As a publicly traded company, Google has a fiduciary duty to maximize return on investment for the shareholders.
Google's corporate structure is actually somewhat unique in that respect. What you say isn't totally untrue, but a more accurate statement is that Google's leadership has a legal responsibility to meet the company's goals, as expressed in the Articles of Incorporation and the IPO prospectus. As a practical matter, Google's leadership also has to satisfy the voting shareholders or they'll be kicked out.
In most cases, the Articles of Incorporation and the prospectus say that the company's #1 goal is profit. That's a very reasonable thing for a corporation to be about. In Google's case that's true as well, but there are some caveats. The "Don't Be Evil" idea isn't just a motto, it was actually baked into the founding documents, and this gives Google's leadership the fully-legal opportunity to occasionally do things not to maximize profits, but because it's the right thing to do. In fact, though it's kind of fuzzy, it not only gives them legal cover it gives them a legal obligation
On the second point, Google's voting shares were intentionally structured to ensure that Larry Page and Sergey Brin retained, between the two of them, a majority of the voting shares. They have begun to sell of stock such that sometime around 2014 they'll lose their majority position (ultimately dropping to about 48%, which will still give them an almost unassailable position unless everyone lines up against them, including all of the Google employees), but as of right now, the two of them can outvote all other Google shareholders combined. This raised a lot of consternation among investors during the lead-up to the IPO, but when people bought Google's shares, they explicitly bought into the idea that Larry and Sergey know best.
The combination of those two facts gives Larry Page quite a lot of leeway to choose non-financial priorities if he'd like. And he himself is so wealthy that fluctuations in the stock price affect him only on paper, not in any way that would affect his lifestyle. Or his great-grandchildren's lifestyle.
If you truly want to work somewhere that does good for the public at their own expense, find a non-profit with a mission you support. And work unpaid overtime.
I do devote a significant amount of hours to volunteer for what I think are good causes, but I need to spend most of my time earning money to support my family. Luckily, my chosen profession gives me enough well-paying options that I don't have to do something I hate, and can sometimes do stuff that I really feel good about. The work I do for Google definitely falls into the latter bucket.
no. missing out on additional profits you could have had by being a fucking whore is not the same as suffering damage. that's not even a nice try, and shame on you for even attempting to pull that one.
Choosing to unilaterally change the business approach in a way that would reduce revenue would be considered "damage" to the business. What would the actual impact be? I'm sure someone in Google could tell you, but I don't know, so let's just assume the decrease in effectiveness of Google's targeted ads would decrease Google's revenues by 20%, based purely on reduced click-through (Google's primary business model is such that Google only gets paid if you click on the ad). That would be damage. Further, assuming Microsoft and Facebook didn't choose to do the same thing (*very* safe assumption, I think), the decline in Google's ad effectiveness would encourage advertisers to spend more of their money other places, where it works better. That would accelerate the losses in Google's core business.
Google is taking a risk by allowing users to opt out. If Google is wrong about the value of personalization to users, and wrong about the number of people who will choose to take the opt-outs, then it could cost the company a lot of money. If that happens (though I think it's unlikely), Google's management will either have to watch the company tank, or else publicly reverse positions and remove the opt-out options. If you don't see the riskiness inherent in Google's attempts to do the right thing here, you're blind.
risky to whom?
I think I answered this question quite thoroughly above. If you'd like to continue discussing this with me, please adopt a less aggressive tone and language, and I'll be happy to continue. If you respond again as you did the first time, I'll know you for a troll and ignore you (while congratulating you on your success at getting me to respond once.)
I was being facetious with my choice of "midget porn". There could be any number of embarrassing things or just things you don't want your co-workers to know about that aren't blocked by safe search.
Agreed. Either keep your work and personal accounts separate (which might actually improve the personalization in both contexts) or else opt out of personalization if there are things you don't want to bleed over.
Selling, sharing...it's just a matter of money and semantics.
It's far more than semantics... and money changes hands either way. The difference is that Google holds the subsidiaries, affiliates, etc., to Google's privacy policy. So Google continues to take responsibility for the way the data is used.
