"Not using Google" is not enough to prevent Google from tracking you. In case you're unaware of how it works, have a look here. If you're already aware of how it works then I guess I'm just wasting my time...
Especially when said corporations are not European and not government. France has no problem amassing ridiculous amounts of data (of questionable quality) to use against their own citizens, here is a list (only available in French unfortunately).
Said differently: when your government does something that has a positive impact for you, it doesn't mean it's doing it for you. A pessimist would argue that there likely is a higher interest at stake.
You're mixing up uncompensated work and waste of time.
Spending time on the web interface to find the correct files for student assignments is uncompensated work (especially when the students are not good at using said web interface and put me in the situation of explaining them how to use said interface).
Spending four hours in a meeting room while someone plays with an expensive (albeit useless) smartboard and telling you how to keep a forum alive because it's so important is a waste of my time. Spending more hours listening to people congratulate themselves because a third of the students are happy is another waste of my time.
By the way it's not about putting course material online, I already do that by myself, both printable and animated versions. It's about using a web interface to communicate and deliver assignments, perform additional interactive tests and a thousand more time-consuming things with no added value.
This. I've been testing web education or whatever it's called this week. I did the same course with and without the "technology" addon.
For the students: I didn't notice a difference. No more or less success. Good students are good, lazy students are lazy, nothing will change that. And holding their hand will just make them take less initiative, which is not a good thing for society as a whole.
For the teacher (me): extra work, plenty. Also some waste of time (e.g. 4 hour meeting to brief us on how to keep a forum alive, wtf). No extra money, thank you. Also no taking this into account when evaluating my research (i.e. publications).
For the people setting the whole thing up: yes, they got paid for doing something absolutely useless and wasting my precious time. They were quite happy with themselves, being convinced that they did something useful. I even heard "35% of the students are happy with the online course, that's very positive". My reaction "wait a minute, doesn't that mean that 65% is either unhappy with it or doesn't care about it?" was met with silence.
My overall conclusion: thanks but next time I'll pass if I have the choice. And please, let the teachers do the teaching, not some guy from the I-have-to-justify-my-salary department who thinks that technology can solve all problems and that whoever doesn't agree just needs to open their eyes.
Because they can. The real problem here is that the browser cannot enforce its own security settings. The fact that Google is evil is beside the point. If I check a "don't track me" option in my browser then end up being tracked, my anger is directed toward the browser, not the tracker. Anything else doesn't make sense and is counter-productive.
Risky analogy: if my partner cheats on me, my anger should be directed toward my partner, not to anyone else (provided my partner cheated on me with someone who doesn't know me).
It seems to me that the US government wants to be able to use software-based attacks on other countries (like Iran with Stuxnet), while being totally protected from software-based attacks from the outside. In my opinion, this will never happen: US, like any other country, is and will be vulnerable to these attacks. No matter how much money they throw at it. In this context one might wonder whether it's in the US government's interest to bring the war to this terrain, like they did with Stuxnet.
After reading TFA I cannot find any convincing experimental validation. I see a lot of "can" and conditional tense (maybe that's the author's style), but nothing on the validation of the approach. Where is the experimental data, including the number of anonymous users correctly and incorrectly identified on forums?
No, being a republican while not being rich just makes you vote for people who don't have your best interest at heart. Whether that makes you someone with principles or just a victim is another question. To be fair, democrats also don't have your best interest a heart.
For some people (including me), surprising someone and showing them that we really tried to find something they like is a very important part of making a present.
Firearms account for approximately 18,000 suicides annually in the US and approximately 10,000 homicides.
So, even if we lump in homicides with your suicides AND assume homicides are committed by legal gun owners (which most times they are not): 28,000 is 0.035% of 80 million gun owners in the US, which means it is NOT the "primary purpose of owning a gun". It in fact accounts for a MINISCULE use of firearms.
Although to be fair, you should also take into account that each of these gun owners will own guns for more than a year of their life. Imagining they own a gun for 30 years on average (I have no clue if this is realistic) and the gun owner population stays around the same size, then 1.05% of gun owners in the US will at some point use their gun in a suicide or homicide. I would worry about it, although probably less than about tobacco.
