Maybe I should give Chrome a whirl seeing as it is supposed to render so much faster and I won't have any special reason to use Firefox any longer?
Maybe you should give Pale Moon a whirl, and re-live the experience of Firefox from the days when the UI was sensible and most of your add-ons still worked. It probably won't render as fast as Chrome, but hey, at least your FF add-ons will still work, and you won't be fully embracing the evil that is Google.
... States should get more power. That can be accomplished for instance by abolishing the federal income tax. Have states collect it all in the exact same amount that's currently being collected by the Fed + States. Then have States share the money with the Fed government. An individual has very little power to affect taxes and budget spending. 50 States would have a lot more leverage.
Why stop there? Why not take it down to the regional level, or even municipal? If I recall my history correctly, city-states have some significant advantages when it comes to individual autonomy.
I never liked that phrase because of its obvious untruth -- might gets you your way, might makes victory, but being victorious and getting your way does not imply that you're right.
Actually, I considered exactly that point as I was writing the comment. Then it occurred to me that I had misunderstood the saying all along - that maybe it meant 'right' in the legal sense, (i.e. 'rights'), rather than in the moral and philosophical sense.
"We", Kimosabe? The folks losing their jobs will be doing a lot less because they now have a lot less, unless and until they find other jobs with equivalent pay. Of course those at the top will be doing a lot more with a lot more, and the newly unemployed people can surely take comfort in that while they're struggling to make the next mortgage payment, right?
ANY organization becomes more evil, (from the standpoint of the average citizen), when it becomes bigger and/or more powerful. That 'and/or' qualifier I put there was intentional. Mozilla didn't have the kind of power that Google has, but after they reached a certain size their own internal power struggles, empire-building tendencies, and sheer hubris led to ignoring their users' needs and desires. As for Google, they are both very big and very powerful. "Might makes right" became a cliché for a very good reason, and Google is a fine example of this.
I've long argued that laissez-faire ought to apply to small businesses, with a sliding scale of progressively more government interference as a company gets larger. The catch-22 here is that government will become bigger and more powerful as a result, with the same consequences. So what we really need is an educated, thoughtful, politically engaged populace. But governments and corporations have that covered: schooling that teaches knee-jerk obedience to authority and frowns upon truly critical thinking, combined with bread and circuses and copious advertising, ensure that most people will take what they're given and do as they're told, even as they imagine themselves to be rebels.
Seems to me that these days there's a bigger learning curve required to design, build, and sell semi trucks than there is to design and build electric power trains. Also, I suspect it will be both easier and more cost-effective to retro-fit an electric truck for extra range than it would be for a car. If I'm right, truckers will be able to start saving money on fuel immediately, and invest in greater range later on without having to trade in / trade up.
If Musk was less of an ego-maniac, he might see the sense in partnering with someone already in the truck manufacturing business. Leveraging the knowledge, reputation, and sales channels of an incumbent would allow him to get all that wonderful innovation Tesla has developed into a LOT more vehicles. Megalomania only gets one so far - at some point your company will suffer if you fail to cooperate with others and strike strategic alliances.
Bought some kind of HID from them - possibly a mouse, but it was so long ago that I'm no longer sure. What I am sure of is that the driver disc also installed some phone-home software which I didn't know about beforehand and certainly never agreed to, and which IIRC I discovered by accident. Ripped that crap out, never bought from them again, and never will. I'd love to see them go down in flames for this, as a caution to all those other fuckheaded companies who think that exchanging their product for a customer's money gives them the right to abuse said customer ad infinitum.
There are Android firewalls available that don't require root. I don't know if they're any good, because my own phone is rooted and I use AFWall+, but you may want to try one out - you just might be able to stop the app from phoning home.
The next logical step is to set your sights higher up your own leg. And Mozilla is being oh-so-logical, although I fail to understand the peculiar logic that's driving them to squander the paltry remainder of their user base.
While my first response to this situation was outrage, sober second thoughts have prevailed, and I now see some sense in DJI's actions. They have a moral obligation to the public, (and a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders - I don't give a shit about that, but some people do), to ensure that the products they sell remain both safe, and compliant with changing regulations. The problem here is not in their ability to enforce updates that correct safety shortcomings and allow for changes in legal requirements, no-fly zones, etc. The problem is the lack of a regulatory framework with teeth - one that would ensure continued functioning of the products if the company folds, and would also forbid them from charging for post-purchase updates, stop them from force-updating random shit in order to siphon more money, data, or whatever out of the buyer, etc.. (We'll likely never see that regulation, because the gubmint pays allegiance to the corps, not the voters - but that's a whole 'nother topic).