...right up until the point you are searching Google at work and it starts flashing up ads for midget porn based on that mailing list you signed up for in your personal gmail account.
Spending money on a media blitz to make sure that everyone knows how you're watching them is going above and beyond.
Hmmm, now I'm suspicious... wait a minute...
What makes you suspicious?
Actually, I know what makes you suspicious, and it's a common problem for Google. Everyone thinks that no corporation can ever do anything that appears good for the public and costly to the company unless there's some hidden profit motive. Since Google not infrequently does things that are good for the public and costly to the company with no hidden profit motive other than building long-term goodwill, people get intensely suspicious, certain that there must be more than meets the eye... and since the company is clearly trying to hide whatever that something is, it must be something really nefarious.
But the truth is simpler: Thought Google screws up from time to time, it generally does try to be a good citizen, and up front about its motives and methods.
[Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer.
Ah, now I get it.
That doesn't mean what you think it means. Like most engineers (and especially security engineers), I'm fairly suspicious of corporate skullduggery, and protective of on-line privacy. Like most Google engineers, I'm capable enough that I could easily work elsewhere if I felt like my talents were being put to evil uses. And as a recent hire, it's not like I have much of my net worth tied up in Google stock (I have a few shares that were given to me as a signing bonus), so I really have no motivation to shill for the company, even if I were dumb enough to think my posts on slashdot could affect the stock price.
So, again, what I post is the simple truth as I see it. There's no doubt that I have a positive bias towards Google, but that bias arises not from the fact that they deposit my bi-weekly paycheck, but because I see a lot of what Google does from the inside -- and it impresses me.
Oh, I was also going to mention that only two points in the policy document surprised me, and both in a good way.
The first is that Google does not aggregate DoubleClick tracking data with all of the rest, unless you specifically opt-in to that tracking. Personally, I think Google's personalization is useful enough to me that I will probably track down that opt-in setting and turn it on, but I'm surprised that it's not on by default.
The second thing is that while I'd always believed that Google kept all of the data in-house, and didn't sell any of it, I hadn't ever seen a commitment in writing to that effect. After starting work for Google early last year I quickly realized that the company would have to change dramatically before they'd ever sell user information, because there's a strong sentiment -- arrogance probably isn't too strong a word -- that no one else would use it as effectively as Google, so selling it would be a waste. There's also a strong sentiment that no one else would be as responsible with it.
Anyway, it's nice to see Google commit to not selling user data. I'd like to see a similar commitment from Facebook.
I thought they did that regardless of you being signed in or not.. maybe that's the way they used to do it? with cookies, but perhaps that would have soon been illegal in some locales, whereas using your signed in information is not?
the question again is does the tracking end when you log out.
The privacy policy is pretty clear, I think. Yes they use cookies to track you even when you're not signed in, and they try to connect that with you when you do sign in. If you want to ensure Google never tracks you, you can opt out using their privacy tools. That will install a "do not track" cookie which will cause Google to discard all of that data, except where they aggregate it into statistics that are in no way connectable to you. Unfortunately, various actions can cause that "do not track" cookie to be lost, so if you want to be really sure install Google's "keep my opt outs" extension, which will ensure the cookie is always present.
This isn't a change in Google's policy, or practice. Google has long collected information about all of its users, and used that information for targeted advertising. Those of us who think about things realized long ago that Google has tremendous visibility into our on-line activities and is smart enough to be able to extract a lot of information about us. All that's happening here is that Google is making this fact more visible to users by condensing dozens of long privacy policy documents written in legalese into one short, understandable document. According to their blog entry, Google is also going to be doing a lot of advertising to make sure that everyone is aware of the policy document.
In the short term, I think Google is going to suffer from a lot of backlash from users who are frightened by the explanation of what Google collects about them, but I think this is a really positive move by Google and I hope it spurs other on-line service providers to follow suit. If you're going to collect and use personal information about people, telling them what you're collecting and how you're using it, and doing so in a way that is easy to understand is the right thing to do. Spending money on a media blitz to make sure that everyone knows how you're watching them is going above and beyond.
