I guess it's time to bring this up. I have been waiting a many years, but I think the day has arrived.
Ceti Alpha Six exploded?! And everyone just glosses over that and accepts it?! WTF. Planets don't just explode. But this one did? Uh huh. Why? How? What happened?
"The shock shifted the orbits?" WTF. I'm supposed to believe that not only did a planet explode (how?!) but there was a shockwave through the medium of space.. ?.. and it travelled across interplanetary distances losing energy at inverse-square rate, and it hit Ceti Alpha Five so hard that it changed its orbit. Um.. okay. So, I think we are probably talking about an event with considerably more energy than a nova. Depending on the distance, this might be a bigger deal than a supernova.
And nobody in the federation happened to notice that it happened.
But, years later, they sent people to the Ceti Alpha system for possible Genesis testing. And they not only didn't notice a missing planet and nothing being where it's supposed to be (and if you're not using old pre-explosion charts, then how were you counting up to 6 to guess which planet was Ceti Alpha Six?), but they didn't notice there's probably a new asteroid belt, etc. It's going to be a very interesting looking system to any astronomer.
I think Khan's story doesn't add up. It's so bullshit. They were on Ceti Alpha Six. So how did Khan and team get there?
I understand why you'd recommend against JSON since it was originally intended to be an expression (and some fuckwits would eval() it) rather than really intended to do quite the same thing as, say, Python's pickles. But what's the beef with XML?
Because someone suggested involuntary population control. If you can justify that, then you can justify anything. And I kind of thought my example of a negative number, instead of 1, illustrated it. Once you decide that it's worth using force (i.e. set a "policy" for the country) and then try select an optimum growth setting, you might end up anywhere.
Are there any regulations in place to ensure... the odds are fair?
Hopefully not! Why would there be such regulations? It's not supposed to be fair. If it were fair, nobody would do it. Nobody would offer it. There would be no point.
If you force it to be fair, you're killing it. Making it be fair is a bad thing. If you want to gamble, you need to work to prevent regulations from making it fair. Whoever tries to make it fair, probably has a "gambling is a sin and the lord told me to fight it" agenda.
Personally, I am hard-pressed to think of anything as boring as gambling, but even I wouldn't try to kill it. I know people who enjoy it, and they enjoy it with the full knowledge that they lose money. On the bright side, they sometimes treat me to a casino buffet with their "free" (omg, I so have to suppress my laughter when I hear that word) points.
So please explain how my suggestion to use your phone instead of the iPod nano or iPod shuffle will negatively impact the amount of music you can carry around?
I can't. I was explaining that phones aren't very good as portable music players, not comparing them to iPods. Now that you mention the amusing/stunning limitations of the iPod, my argument basically just comes down to: I don't use a phone because they're just as bad as iPods. (In terms of storage. iPods have other problems, too.)
Even in 2003 my music player had a 30 GB hard disk. From looking at 2.5" drive prices, a modern music player ought to have 500GB-1TB. Problem is, I can't find a modern one! Everyone keeps saying to use phones, but all of today's phones still have storage roughly on par with late 1990s computers.
The more I read their decision, the more I'm convinced this is completely about "sponsored results." At least after a few test searches, a couple things are clear to me:
This statement in the decision is true..
Google has systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service: when a consumer enters a query into the Google search engine in relation to which Google's comparison shopping service wants to show results, these are displayed at or near the top of the search results.
..and this statement in the decision is false..
Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions.
..unless it's all about the sponsored results (i.e. the results that most users unconsciously skip over; I was doing it before I realized I needed to pay attention to it, in order to understand the EU decision).
It's that simple, right? EU wants Google to include unpaid ads by competitors in their sponsored results? (And for those ads to be as broadly targeted as Google's own ads, to the point of being comically irrelevant most of the time.)
Whoa. Holy shit. I think I might be misunderstanding, so I just want someone to sanity-check me or test my reading comprehension. Surely I have made a hilariously stupid mistake in basic reading comprehension, and if there is one thing I trust the Internet for, it's for telling me how stupendously wrong I am about something:
My understanding was that this EU fine was about generic search. It's not about if a user does more than enter the name of a product; it's not about if a clicks deeper into Google's services with a specific, explicit request made to Google for Google to help them shop for an item.
Now I am seeing someone mention this shopping tab, and my opinion is changing rapidly. EU has a problem with that?!
