Is it just me, or anybody else has the feeling that this, ahem, "article" is shameless plug for a neither-original-nor-particularly-interesting web site?
Does Jon Katz believe that MyVideoGames.com is the first site to focus on games??? The first site to report game news and publish articles ruminating on the meaning/use/significance/addiction to games?
Gaming community has been flourishing on the web, and on the 'net before that, for a long, long time. MyVideoGames is just Johnny-come-lately...
He hacked his way across the internet and into that computer and captured a screenshot? Please! If he knew how to do that, he'd be far too busy to do what he's doing with it.
anyway, all Occam's razor is is a rough guide on what to work with...it doesn't actually have anything to do with what's "right" or "wrong"...
Not to start an epistemiological debate, but I wonder how you define "right" and "wrong" in the context of contemporary science? Specifically, how can you tell if whether science theory is "right"? Is is possible to *prove* a science theory?
Is there any evidence for string theory? I was under the impression that this is somewhat-elegant-but-not-great-friends-with-Occams 's-razor theory which is a long, long way from getting any empirical support. Yet this review mentions accumulating evidence for the sting theory. Did I miss something? (and no, accumulating papers and preprints are not evidence).
The beauty of open source (and the thing I overlooked when evaluating my project) is that with open source, "nothing's too lame". Because we're developing on our own time, we're allowed (even encouraged!) to follow our whims.
Second, maybe. First, no.
As to developing on a whim, anybody who develops on his own time -- open source or not -- is free to (not allowed, but free to -- important difference) to do whatever he wants. On my whim I can write some code that I'll never show to another person in my life. Open source has nothing to do with it.
Whether "nothing's too lame", I beg to disagree. The world has enough ugliness as is, and more is not really needed. As long as you write for yourself, it's OK 'cause the ugliness is going to be its own punishment. But I object to people releasing lame code/applications for public consumption. At best it's a waste of everybody's time, at worst it's a slow and non-obvious corruption of data or a root-producing security hole.
Of course, everybody is free to release what he wants. I am not arguing for prohibiting people from releasing code or for licensing programmers (as some misguided souls have suggested). All I am wishing for is a little wisdom from people about to unleash their creation upon the unsuspecting world. I know, I know, I am going to be disappointed. But at least I can bitch in Slashdot about it...
It is a marketing coup: you get 1) free programming through the power of open source, 2) free promotion throughout a possible target audience, and 3) happy potential customers. What more could a company ask for?
In a small town, a lot of what we now consider basic privacy was impossible. "Everyone knew your business": your salary, work history, the embarrassing things you did in third grade.
That's a common objection to privacy as a right -- "we didn't have any before urbanization". It has a bit of validity, but not much. Some problems with it:
(1) Just because something hasn't always been a right does not mean it's not what we consider a "natural right". For example in ancient Greece personal freedom was not a basic right -- you could become a slave by being captured, by not paying your debts, etc. In medieval Europe (and in the Soviet Union until early 90s, that's 1990's) people could not freely change their place of living, though most American consider the right to settle anywhere to be a "natural right".
(2) Even if you had no privacy against other inhabitants of your village, you had privacy against the world. A stranger coming into the village and asking about you would gain little information. Compare to contemporary situation where anybody with the right tools and access can get what's available.
(3) The village's information-gathering system was highly imperfect. Some information was known by all, some by few, some by nobody. Yes, everybody knew what you did and how much you made, but goings-on inside the house were generally private. Nowaday the ability to concentrate information in one place is much higher.
(4) The village's storage of information was short-term. Human memory is selective and lossy. Nobody remembers your third-grade grades or the fact that you were expelled from the class five times for being disrespectful to a teacher. Compare to now -- databases never forget.
(5) The villagers would not generalize about you because they had too little information about people like you (and too little processing capability, too). Today it's perfectly feasible to make the following chain of connections: "This guy buys a lot of red meat and butter and we see no gym payments anywhere -- we know that statistically such people die early from heart disease -- so let's target this guy for cholesterol-lowering medication and raise his life insurance rates".
So, no, "we all lived in villages with no privacy" is not a good argument.
Privacy isn't important in the world of e-commerce, unless it is a product unto itself.
Yep.
Companies will sell you software to help violate someone else's privacy, and software to protect your privacy, which means that privacy itself is for sale.
Nope. Just because tools for for invasion/protection of privacy are being sold, does not mean privacy itself is being sold. I could download some, say, nasty sniffer software, and I could download some military-strength encryption software. Does this mean privacy is being downloaded?
Unless protecting my privacy becomes profitable, companies will sell my details to the highest bidder.
They most certainly will.
