... is the ability to sanitize them easily. I don't think ANY less transparent, less-editable substitute will allow getting rid of, say, my Amazon search history from the URL I'm looking at before passing it on to a friend. We don't need 'better URL's', we need better education about the current URL structure and uses.
I parse URL's, probably on a daily basis, as a security / privacy measure. I'm sure I'm in the minority even here on Slashdot - but I damned well shouldn't be.
Glad you were modded up to +5, but I'm confused as to why people thought you were being funny. Oracle is totally unreliable and have shown themselves only too eager to screw over their customers at a moment's notice. And Darth Ellison's ego is so huge I'm sure he'd take delight 'altering the deal' with the Pentagon, then threatening to 'alter it further' if he thought he could extort more money from them.
We recently saw how throttling helped fire departments communicate while by-standers were streaming their videos to Youtube and Facebook during fire emergencies. The entire idea of net neutrality resides on the false belief that bandwidth is unlimited, up for grabs by anyone. With Net Neutrality, the streamers would have eaten up all the bandwidth...
We also recently saw how throttling hindered fire departments' ability to do their jobs. That one was really prominent, and it was posted here on Slashdot. It's kind of hard to believe you weren't aware of it. Were you cherry-picking? If so, then stop it - it's cowardly and intellectually dishonest. Then there's your whole implied-by-lack-of-addressing-it endorsement of a company out-and-out lying to its customers to try to get legislation passed that fattens their bottom line. If you're shilling, then stop it - that doesn't work here.
Nobody here is against giving priority to emergency responders' data traffic during an actual emergency. And if current Net Neutrality regs don't take that into account, it's a pretty easy and straightforward fix. So no, you don't get to kill and bury Net Neutrality 'because emergency responders'.
ALL of the c-levels of any company that pulls this shit, ought to be sent to maximum-security prison for a minimum of one year. And 80% of of the company's profits, for the next five years, should be confiscated and used to feed and shelter the homeless. Shareholder dividends, and the price at which they can sell their stocks in the company, should be cut in half for five years. These measures would immediately put an end to this kind of behaviour.
If I was ever in the presence of any of the despicable psychopathic bastards who approved this criminal propaganda campaign, I would be hard pressed not to take keys in hand and sucker punch him at least once. If I came across one of them on fire, I'd be tempted to piss on him - but not so much that it might extinguish the flames.
Yeah, none of the above is ever going to happen. But fantasizing about it takes some of the edge off the anger I'm feeling right now...
I've even heard Liberal commentators trying to make the argument that PBS is better off 'freed' from government funding, since it's now less subject to accusations of bias. Except that it's now biased toward the corporate overlords... Hmmm, am I making your point?
I think you might be - so allow me to try to return the favour...;-)
During the last four or five decades, people have had loads of opportunities to vote in ways that count - not only at the ballot box, but with their feet, their wallets, their shopping choices, TV and movie choices, food choices, and on and on and on. They've pretty consistently opted out of anything that required effory, discomfort, or higher taxes - and they started doing that while the mass brainwashing we've been discussing was still in its infancy. As for the founding fathers, I really don't think it was possible for them to do a much better job than they did. Ultimately, we're limited by human nature - both our own, and each other's. Most people say we get the government we deserve, while I've always complained that I get the government my neighbours deserve. I guess I ought to stop that, given that I've not been out knocking on doors, organizing protests and boycotts, etc.
As an aside, if you haven't read 'The Underground History of American Education' by John Taylor Gatto, then I recommend it. It's out of print, but available at http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ugho... as a free PDF download. If you've ever wondered why public schools are the way they are, (and why the population seems dumber than you think it ought to be), you may find Gatto's answers to be real eye openers.
... I guess the founding fathers also anticipated that a complacent and/or easily distracted public wouldn't use the other tool they gave them - i.e., the vote - to accomplish the same thing by peaceful means...
I'm not sure that voting can actually do much any more, even if the majority of the electorate were to wake up and try to save itself. I suppose citizens could band together, choose independent candidates, and vote them in via a highly organized mass write-in campaign. But even in the highly unlikely event that this should happen, the newly-elected independents would have to agree on the main issues and problems, and work together to solve them. Lacking the organization, discipline, and resources of a political party, they would be hard pressed to maintain order and act in concert consistently enough to thwart the entrenched bureaucracy and the reactionaries among the existing parties.