Google's policy document also contains a link to Google's privacy tools, which make it easy for users to see what Google is tracking about them and to opt out if they don't want to be tracked. It's potentially risky for Google to advertise that to large numbers of people, but again it's the right thing to do. Google's theory is that when given the ability to make an informed choice, people will see enough value in the search personalization and even targeted advertising that they'll be okay with it.
I guess the truly selfless thing to do would be to make all of Google's tracking opt-in, rather than opt-out, but that's probably too much to hope for -- and it may even be that the world is better off this way, because if Google is right about the value of mass personalization we'd probably never know because hardly anyone will opt in. This way, it's possible that large numbers of people will opt out, but not the majority. In any case, making it all opt in would almost certainly be very damaging to Google's business. The current approach is significantly less risky, but still enables people to limit their privacy exposure if they wish.
[Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer. I work on the security of systems that process payments to/from Google, though, not on anything related to personal information tracking or privacy (other than I do work really hard to make sure users' payment instruments are well-protected, even from me). These opinions are my own, and based on Google's public statements not on inside information.]
TCP also has a packet content checksum. It's a literal sum (1's complement) of all of the header fields and text, so not the most sophisticated checksum, but certainly capable of catching most damage. Granted that SCTP's 32-bit CRC is better, but it's not a huge difference.
Yes, but the number of streams is limited. Also, that approach puts it on the browser to decide which pieces to get in which order, whereas SPDY allows those decisions to be shifted to the server, which can presumably know a lot more about the content it's delivering. Multiplexing rather than using separate connections should also reduce server load.
But only for dynamic requests (the article mentions a slow database query). Besides, few server setups add the Content-Length header for generated content, which effectively disables multi-request use such as pipelining.
Pipelining is probably perfectly fine for a server solely serving static content.
This is why we also need to deploy Moxie Marlinspike's "Convergence" certificate validation system, either as a stand-beside to the existing CA system, or as a replacement. This would eliminate government ability to easily spoof certs, also, even with CA cooperation (which they almost certainly get).
Though, as others have pointed out, you can *already* get free certs from startssl.com.
The pervasive meme that government is controlled by money, and politicians are owned by the highest bidders is wrong. Or, at least, the connection between money and influence isn't as direct as it's often assumed to be.
See, we do have some pretty good anti-corruption laws in place. Now, I'm not claiming that they're as good as they could be, but they're good enough that if you offer a bald bribe to an elected official, he'll not only turn you down he'll probably turn you in. Even the crookedest politicians (except in Chicago, maybe) realize that putting money in their own pockets is way too risky.
So lobbyists who want to buy Congressional votes have to be more subtle. The simplest and most direct way is to offer campaign donations -- but that's a form of payment that's a lot less effective than the aforementioned cynics think, because campaign monies can never find their way into the official's pocket. They can only be used for campaigning. "But," the cynics say, "that still means the money can be used to buy another term in office, and while the salary may not be that great, the perks are awesome, especially in terms of social standing (read: ego-stroking)."
Sort of. Campaign money also can't be used directly to buy voters' votes. It can really only be used to buy advertising of various sorts, to push a message. Given the skill of advertisers, that means that the candidate with the most money is able to give himself a significant leg up on the competition, because of the large number of basically apathetic voters, who will more or less just believe whatever the ads say -- especially if the ads say what the voter wants to hear. Which points out another important use of that campaign warchest: buying lots of polls and paying large teams of skilled strategists to help craft the message to ensure that it is what most of those apathetic voters want to hear and yet doesn't truly offend the rest. So the guy able to mainline the most, and best-tailored, ads into the apathetic voters' bloodstream wins.
BUT, and it's a big BUT, that only works when the voters are apathetic. This means that if something comes along which actually garners enough real voter attention, and makes the voters upset at the politician, he knows his ads are unlikely to be able to overcome that.
Votes are the real currency that matters to politicians. In most cases, campaign cash is a good proxy for votes, but not always. Chris Dodd appears to have forgotten this fact. Google, however, has just seen it reaffirmed. Google's intensive lobbying and cash wasn't able to do more than slow SOPA a bit, but a message direct to the voters got action.