Please, someone tell me I have absurdly misinterpreted the situation (and it reflects poorly on my character, intellect, and family background), and really, this is about generic search. Right? Right?! Please, someone on the Internet, tell me I'm a moron for suspecting this case is about explicit shopping searches. Please?
TANSTAAFL. It's shady offer, like a buffet or unmetered internet. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad but everyone needs to be looking at stuff like that as shady and exceptional. I'm not sure I care much which side government policy favors, in the conflict that such a deal will inevitably create.
Yes, I'm actually bothering to reply to a question with "I don't care." Wait! This doesn't necessarily make me an asshole. (I was an assole long before I replied, ha ha.) My point is that there are way easier and black-and-white situations where right to repair really matters. Let's not dwell on buffet-like examples, where the premise is that the customer is going to scam the scammer. ("If I pay to get into the buffet, and then I undergo mitosis while I'm in the restaurant, do my two descendants get to eat?")
If I had to pick a side (if "fuck you both" wasn't accepted), then...
I think policies shouldn't be doing anything to encourage unmetered stuff. Unmetered stuff is all about putting the two parties into zero-sum conflict where they're each hoping the other side mis-estimates what's going to happen. That's not a healthy situation; it's not the kind of economic activity that lifts all ships. (There's always going to be a loser, and I like transactions where both sides win.)
The vendor probably has more information, and therefore an advantage, over the customer. The vendor is initiating the shady deal. The customer does consent and therefore becomes party to the "crime" (ok, that's too strong a word, I'll admit) but they were led there. Therefore, if I had to pick a side, I'd make policy work against the vendor's interests. Yes, your two Widget Xs should get free service. Not because it's fair (it's not!), but to encourage companies to stop trying to scam the public with shit like Widget X. Decouple services from devices. (To be a little hyperbolic: "Free" things suck because we know they're not free, and the people who offer them are fucking liars and we should take pleasure in their misfortune.) If you happen to be getting good use out of yours, it's only because someone else got ripped off and their Widget X is in a landfill, not using the service that they paid for.
Again, that's if I had to pick sides. I hate the example, though, and right to repair is far bigger and is relevant in a much wider selection of transactions.
Come on, you can't seriously define freedom as being able to download Netflix and Hollywood created content. It's just entertainment created by for profit companies. It isn't gonna cure diseases, it isn't gonna help hunger or global warning. It's just enterntainment and nobody is entitled to it.
If you're right, then nobody needs to frivolously use government force by having courts and cops get involved in something so unimportant.
And they certainly wouldn't ever get involved in messing with people who make tools which might be used for that, by passing fucked up laws to prevent media and players from becoming independent markets.
I'm pretty amazed that someone would pick a topic where LAW is so often talked about, to say freedom isn't a significant aspect. Freedom, and which ones to trade for which economic advantages, is almost the entirety of the issue.
Space-shifting is legal, but the DRM on DVDs and Blu-Rays circumvents the Fair Use defense. It's not about copyright infringement, it's about DMCA violations. If you don't have permission to play or read the disc, then you broke the law and there is no Fair Use defense.
Probably yadda yadda memory security yadda yadda but more importantly, because it's easier (faster; less programmers' time) and to reduce bugs. Wouldn't you use processes instead of threads, if you had a situation where you reasonably could? (i.e. if you didn't have to do a shitload of IPC?)
You're telling me we should quit trying to demand abortion rights and try to get everyone on the same page first about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?.. The pro-life crowd must be opposed with legislative force, screw their beliefs.
I'm not saying you shouldn't fight; I'm saying you should begin to fight to win, instead of continuing the futile, losing strategy, which BTW, looks like it was copied from the other team's playbook. Are you sure they don't know something about the battleground that you don't? It looks like you're accepting their invitation to fight on their terms.
This matter will be settled either when a critical mass of pro-lifers die out
I think that's an unreasonably optimistic view. From what I've seen, pro-life isn't an old-people thing. Religion is taught and people are still doing it, today. Their ranks are constantly replenished, and if your idea of a good fight is in the legislature rather than in peoples' heads, then it means you are doing nothing to counter their advantage.
Look at climate change... uninformed voters root for their "team" and point to the charlatans, they have way too much political power
Now, c'mon, I can tell you know exactly how to fight that one; you gave it away with the word "uninformed." You know what to do, and you probably already know that you're eventually going to win. You can try the same strategy with abortion. It's harder because it's about values instead of facts, but values can be taught too. What is a person?