In the old days of amateur radio, when home-built transmitters could screw up TV reception, aircraft communication, and emergency services more easily than they can now, the technical barriers to entry were such that by the time most people knew enough to build such a transmitter, they also knew enough to build it correctly and use it responsibly. Today, in the case of drones, any fuckwit can buy one and wreak all kinds of havoc. In short, irresponsible people who would use drones unsafely or illegally, are the reason we can't have drones that we truly own. Unless we make 'em ourselves...;)
As any true nerd knows, when something is "bricked" it is permanently and irrevocably disabled, which is not what this is.
Disagreed. In the first place, a device which even a 'true nerd' considers bricked, may be repairable by someone with greater knowledge, more skill, or access to special parts, documentation, or software. So the definition of 'bricked' is situational. Secondly, if the owner doesn't consent to the update, (and ANY reason for not consenting is perfectly valid, from the standpoint of a true owner), then the craft is bricked, unless and until there is a third-party workaround. So the definition of 'bricked' is also moral / philosophical in nature.
In the mid-1990s I was determined to quit using Windows, so I switched to BSD & GNU/Linux, almost exclusively the last 10+ years. I like Open Cubic Player, DeadBeef, XMMS (v1, but can't get it,) Audacious
If you like DeadBeef, you might want to check out Decibel Audio Player.
Sure, there is lots more software that needs to be open-sourced - but software is still light-years ahead of hardware in that respect. And really, the lack of open hardware hinders software development, especially in key areas such as phones. If the system contains any closed bits, then it isn't truly open. And only true, complete openness has a chance of saving us from the shit-show of corporate dominance, government spying, and general ass-fuckery the powers-that-be are subjecting us to.
A consumer-ready product does not yet exist and its progress is heavily shrouded by intellectual property claims...
I'm sure RMS disapproves of proprietary wetware as much as he disapproves of proprietary software. Let's start an Open Meat movement. LibreChicken, anyone? How about Moo-nix? OpenBSE?
There should be no difference between a human reading the site and a machine. If it is able to be accessed by a person then it should be ok to scrape and aggregate it.
Do you also believe that there should be no difference between a person buying tickets to an event, and a bot doing so? That if it is able to be purchased by a person then it should be ok to use bots to buy up a few thousand tickets in a few seconds and artificially increase the price?
BTW, I agree with what you said; but while I was thinking about your comment that analogy crossed my mind. I'd like the people who use bots to buy up tickets to DIAF, yet I'm happy to let hiQ scrape LinkedIn data. Strange...
If users added their info, and made it public, it's not up to LinkedIn to decide what users want to protect.
Besides, given LinkedIn's past behavior with scraping people's contacts/address books on their PCs and email accounts, it has no lessons to give anyone else.
LinkedIn doesn't give a good goddamn about "what users want to protect", and their "past behavior" is the proof. LinkedIn cares only about having exclusive use of that mine full of data, (except for the bits and pieces that users gather about each other), because it doesn't want potential competitors to eat a slice of the pie they've come to think of as belonging entirely to them.
I'm not convinced the claims are terribly exaggerated. If I'm right, then it's a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons - which is better than not doing the right thing at all.
In the few comments here so far there's a lot of naysaying. I totally sympathize with that, given that big business a) is often talking out of its ass when it comes to science and b) is largely responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in. But I still think that what Schroders is doing has real value.
First, because the warnings are about disastrous financial losses, and are coming from a respected member of the club, the conservative business types, (who have a history of laughing at climate change and shrugging it off), are much more likely to take the matter seriously.
Second, when I did a quick Google search I didn't find any other meta-models like this that start at various end points, work backwards to today, and project various scenarios based on what we're doing at this moment in time, and what we could and might do between now and an X degree increase. I think this approach will lead to a better grasp of the problem, a more vivid imagining of the consequences, and a greater will to change, among the non-technical and non-scientific types who are currently making the decisions we'll all have to live with.
Third, it's a conservative voice pointing out that even if we cut greenhouse gas emissions deeply and swiftly, we're still in for a LOT of fallout from the long-tail effects of what we've already pumped into the atmosphere. That's an observation that IMHO tends to be under-represented in the media coverage of AGW.