I really don't have the tiniest amount of hope left that our subjugation to corporations, (and the inequality that results from it), can even be taken seriously by either party, much less addressed and solved by them. And I see it as a nearly impossible task to throw the Democlicans and the Repubmocrats out on their asses and replace them with true leaders who owe their allegiance to average citizens and will tell the corporations to get stuffed.
Google's success and dominance are merely proof that the majority of us are dumb. Google didn't make people dumb - they just took advantage of people's pre-existing dumbness.
These companies need to be brought to heel, putting a gun to their corporate heads if necessary to force them to stop leeching peoples' data, and to delete anything and everything they have on someone at their request.
I agree entirely. Unfortunately, the only way of making the bastards come to heel is to use literal, actual guns, and lots of them. But the government, (elected by the people, paid for by the corporations), has more guns, more force, more resources, and more cohesiveness than the citizenry ever will. Plus a huge part of the citizenry really has no clue, and adamantly refuses said clue when some kind soul tries to give it to them. So bend over, hold your ankles, and get used to this posture. Your neighbours, (and probably even some of your friends), have already decided this is how it's going to be - and short of buying an island and opting out of society altogether, you really don't have much choice.
Came here to say EXACTLY this. Perhaps the bigger problem though, is that the farmer is effectively in the employ of the foxes. The hens don't stand much of a chance in this scenario.
I hope the EFF and the ACLU make lots of noise about this, and fight it tooth and nail.
Microsoft can allow and encourage some truly independent skunkworks, (and keep their damned hands off until it either succeeds or goes bust), or the whole corporation can pull a complete 180 like Apple did when they brought back Jobs. Short of that kind of drastic change, I think Microsoft is unlikely to regain its long-lost status as an innovator, regardless of Nadella's efforts to initiate a company-wide culture shift. The agile, risk-taking, seat-of-the-pants development mindset that fosters innovation, cannot survive when it's subordinated to the risk-averse, inertia-laden culture that gave the world enforced-by-trickery Windows 10 upgrades.
Yeah, knowing that the platform is managed by SLU instead of Amazon would make me worry even more about the platform being abused.
Especially given that the platform being "managed by SLU" is probably located not at the university, but rather on an AWS server. That would make TWO 'interested parties' who have everything they need to invade students' privacy with a few clicks of a mouse.
H1-B is, at its core, a mechanism for re-distributing wealth from richer countries to poorer ones. Which doesn't sound like a bad thing, until I look more closely. Then I see the companies that are importing cheap labour, are simultaneously taking advantage of tax breaks, concessions, and taxation-funded infrastructure. So to a fairly large extent, the companies aren't re-distributing their own wealth - they're exporting money that taxpayers legitimately expect to be spent in their own jurisdictions and for their own interests.
There should be two classes of corporations. Those that oink away at the public tax trough, should be required to hire locally. Those who DON'T get tax breaks and other government subsidies, can hire whomever they want from wherever they want. I can't think of a single major corporation that falls into that second category - and I'm pretty sure that category would remain empty even if my 'two classes' idea was actually implemented and enforced. So why aren't we forcing corporations to hire locally? I guess it's because government isn't "by the people, and for the people". That needs to change.
These days obsolescence, (even among the highest-tech goods), is as much a matter of fashion as it is of product failure, unrepairability, etc. People expect and demand the latest 'innovation', even if it's only a small change in size, the lack of a bezel, or some other frivolity. The population at large is addicted to having the latest and greatest, with no thought for future generations. It's kind of a 'chicken and egg' situation: planned obsolescence and flashy advertising make unnecessary purchases more compelling, while the resultant increased demand further encourages manufacturers to make products that inherently don't last and can't easily be repaired. So along with legislation against planned obsolescence, we need mass education to help turn the tide of rampant consumerism.
Of course, taking these actions will have negative consequences for 'The Economy'. Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing - hence my sig. As a species, we need to start living within our means, and to abandon the notion that uncurtailed economic growth is anything other than a social cancer. Instead, we keep "borrowing", (or, more accurately, stealing), the resources that fuel our (largely) hollow and soul-suckingly luxurious lifestyle from future generations. The early investors live the high life, while the later ones, (many of whom either have no choice or haven't even been born yet), get screwed. Population growth makes even mere survival of mankind an iffy proposition in the long term, so we really need to stop treating the Earth as though it's a broken freezer that needs to have all of its contents consumed before they go bad. Our current habits are making us fat and lazy, and they they may eventually bring about the end of mankind.