BTW, the ruling party in the US is the voters, really. We're just very easily manipulated, thanks to our intellectual apathy and cowardice. Arguing is exactly what is needed, so that people start voting better. Maybe you've just been arguing badly? I noticed your compelling "Bullshit, you're either being lazy or disingenuous" argument and.. if I'm going to practice what I'm trying to preach in this very paragraph.. let's just say that it revealed certain aspects of your personality which suggest you might be out-classed by most pro-lifers. But I don't think that means you shouldn't try! Practice makes perfect, after all.
Do they do so in the name of God, or because they find gays icky?
What's the difference?
Isn't it true that among all religious people, God's opinion on everything just happens to perfectly match the religious person's opinions? (If you think it's icky, then God thinks it's icky. If you think it's worth killing people over, then God commands the sinners be put to death.)
No? Did I get that wrong? Sorry for my arrogant presumption. Very well, I ask all religious people: what do you disagree with God about? What is God wrong about, where He is in need of your humanist enlightenment?
Religious law is whatever you want it to be. If you want someone dead, then God wants them dead too. God will always be there to take the burden of blame, so go forth and let His will be done.
For me, "small government" means "Not restricting freedoms and rights." Like no laws against abortion.
You're never going to persuade anyone on that. The choir will nod, and your opponents will glare at you.
Pro-choice people see one person's rights at stake (the woman's) in an abortion decision. Since there is only one person, there is no possible conflict, and the common-sense policy is for government to stay the fuck out of it.
Pro-life people see two people's rights at stake (the woman's rights and the fetus' rights) in direct conflict for the same resources. Any decision will result in some person's rights being infringed (and to a lethal degree, if the fetus loses). Even without government interference, someone is going to have a really bad day. Regardless of whether you want small government or big government, if you think a fetus is a person, you are probably going to want government involved, unless your "small government" is small to the point of total anarchy.
It's not a disagreement about "small government." It's not even really a conservative/liberal issue (though perversely, many people do seem to appear to align a certain way, without explanation). It's simply a disagreement about whether or not the fetus is a person, and therefore has rights which can possibly be infringed. If it's a person, then government has to protect its rights. If it's not a person, then the government should be protecting other peoples' rights from being unnecessarily infringed in a misguided effort to protect something relatively important.
Leave abortion out of the small government issue. It's a religious issue, unless we all somehow magically get to a consensus agreement on "what is a person?" so that we can objectively test/measure personhood instead of everyone just listening to their feelings (i.e. half-assed rarely-considered opinions). And, hint: we do not have that consensus yet. Not even close.
Wanna fight for pro-choice? Help create that consensus. Get people to think about "what is a person?" and have fun with it, too. It's not just a question for abortion, but also for upcoming or theoretical things like AI, genetic engineering, aliens, etc. The more people work through the essense of personhood and think about why we protect peoples' rights, the more likely they'll develop more compassion while also finding little specs of goo to be unqualified.
The cable company's can't. Disney insists they buy ESPN as well as a host of other channels as a package. Thus the cable companies do not have the option to skip ESPN unless they're willing to also lose a whole lot of other channels (such as ABC, A&E and it's descendants, Lifetime and its descendants)
Sound like you're saying they can; they just need to try it. Have an offering which excludes all of Disney's stuff. Then have "add all of Disney's channels for $n" optional add-on. This puts the information and choice in the right place, and gets people voting with their wallets. Watch Disney squirm as ABC becomes thought of as a premium channel (which it's totally not worth) whose ads don't really reach all segments anymore. I think that'd result in ABC-ESPN unbundling pretty damn quick.
In that case why would you connect anything to any network you don't own and control?
To talk to other people.
There are lots of things that are better and easier without talking to other people, though. That's why you need to think about what should be under your control vs what should be under someone else's. If you try thinking, you'll find it to be not quite as hard as you thought, but also not necessarily easy, and usually fun. Try it. Think today!
Why are you asking him to sign such an agreement? He never asked you to sign anything; he claims you agreed by magic, in secret without you ever being a party to the agreement, and despite you never doing anything that could be construed to having agreed to whatever his terms are.
If you claim that the other party agreed to something, then they agreed to it, period. That's how magic contracts work. We don't need no stinking signatures!
When I read what they're trying to do, I like it. I am not one of those people who thinks handhelds and desktops must necessarily have different UIs. (I'm not saying I have the answers, just that I think answers exist, for solving the same problem in two places.)
Then I look at the screenshots, and "eww." But whatever. Maybe I just don't get it. And also, it's Microsoft, so fuck them.