The Vice article sensationalized this, 'cause that's what Vice does. But Schroders' admittedly self-serving blurb, is somewhat more matter-of-fact in tone. On balance, I feel that this 'dashboard' is a good thing.
The conspiracy theorist in me can't help but think about all the pressure to cut healthcare costs, and about food corporations pushing high-carb, high-sugar foods, and the entertainment industry with all its incentives to become a couch potato. Corporations get to increase profits in the short term, and reduce costs in the long term when people die prematurely. No, there's probably not a conspiracy per se, but it may not be entirely a coincidence either.
The only people calling him the "anti-diversity" engineer are those that haven't read a word of his memo.
I did and he is.
I did, and he isn't. He's for diversity. He's against a) blindly using and institutionalizing discrimination in the name of promoting diversity and b) ignoring the factors which contribute to a lack of diversity but which don't result from social or institutional biases. I think he's probably an asshole, and he can't write worth shit, but it's pretty clear to me that he's for diversity.
Why would somebody write such an in depth piece with the expectation that it is largely ignored?
Heck, I do a similar thing here on Slashdot all the time, and I'm sure I'm far from the only one. Sometimes what I write is noticed and prompts a little bit of thought and discussion, but I certainly expect it to go unnoticed most of the time. I post here for a variety of reasons - among them are 'venting', 'hearing myself talk' and 'playing with words and ideas'. I like getting responses, but whether I'm noticed or ignored is often irrelevant.
... was sending out what he wrote immediately, rather than sitting on it for a few days, re-reading it, editing it, and having it reviewed by a trusted friend, and re-writing it before unleashing it. At least it reads that way to me. I think much of what he had to say has validity and should be discussed, both at Google and in society at large; but he said it in a manner which lacked diplomacy and tact, was poorly written, and suffered from contradictory logic. The lad was onto something, and might have been praised and promoted instead of fired if he had turned down the self-righteousness by an order or two and hadn't gone off half-cocked.
I hope Google at least makes the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff in what Damore wrote, rather than dismissing the whole thing out-of-hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I should give Chrome a whirl seeing as it is supposed to render so much faster and I won't have any special reason to use Firefox any longer?
Maybe you should give Pale Moon a whirl, and re-live the experience of Firefox from the days when the UI was sensible and most of your add-ons still worked. It probably won't render as fast as Chrome, but hey, at least your FF add-ons will still work, and you won't be fully embracing the evil that is Google.
... States should get more power. That can be accomplished for instance by abolishing the federal income tax. Have states collect it all in the exact same amount that's currently being collected by the Fed + States. Then have States share the money with the Fed government. An individual has very little power to affect taxes and budget spending. 50 States would have a lot more leverage.
Why stop there? Why not take it down to the regional level, or even municipal? If I recall my history correctly, city-states have some significant advantages when it comes to individual autonomy.
"Might makes right"
I never liked that phrase because of its obvious untruth -- might gets you your way, might makes victory, but being victorious and getting your way does not imply that you're right.
Actually, I considered exactly that point as I was writing the comment. Then it occurred to me that I had misunderstood the saying all along - that maybe it meant 'right' in the legal sense, (i.e. 'rights'), rather than in the moral and philosophical sense.
We're now doing a lot more with a lot less.
"We", Kimosabe? The folks losing their jobs will be doing a lot less because they now have a lot less, unless and until they find other jobs with equivalent pay. Of course those at the top will be doing a lot more with a lot more, and the newly unemployed people can surely take comfort in that while they're struggling to make the next mortgage payment, right?
... a net win for society...
Still subscribing to that ol' trickle-down theory, are you? Heck, even the bastards at the IMF have finally realized that it's bullshit.
ANY organization becomes more evil, (from the standpoint of the average citizen), when it becomes bigger and/or more powerful. That 'and/or' qualifier I put there was intentional. Mozilla didn't have the kind of power that Google has, but after they reached a certain size their own internal power struggles, empire-building tendencies, and sheer hubris led to ignoring their users' needs and desires. As for Google, they are both very big and very powerful. "Might makes right" became a cliché for a very good reason, and Google is a fine example of this.
I've long argued that laissez-faire ought to apply to small businesses, with a sliding scale of progressively more government interference as a company gets larger. The catch-22 here is that government will become bigger and more powerful as a result, with the same consequences. So what we really need is an educated, thoughtful, politically engaged populace. But governments and corporations have that covered: schooling that teaches knee-jerk obedience to authority and frowns upon truly critical thinking, combined with bread and circuses and copious advertising, ensure that most people will take what they're given and do as they're told, even as they imagine themselves to be rebels.