I never get paid for reviewing an article, it's part of the job, and it also makes sense: I want other people to review my articles, so I review other people's articles too. I want good (not necessarily positive) reviews, so I try my best to deliver good reviews.
One anecdote though: I once received a request to review a paper for a journal which I didn't know. It was the "Journal of ****** University" or something like that, anyway a university edited its own journal, which I find questionable for several reasons. It was a Chinese university. I was extremely reluctant to accept to review this paper. This was probably expected, since the editor also asked me my postal address so that they can send me a gift, should I accept to review the paper. This made me even more reluctant. I still accepted to perform the review due to other reasons, but I did not indicate my address. I still received a gift a few weeks later (some Chinese stamps). So although in theory the reviews are performed for free, it doesn't prevent the editors from trying to buy services from the reviewers. In that case, in order to give credibility to a new journal.
Games don't need to be optimised for iControlpad: you can map the keypresses from the pad to a virtual keyboard using free software. Plus, most people already carry their phone everywhere anyway, so the extra iControlpad is no bigger hassle than the extra PSP. The pad is about the samesize as a regular smartphone. For me it's as convenient as can be. I'd still be interested in seeing numbers though.
I didn't argue that they add no value. The starting point is that the policy "blows goats", but that it's "good for most users". In other words, we're discussing the fact that, as you put it yourself, Apple forces people into their setup. I can perfectly understand that the added value is trust, but also that this trust comes as a price. I have more trouble understanding that forcing people into this setup is "good for most users". Let people decide for themselves what's good for them.
How exactly is this good for "most users"? If Apple takes its toll on every sale, then the price of everything rises so that the sellers can still make a benefit. Guess who pays for that?
I think you misunderstand the meaning of "agnosticism". It is more about suspending your judgement than about not believing. The existence of a god is a gnosis so you don't take it as a truth, but the same holds for its non-existence.
Actually good independent newspapers exist in France and some of them do a great work. The best example is "Le Canard Enchaîné", which has existed for almost a century. Although self-qualified "satyrical", this weekly is at the origin of many scandals in France in the past century. The journalists do amazing investigations, you won't see ads on any page (to ensure independence), it cannot be read electronically (although there is a website including a poor-quality version of the front page). And guess what, people are willing to pay for a paper version with no ads and quality content. They release accounts and balance every year, and unlike every mainstream newspaper using tons of ads and an electronic version, the balance is positive every year.
By the way, politicians are afraid of it, too. I'm not sure there are equivalents in other countries in fact, but maybe someone could enlighten me. For instance, how many national newspapers with 0 ads can you find in the USA?
If your employer types your name in a search engine, is he only going to find the account for colleagues? I'm not on Facebook so I have no idea, but I'm wondering, aren't you required to use your real identity? Also, is it not annoying to log in four times every day?
Just speaking for myself here: they most certainly are, although discussing the reasons is out of scope and would take ages. I get the impression that many people see the USA as a necessary evil. Apparently everybody thinks that there has to be domination by one nation over the others; in this perspective, the USA are the least bad option (alternatives such as China or Russia aren't that exciting).
Seeing how the USA are the biggest bully on the planet, it is a smart choice for no country to depend on them, even for the EU, itself made of big bullies. The USA have already misbehaved with their "friends" and there is no reason to believe that they will not do it again. Therefore seeking independence from them is the sane thing to do.
Your answer is informative but does not really answer the original question, let me reformulate it for you: why should anyone wonder about who Bill Clinton had sex with in the first place, it's his problem, not the people's.
The fact that Bill Clinton lied when this story was investigated is a different matter: the point is, this story should never have been investigated to start with.
Agreed, the distinction between cult and religion is highly subjective. Where I come from, there is a saying that a religion is simply a successful cult.
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"Not using Google" is not enough to prevent Google from tracking you. In case you're unaware of how it works, have a look here. If you're already aware of how it works then I guess I'm just wasting my time...
