you to call them criminals - a class of people who (surprise, surprise) have violated criminal law.
everyone who has been tagged as Illegal by the tea party, neo-facists
I'm no fan of the Tea Party myself, but I wouldn't group them in with neo-fascists the way you have. That's a serious prejudice you have there.
racist union thugs
Racist union thugs are now in favor of "reform". They're now in your camp, so maybe you should tone down the name calling.
It provides a focus for the xenophobia which is at the core of nearly every successful election campaign.
Including the campaigns where the candidate advocates "reform"? You should really be careful with those generalizations, as generalizing about groups is at the heart of prejudice.
You've missed an option
Not quite. That's an extension of my option that "everyone just be stateless until such time as some country decides to grant them citizenship". The difference is that people would be permanently stateless, because granting them birthright citizenship would violate the principle that "accidentally been born somewhere shouldn't give you special privileges".
Yes, Snowden and Greenwald have a clear agenda. And it is the libertarian view that government is bad and should be defunded.
Please cite where either of them has said that, as opposed to abiding by the Constitution. If you think that libertarians are the only ones who respect that document, you couldn't be more wrong. If you think that defunding the government would help, I'll remind you that the NSA is but a tiny part of the federal budget. Eliminate the federal income tax and they'd still have plenty of money for it.
Yet another revelation from Snowden that reveals Top Secret American foreign intelligence activities that have no relation to the rights of Americans.
Given the underwhelming response by those who think the Constitution is just a piece of paper, a little foreign heat could only help.
When will people come to understand that his goal was not simply protecting the rights of Americans? Isn't it clear from who his Russian spokesman was?
Given the vicious response of his native country's government to his whistle blowing on 4th Amendment violations, he'd be a fool not to make allies of convenience. Worked for us in WWII.
Maybe they just wanted to know how many French cars would burn this year [nytimes.com], set ablaze by.....guess who?
According to the article you linked to, the "guess who" is the French.
Given how patriotic one of them has been, I'll give three cheers for 20ish high school dropouts.
NSA tapped the whole frigging country including underwater sea cables.
As much as I don't like what the NSA has been doing, it's nice to know that that Yankee "can do" spirit isn't dead.
I'm also an East Coast embedded developer. I've worked with some excellent people in SV, but agree that the average caliber is nothing to write home about. There are still some serious tech startups, but they seem to be overshadowed by all the over-hyped garbage. Is there money in social media? Sure, but there's probably more in parking garages (you have to have seen the Curious George movie to fully appreciate that reference).
SV's biggest export these days seems to be hype, and too many people, both there and elsewhere, actually believe it. This leads to SV provincialism, where SV denizens are unaware of anything outside of the Bay Area (except for India of course). They scream for more H-1B's, and in a new twist apparently, illegal aliens (I remember when they just did farm work). Bay Area zillionaires and their lackeys complain that they can't hire enough people there, and for all I know they're right. Try Pittsburgh, and any of at least a dozen other places in the country (I'm not in Pittsburgh, but thanks to CMU, it's an excellent place to find software talent). It's astounding how people who crow about how they've shrunk the world, can't seem to locate anything outside of a small radius. I admit the vineyards in Pittsburgh suck, and occasionally they have something called "snow", but if the locals can live with it, SV genyuses ought to be able to withstand a visit or two.
What I love is the compliant media. Zuck gets free op-ed space in WaPo, but as far as I know of, no serious criticism in the media. Any half-baked columnist could rip this guy a new one. Nice lapdog - nice, nice little doggy.