Seems to me that these days there's a bigger learning curve required to design, build, and sell semi trucks than there is to design and build electric power trains. Also, I suspect it will be both easier and more cost-effective to retro-fit an electric truck for extra range than it would be for a car. If I'm right, truckers will be able to start saving money on fuel immediately, and invest in greater range later on without having to trade in / trade up.
If Musk was less of an ego-maniac, he might see the sense in partnering with someone already in the truck manufacturing business. Leveraging the knowledge, reputation, and sales channels of an incumbent would allow him to get all that wonderful innovation Tesla has developed into a LOT more vehicles. Megalomania only gets one so far - at some point your company will suffer if you fail to cooperate with others and strike strategic alliances.
Bought some kind of HID from them - possibly a mouse, but it was so long ago that I'm no longer sure. What I am sure of is that the driver disc also installed some phone-home software which I didn't know about beforehand and certainly never agreed to, and which IIRC I discovered by accident. Ripped that crap out, never bought from them again, and never will. I'd love to see them go down in flames for this, as a caution to all those other fuckheaded companies who think that exchanging their product for a customer's money gives them the right to abuse said customer ad infinitum.
There are Android firewalls available that don't require root. I don't know if they're any good, because my own phone is rooted and I use AFWall+, but you may want to try one out - you just might be able to stop the app from phoning home.
The next logical step is to set your sights higher up your own leg. And Mozilla is being oh-so-logical, although I fail to understand the peculiar logic that's driving them to squander the paltry remainder of their user base.
While my first response to this situation was outrage, sober second thoughts have prevailed, and I now see some sense in DJI's actions. They have a moral obligation to the public, (and a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders - I don't give a shit about that, but some people do), to ensure that the products they sell remain both safe, and compliant with changing regulations. The problem here is not in their ability to enforce updates that correct safety shortcomings and allow for changes in legal requirements, no-fly zones, etc. The problem is the lack of a regulatory framework with teeth - one that would ensure continued functioning of the products if the company folds, and would also forbid them from charging for post-purchase updates, stop them from force-updating random shit in order to siphon more money, data, or whatever out of the buyer, etc.. (We'll likely never see that regulation, because the gubmint pays allegiance to the corps, not the voters - but that's a whole 'nother topic).
In the old days of amateur radio, when home-built transmitters could screw up TV reception, aircraft communication, and emergency services more easily than they can now, the technical barriers to entry were such that by the time most people knew enough to build such a transmitter, they also knew enough to build it correctly and use it responsibly. Today, in the case of drones, any fuckwit can buy one and wreak all kinds of havoc. In short, irresponsible people who would use drones unsafely or illegally, are the reason we can't have drones that we truly own. Unless we make 'em ourselves... ;)
As any true nerd knows, when something is "bricked" it is permanently and irrevocably disabled, which is not what this is.
Disagreed. In the first place, a device which even a 'true nerd' considers bricked, may be repairable by someone with greater knowledge, more skill, or access to special parts, documentation, or software. So the definition of 'bricked' is situational. Secondly, if the owner doesn't consent to the update, (and ANY reason for not consenting is perfectly valid, from the standpoint of a true owner), then the craft is bricked, unless and until there is a third-party workaround. So the definition of 'bricked' is also moral / philosophical in nature.
You know, I just really want a media player that forces itself into my life in strange and unusual ways.
LOL - thanks for the chuckle. I guess iTunes is the systemd of media.
In the mid-1990s I was determined to quit using Windows, so I switched to BSD & GNU/Linux, almost exclusively the last 10+ years. I like Open Cubic Player, DeadBeef, XMMS (v1, but can't get it,) Audacious
If you like DeadBeef, you might want to check out Decibel Audio Player.
Sure, there is lots more software that needs to be open-sourced - but software is still light-years ahead of hardware in that respect. And really, the lack of open hardware hinders software development, especially in key areas such as phones. If the system contains any closed bits, then it isn't truly open. And only true, complete openness has a chance of saving us from the shit-show of corporate dominance, government spying, and general ass-fuckery the powers-that-be are subjecting us to.
... if those modified E. Coli bacteria were ever released and came to populate the guts of certain mammals.
A consumer-ready product does not yet exist and its progress is heavily shrouded by intellectual property claims...