The maximum salary in Toronto is 80k.....so yes, go ahead and enjoy the silence.
Say what? I was making $90K in Toronto fifteen years ago, (before the company I worked for pissed me off and I quit, just a couple of years before they tanked), and salaries have gone up since then.
And yet people continue to buy these very expensive, unrepairable devices whose battery is not user replaceable.
So much for any economic theory involving rational markets.
"Rational" is not the immutable constant most people seem to think it is. The behaviour of most Apple customers is perfectly rational in their own eyes - they see value in the products and services that matches or exceeds the value they place on the money they spend for them.
That's why I always try to get people to look at the far-reaching consequences of the decisions we make. Our current 'lifestyle' choices, (such as making throwaway products into huge market successes), will make it VERY hard for our children, (and certainly our grandchildren and beyond), to even survive, much less enjoy comfort and prosperity. In the name of getting one up on our fellow humans, we are willing to convert irreplaceable resources into Earth-killing landfill and greenhouse gases at a rate that can only be described as sociopathically criminal. Yes, this IS how we are programmed as a species. That said, we HAVE demonstrated the ability to behave counter to that programming. Now we just need to demonstrate lots, lots more of it.
It's really common for me to have 30-50 tabs open at the same time. How am going to fit them all now?
30-50 tabs? Amateur! I seldom have fewer than 200 open, and often the number is far, far higher than that. Of course, I'm using Pale Moon with Tab Mix Plus, not the botched abomination that Chrome misnames a UI; so for me, having a stupidly high number of tabs open at once is only marginally inconvenient.
This reminds me of stories I've read in many Slashdot comments. You know, the ones that talk about tech people training their (much lower salaried) replacements. This time the 'replacement' is AI, and it's not just tech workers being replaced, it's just about everyone.
Besides, people are already being 'paid' for much of their data, in the form of services that they don't have to open their wallets for. I'm sure Google, Facebook, and the like, consider those services to be fair and sufficient payment. Judging by the vast number of users who keep using the services and don't kick up a fuss, I'd say the majority of people using those services are in agreement. Or they just don't care, which amounts to the same thing.
Does anyone get respect from Google search? I search for two words, word1 and word2, and right there on page 1 of the results are many that don't include one of the necessary words. Farther down are words that are similar but wrong. And, still on page 1 of the results are finds that include neither word. Some results have oriental characters and no English at all.
I face the same struggles with Google almost every day. You CAN get better results. Put the terms that you need an exact match for between double quotes. Type allintext: at the beginning of your terms to get hits that contain ALL of your terms. I've noticed lately that Google is starting to ignore these to some extent; but results are still far, far better than if you give them carte blanche to use their thoroughly inept mind-reading algorithms and their laughable thesaurus entries.
Much additional information was available about each search result that is now denied us.
You can get back some of that goodness by blocking all the Google domains in NoScript. When you do that, useful things like 'Cached' and 'Similar' suddenly appear, along with the abilities to choose a time range and to limit results to the country you're in. When I need Gstatic for maps, or some Google domain for something else, I temporarily enable it in NoScript, then immediately disable it again.
After all these years is there no competitor that can replicate the original search engine and give Google some competition?
Probably not. Google's infrastructure is huge; anybody who wanted to mount a serious challenge to their dominance would probably have to invest tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, to get a foot in the door. That's probably not going to happen.
I've started using Startpage as an alternative. Their results aren't as good as Google's, but are getting better. Startpage actually uses Google at some point in their search process - it's not clear to me exactly how - but Startpage claims to protect your privacy, and offers user-configurable options in that regard. You might want to check them out.
Facebook has manipulated, lied to, and sold out its users from the beginning. They only admitted any wrongdoing, (oh, sorry, those were mistakes, right?), when Congress held their feet to the fire. The Zuck can't even go to Britain now, or he'll be hauled in front of Parliament and asked questions that he clearly doesn't want to answer. (There's a delicious corollary here that goes something like "if you're afraid, then you must have something to hide"). Examples of Facebook lying and dissembling continue to come to light - such behaviour seems to be part of their corporate culture, from the top down - and yet they're still in business.