Especially when said corporations are not European and not government. France has no problem amassing ridiculous amounts of data (of questionable quality) to use against their own citizens, here is a list (only available in French unfortunately).
Said differently: when your government does something that has a positive impact for you, it doesn't mean it's doing it for you. A pessimist would argue that there likely is a higher interest at stake.
You're mixing up uncompensated work and waste of time.
Spending time on the web interface to find the correct files for student assignments is uncompensated work (especially when the students are not good at using said web interface and put me in the situation of explaining them how to use said interface).
Spending four hours in a meeting room while someone plays with an expensive (albeit useless) smartboard and telling you how to keep a forum alive because it's so important is a waste of my time. Spending more hours listening to people congratulate themselves because a third of the students are happy is another waste of my time.
By the way it's not about putting course material online, I already do that by myself, both printable and animated versions. It's about using a web interface to communicate and deliver assignments, perform additional interactive tests and a thousand more time-consuming things with no added value.
This. I've been testing web education or whatever it's called this week. I did the same course with and without the "technology" addon.
For the students: I didn't notice a difference. No more or less success. Good students are good, lazy students are lazy, nothing will change that. And holding their hand will just make them take less initiative, which is not a good thing for society as a whole.
For the teacher (me): extra work, plenty. Also some waste of time (e.g. 4 hour meeting to brief us on how to keep a forum alive, wtf). No extra money, thank you. Also no taking this into account when evaluating my research (i.e. publications).
For the people setting the whole thing up: yes, they got paid for doing something absolutely useless and wasting my precious time. They were quite happy with themselves, being convinced that they did something useful. I even heard "35% of the students are happy with the online course, that's very positive". My reaction "wait a minute, doesn't that mean that 65% is either unhappy with it or doesn't care about it?" was met with silence.
My overall conclusion: thanks but next time I'll pass if I have the choice. And please, let the teachers do the teaching, not some guy from the I-have-to-justify-my-salary department who thinks that technology can solve all problems and that whoever doesn't agree just needs to open their eyes.
Because they can. The real problem here is that the browser cannot enforce its own security settings. The fact that Google is evil is beside the point. If I check a "don't track me" option in my browser then end up being tracked, my anger is directed toward the browser, not the tracker. Anything else doesn't make sense and is counter-productive.
Risky analogy: if my partner cheats on me, my anger should be directed toward my partner, not to anyone else (provided my partner cheated on me with someone who doesn't know me).
It seems to me that the US government wants to be able to use software-based attacks on other countries (like Iran with Stuxnet), while being totally protected from software-based attacks from the outside. In my opinion, this will never happen: US, like any other country, is and will be vulnerable to these attacks. No matter how much money they throw at it. In this context one might wonder whether it's in the US government's interest to bring the war to this terrain, like they did with Stuxnet.
After reading TFA I cannot find any convincing experimental validation. I see a lot of "can" and conditional tense (maybe that's the author's style), but nothing on the validation of the approach. Where is the experimental data, including the number of anonymous users correctly and incorrectly identified on forums?
No, being a republican while not being rich just makes you vote for people who don't have your best interest at heart. Whether that makes you someone with principles or just a victim is another question. To be fair, democrats also don't have your best interest a heart.
Of course no mod points - still, thanks for the laugh :)
For some people (including me), surprising someone and showing them that we really tried to find something they like is a very important part of making a present.
Firearms account for approximately 18,000 suicides annually in the US and approximately 10,000 homicides.
So, even if we lump in homicides with your suicides AND assume homicides are committed by legal gun owners (which most times they are not): 28,000 is 0.035% of 80 million gun owners in the US, which means it is NOT the "primary purpose of owning a gun". It in fact accounts for a MINISCULE use of firearms.
Although to be fair, you should also take into account that each of these gun owners will own guns for more than a year of their life. Imagining they own a gun for 30 years on average (I have no clue if this is realistic) and the gun owner population stays around the same size, then 1.05% of gun owners in the US will at some point use their gun in a suicide or homicide. I would worry about it, although probably less than about tobacco.