That is an utterly ludicrous statement. Degree absolutely does matter, there's a huge difference between killing someone and fining them, for example, even if both are abuses of human rights. The fact that one abuse is of lesser degree doesn't make it right, or acceptable, but it does mean that its less bad than the abuse of greater degree.
If my country tortures just one person, it's lost any kind of moral high ground from which to cast criticism
Now you've changed your argument from "degree doesn't matter" to "quantity doesn't matter". That I can agree with, not so much because quantity truly doesn't matter but because accepting a given degree of abuse in small quantities almost inevitable results in that abuse in greater quantity over time.
I do have to point out that there are different forms of torture, which constitute different degrees of abuse, however. None are acceptable, and I do not approve of my country engaging in torture at all, but there are still differences between playing loud music all night, waterboarding and flaying.
When you do your search, and decide that you don't like how Google helped "fix up" your query, you can use "verbatim" mode. On the left side of the screen you'll see a "search tools" link. Click that, and it will expand to a list of various search options. Click "verbatim" and you'll get exactly the terms you searched for, no spelling correction, no synonyms, etc.
I think for most people, the automatic "improvements" of their search queries yields better results, because most people aren't very precise about their queries. For geeks, I think it would be good if Google provided a way to set verbatim mode as the default.
Equally as ridiculous: the state involved in the love affairs and relationships of anyone.
I think this is it. The state shouldn't recognize gay marriage because it shouldn't recognize straight marriage. It should recognize civil unions gay or straight and then let whatever religion you are decide to call it marriage.
Even better: The state shouldn't care about how individuals structure their living and financial arrangements at all. Let people define how they share their finances, etc. via contracts, and let them begin and end their relationships however they like, with or without some religious or non-religious ceremony.
Yes, this would require some restructuring of the tax code, but it could be done, and IMO we'd all be better off if the government just ceased to take any special note of any sort of marriage or civil union.
No problem. I do still mean what I said about Bush being responsible for at least some of this; the amount of effort that NCLB put on standardized testing crowded out room for other, potentially much more beneficial programs and classes.
Perhaps. I'm no Bush fan, I just think presidents in general get both too much blame and too much credit. Though I definitely agree that the question of how much standardized testing is useful is one that should be delegated to the state and local level. But then I think basically all education issues should be delegated to the state and local level, because the federal government has no legal basis for involving itself.
Password protect the AP. Lesson learned. Everybody move on.
While the rest of your post was probably true, on this point - if the AP is secure then the same kid will probably come back and download kiddy porn, then the owners go to jail - because it was via a secured AP.
He said password protect the AP's configuration, not secure the AP (in the normal sense of AP security, i.e. WPA).
"Treatment" centers? I said drop-in center, like, an afterschool program where they can use the internet, play video games, get some free food, and socialize. These kids don't have any special mental issues (other than "being a teenager").
In this case the connection has one hop, the No Child Left Behind Act. I don't blame Bush for everything, but there's a lot for which he can legitimately be blamed. This is one of those things.
Because prior to No Child Left Behind, public schools all had relationship classes?
Also, I know what your wife sees, because I have a daughter who's spent significant time in various teen treatment centers, and I got to know a lot of the girls. But you do have to keep in mind that those kids don't represent the norm. Most of them have some sort of mental or emotional disorder, and they tend to be *much* worse than "normal" kids in just about everything that has to do with other people.
I gave all my passwords to my wife, and I have all hers. Neither of us demanded it; it just made sense.
But the spousal relationship is unique, ethically and legally. I wouldn't normally do that with any other person except as an exception, and I would change passwords afterwards.
Heh. I know my wife's passwords but she doesn't know mine. I know hers because I manage her computer. She doesn't know mine because she can't remember them. We use a shared password storage service for all of the important passwords, which have to be unique and complex. So we both have access to the bank accounts, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
As a publicly traded company, Google has a fiduciary duty to maximize return on investment for the shareholders.
Google's corporate structure is actually somewhat unique in that respect. What you say isn't totally untrue, but a more accurate statement is that Google's leadership has a legal responsibility to meet the company's goals, as expressed in the Articles of Incorporation and the IPO prospectus. As a practical matter, Google's leadership also has to satisfy the voting shareholders or they'll be kicked out.