I understand people who grudgingly give in to extortion by mobsters, or to threats by blackmailers. What I DON'T get, is people who seem quite happy to be manipulated, deceived, and turned into products by the very companies to whom they grant full-access backstage passes to their very lives. Do Facebook users truly think themselves so unworthy?
Thanks for the suggestion. I've used this kind of social engineering for a long time, but I haven't gained much traction, probably my alternative names tend toward abrasive profanity. I like your more restrained approach, and from now on I will refer to 'Facebook' as 'Spybook'.
Call it "Spybook" from now on. I honestly believe this is one way we can actually make a difference: give them a nickname that sticks and hopefully makes it all the way to pop culture. "Spybook" says everything that needs to be said about this company in a single word. You don't even need to explain anything -- just say "Spybook", and they'll be forced to actually think.
This is one of the twice-daily Apple posts/. supplies so that Apple haters can take turns trying to out-do each other in slandering Apple product users and shouting about how much they hate Apple products. If/. doesn't supply them then the Apple-hating crowd have to go to Reddit to hate on Apple users.
Best laugh I've had in may days - thanks for that!
At first I wasn't too worried about the 'link tax' - I figured that news outlets and media companies would realize what a tremendous footgun the idea is and have it repealed posthaste. But then I started thinking about smaller content creators who depend on those links - lack of site traffic is likely a bigger problem for them than copyright infringement is. As for checking everything uploaded for infringement, just how are they going to do that? Even if you ignore the problems of different laws in different jurisdictions outside the EU; and even if you can figure out how to consistently and reliably make sure that 'fair use', 'fair dealing', and the like are properly evaluated; there's still the techno-logistical problem of the HUGE volume of uploading that takes place every minute. There's simply no way to handle that volume with anything like acceptable accuracy and latency. And this is just the first gloss - I can already see a LOT of subtleties and complexities that would make this whole thing totally unworkable even if the means existed to do the job. Those who drafted this either weren't thinking clearly, or are simply too stupid and / or ill-informed to be charged with writing laws.
Slashdot Mirror
... is the ability to sanitize them easily. I don't think ANY less transparent, less-editable substitute will allow getting rid of, say, my Amazon search history from the URL I'm looking at before passing it on to a friend. We don't need 'better URL's', we need better education about the current URL structure and uses.
I parse URL's, probably on a daily basis, as a security / privacy measure. I'm sure I'm in the minority even here on Slashdot - but I damned well shouldn't be.
Glad you were modded up to +5, but I'm confused as to why people thought you were being funny. Oracle is totally unreliable and have shown themselves only too eager to screw over their customers at a moment's notice. And Darth Ellison's ego is so huge I'm sure he'd take delight 'altering the deal' with the Pentagon, then threatening to 'alter it further' if he thought he could extort more money from them.
We recently saw how throttling helped fire departments communicate while by-standers were streaming their videos to Youtube and Facebook during fire emergencies. The entire idea of net neutrality resides on the false belief that bandwidth is unlimited, up for grabs by anyone. With Net Neutrality, the streamers would have eaten up all the bandwidth...
We also recently saw how throttling hindered fire departments' ability to do their jobs. That one was really prominent, and it was posted here on Slashdot. It's kind of hard to believe you weren't aware of it. Were you cherry-picking? If so, then stop it - it's cowardly and intellectually dishonest. Then there's your whole implied-by-lack-of-addressing-it endorsement of a company out-and-out lying to its customers to try to get legislation passed that fattens their bottom line. If you're shilling, then stop it - that doesn't work here.
Nobody here is against giving priority to emergency responders' data traffic during an actual emergency. And if current Net Neutrality regs don't take that into account, it's a pretty easy and straightforward fix. So no, you don't get to kill and bury Net Neutrality 'because emergency responders'.
ALL of the c-levels of any company that pulls this shit, ought to be sent to maximum-security prison for a minimum of one year. And 80% of of the company's profits, for the next five years, should be confiscated and used to feed and shelter the homeless. Shareholder dividends, and the price at which they can sell their stocks in the company, should be cut in half for five years. These measures would immediately put an end to this kind of behaviour.
If I was ever in the presence of any of the despicable psychopathic bastards who approved this criminal propaganda campaign, I would be hard pressed not to take keys in hand and sucker punch him at least once. If I came across one of them on fire, I'd be tempted to piss on him - but not so much that it might extinguish the flames.
