after having tracking explained to them, users generally are against it.
I agree.
So it could be argued that having 'do not track' as a default setting is more representative then having 'tracking is fine with me' be the default.
It could be argued that having "I haven't had it explained to me yet, which would inevitably end up with me being against it" be the default setting, would be even more representative.
As it happens, for every browser except MSIE10, that is the default setting.
Everyone out there that objects to 'not being tracked' for advertisement purposes please raise their hands....
DNT is not a technical measure intended to deny adversaries the capability to track you. If you think of it in those terms, then you will come away from it with all kinds of weird ideas about how it fails. MSIE10's default setting of DNT:1 will seem harmless at word (or even heroic), and you'll also have a feeling that regardless of Microsoft or anyone else, DNT is useless anyway. (Does that happen to be your opinion?)
If you think about what DNT really is, though, then you'll get that it's not completely useless (it just has perhaps very low, yet nonzero, value) and a default DNT:1 undermines DNT, further reducing its meager value.
DNT is an expression of a user's preference. It's a way for a user, not the user's agent's author, to communicate something. It is intended, not for you to deal with your worst nightmares of advertising and Big Brother, but with those few (many? unknown number of?) good actors who are willing to respect your preference. That you would even use "Everyone who wants x raise your hands" suggests that even you think that someone out there just might give a damn what other people think. Maybe it's because we all know that while there are lots of things worth fighting about and sometimes differences really can't be resolved, there are also many situations where everyone gets ahead by cooperating.
(For dealing with not-so-good actors, you're not going to count on some advisory header to persuade them to be nice. Instead, you're going to do smarter things, such as alter the browser's behavior to not load foreign resources (shit, that's 90% of the battle right there), and make use of a wide variety of different ways to inject noise into adversaries' intell, etc. But let's get back to the DNT approach...)
When a tool, acting without direction of the user, defaults DNT to 1 or 0 rather than leaving it unset, that tool injects noise into a friendly party's intell. That is, if I run a site which tracks people for my selfish gain, but also abstains from doing that to people who request to be not tracked, MSIE's behavior will create a problem.
And no, my problem isn't that Microsoft fucked me by reducing the number of people I can track. (Remember: DNT has no bearing on who I can track. It's intended to influence who I choose to track.) My problem is that Microsoft denied me and the user the ability to communicate that preference. I don't give a fuck what Microsoft thinks about whether or not people should be tracked, because Microsoft isn't who I am trying to cooperate with; the user is. I want to know what the user is saying about tracking, not what Microsoft is saying. But if the user is using MSIE, then when I see "DNT:1" that means the same thing as having no DNT header at all. A person with no preference, and a person who prefers to not be tracked, say the same thing if they're both unfortunate enough to be using MSIE 10. Microsoft has taken the don't-track-me guy's voice away from him!
Exactly how would this be a detriment to the users?
A MSIE10 user will have no way of expressing that they prefer to not be tracked. And expression of users' preference is what this is all about.
If you actually want people, yo must make the initial signup dead easy.
This is a recurring problem with freedom. The whole reason Facebook "needs" replacing is that it's centralized and under exclusive control of one party. (And such a party is always going to have a "fuck the users" attitude. Their money comes from elsewhere.) That is why signup is easy. If you fix the problem of centralization, then you simultaneously fix all the things people don't like about Facebook, because now there's decentralization, competition, etc. But as a side-effect, it creates the problem of users having to choose where to host. (Half the people here, are probably outraged that I just said "having to choose" instead of "getting to choose.")
How "dead easy" is it to sign up for email? (Or OpenID? Or Jabber/XMPP?) It's both utterly trivial beyond even thinking about, but also impossibly difficult. It all depends on your point of view, whether selecting (or installing) an email host is more than you want to think about, or exactly the answer to all your problems. Same goes for any other protocol, as opposed to proprietary service.
If you look at it "the right way" Facebook is just as hard to sign up for as Diaspora pods, because the first step of signing up for Facebook, is to figure out whether or not Facebook is a good service to use. But is that really the "right" way to look at it, or the "stupid" way? Everyone knows that Facebook is perfectly reliable and dependable and trustworthy, so it's an obvious Yes. Except for all of us who know that's not true, and that it's an obvious No.