I never get paid for reviewing an article, it's part of the job, and it also makes sense: I want other people to review my articles, so I review other people's articles too. I want good (not necessarily positive) reviews, so I try my best to deliver good reviews.
One anecdote though: I once received a request to review a paper for a journal which I didn't know. It was the "Journal of ****** University" or something like that, anyway a university edited its own journal, which I find questionable for several reasons. It was a Chinese university. I was extremely reluctant to accept to review this paper. This was probably expected, since the editor also asked me my postal address so that they can send me a gift, should I accept to review the paper. This made me even more reluctant. I still accepted to perform the review due to other reasons, but I did not indicate my address. I still received a gift a few weeks later (some Chinese stamps). So although in theory the reviews are performed for free, it doesn't prevent the editors from trying to buy services from the reviewers. In that case, in order to give credibility to a new journal.
I cannot find any mention of him using text search on the whole article.
Games don't need to be optimised for iControlpad: you can map the keypresses from the pad to a virtual keyboard using free software. Plus, most people already carry their phone everywhere anyway, so the extra iControlpad is no bigger hassle than the extra PSP. The pad is about the samesize as a regular smartphone. For me it's as convenient as can be. I'd still be interested in seeing numbers though.
I have an iControlpad and games are very playable. Also works with most other emulators, so you can play snes, arcade, psx and n64 games for instance.
It is exactly the same. Apple just adds a layer. I'd let the users decide if yet another layer is a thing they want, but Apple won't let them.
I didn't argue that they add no value. The starting point is that the policy "blows goats", but that it's "good for most users". In other words, we're discussing the fact that, as you put it yourself, Apple forces people into their setup. I can perfectly understand that the added value is trust, but also that this trust comes as a price. I have more trouble understanding that forcing people into this setup is "good for most users". Let people decide for themselves what's good for them.
How exactly is this good for "most users"? If Apple takes its toll on every sale, then the price of everything rises so that the sellers can still make a benefit. Guess who pays for that?
I think you misunderstand the meaning of "agnosticism". It is more about suspending your judgement than about not believing. The existence of a god is a gnosis so you don't take it as a truth, but the same holds for its non-existence.
Actually good independent newspapers exist in France and some of them do a great work. The best example is "Le Canard Enchaîné", which has existed for almost a century. Although self-qualified "satyrical", this weekly is at the origin of many scandals in France in the past century. The journalists do amazing investigations, you won't see ads on any page (to ensure independence), it cannot be read electronically (although there is a website including a poor-quality version of the front page). And guess what, people are willing to pay for a paper version with no ads and quality content. They release accounts and balance every year, and unlike every mainstream newspaper using tons of ads and an electronic version, the balance is positive every year.
By the way, politicians are afraid of it, too. I'm not sure there are equivalents in other countries in fact, but maybe someone could enlighten me. For instance, how many national newspapers with 0 ads can you find in the USA?
If your employer types your name in a search engine, is he only going to find the account for colleagues? I'm not on Facebook so I have no idea, but I'm wondering, aren't you required to use your real identity?
Also, is it not annoying to log in four times every day?
they're not in "bad guy" territory yet
Just speaking for myself here: they most certainly are, although discussing the reasons is out of scope and would take ages.
I get the impression that many people see the USA as a necessary evil. Apparently everybody thinks that there has to be domination by one nation over the others; in this perspective, the USA are the least bad option (alternatives such as China or Russia aren't that exciting).
Seeing how the USA are the biggest bully on the planet, it is a smart choice for no country to depend on them, even for the EU, itself made of big bullies.
The USA have already misbehaved with their "friends" and there is no reason to believe that they will not do it again. Therefore seeking independence from them is the sane thing to do.
Your answer is informative but does not really answer the original question, let me reformulate it for you: why should anyone wonder about who Bill Clinton had sex with in the first place, it's his problem, not the people's.
The fact that Bill Clinton lied when this story was investigated is a different matter: the point is, this story should never have been investigated to start with.
Agreed, the distinction between cult and religion is highly subjective.
Where I come from, there is a saying that a religion is simply a successful cult.