Yeah, none of the above is ever going to happen. But fantasizing about it takes some of the edge off the anger I'm feeling right now ...
I've even heard Liberal commentators trying to make the argument that PBS is better off 'freed' from government funding, since it's now less subject to accusations of bias. Except that it's now biased toward the corporate overlords... Hmmm, am I making your point?
I think you might be - so allow me to try to return the favour... ;-)
During the last four or five decades, people have had loads of opportunities to vote in ways that count - not only at the ballot box, but with their feet, their wallets, their shopping choices, TV and movie choices, food choices, and on and on and on. They've pretty consistently opted out of anything that required effory, discomfort, or higher taxes - and they started doing that while the mass brainwashing we've been discussing was still in its infancy. As for the founding fathers, I really don't think it was possible for them to do a much better job than they did. Ultimately, we're limited by human nature - both our own, and each other's. Most people say we get the government we deserve, while I've always complained that I get the government my neighbours deserve. I guess I ought to stop that, given that I've not been out knocking on doors, organizing protests and boycotts, etc.
As an aside, if you haven't read 'The Underground History of American Education' by John Taylor Gatto, then I recommend it. It's out of print, but available at http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ugho... as a free PDF download. If you've ever wondered why public schools are the way they are, (and why the population seems dumber than you think it ought to be), you may find Gatto's answers to be real eye openers.
... I guess the founding fathers also anticipated that a complacent and/or easily distracted public wouldn't use the other tool they gave them - i.e., the vote - to accomplish the same thing by peaceful means...
I'm not sure that voting can actually do much any more, even if the majority of the electorate were to wake up and try to save itself. I suppose citizens could band together, choose independent candidates, and vote them in via a highly organized mass write-in campaign. But even in the highly unlikely event that this should happen, the newly-elected independents would have to agree on the main issues and problems, and work together to solve them. Lacking the organization, discipline, and resources of a political party, they would be hard pressed to maintain order and act in concert consistently enough to thwart the entrenched bureaucracy and the reactionaries among the existing parties.
I really don't have the tiniest amount of hope left that our subjugation to corporations, (and the inequality that results from it), can even be taken seriously by either party, much less addressed and solved by them. And I see it as a nearly impossible task to throw the Democlicans and the Repubmocrats out on their asses and replace them with true leaders who owe their allegiance to average citizens and will tell the corporations to get stuffed.
Google's success and dominance are merely proof that the majority of us are dumb. Google didn't make people dumb - they just took advantage of people's pre-existing dumbness.
These companies need to be brought to heel, putting a gun to their corporate heads if necessary to force them to stop leeching peoples' data, and to delete anything and everything they have on someone at their request.
I agree entirely. Unfortunately, the only way of making the bastards come to heel is to use literal, actual guns, and lots of them. But the government, (elected by the people, paid for by the corporations), has more guns, more force, more resources, and more cohesiveness than the citizenry ever will. Plus a huge part of the citizenry really has no clue, and adamantly refuses said clue when some kind soul tries to give it to them. So bend over, hold your ankles, and get used to this posture. Your neighbours, (and probably even some of your friends), have already decided this is how it's going to be - and short of buying an island and opting out of society altogether, you really don't have much choice.
guarding the hen house
Came here to say EXACTLY this. Perhaps the bigger problem though, is that the farmer is effectively in the employ of the foxes. The hens don't stand much of a chance in this scenario.
I hope the EFF and the ACLU make lots of noise about this, and fight it tooth and nail.
In 2007, Wired ran a brief article about Toshiba's micro-reactor. If this technology existed eleven years ago, then how is its current "development" newsworthy?
Data was never assimilated by the Borg, and therefore has always been singular, not plural. Case closed.
Microsoft can allow and encourage some truly independent skunkworks, (and keep their damned hands off until it either succeeds or goes bust), or the whole corporation can pull a complete 180 like Apple did when they brought back Jobs. Short of that kind of drastic change, I think Microsoft is unlikely to regain its long-lost status as an innovator, regardless of Nadella's efforts to initiate a company-wide culture shift. The agile, risk-taking, seat-of-the-pants development mindset that fosters innovation, cannot survive when it's subordinated to the risk-averse, inertia-laden culture that gave the world enforced-by-trickery Windows 10 upgrades.