This leads to the question: is there a way to guarantee that it is in Company X's best interest to protect my privacy?
Why should that be so? Why should company X be concerned about your privacy? You are not in the business of protecting the privacy of your next-door neighbor, and company X is not in the business of protecting your privacy. Your privacy is your own concern -- if you care about it, you can protect it.
I don't want anybody to protect my privacy -- but I want tools and rights to do the job on my own.
IANAL, But I believe you'll find that intent is important in US law. If your intent is to do harm (dropping bricks on people) and you kill someone, then you are guilty of a some kind of Manslaughter. Usually, you have to intend to kill to be convicted of 1st degree murder. The kids you cite are probably guilty of some other kind of Manslaughter.
IANAL, too, but as far as I know:
Intent to kill -- 1st degree murder
No intent to kill, but either intent to do harm, or... er, forgot the proper word, but the meaning is that maybe you didn't want to kill but you should have known that what you are doing will kill ("a reasonable person in the same situation will realize that...") -- 2nd degree murder.
No intent to kill, no intent to do harm, but something like negligence -- manslaughter.
Now, they wanted proof that the credit card details I sent them really belonged to me, in the form of a photo of me and a photo of my credit card (actual size I suppose).
Amazing. And you didn't tell them to fuck off? You must be a really kindhearted soul.
In any case, they are waaaay out of line and, of course, breathtakingly stupid. I mean, what's to stop you from sending them a photograph of some random Joe Q. Loser and slightly-Photoshop-processed picture of a credit card showing whatever numbers you want it to show?
If I were you, I'd tell these guys that they are being bloody utterly ridiculous and that you'll be glad to see the survival-of-the-fittest principle demonstrated on them. I mean who would ever buy from them??
what makes you think that they're just searching for the name "metallica" rather than the actual names of their songs?
And what difference would that make? I don't know the names of Metallica songs, but for the sake of argument let's say it has a song called "Hellraiser". So my two files are going to be called "Metallica -- Hellraiser/real/" and "Metallica -- Hellraiser/bogus/". Again, a human can deal with it easily, software -- not so easily.
It's a very sensible thing to do and entirely in the spirit of the net.
It is a sensible thing to do, but I beg to disagree on the "spirit of the net" issue. I am quite sure that assembling databases of who owns which files is not in the spirit of the net. Sniffing packets -- yeah, sure. Assembling hit lists for corporations' legal departments -- not really.
As for the re-naming of files, that's a complete red herring. People find songs on Napster because the songs are filed under sensible names - i.e. the name of the song. Whatever filing mechanism you decide to use, if you don't want to use names, then software such as this will always be able to access that filing mechanism just as easily as the official client software.
Bullshit. This is completely equivalent to spam-proofing email addresses. If I have two files, one of which is called "Metallica -- track 13" and the other is called "Metallica -- RIAA bait", a human will be able to know what's happening perfectly well. Software is likely to have severe problems.
Remember -- we are not really talking about 'hiding' files from RIAA, though it's doable, too. We are talking about spamming their search engines with bogus data which is trivial.
Most of these net play versions seem to focus on dweebs at home fragging their buddies across the net. Give me a world where I get to shoot the baddies, discover levels and fight to survive. An a believable reason for doing so.
Two words: System Shock.
And a word of advice: don't play it alone in a dark room. You'll have nightmares.
Without anonymity, there can be no privacy on the Internet.
Well, technically speaking that's not true. Just encrypt everything and you have quite good privacy, but not necessarily anonymity. Yes, you are still vulnerable to traffic analysis, but this is a huge step up from the current situation.
[excuse]It's not that I don't value anonymity. It's just that this particular argument fails.[/excuse]
Pretty much anyone can be tracked down, despite the "anonymous" quality of the Internet as it exists today. If I happen to view a website that the government doesn't like, they can trace my IP, check with my ISP, and get a lock on me pretty quickly.
It depends. Generally, if you don't cover your tracks, tracing you is very, very easy. But if you do cover your tracks and have a clue, then finding you is hard. Exhibit A: The Freedom software (www.freedom.net). Exhibit B: DDOS attacks.
If you aren't willing to take responsibility for what you do or say, you shouldn't do or say it.
It's not a question of responsibility. It's a question of pressure from the majority and/or a vocal minority. It has long been recognized that anonymous speech is very, very important to a democracy. There are multiple Supreme Court cases where this is said explicitly.