See how much freedom sucks? Er, I mean, rules? Oh, whatever!
So you can distinguish between two supposedly-identical graphics cards. Ok, yeah, I guess that's neat. One hacker test point for you. But you're really reaching for applications of this knowledge, aren't you? Dude, give in: it has no useful applications. That's ok. Be happy about what you did anyway, use it to impress some chick in a bar ("hey baby, did you know I can tell your Radeon from another Radeon?"), and go on to the next project.
The thing about fluoridation is that people used to really say that. So it made it into a certain famous movie, and now everyone knows it's a joke, so it's a special red flag for satire. But it's only a satire signal because it used to not be one.
We have way more media today, than in 1963. Everything is faster. Why cannot everything become a satire signal, and therefore though dilution, nothing be a reliable satire signal? The time will come, that crackpots will not be creative enough to say something which hasn't already been mocked. (This is uniquely true for conservative crackpots, because by definition, they have to say old things or else they'll be labeled liberal crackpots instead.)
I wonder if it's even possible to resist Poe's Law. Did you see this week's episode of South Park? There might come a day, when no one ever knows if someone else is joking or not.
Is there something in particular about Google's API that makes this more likely, or might your cynicism apply to any sort of voter precinct information source, interface, or service?
I'd be a lot more concerned about the "disappearing API" concerns voiced by others. I love the basic idea here, but it'd be insane for any pro to invest effort in a client application which relies on this API. You're going to have to have a more reliable backup plan anyway, so why not just use that, and forget Google?
Agreed. I remember when all this stuff was just "paranoid" ravings, theoretical risk, etc. You had to be some kind of weird cypherpunk nerd to want to have a PGP keysigning meeting.
But now it definitely happens for sure, it's mainstream knowledge, and.. you have to be some kind of weird cypherpunk nerd to want to have a PGP keysigning meeting.
WTF? Situation changed, our perception and knowledge of it changed, but our attitude and behavior didn't.
Anyone else feel we are getting to the point where that needs to happen?
It looks like the answer to your question is no. I just went to four parties' websites, and none of them had any sort of inline gpg signature on the page. That kind of tech is unusual on the web, though, so let's look at one highly-broken but widely ubiquitous way for websites to have at least some attestation of who they are: https.
For some amazing adventures in mismatched certs, 404s(!), other brokenness, and even the CA "Comodo" raising its ugly head (did you think they had gone out of business?), try loading (shown in sorted order): https://www.democrats.org/ https://www.gop.com/ https://www.gp.org/ https://www.lp.org/ You have to see it all to believe it. The one which "works" (no spoilers) still manages to be self-defeating and useless for identity-checking.
More than (I even included the biggest two third parties!) 99 of voters spoke: No, we're not at the point where any voter gives a damn if a party's site says who it is.
As soon as I saw that the guy wrote "UX" I knew I was probably dealing with an exceptional moron (how that one acronym has turned into such a reliable red flag, I don't know, but look around and try to tell me it isn't true), but I still had no idea just how badly the article would go. It's not even stupid. It's just.. nothing.
The guy's argument is really that his text editor's preferences are/were set to something he doesn't like.
I shit you not. His editor's preferences were something he considers to be not-quite-right, and he noticed that it wasn't working well for him, and then somehow that turned into a programming article.
I can't even follow through on my "UX" prejudice and say "Aha! See? The guy knows nothing!" because he's taking it to the next level, so that from now on when I see "UX" it'll be "Aha, See? The guy says nothing." Although now that I think of it, maybe that's what the "UX" red flag has really always meant, all along. Hmm. Ok, you did give me something to think about.
Why not use the extra money to fund some actual research in electrical engineering?
Please continue your thought; don't leave us hanging.
Who is this researcher? What is their project? Tell us about it.
You might have noticed the Oatmeal guy didn't persuade people "Hey, let's spend a lot of money to buy any old lab and make some kind of museum." He was much more specific. That is why the money is flowing.