In most cases, the Articles of Incorporation and the prospectus say that the company's #1 goal is profit. That's a very reasonable thing for a corporation to be about. In Google's case that's true as well, but there are some caveats. The "Don't Be Evil" idea isn't just a motto, it was actually baked into the founding documents, and this gives Google's leadership the fully-legal opportunity to occasionally do things not to maximize profits, but because it's the right thing to do. In fact, though it's kind of fuzzy, it not only gives them legal cover it gives them a legal obligation
On the second point, Google's voting shares were intentionally structured to ensure that Larry Page and Sergey Brin retained, between the two of them, a majority of the voting shares. They have begun to sell of stock such that sometime around 2014 they'll lose their majority position (ultimately dropping to about 48%, which will still give them an almost unassailable position unless everyone lines up against them, including all of the Google employees), but as of right now, the two of them can outvote all other Google shareholders combined. This raised a lot of consternation among investors during the lead-up to the IPO, but when people bought Google's shares, they explicitly bought into the idea that Larry and Sergey know best.
The combination of those two facts gives Larry Page quite a lot of leeway to choose non-financial priorities if he'd like. And he himself is so wealthy that fluctuations in the stock price affect him only on paper, not in any way that would affect his lifestyle. Or his great-grandchildren's lifestyle.
If you truly want to work somewhere that does good for the public at their own expense, find a non-profit with a mission you support. And work unpaid overtime.
I do devote a significant amount of hours to volunteer for what I think are good causes, but I need to spend most of my time earning money to support my family. Luckily, my chosen profession gives me enough well-paying options that I don't have to do something I hate, and can sometimes do stuff that I really feel good about. The work I do for Google definitely falls into the latter bucket.
no. missing out on additional profits you could have had by being a fucking whore is not the same as suffering damage. that's not even a nice try, and shame on you for even attempting to pull that one.
Choosing to unilaterally change the business approach in a way that would reduce revenue would be considered "damage" to the business. What would the actual impact be? I'm sure someone in Google could tell you, but I don't know, so let's just assume the decrease in effectiveness of Google's targeted ads would decrease Google's revenues by 20%, based purely on reduced click-through (Google's primary business model is such that Google only gets paid if you click on the ad). That would be damage. Further, assuming Microsoft and Facebook didn't choose to do the same thing (*very* safe assumption, I think), the decline in Google's ad effectiveness would encourage advertisers to spend more of their money other places, where it works better. That would accelerate the losses in Google's core business.
Google is taking a risk by allowing users to opt out. If Google is wrong about the value of personalization to users, and wrong about the number of people who will choose to take the opt-outs, then it could cost the company a lot of money. If that happens (though I think it's unlikely), Google's management will either have to watch the company tank, or else publicly reverse positions and remove the opt-out options. If you don't see the riskiness inherent in Google's attempts to do the right thing here, you're blind.
risky to whom?
I think I answered this question quite thoroughly above. If you'd like to continue discussing this with me, please adopt a less aggressive tone and language, and I'll be happy to continue. If you respond again as you did the first time, I'll know you for a troll and ignore you (while congratulating you on your success at getting me to respond once.)
I was being facetious with my choice of "midget porn". There could be any number of embarrassing things or just things you don't want your co-workers to know about that aren't blocked by safe search.
Agreed. Either keep your work and personal accounts separate (which might actually improve the personalization in both contexts) or else opt out of personalization if there are things you don't want to bleed over.
Selling, sharing...it's just a matter of money and semantics.
It's far more than semantics... and money changes hands either way. The difference is that Google holds the subsidiaries, affiliates, etc., to Google's privacy policy. So Google continues to take responsibility for the way the data is used.
...right up until the point you are searching Google at work and it starts flashing up ads for midget porn based on that mailing list you signed up for in your personal gmail account.
Turn on safe search.
Spending money on a media blitz to make sure that everyone knows how you're watching them is going above and beyond.
Hmmm, now I'm suspicious... wait a minute...
What makes you suspicious?