I'm sure RMS disapproves of proprietary wetware as much as he disapproves of proprietary software. Let's start an Open Meat movement. LibreChicken, anyone? How about Moo-nix? OpenBSE?
There should be no difference between a human reading the site and a machine. If it is able to be accessed by a person then it should be ok to scrape and aggregate it.
Do you also believe that there should be no difference between a person buying tickets to an event, and a bot doing so? That if it is able to be purchased by a person then it should be ok to use bots to buy up a few thousand tickets in a few seconds and artificially increase the price?
BTW, I agree with what you said; but while I was thinking about your comment that analogy crossed my mind. I'd like the people who use bots to buy up tickets to DIAF, yet I'm happy to let hiQ scrape LinkedIn data. Strange...
If users added their info, and made it public, it's not up to LinkedIn to decide what users want to protect.
Besides, given LinkedIn's past behavior with scraping people's contacts/address books on their PCs and email accounts, it has no lessons to give anyone else.
LinkedIn doesn't give a good goddamn about "what users want to protect", and their "past behavior" is the proof. LinkedIn cares only about having exclusive use of that mine full of data, (except for the bits and pieces that users gather about each other), because it doesn't want potential competitors to eat a slice of the pie they've come to think of as belonging entirely to them.
...to help self-driving cars correctly identify defaced street signs.
I'm not convinced the claims are terribly exaggerated. If I'm right, then it's a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons - which is better than not doing the right thing at all.
In the few comments here so far there's a lot of naysaying. I totally sympathize with that, given that big business a) is often talking out of its ass when it comes to science and b) is largely responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in. But I still think that what Schroders is doing has real value.
First, because the warnings are about disastrous financial losses, and are coming from a respected member of the club, the conservative business types, (who have a history of laughing at climate change and shrugging it off), are much more likely to take the matter seriously.
Second, when I did a quick Google search I didn't find any other meta-models like this that start at various end points, work backwards to today, and project various scenarios based on what we're doing at this moment in time, and what we could and might do between now and an X degree increase. I think this approach will lead to a better grasp of the problem, a more vivid imagining of the consequences, and a greater will to change, among the non-technical and non-scientific types who are currently making the decisions we'll all have to live with.
Third, it's a conservative voice pointing out that even if we cut greenhouse gas emissions deeply and swiftly, we're still in for a LOT of fallout from the long-tail effects of what we've already pumped into the atmosphere. That's an observation that IMHO tends to be under-represented in the media coverage of AGW.
The Vice article sensationalized this, 'cause that's what Vice does. But Schroders' admittedly self-serving blurb, is somewhat more matter-of-fact in tone. On balance, I feel that this 'dashboard' is a good thing.
The conspiracy theorist in me can't help but think about all the pressure to cut healthcare costs, and about food corporations pushing high-carb, high-sugar foods, and the entertainment industry with all its incentives to become a couch potato. Corporations get to increase profits in the short term, and reduce costs in the long term when people die prematurely. No, there's probably not a conspiracy per se, but it may not be entirely a coincidence either.
The only people calling him the "anti-diversity" engineer are those that haven't read a word of his memo.
I did and he is.
I did, and he isn't. He's for diversity. He's against a) blindly using and institutionalizing discrimination in the name of promoting diversity and b) ignoring the factors which contribute to a lack of diversity but which don't result from social or institutional biases. I think he's probably an asshole, and he can't write worth shit, but it's pretty clear to me that he's for diversity.
Why would somebody write such an in depth piece with the expectation that it is largely ignored?
Heck, I do a similar thing here on Slashdot all the time, and I'm sure I'm far from the only one. Sometimes what I write is noticed and prompts a little bit of thought and discussion, but I certainly expect it to go unnoticed most of the time. I post here for a variety of reasons - among them are 'venting', 'hearing myself talk' and 'playing with words and ideas'. I like getting responses, but whether I'm noticed or ignored is often irrelevant.
... was sending out what he wrote immediately, rather than sitting on it for a few days, re-reading it, editing it, and having it reviewed by a trusted friend, and re-writing it before unleashing it. At least it reads that way to me. I think much of what he had to say has validity and should be discussed, both at Google and in society at large; but he said it in a manner which lacked diplomacy and tact, was poorly written, and suffered from contradictory logic. The lad was onto something, and might have been praised and promoted instead of fired if he had turned down the self-righteousness by an order or two and hadn't gone off half-cocked.
I hope Google at least makes the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff in what Damore wrote, rather than dismissing the whole thing out-of-hand.