The biggest incentive we have for a non-neutral net is that the biggest ISPs are also content providers.
I agree. I'm saying that the flamee's suggestion ("What is wrong with the idea of getting billed based on the amount of data you consume?") would go a long way toward neutralizing that incentive.
I have to admit, I'm not saying it's practical to rely on it, as the idea that Comcast would ever decide to start charging by the gigabyte (and of course applying that charge to their own video) is absurd. Not doing that, is how their video remains "competitive."
But once we give up, throw up our arms and decide to use government force to deal with the situation (which is what enforced network neutrality is all about), or at least decide to use force against parties who rely on existing policies of government force being used against others (e.g. Comcast's franchises and easements, Verizon's spectrum license, etc) (I'm all about tit-for-tat, and only applying NN legislation to those who exist as a function of legislation) then I think "billed based on the amount of data you consume" suddenly becomes one of the very best things to force upon those parties. Being an ISP+content provider is no longer a magic combination.
My government-sanction electricity and natural gas and water providers already work that way. Maybe that's why those companies aren't offering bundles that run on top of those services. My electric company hasn't tried to sell me an unmetered electric car. Usage-based billing works.
I would love that debate (yes, even more than the science one) but just like answering science policy questions, it raises the same issue: what's in it for them? Why would a candidate share their opinions on these matters?
We only punish them for speaking their minds. And we never EVER punish them for being silent. Even Romney is likely to get somewhere around 50% of the vote, give or take 5%.
Our candidates aren't the problem; we are. Because 99% of us vote for whatever they (the two biggest parties) put forth. That won't change until we change.
So instead of asking candidates their opinions about what policies should be, I'd like to ask voters: what would it take, to make you give a fuck? Under what conditions might you be willing to vote your heart, for the candidate you'd most like to win, even if you were pretty sure you would lose (i.e. your vote would be "wasted")?
Are there really no conditions under which that might happen, or is there some hope that some day America might start voting for things it wants, so that policy debates start to matter, and candidates have incentive to share their opinions?
What is wrong with the idea of getting billed based on the amount of data you consume?
You mean, other than having absolutely fuckall to do with Network Neutrality, and being completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand?
I'm not so sure it's irrelevant. Usage-based billing removes a lot of the incentive to have a non-neutral net. (Of course, that is why the very parties we need to adopt it, won't adopt it.)
Say you watch a gigabyte of video from Netflex. You pay for a gigabyte. Or you watch a gigabyte of video from Comcast, who also happens to be your ISP. You pay for a gigabyte, i.e. it's no longer "free" or included in your fixed monthly payment. And if Comcast decides to charge you more per gigabyte for Netflix, they're charging more for Comcast TV too, so the playing field stays leveller.
That doesn't address all NN concerns but it addresses one of the big ones, the conflict of interest that makes ISPs want you to pay "extra" when you use services that compete with their own bundled services.
Usage based billing would kick ass, pretty much for everyone, except those who profit by abusing the way fixed-rate billing "clips" out certain aspects of reality.
Spam is like burglary. Why bother breaking through the burglar bars (or writing a specialized bot for one site), when you can just go to the next house?
What's really amazing and [un]special about you, is that you are The One case! You are the same as everyone, so no one needs things that you don't need, everyone has the same constraints (and lack of constraints) that you do, and your desires represent the desires of humanity.
Congratulations on being 100% of the market.
I have been looking for you, though previously dismissed you as mythical. So tell me: what is the next great product that everyone wants? You, of all people, know the answer to this.
The laws of physics say that using a nondirectional antenna on a transmitter means that the signal goes EVERY direction,
The laws of mathematics say what pi is, but that doesn't mean you math/science guys will always get the last word. The people have spoken, so keep your precious reality to yourself. You're lucky Slashdot isn't paid for through the government, or else I'd say your instruction in Common Sense 102 was an infringement of my First Amendment rights!
Second, because you're putting the cart before the horse, trying to have a "bill of rights" to dogmatically persuade people to support freedom, instead of first persuading people to support freedom and then passing this "bill of rights" as a manifesto explaining the tolerable limits of policies.