Actually, I know what makes you suspicious, and it's a common problem for Google. Everyone thinks that no corporation can ever do anything that appears good for the public and costly to the company unless there's some hidden profit motive. Since Google not infrequently does things that are good for the public and costly to the company with no hidden profit motive other than building long-term goodwill, people get intensely suspicious, certain that there must be more than meets the eye... and since the company is clearly trying to hide whatever that something is, it must be something really nefarious.
But the truth is simpler: Thought Google screws up from time to time, it generally does try to be a good citizen, and up front about its motives and methods.
[Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer.
Ah, now I get it.
That doesn't mean what you think it means. Like most engineers (and especially security engineers), I'm fairly suspicious of corporate skullduggery, and protective of on-line privacy. Like most Google engineers, I'm capable enough that I could easily work elsewhere if I felt like my talents were being put to evil uses. And as a recent hire, it's not like I have much of my net worth tied up in Google stock (I have a few shares that were given to me as a signing bonus), so I really have no motivation to shill for the company, even if I were dumb enough to think my posts on slashdot could affect the stock price.
So, again, what I post is the simple truth as I see it. There's no doubt that I have a positive bias towards Google, but that bias arises not from the fact that they deposit my bi-weekly paycheck, but because I see a lot of what Google does from the inside -- and it impresses me.
Oh, I was also going to mention that only two points in the policy document surprised me, and both in a good way.
The first is that Google does not aggregate DoubleClick tracking data with all of the rest, unless you specifically opt-in to that tracking. Personally, I think Google's personalization is useful enough to me that I will probably track down that opt-in setting and turn it on, but I'm surprised that it's not on by default.
The second thing is that while I'd always believed that Google kept all of the data in-house, and didn't sell any of it, I hadn't ever seen a commitment in writing to that effect. After starting work for Google early last year I quickly realized that the company would have to change dramatically before they'd ever sell user information, because there's a strong sentiment -- arrogance probably isn't too strong a word -- that no one else would use it as effectively as Google, so selling it would be a waste. There's also a strong sentiment that no one else would be as responsible with it.
Anyway, it's nice to see Google commit to not selling user data. I'd like to see a similar commitment from Facebook.
I thought they did that regardless of you being signed in or not.. maybe that's the way they used to do it? with cookies, but perhaps that would have soon been illegal in some locales, whereas using your signed in information is not?
the question again is does the tracking end when you log out.
The privacy policy is pretty clear, I think. Yes they use cookies to track you even when you're not signed in, and they try to connect that with you when you do sign in. If you want to ensure Google never tracks you, you can opt out using their privacy tools. That will install a "do not track" cookie which will cause Google to discard all of that data, except where they aggregate it into statistics that are in no way connectable to you. Unfortunately, various actions can cause that "do not track" cookie to be lost, so if you want to be really sure install Google's "keep my opt outs" extension, which will ensure the cookie is always present.
This isn't a change in Google's policy, or practice. Google has long collected information about all of its users, and used that information for targeted advertising. Those of us who think about things realized long ago that Google has tremendous visibility into our on-line activities and is smart enough to be able to extract a lot of information about us. All that's happening here is that Google is making this fact more visible to users by condensing dozens of long privacy policy documents written in legalese into one short, understandable document. According to their blog entry, Google is also going to be doing a lot of advertising to make sure that everyone is aware of the policy document.
In the short term, I think Google is going to suffer from a lot of backlash from users who are frightened by the explanation of what Google collects about them, but I think this is a really positive move by Google and I hope it spurs other on-line service providers to follow suit. If you're going to collect and use personal information about people, telling them what you're collecting and how you're using it, and doing so in a way that is easy to understand is the right thing to do. Spending money on a media blitz to make sure that everyone knows how you're watching them is going above and beyond.
Google's policy document also contains a link to Google's privacy tools, which make it easy for users to see what Google is tracking about them and to opt out if they don't want to be tracked. It's potentially risky for Google to advertise that to large numbers of people, but again it's the right thing to do. Google's theory is that when given the ability to make an informed choice, people will see enough value in the search personalization and even targeted advertising that they'll be okay with it.