Yeah, knowing that the platform is managed by SLU instead of Amazon would make me worry even more about the platform being abused.
Especially given that the platform being "managed by SLU" is probably located not at the university, but rather on an AWS server. That would make TWO 'interested parties' who have everything they need to invade students' privacy with a few clicks of a mouse.
H1-B is, at its core, a mechanism for re-distributing wealth from richer countries to poorer ones. Which doesn't sound like a bad thing, until I look more closely. Then I see the companies that are importing cheap labour, are simultaneously taking advantage of tax breaks, concessions, and taxation-funded infrastructure. So to a fairly large extent, the companies aren't re-distributing their own wealth - they're exporting money that taxpayers legitimately expect to be spent in their own jurisdictions and for their own interests.
There should be two classes of corporations. Those that oink away at the public tax trough, should be required to hire locally. Those who DON'T get tax breaks and other government subsidies, can hire whomever they want from wherever they want. I can't think of a single major corporation that falls into that second category - and I'm pretty sure that category would remain empty even if my 'two classes' idea was actually implemented and enforced. So why aren't we forcing corporations to hire locally? I guess it's because government isn't "by the people, and for the people". That needs to change.
These days obsolescence, (even among the highest-tech goods), is as much a matter of fashion as it is of product failure, unrepairability, etc. People expect and demand the latest 'innovation', even if it's only a small change in size, the lack of a bezel, or some other frivolity. The population at large is addicted to having the latest and greatest, with no thought for future generations. It's kind of a 'chicken and egg' situation: planned obsolescence and flashy advertising make unnecessary purchases more compelling, while the resultant increased demand further encourages manufacturers to make products that inherently don't last and can't easily be repaired. So along with legislation against planned obsolescence, we need mass education to help turn the tide of rampant consumerism.
Of course, taking these actions will have negative consequences for 'The Economy'. Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing - hence my sig. As a species, we need to start living within our means, and to abandon the notion that uncurtailed economic growth is anything other than a social cancer. Instead, we keep "borrowing", (or, more accurately, stealing), the resources that fuel our (largely) hollow and soul-suckingly luxurious lifestyle from future generations. The early investors live the high life, while the later ones, (many of whom either have no choice or haven't even been born yet), get screwed. Population growth makes even mere survival of mankind an iffy proposition in the long term, so we really need to stop treating the Earth as though it's a broken freezer that needs to have all of its contents consumed before they go bad. Our current habits are making us fat and lazy, and they they may eventually bring about the end of mankind.
The maximum salary in Toronto is 80k.....so yes, go ahead and enjoy the silence.
Say what? I was making $90K in Toronto fifteen years ago, (before the company I worked for pissed me off and I quit, just a couple of years before they tanked), and salaries have gone up since then.
And yet people continue to buy these very expensive, unrepairable devices whose battery is not user replaceable.
So much for any economic theory involving rational markets.
"Rational" is not the immutable constant most people seem to think it is. The behaviour of most Apple customers is perfectly rational in their own eyes - they see value in the products and services that matches or exceeds the value they place on the money they spend for them.
That's why I always try to get people to look at the far-reaching consequences of the decisions we make. Our current 'lifestyle' choices, (such as making throwaway products into huge market successes), will make it VERY hard for our children, (and certainly our grandchildren and beyond), to even survive, much less enjoy comfort and prosperity. In the name of getting one up on our fellow humans, we are willing to convert irreplaceable resources into Earth-killing landfill and greenhouse gases at a rate that can only be described as sociopathically criminal. Yes, this IS how we are programmed as a species. That said, we HAVE demonstrated the ability to behave counter to that programming. Now we just need to demonstrate lots, lots more of it.
It's really common for me to have 30-50 tabs open at the same time. How am going to fit them all now?
30-50 tabs? Amateur! I seldom have fewer than 200 open, and often the number is far, far higher than that. Of course, I'm using Pale Moon with Tab Mix Plus, not the botched abomination that Chrome misnames a UI; so for me, having a stupidly high number of tabs open at once is only marginally inconvenient.
This reminds me of stories I've read in many Slashdot comments. You know, the ones that talk about tech people training their (much lower salaried) replacements. This time the 'replacement' is AI, and it's not just tech workers being replaced, it's just about everyone.