Yet I think it's a good and reasonable goal, and some day, someone will succeed at it.
Do you know what else, besides robots, displaces humans?
Other humans.
"Kill them all," is what the robot economist just heard Jane Kim say is desired. You were so worried about robots stealing your job, that you just authorized the production of Terminators.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it's time to bring this up. I have been waiting a many years, but I think the day has arrived.
Ceti Alpha Six exploded?! And everyone just glosses over that and accepts it?! WTF. Planets don't just explode. But this one did? Uh huh. Why? How? What happened?
"The shock shifted the orbits?" WTF. I'm supposed to believe that not only did a planet explode (how?!) but there was a shockwave through the medium of space .. ? .. and it travelled across interplanetary distances losing energy at inverse-square rate, and it hit Ceti Alpha Five so hard that it changed its orbit. Um.. okay. So, I think we are probably talking about an event with considerably more energy than a nova. Depending on the distance, this might be a bigger deal than a supernova.
And nobody in the federation happened to notice that it happened.
But, years later, they sent people to the Ceti Alpha system for possible Genesis testing. And they not only didn't notice a missing planet and nothing being where it's supposed to be (and if you're not using old pre-explosion charts, then how were you counting up to 6 to guess which planet was Ceti Alpha Six?), but they didn't notice there's probably a new asteroid belt, etc. It's going to be a very interesting looking system to any astronomer.
I think Khan's story doesn't add up. It's so bullshit. They were on Ceti Alpha Six. So how did Khan and team get there?
Parser loop.
I understand why you'd recommend against JSON since it was originally intended to be an expression (and some fuckwits would eval() it) rather than really intended to do quite the same thing as, say, Python's pickles. But what's the beef with XML?
Because someone suggested involuntary population control. If you can justify that, then you can justify anything. And I kind of thought my example of a negative number, instead of 1, illustrated it. Once you decide that it's worth using force (i.e. set a "policy" for the country) and then try select an optimum growth setting, you might end up anywhere.
(Emphasis mine.)
How did you figure out that 1.00 is the correct number? What if it's 0.71? Or -0.16?
I think you pulled that 1 out of your ass.
Hopefully not! Why would there be such regulations? It's not supposed to be fair. If it were fair, nobody would do it. Nobody would offer it. There would be no point.
If you force it to be fair, you're killing it. Making it be fair is a bad thing. If you want to gamble, you need to work to prevent regulations from making it fair. Whoever tries to make it fair, probably has a "gambling is a sin and the lord told me to fight it" agenda.
Personally, I am hard-pressed to think of anything as boring as gambling, but even I wouldn't try to kill it. I know people who enjoy it, and they enjoy it with the full knowledge that they lose money. On the bright side, they sometimes treat me to a casino buffet with their "free" (omg, I so have to suppress my laughter when I hear that word) points.
Please, don't take away my buffet.
I can't. I was explaining that phones aren't very good as portable music players, not comparing them to iPods. Now that you mention the amusing/stunning limitations of the iPod, my argument basically just comes down to: I don't use a phone because they're just as bad as iPods. (In terms of storage. iPods have other problems, too.)
Even in 2003 my music player had a 30 GB hard disk. From looking at 2.5" drive prices, a modern music player ought to have 500GB-1TB. Problem is, I can't find a modern one! Everyone keeps saying to use phones, but all of today's phones still have storage roughly on par with late 1990s computers.
The more I read their decision, the more I'm convinced this is completely about "sponsored results." At least after a few test searches, a couple things are clear to me:
This statement in the decision is true..
..and this statement in the decision is false..
..unless it's all about the sponsored results (i.e. the results that most users unconsciously skip over; I was doing it before I realized I needed to pay attention to it, in order to understand the EU decision).
It's that simple, right? EU wants Google to include unpaid ads by competitors in their sponsored results? (And for those ads to be as broadly targeted as Google's own ads, to the point of being comically irrelevant most of the time.)
Whoa. Holy shit. I think I might be misunderstanding, so I just want someone to sanity-check me or test my reading comprehension. Surely I have made a hilariously stupid mistake in basic reading comprehension, and if there is one thing I trust the Internet for, it's for telling me how stupendously wrong I am about something:
My understanding was that this EU fine was about generic search. It's not about if a user does more than enter the name of a product; it's not about if a clicks deeper into Google's services with a specific, explicit request made to Google for Google to help them shop for an item.
Now I am seeing someone mention this shopping tab, and my opinion is changing rapidly. EU has a problem with that?!