I guess the truly selfless thing to do would be to make all of Google's tracking opt-in, rather than opt-out, but that's probably too much to hope for -- and it may even be that the world is better off this way, because if Google is right about the value of mass personalization we'd probably never know because hardly anyone will opt in. This way, it's possible that large numbers of people will opt out, but not the majority. In any case, making it all opt in would almost certainly be very damaging to Google's business. The current approach is significantly less risky, but still enables people to limit their privacy exposure if they wish.
[Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer. I work on the security of systems that process payments to/from Google, though, not on anything related to personal information tracking or privacy (other than I do work really hard to make sure users' payment instruments are well-protected, even from me). These opinions are my own, and based on Google's public statements not on inside information.]
TCP also has a packet content checksum. It's a literal sum (1's complement) of all of the header fields and text, so not the most sophisticated checksum, but certainly capable of catching most damage. Granted that SCTP's 32-bit CRC is better, but it's not a huge difference.
Yes, but the number of streams is limited. Also, that approach puts it on the browser to decide which pieces to get in which order, whereas SPDY allows those decisions to be shifted to the server, which can presumably know a lot more about the content it's delivering. Multiplexing rather than using separate connections should also reduce server load.
But only for dynamic requests (the article mentions a slow database query). Besides, few server setups add the Content-Length header for generated content, which effectively disables multi-request use such as pipelining.
Pipelining is probably perfectly fine for a server solely serving static content.
But SPDY works for both.
This is why we also need to deploy Moxie Marlinspike's "Convergence" certificate validation system, either as a stand-beside to the existing CA system, or as a replacement. This would eliminate government ability to easily spoof certs, also, even with CA cooperation (which they almost certainly get).
Though, as others have pointed out, you can *already* get free certs from startssl.com.
Can they force _you_ to break the law by giving them the key though?
Complying with a court order is not breaking the law, even if the action would normally be a crime.
But the remainder of the DMCA... well, it's not terrible, but I'm not sure it accomplishes a ton either.
Criminalization of tools that may be used to circumvent copy protection schemes is terrible, in fact it's the worst part of the act.
there are still differences between playing loud music all night, waterboarding and flaying
While I'm not actually disagreeing with you, prolonged sleep deprivation is more than an inconvenience and can potentially be fatal.
True, but the degree of sleep deprivation you're talking about isn't achievable with loud music.
+1
The pervasive meme that government is controlled by money, and politicians are owned by the highest bidders is wrong. Or, at least, the connection between money and influence isn't as direct as it's often assumed to be.
See, we do have some pretty good anti-corruption laws in place. Now, I'm not claiming that they're as good as they could be, but they're good enough that if you offer a bald bribe to an elected official, he'll not only turn you down he'll probably turn you in. Even the crookedest politicians (except in Chicago, maybe) realize that putting money in their own pockets is way too risky.
So lobbyists who want to buy Congressional votes have to be more subtle. The simplest and most direct way is to offer campaign donations -- but that's a form of payment that's a lot less effective than the aforementioned cynics think, because campaign monies can never find their way into the official's pocket. They can only be used for campaigning. "But," the cynics say, "that still means the money can be used to buy another term in office, and while the salary may not be that great, the perks are awesome, especially in terms of social standing (read: ego-stroking)."
Sort of. Campaign money also can't be used directly to buy voters' votes. It can really only be used to buy advertising of various sorts, to push a message. Given the skill of advertisers, that means that the candidate with the most money is able to give himself a significant leg up on the competition, because of the large number of basically apathetic voters, who will more or less just believe whatever the ads say -- especially if the ads say what the voter wants to hear. Which points out another important use of that campaign warchest: buying lots of polls and paying large teams of skilled strategists to help craft the message to ensure that it is what most of those apathetic voters want to hear and yet doesn't truly offend the rest. So the guy able to mainline the most, and best-tailored, ads into the apathetic voters' bloodstream wins.
BUT, and it's a big BUT, that only works when the voters are apathetic. This means that if something comes along which actually garners enough real voter attention, and makes the voters upset at the politician, he knows his ads are unlikely to be able to overcome that.