Besides, people are already being 'paid' for much of their data, in the form of services that they don't have to open their wallets for. I'm sure Google, Facebook, and the like, consider those services to be fair and sufficient payment. Judging by the vast number of users who keep using the services and don't kick up a fuss, I'd say the majority of people using those services are in agreement. Or they just don't care, which amounts to the same thing.
Does anyone get respect from Google search? I search for two words, word1 and word2, and right there on page 1 of the results are many that don't include one of the necessary words. Farther down are words that are similar but wrong. And, still on page 1 of the results are finds that include neither word. Some results have oriental characters and no English at all.
I face the same struggles with Google almost every day. You CAN get better results. Put the terms that you need an exact match for between double quotes. Type allintext: at the beginning of your terms to get hits that contain ALL of your terms. I've noticed lately that Google is starting to ignore these to some extent; but results are still far, far better than if you give them carte blanche to use their thoroughly inept mind-reading algorithms and their laughable thesaurus entries.
Much additional information was available about each search result that is now denied us.
You can get back some of that goodness by blocking all the Google domains in NoScript. When you do that, useful things like 'Cached' and 'Similar' suddenly appear, along with the abilities to choose a time range and to limit results to the country you're in. When I need Gstatic for maps, or some Google domain for something else, I temporarily enable it in NoScript, then immediately disable it again.
After all these years is there no competitor that can replicate the original search engine and give Google some competition?
Probably not. Google's infrastructure is huge; anybody who wanted to mount a serious challenge to their dominance would probably have to invest tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, to get a foot in the door. That's probably not going to happen.
I've started using Startpage as an alternative. Their results aren't as good as Google's, but are getting better. Startpage actually uses Google at some point in their search process - it's not clear to me exactly how - but Startpage claims to protect your privacy, and offers user-configurable options in that regard. You might want to check them out.
Editor! We need help with this patient, stat!!!
Facebook has manipulated, lied to, and sold out its users from the beginning. They only admitted any wrongdoing, (oh, sorry, those were mistakes, right?), when Congress held their feet to the fire. The Zuck can't even go to Britain now, or he'll be hauled in front of Parliament and asked questions that he clearly doesn't want to answer. (There's a delicious corollary here that goes something like "if you're afraid, then you must have something to hide"). Examples of Facebook lying and dissembling continue to come to light - such behaviour seems to be part of their corporate culture, from the top down - and yet they're still in business.
I understand people who grudgingly give in to extortion by mobsters, or to threats by blackmailers. What I DON'T get, is people who seem quite happy to be manipulated, deceived, and turned into products by the very companies to whom they grant full-access backstage passes to their very lives. Do Facebook users truly think themselves so unworthy?
Thanks for the suggestion. I've used this kind of social engineering for a long time, but I haven't gained much traction, probably my alternative names tend toward abrasive profanity. I like your more restrained approach, and from now on I will refer to 'Facebook' as 'Spybook'.
Call it "Spybook" from now on. I honestly believe this is one way we can actually make a difference: give them a nickname that sticks and hopefully makes it all the way to pop culture. "Spybook" says everything that needs to be said about this company in a single word. You don't even need to explain anything -- just say "Spybook", and they'll be forced to actually think.
This is one of the twice-daily Apple posts /. supplies so that Apple haters can take turns trying to out-do each other in slandering Apple product users and shouting about how much they hate Apple products. If /. doesn't supply them then the Apple-hating crowd have to go to Reddit to hate on Apple users.
Best laugh I've had in may days - thanks for that!
At first I wasn't too worried about the 'link tax' - I figured that news outlets and media companies would realize what a tremendous footgun the idea is and have it repealed posthaste. But then I started thinking about smaller content creators who depend on those links - lack of site traffic is likely a bigger problem for them than copyright infringement is. As for checking everything uploaded for infringement, just how are they going to do that? Even if you ignore the problems of different laws in different jurisdictions outside the EU; and even if you can figure out how to consistently and reliably make sure that 'fair use', 'fair dealing', and the like are properly evaluated; there's still the techno-logistical problem of the HUGE volume of uploading that takes place every minute. There's simply no way to handle that volume with anything like acceptable accuracy and latency. And this is just the first gloss - I can already see a LOT of subtleties and complexities that would make this whole thing totally unworkable even if the means existed to do the job. Those who drafted this either weren't thinking clearly, or are simply too stupid and / or ill-informed to be charged with writing laws.