Current popular opinion (and it's nearly unanimous; I'm not talking about some kind of 60% vs 40% thing) is that freedom is a bad idea, and that our elected rulers should consist of those who will fight against freedom. Even if you create stone tablets enumerating our rights, the tablets will not have the support of the people or the policy-makers they elect, so they will be ignored. Your "bill of rights" represents no power. And if you look at what America has done with its earlier constitutional Bill of Rights, you should have seen by now how pathetic it is when parts of the bill fall out of favor. Seriously, we'd be better off if unsupported rights not not been ratified at all, or at least that they be formally repealed. (Remember the 9th and 10th? And have you noticed the amount of respect lately given to the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th?)
It is better to persuade the people that freedom is good, and that those who fight against freedom are the enemy. If you can achieve that, then eventually there will be elections resulting in policy-makers who do things that are compatible with, rather than incompatible with, your "bill of rights." Then ratify a Bill of Rights that the people have already spoken in support of -- one that is actually a testament of the people's passionately-held agenda. That will be a dogma with some real authority behind it, and woe to those who run on a platform of opposing it.
Right now, any bill of rights would be a totally empty threat. It is not yet time. We have a war for hearts and minds to win, first.
The next question is how did the author know *exactly* what the PATH and program files folders are configured on the target machine.
It's a follow-up attack. The target has already been seen (though perhaps indirectly) in the past by the attacker. Perhaps the target was already running some malware which has been (inadvertently?) disabled, and the attacker is trying to update it, or fetch some data that it collected.
I've already significantly narrowed down who the target is, from RTFAing. It looks like the target is someone who runs Windows. Hope my analysis helps.;-)
I was semi-excited when cheap 7" tablets came out. I didn't ever understand the appeal of tablets, but when they dipped under $100 I decided I might as well get one and see what the fuss is about, and 7" is the right size -- it fits in my pocket so that I will actually have one on me.
Bullshit. It fits in my pocket? No, it breaks in my pocket (cracked screen; still works but it's just a matter of time, now). Whether that's because I bought cheap crap (I did, so it's somewhat possible that's why it cracked, I'll admit) or because of the stresses (particularly when sitting in car, with chorkie on my lap), I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure it wouldn't have happened, if I had used the cheapo case that I bought but never use. The problem is that with the case, it doesn't fit in my pocket anymore, thereby undermining the entire "tablet experiment." (If the best computer is the one you have, then the most useless computer is one you don't have.)
And that's why I've reversed my opinion on 7" tablets -- they're losers too, just as bad as 10" ones. And if you have to use a case and therefore can't pocket it anyway, then 10" isn't really any worse than 7". My next gizmo will be 5" maximum, plus case. And that's for ruggedness reasons, which is why I mention it here.
Use case. Make that part of your spec. Then shop around, within that size-increasing constraint.
The system is rigged in such a way that there is no effective third party
And do you know who "rigs" it? The voters. When you vote against all the other candidates this November, that'll be your way of saying that you don't want people to run who don't have a "R" or "D" next to their names. Persuade 200 million other Americas to do what you do, and we'll have collectively rigged the system against third parties. (Although it sounds to me like 200 million other Americans may have already persuaded you. Perhaps I'm mistaken?)
That -- people voting that they'd prefer there be only two parties -- is the main barrier. It dwarfs all other barriers combined: the rules for getting onto ballots, the media's decision for who to invite to debates, the megacorps funding the campaigns of only Republicans and Democrats, who said something dumb enough to get quoted on The Daily Show, etc. All of that relatively impotent stuff is secondary to the decisions that we make when we cast our votes.
Cynics say that if the people ever did vote for someone else, the powers that be would prevent our choice from taking office. Isn't it interesting, though, that we never test their resolve and make them perform that assassination, or whatever it is they're going to do? And isn't it interesting, that since we apparently have nothing to lose anyway (i.e. there supposedly isn't any democracy) we don't bother to act like people who have nothing to lose, by voting for who we want? Those cynics are full of shit: The Man isn't keeping us down; we choose to be down.