Votes are the real currency that matters to politicians. In most cases, campaign cash is a good proxy for votes, but not always. Chris Dodd appears to have forgotten this fact. Google, however, has just seen it reaffirmed. Google's intensive lobbying and cash wasn't able to do more than slow SOPA a bit, but a message direct to the voters got action.
Degree doesn't matter.
That is an utterly ludicrous statement. Degree absolutely does matter, there's a huge difference between killing someone and fining them, for example, even if both are abuses of human rights. The fact that one abuse is of lesser degree doesn't make it right, or acceptable, but it does mean that its less bad than the abuse of greater degree.
If my country tortures just one person, it's lost any kind of moral high ground from which to cast criticism
Now you've changed your argument from "degree doesn't matter" to "quantity doesn't matter". That I can agree with, not so much because quantity truly doesn't matter but because accepting a given degree of abuse in small quantities almost inevitable results in that abuse in greater quantity over time.
I do have to point out that there are different forms of torture, which constitute different degrees of abuse, however. None are acceptable, and I do not approve of my country engaging in torture at all, but there are still differences between playing loud music all night, waterboarding and flaying.
When you do your search, and decide that you don't like how Google helped "fix up" your query, you can use "verbatim" mode. On the left side of the screen you'll see a "search tools" link. Click that, and it will expand to a list of various search options. Click "verbatim" and you'll get exactly the terms you searched for, no spelling correction, no synonyms, etc.
I think for most people, the automatic "improvements" of their search queries yields better results, because most people aren't very precise about their queries. For geeks, I think it would be good if Google provided a way to set verbatim mode as the default.
Equally as ridiculous: the state involved in the love affairs and relationships of anyone.
I think this is it. The state shouldn't recognize gay marriage because it shouldn't recognize straight marriage. It should recognize civil unions gay or straight and then let whatever religion you are decide to call it marriage.
Even better: The state shouldn't care about how individuals structure their living and financial arrangements at all. Let people define how they share their finances, etc. via contracts, and let them begin and end their relationships however they like, with or without some religious or non-religious ceremony.
Yes, this would require some restructuring of the tax code, but it could be done, and IMO we'd all be better off if the government just ceased to take any special note of any sort of marriage or civil union.
No problem. I do still mean what I said about Bush being responsible for at least some of this; the amount of effort that NCLB put on standardized testing crowded out room for other, potentially much more beneficial programs and classes.
Perhaps. I'm no Bush fan, I just think presidents in general get both too much blame and too much credit. Though I definitely agree that the question of how much standardized testing is useful is one that should be delegated to the state and local level. But then I think basically all education issues should be delegated to the state and local level, because the federal government has no legal basis for involving itself.
Password protect the AP. Lesson learned. Everybody move on.
While the rest of your post was probably true, on this point - if the AP is secure then the same kid will probably come back and download kiddy porn, then the owners go to jail - because it was via a secured AP.
He said password protect the AP's configuration, not secure the AP (in the normal sense of AP security, i.e. WPA).
"Treatment" centers? I said drop-in center, like, an afterschool program where they can use the internet, play video games, get some free food, and socialize. These kids don't have any special mental issues (other than "being a teenager").
Ah, okay. I misunderstood.
In this case the connection has one hop, the No Child Left Behind Act. I don't blame Bush for everything, but there's a lot for which he can legitimately be blamed. This is one of those things.
Because prior to No Child Left Behind, public schools all had relationship classes?
Also, I know what your wife sees, because I have a daughter who's spent significant time in various teen treatment centers, and I got to know a lot of the girls. But you do have to keep in mind that those kids don't represent the norm. Most of them have some sort of mental or emotional disorder, and they tend to be *much* worse than "normal" kids in just about everything that has to do with other people.
I gave all my passwords to my wife, and I have all hers. Neither of us demanded it; it just made sense. But the spousal relationship is unique, ethically and legally. I wouldn't normally do that with any other person except as an exception, and I would change passwords afterwards.
Heh. I know my wife's passwords but she doesn't know mine. I know hers because I manage her computer. She doesn't know mine because she can't remember them. We use a shared password storage service for all of the important passwords, which have to be unique and complex. So we both have access to the bank accounts, etc.