Please, someone tell me I have absurdly misinterpreted the situation (and it reflects poorly on my character, intellect, and family background), and really, this is about generic search. Right? Right?! Please, someone on the Internet, tell me I'm a moron for suspecting this case is about explicit shopping searches. Please?
TANSTAAFL. It's shady offer, like a buffet or unmetered internet. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad but everyone needs to be looking at stuff like that as shady and exceptional. I'm not sure I care much which side government policy favors, in the conflict that such a deal will inevitably create.
Yes, I'm actually bothering to reply to a question with "I don't care." Wait! This doesn't necessarily make me an asshole. (I was an assole long before I replied, ha ha.) My point is that there are way easier and black-and-white situations where right to repair really matters. Let's not dwell on buffet-like examples, where the premise is that the customer is going to scam the scammer. ("If I pay to get into the buffet, and then I undergo mitosis while I'm in the restaurant, do my two descendants get to eat?")
If I had to pick a side (if "fuck you both" wasn't accepted), then...
I think policies shouldn't be doing anything to encourage unmetered stuff. Unmetered stuff is all about putting the two parties into zero-sum conflict where they're each hoping the other side mis-estimates what's going to happen. That's not a healthy situation; it's not the kind of economic activity that lifts all ships. (There's always going to be a loser, and I like transactions where both sides win.)
The vendor probably has more information, and therefore an advantage, over the customer. The vendor is initiating the shady deal. The customer does consent and therefore becomes party to the "crime" (ok, that's too strong a word, I'll admit) but they were led there. Therefore, if I had to pick a side, I'd make policy work against the vendor's interests. Yes, your two Widget Xs should get free service. Not because it's fair (it's not!), but to encourage companies to stop trying to scam the public with shit like Widget X. Decouple services from devices. (To be a little hyperbolic: "Free" things suck because we know they're not free, and the people who offer them are fucking liars and we should take pleasure in their misfortune.) If you happen to be getting good use out of yours, it's only because someone else got ripped off and their Widget X is in a landfill, not using the service that they paid for.
Again, that's if I had to pick sides. I hate the example, though, and right to repair is far bigger and is relevant in a much wider selection of transactions.
If you're right, then nobody needs to frivolously use government force by having courts and cops get involved in something so unimportant.
And they certainly wouldn't ever get involved in messing with people who make tools which might be used for that, by passing fucked up laws to prevent media and players from becoming independent markets.
I'm pretty amazed that someone would pick a topic where LAW is so often talked about, to say freedom isn't a significant aspect. Freedom, and which ones to trade for which economic advantages, is almost the entirety of the issue.
Space-shifting is legal, but the DRM on DVDs and Blu-Rays circumvents the Fair Use defense. It's not about copyright infringement, it's about DMCA violations. If you don't have permission to play or read the disc, then you broke the law and there is no Fair Use defense.
EFF's example involves media without DRM.
Probably yadda yadda memory security yadda yadda but more importantly, because it's easier (faster; less programmers' time) and to reduce bugs. Wouldn't you use processes instead of threads, if you had a situation where you reasonably could? (i.e. if you didn't have to do a shitload of IPC?)
I'm not saying you shouldn't fight; I'm saying you should begin to fight to win, instead of continuing the futile, losing strategy, which BTW, looks like it was copied from the other team's playbook. Are you sure they don't know something about the battleground that you don't? It looks like you're accepting their invitation to fight on their terms.
I think that's an unreasonably optimistic view. From what I've seen, pro-life isn't an old-people thing. Religion is taught and people are still doing it, today. Their ranks are constantly replenished, and if your idea of a good fight is in the legislature rather than in peoples' heads, then it means you are doing nothing to counter their advantage.
Now, c'mon, I can tell you know exactly how to fight that one; you gave it away with the word "uninformed." You know what to do, and you probably already know that you're eventually going to win. You can try the same strategy with abortion. It's harder because it's about values instead of facts, but values can be taught too. What is a person?
BTW, the ruling party in the US is the voters, really. We're just very easily manipulated, thanks to our intellectual apathy and cowardice. Arguing is exactly what is needed, so that people start voting better. Maybe you've just been arguing badly? I noticed your compelling "Bullshit, you're either being lazy or disingenuous" argument and .. if I'm going to practice what I'm trying to preach in this very paragraph .. let's just say that it revealed certain aspects of your personality which suggest you might be out-classed by most pro-lifers. But I don't think that means you shouldn't try! Practice makes perfect, after all.