Even the little guy doesn't care for the little guy. I bet you Obama and Romney get at least 98% of the presidential vote. People like to bitch about those assholes but when it comes to pressing buttons in a booth, there actually aren't any really strong feelings against them.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree.
It could be argued that having "I haven't had it explained to me yet, which would inevitably end up with me being against it" be the default setting, would be even more representative.
As it happens, for every browser except MSIE10, that is the default setting.
DNT is not a technical measure intended to deny adversaries the capability to track you. If you think of it in those terms, then you will come away from it with all kinds of weird ideas about how it fails. MSIE10's default setting of DNT:1 will seem harmless at word (or even heroic), and you'll also have a feeling that regardless of Microsoft or anyone else, DNT is useless anyway. (Does that happen to be your opinion?)
If you think about what DNT really is, though, then you'll get that it's not completely useless (it just has perhaps very low, yet nonzero, value) and a default DNT:1 undermines DNT, further reducing its meager value.
DNT is an expression of a user's preference. It's a way for a user, not the user's agent's author, to communicate something. It is intended, not for you to deal with your worst nightmares of advertising and Big Brother, but with those few (many? unknown number of?) good actors who are willing to respect your preference. That you would even use "Everyone who wants x raise your hands" suggests that even you think that someone out there just might give a damn what other people think. Maybe it's because we all know that while there are lots of things worth fighting about and sometimes differences really can't be resolved, there are also many situations where everyone gets ahead by cooperating.
(For dealing with not-so-good actors, you're not going to count on some advisory header to persuade them to be nice. Instead, you're going to do smarter things, such as alter the browser's behavior to not load foreign resources (shit, that's 90% of the battle right there), and make use of a wide variety of different ways to inject noise into adversaries' intell, etc. But let's get back to the DNT approach...)
When a tool, acting without direction of the user, defaults DNT to 1 or 0 rather than leaving it unset, that tool injects noise into a friendly party's intell. That is, if I run a site which tracks people for my selfish gain, but also abstains from doing that to people who request to be not tracked, MSIE's behavior will create a problem.
And no, my problem isn't that Microsoft fucked me by reducing the number of people I can track. (Remember: DNT has no bearing on who I can track. It's intended to influence who I choose to track.) My problem is that Microsoft denied me and the user the ability to communicate that preference. I don't give a fuck what Microsoft thinks about whether or not people should be tracked, because Microsoft isn't who I am trying to cooperate with; the user is . I want to know what the user is saying about tracking, not what Microsoft is saying. But if the user is using MSIE, then when I see "DNT:1" that means the same thing as having no DNT header at all. A person with no preference, and a person who prefers to not be tracked, say the same thing if they're both unfortunate enough to be using MSIE 10. Microsoft has taken the don't-track-me guy's voice away from him!
A MSIE10 user will have no way of expressing that they prefer to not be tracked. And expression of users' preference is what this is all about.
This is a recurring problem with freedom. The whole reason Facebook "needs" replacing is that it's centralized and under exclusive control of one party. (And such a party is always going to have a "fuck the users" attitude. Their money comes from elsewhere.) That is why signup is easy. If you fix the problem of centralization, then you simultaneously fix all the things people don't like about Facebook, because now there's decentralization, competition, etc. But as a side-effect, it creates the problem of users having to choose where to host. (Half the people here, are probably outraged that I just said "having to choose" instead of "getting to choose.")
How "dead easy" is it to sign up for email? (Or OpenID? Or Jabber/XMPP?) It's both utterly trivial beyond even thinking about, but also impossibly difficult. It all depends on your point of view, whether selecting (or installing) an email host is more than you want to think about, or exactly the answer to all your problems. Same goes for any other protocol, as opposed to proprietary service.
If you look at it "the right way" Facebook is just as hard to sign up for as Diaspora pods, because the first step of signing up for Facebook, is to figure out whether or not Facebook is a good service to use. But is that really the "right" way to look at it, or the "stupid" way? Everyone knows that Facebook is perfectly reliable and dependable and trustworthy, so it's an obvious Yes. Except for all of us who know that's not true, and that it's an obvious No.
