That seemed to be the underlying purpose of the user who suggested it. Props to him, if that's the case. "He said his motive was to test the system and show that web pages not showing material connected with sexual abuse of children could end up on the blacklist." What gets me is that they'll tag an anti-abortion website as "abusive to children." Hatespeech, disturbing images, or the like maybe, but sexual abuse? Meh, this reminds me of my college's wonderful censorship program Websense, which at one point had the Google homepage tagged for "gambling."
Except something like a benchmark actually interacts with that which it is attempting to measure. In theory, we are merely measuring a quantity, so making the data gathering better should just make the data sets less noisy. Any trend should still be there.
I'm not saying that they are wrong, necessarily; it sounds to me like they are just lazy/cheap and don't want to upgrade.
True, the companies have rights, too; and we can't get caught up in unthinking corporate bashing, or we shoot ourselves in the foot. But I think most of us agree that the RIAA in this case is the "bad guy," if I may so simplify matters.
If the RIAA were merely prosecuting individual thefts of merchandise, I would not object. I'd think they were petty and stupid, but at least they would be operating within the letter of the law.
But the fact is they don't do that; they trump up charges to the point where every person who pirates is treated like a corporation that steals technology or products for their own profit. That is unfair, most people cannot defend themselves with high-priced lawyers and massive amounts of capital the way corporations can, nor were they out for major gains in the first place. So I think the terms "ordinary citizen" and "big corporation" here do apply, but it's nice to avoid buzz words, too.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess you're right about that. I don't really have the time or the resources to go ask a statistically significant portion of the population myself.
That seemed to be the underlying purpose of the user who suggested it. Props to him, if that's the case. "He said his motive was to test the system and show that web pages not showing material connected with sexual abuse of children could end up on the blacklist." What gets me is that they'll tag an anti-abortion website as "abusive to children." Hatespeech, disturbing images, or the like maybe, but sexual abuse? Meh, this reminds me of my college's wonderful censorship program Websense, which at one point had the Google homepage tagged for "gambling."
Nonsense! I find the concept of "white noise" to be inherently racist, and would demand that they block such it.
Except something like a benchmark actually interacts with that which it is attempting to measure. In theory, we are merely measuring a quantity, so making the data gathering better should just make the data sets less noisy. Any trend should still be there. I'm not saying that they are wrong, necessarily; it sounds to me like they are just lazy/cheap and don't want to upgrade.
Interesting, comparing that link with this one: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00006424 Apparently McCain's TOP contributor gave less than Obama's 20th top contributor. Not sure what that implies, if anything, I just think it is strange.
True, the companies have rights, too; and we can't get caught up in unthinking corporate bashing, or we shoot ourselves in the foot. But I think most of us agree that the RIAA in this case is the "bad guy," if I may so simplify matters. If the RIAA were merely prosecuting individual thefts of merchandise, I would not object. I'd think they were petty and stupid, but at least they would be operating within the letter of the law. But the fact is they don't do that; they trump up charges to the point where every person who pirates is treated like a corporation that steals technology or products for their own profit. That is unfair, most people cannot defend themselves with high-priced lawyers and massive amounts of capital the way corporations can, nor were they out for major gains in the first place. So I think the terms "ordinary citizen" and "big corporation" here do apply, but it's nice to avoid buzz words, too.