What's the difference?
Isn't it true that among all religious people, God's opinion on everything just happens to perfectly match the religious person's opinions? (If you think it's icky, then God thinks it's icky. If you think it's worth killing people over, then God commands the sinners be put to death.)
No? Did I get that wrong? Sorry for my arrogant presumption. Very well, I ask all religious people: what do you disagree with God about? What is God wrong about, where He is in need of your humanist enlightenment?
Religious law is whatever you want it to be. If you want someone dead, then God wants them dead too. God will always be there to take the burden of blame, so go forth and let His will be done.
You're never going to persuade anyone on that. The choir will nod, and your opponents will glare at you.
Pro-choice people see one person's rights at stake (the woman's) in an abortion decision. Since there is only one person, there is no possible conflict, and the common-sense policy is for government to stay the fuck out of it.
Pro-life people see two people's rights at stake (the woman's rights and the fetus' rights) in direct conflict for the same resources. Any decision will result in some person's rights being infringed (and to a lethal degree, if the fetus loses). Even without government interference, someone is going to have a really bad day. Regardless of whether you want small government or big government, if you think a fetus is a person, you are probably going to want government involved, unless your "small government" is small to the point of total anarchy.
It's not a disagreement about "small government." It's not even really a conservative/liberal issue (though perversely, many people do seem to appear to align a certain way, without explanation). It's simply a disagreement about whether or not the fetus is a person, and therefore has rights which can possibly be infringed. If it's a person, then government has to protect its rights. If it's not a person, then the government should be protecting other peoples' rights from being unnecessarily infringed in a misguided effort to protect something relatively important.
Leave abortion out of the small government issue. It's a religious issue, unless we all somehow magically get to a consensus agreement on "what is a person?" so that we can objectively test/measure personhood instead of everyone just listening to their feelings (i.e. half-assed rarely-considered opinions). And, hint: we do not have that consensus yet. Not even close.
Wanna fight for pro-choice? Help create that consensus. Get people to think about "what is a person?" and have fun with it, too. It's not just a question for abortion, but also for upcoming or theoretical things like AI, genetic engineering, aliens, etc. The more people work through the essense of personhood and think about why we protect peoples' rights, the more likely they'll develop more compassion while also finding little specs of goo to be unqualified.
What is a person?
Sound like you're saying they can; they just need to try it. Have an offering which excludes all of Disney's stuff. Then have "add all of Disney's channels for $n" optional add-on. This puts the information and choice in the right place, and gets people voting with their wallets. Watch Disney squirm as ABC becomes thought of as a premium channel (which it's totally not worth) whose ads don't really reach all segments anymore. I think that'd result in ABC-ESPN unbundling pretty damn quick.
To talk to other people.
There are lots of things that are better and easier without talking to other people, though. That's why you need to think about what should be under your control vs what should be under someone else's. If you try thinking, you'll find it to be not quite as hard as you thought, but also not necessarily easy, and usually fun. Try it. Think today!
Why are you asking him to sign such an agreement? He never asked you to sign anything; he claims you agreed by magic, in secret without you ever being a party to the agreement, and despite you never doing anything that could be construed to having agreed to whatever his terms are.
If you claim that the other party agreed to something, then they agreed to it, period. That's how magic contracts work. We don't need no stinking signatures!
When I read what they're trying to do, I like it. I am not one of those people who thinks handhelds and desktops must necessarily have different UIs. (I'm not saying I have the answers, just that I think answers exist, for solving the same problem in two places.)
Then I look at the screenshots, and "eww." But whatever. Maybe I just don't get it. And also, it's Microsoft, so fuck them.
Yet I think it's a good and reasonable goal, and some day, someone will succeed at it.
Perhaps it's ridiculous, but is it important?
You sound like someone from the 20th century. Sure, you can install whatever software that you want to on your own computers, but..
..it can easily be illegal. Haven't you ever heard of DMCA, for example? For some prohibitions, ownership of subject matter is irrelevant.
Don't like it? Start voting differently. Or just break the law and try to go undetected.
That isn't a thing that a person realizes; it's a thing that a person decides.
The enemy wins by persuading you into believing that you've lost.
It's time for a I-hate-technology politician to run for president. "I'll build a Turing Test center, and Google will pay for it!"
Do you know what else, besides robots, displaces humans?
Other humans.
"Kill them all," is what the robot economist just heard Jane Kim say is desired. You were so worried about robots stealing your job, that you just authorized the production of Terminators.