See how much freedom sucks? Er, I mean, rules? Oh, whatever!
So you can distinguish between two supposedly-identical graphics cards. Ok, yeah, I guess that's neat. One hacker test point for you. But you're really reaching for applications of this knowledge, aren't you? Dude, give in: it has no useful applications. That's ok. Be happy about what you did anyway, use it to impress some chick in a bar ("hey baby, did you know I can tell your Radeon from another Radeon?"), and go on to the next project.
The thing about fluoridation is that people used to really say that. So it made it into a certain famous movie, and now everyone knows it's a joke, so it's a special red flag for satire. But it's only a satire signal because it used to not be one.
We have way more media today, than in 1963. Everything is faster. Why cannot everything become a satire signal, and therefore though dilution, nothing be a reliable satire signal? The time will come, that crackpots will not be creative enough to say something which hasn't already been mocked. (This is uniquely true for conservative crackpots, because by definition, they have to say old things or else they'll be labeled liberal crackpots instead.)
I wonder if it's even possible to resist Poe's Law. Did you see this week's episode of South Park? There might come a day, when no one ever knows if someone else is joking or not.
Is there something in particular about Google's API that makes this more likely, or might your cynicism apply to any sort of voter precinct information source, interface, or service?
I'd be a lot more concerned about the "disappearing API" concerns voiced by others. I love the basic idea here, but it'd be insane for any pro to invest effort in a client application which relies on this API. You're going to have to have a more reliable backup plan anyway, so why not just use that, and forget Google?
Agreed. I remember when all this stuff was just "paranoid" ravings, theoretical risk, etc. You had to be some kind of weird cypherpunk nerd to want to have a PGP keysigning meeting.
But now it definitely happens for sure, it's mainstream knowledge, and .. you have to be some kind of weird cypherpunk nerd to want to have a PGP keysigning meeting.
WTF? Situation changed, our perception and knowledge of it changed, but our attitude and behavior didn't.
We're stupid.
Actually, that article says you have to focus on gaming performance, not graphics. So: bring on the Dwarf Fortress benchmarks!
I think it's amazing that you found a Mac where the user hasn't replaced the defective mouse that it came with.
Wait ... I thought Dice was a C compiler for DragonFly BSD. No?
It looks like the answer to your question is no. I just went to four parties' websites, and none of them had any sort of inline gpg signature on the page. That kind of tech is unusual on the web, though, so let's look at one highly-broken but widely ubiquitous way for websites to have at least some attestation of who they are: https.
For some amazing adventures in mismatched certs, 404s(!), other brokenness, and even the CA "Comodo" raising its ugly head (did you think they had gone out of business?), try loading (shown in sorted order):
https://www.democrats.org/
https://www.gop.com/
https://www.gp.org/
https://www.lp.org/
You have to see it all to believe it. The one which "works" (no spoilers) still manages to be self-defeating and useless for identity-checking.
More than (I even included the biggest two third parties!) 99 of voters spoke: No, we're not at the point where any voter gives a damn if a party's site says who it is.
As soon as I saw that the guy wrote "UX" I knew I was probably dealing with an exceptional moron (how that one acronym has turned into such a reliable red flag, I don't know, but look around and try to tell me it isn't true), but I still had no idea just how badly the article would go. It's not even stupid. It's just .. nothing.
The guy's argument is really that his text editor's preferences are/were set to something he doesn't like.
I shit you not. His editor's preferences were something he considers to be not-quite-right, and he noticed that it wasn't working well for him, and then somehow that turned into a programming article.
I can't even follow through on my "UX" prejudice and say "Aha! See? The guy knows nothing!" because he's taking it to the next level, so that from now on when I see "UX" it'll be "Aha, See? The guy says nothing." Although now that I think of it, maybe that's what the "UX" red flag has really always meant, all along. Hmm. Ok, you did give me something to think about.
Please continue your thought; don't leave us hanging.
Who is this researcher? What is their project? Tell us about it.
You might have noticed the Oatmeal guy didn't persuade people "Hey, let's spend a lot of money to buy any old lab and make some kind of museum." He was much more specific. That is why the money is flowing.
I agree. I'm saying that the flamee's suggestion ("What is wrong with the idea of getting billed based on the amount of data you consume?") would go a long way toward neutralizing that incentive.
I have to admit, I'm not saying it's practical to rely on it, as the idea that Comcast would ever decide to start charging by the gigabyte (and of course applying that charge to their own video) is absurd. Not doing that, is how their video remains "competitive."
But once we give up, throw up our arms and decide to use government force to deal with the situation (which is what enforced network neutrality is all about), or at least decide to use force against parties who rely on existing policies of government force being used against others (e.g. Comcast's franchises and easements, Verizon's spectrum license, etc) (I'm all about tit-for-tat, and only applying NN legislation to those who exist as a function of legislation) then I think "billed based on the amount of data you consume" suddenly becomes one of the very best things to force upon those parties. Being an ISP+content provider is no longer a magic combination.
My government-sanction electricity and natural gas and water providers already work that way. Maybe that's why those companies aren't offering bundles that run on top of those services. My electric company hasn't tried to sell me an unmetered electric car. Usage-based billing works.
I would love that debate (yes, even more than the science one) but just like answering science policy questions, it raises the same issue: what's in it for them? Why would a candidate share their opinions on these matters?
We only punish them for speaking their minds. And we never EVER punish them for being silent. Even Romney is likely to get somewhere around 50% of the vote, give or take 5%.
Our candidates aren't the problem; we are. Because 99% of us vote for whatever they (the two biggest parties) put forth. That won't change until we change.
So instead of asking candidates their opinions about what policies should be, I'd like to ask voters: what would it take, to make you give a fuck? Under what conditions might you be willing to vote your heart, for the candidate you'd most like to win, even if you were pretty sure you would lose (i.e. your vote would be "wasted")?
Are there really no conditions under which that might happen, or is there some hope that some day America might start voting for things it wants, so that policy debates start to matter, and candidates have incentive to share their opinions?
I'm not so sure it's irrelevant. Usage-based billing removes a lot of the incentive to have a non-neutral net. (Of course, that is why the very parties we need to adopt it, won't adopt it.)
Say you watch a gigabyte of video from Netflex. You pay for a gigabyte. Or you watch a gigabyte of video from Comcast, who also happens to be your ISP. You pay for a gigabyte, i.e. it's no longer "free" or included in your fixed monthly payment. And if Comcast decides to charge you more per gigabyte for Netflix, they're charging more for Comcast TV too, so the playing field stays leveller.
That doesn't address all NN concerns but it addresses one of the big ones, the conflict of interest that makes ISPs want you to pay "extra" when you use services that compete with their own bundled services.
Usage based billing would kick ass, pretty much for everyone, except those who profit by abusing the way fixed-rate billing "clips" out certain aspects of reality.
Spam is like burglary. Why bother breaking through the burglar bars (or writing a specialized bot for one site), when you can just go to the next house?
What's really amazing and [un]special about you, is that you are The One case! You are the same as everyone, so no one needs things that you don't need, everyone has the same constraints (and lack of constraints) that you do, and your desires represent the desires of humanity.
Congratulations on being 100% of the market.
I have been looking for you, though previously dismissed you as mythical. So tell me: what is the next great product that everyone wants? You, of all people, know the answer to this.
Voting is good; just don't vote for them.
The laws of mathematics say what pi is, but that doesn't mean you math/science guys will always get the last word. The people have spoken, so keep your precious reality to yourself. You're lucky Slashdot isn't paid for through the government, or else I'd say your instruction in Common Sense 102 was an infringement of my First Amendment rights!
I think not, for two reasons.
First, because you used the word "digital."
Second, because you're putting the cart before the horse, trying to have a "bill of rights" to dogmatically persuade people to support freedom, instead of first persuading people to support freedom and then passing this "bill of rights" as a manifesto explaining the tolerable limits of policies.
Current popular opinion (and it's nearly unanimous; I'm not talking about some kind of 60% vs 40% thing) is that freedom is a bad idea, and that our elected rulers should consist of those who will fight against freedom. Even if you create stone tablets enumerating our rights, the tablets will not have the support of the people or the policy-makers they elect, so they will be ignored. Your "bill of rights" represents no power. And if you look at what America has done with its earlier constitutional Bill of Rights, you should have seen by now how pathetic it is when parts of the bill fall out of favor. Seriously, we'd be better off if unsupported rights not not been ratified at all, or at least that they be formally repealed. (Remember the 9th and 10th? And have you noticed the amount of respect lately given to the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th?)
It is better to persuade the people that freedom is good, and that those who fight against freedom are the enemy. If you can achieve that, then eventually there will be elections resulting in policy-makers who do things that are compatible with, rather than incompatible with, your "bill of rights." Then ratify a Bill of Rights that the people have already spoken in support of -- one that is actually a testament of the people's passionately-held agenda. That will be a dogma with some real authority behind it, and woe to those who run on a platform of opposing it.
Right now, any bill of rights would be a totally empty threat. It is not yet time. We have a war for hearts and minds to win, first.
It's a follow-up attack. The target has already been seen (though perhaps indirectly) in the past by the attacker. Perhaps the target was already running some malware which has been (inadvertently?) disabled, and the attacker is trying to update it, or fetch some data that it collected.
I've already significantly narrowed down who the target is, from RTFAing. It looks like the target is someone who runs Windows. Hope my analysis helps. ;-)
I was semi-excited when cheap 7" tablets came out. I didn't ever understand the appeal of tablets, but when they dipped under $100 I decided I might
as well get one and see what the fuss is about, and 7" is the right size -- it fits in my pocket so that I will actually have one on me.
Bullshit. It fits in my pocket? No, it breaks in my pocket (cracked screen; still works but it's just a matter of time, now). Whether that's because I bought cheap crap (I did, so it's somewhat possible that's why it cracked, I'll admit) or because of the stresses (particularly when sitting in car, with chorkie on my lap), I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure it wouldn't have happened, if I had used the cheapo case that I bought but never use. The problem is that with the case, it doesn't fit in my pocket anymore, thereby undermining the entire "tablet experiment." (If the best computer is the one you have, then the most useless computer is one you don't have.)
And that's why I've reversed my opinion on 7" tablets -- they're losers too, just as bad as 10" ones. And if you have to use a case and therefore can't pocket it anyway, then 10" isn't really any worse than 7". My next gizmo will be 5" maximum, plus case. And that's for ruggedness reasons, which is why I mention it here.
Use case. Make that part of your spec. Then shop around, within that size-increasing constraint.
And do you know who "rigs" it? The voters. When you vote against all the other candidates this November, that'll be your way of saying that you don't want people to run who don't have a "R" or "D" next to their names. Persuade 200 million other Americas to do what you do, and we'll have collectively rigged the system against third parties. (Although it sounds to me like 200 million other Americans may have already persuaded you. Perhaps I'm mistaken?)
That -- people voting that they'd prefer there be only two parties -- is the main barrier. It dwarfs all other barriers combined: the rules for getting onto ballots, the media's decision for who to invite to debates, the megacorps funding the campaigns of only Republicans and Democrats, who said something dumb enough to get quoted on The Daily Show, etc. All of that relatively impotent stuff is secondary to the decisions that we make when we cast our votes.
Cynics say that if the people ever did vote for someone else, the powers that be would prevent our choice from taking office. Isn't it interesting, though, that we never test their resolve and make them perform that assassination, or whatever it is they're going to do? And isn't it interesting, that since we apparently have nothing to lose anyway (i.e. there supposedly isn't any democracy) we don't bother to act like people who have nothing to lose, by voting for who we want? Those cynics are full of shit: The Man isn't keeping us down; we choose to be down.
Even the little guy doesn't care for the little guy. I bet you Obama and Romney get at least 98% of the presidential vote. People like to bitch about those assholes but when it comes to pressing buttons in a booth, there actually aren't any really strong feelings against them.