And "stand up to be counted" is sometimes the right thing to do, but often is not. For example, I believe that drugs should be legalized. I am prepared to argue the point in forums like Slashdot, but I will not attempt to convert my co-workers to the idea (they consider me enough weirdo as is:-) )
Besides, you cannot really separate privacy and anonymity. Both of them break the link between the actor and the action, it's just that in privacy the actor is known, but the action is not, while in anonymity the action is known, but the actor is not. They are just two sides of the same coin.
The list of Apogee's trademarks also includes such gems as "Prey" and "Come get some".
I think some lawyers are being overzealous. If you read the text, you'll notice that you have to ask Apogee's permission before using the trademarks, anyway. And no, I don't think it has anything to do with UCITA. This is pure trademark law and AFAIK the terms on Apogee's site have nothing to do with buying a software product from them. For example, I never bought any software from them, and yet I am sure that they feel I would be bound by these trademark use restrictions.
[Meta tags] They're still there, and still used correctly by some sites.
Sure, but does anybody care? Meta tags are now 'tainted' and no search engine even spares as much as a glance in their direction.
Perhaps collaborative trust-based filtering is the way to go.
I don't understand how this could work. It's doable for a tree-like reference site (Yahoo), but seems impossible for a pure search engine (Google). Let's say I type "support vector machines Vapnik" into the engine -- who and how is going to filter the results so that I don't get "naked and petrified young girls" matches? The only feasible thing seems to be locking out of IP addresses which supply bogus data, but this will get extremely messy extremely fast.
You MUST provide an ALT text alternative to any images, otherwise you will drive away viewers
So instead of a banner I will see "Come to our site for hot chicks, naked and petrified...". I don't think this is going to help much.
I wasn't really concerned with bandwidth. I was concerned with the fact that a search becomes a request to send targeted advertising to you, and nothing more.
Your list of suggestions reads like a kindergarden points list: be nice, share, play fair. What makes you think these tactics will be effective in the political arena where spin and perception manipulation rule the day?
There is one quite amazing guy -- calls himself a technomad -- that seems intent on building for himself (and his current girlfriend) a human- (or wind-) powered mobile home jam-packed with electronics. He started with a bike, switched to trimaranish kayak, then to a big almost-blue-water trimaran, then back to a canoe-based small trimaran. The site is called www.microship.com and there are, basically, work diaries online -- makes for very interesting reading.
I think that of all people he should be the most knowledgeable about the issue of 'net access from the middle of nowhere. There may even be information on his site -- plenty of stuff there.
The idea is interesting, no doubt. However there are three major (from my POV) with it:
(1) An obvious point: if a site itself decides which queries to respond to, there'll be a lot of spamming the index. Doesn't anybody remember the fate of the [meta] tags?
(2) This search technology essentially turns a search into an advertising stream. Since the site decides what to return, it'll return a blurb instead of a context around the match. And if the site can returns graphics and not just text strings... oh, my! Advertising banners as search results! Joy.
(3) The results are going to be dependent on the location of the query. Same question asked from a machine in California is likely to return different results if asked from a machine in Germany (especially with low timeouts). This isn't horrible, but not all that good. In particular, it means that I cannot tell other people "Search for 'foo', you'll find the site I am talking about on the first page".
Out of the three, the first is so obvious, something will be done about it. I don't know what, though. It's the second that worries me most of all. Besides more advertising, there is a basic problem here -- I want to see what the site has, not necessarily what they prefer to show me. To give a trivial example, a company could have a recalls/warnings/manufacturing defects page somewhere on its site to satisfy disclosure requirements, but never return this page to any search.
All in all, I'll stick with Google for the time being, thank you very much.
But you cannot claim to be fighting for right when you are willing to expose innocents to more risk than you are willing to take on yourself.
I don't see why. In particular, this means that almost all air-to-ground warfare is highly immoral. Consider an enemy (whatever the enemy might be) group that took cover in an abandoned village. The group has no AA weapons. There are still a few villagers left around -- probably those too old or sick to run away. Your position implies that to bomb this village is immoral, but to stage an infantry assault on it is perfectly OK. Doesn't make sense to me.
Bombing the shit out of the countryside and creating all sorts of "collateral damage" - i.e., dead innocents - from your safe little airplane because you're not willing to get down on the much more dangerous dirt and apply selective force is not heroism.
Agreed. But nobody is talking about heroism. We are talking about morality of relatively riskless application of overwhelming force. I don't think anybody ever claimed there was something heroic in this.
The dehumanization factor of so called "high-tech" warfare creates a social/political climet that allows for justifications of mass suffering.
I don't see why -- you'll have to come up with some arguments as to why do you think this is so. Besides, these kinds of arguments were put forward each time a better ranged weapon came along. For example, there was a great deal of bitching and whining on the part of knights (about the dehumanizing factor of high-tech warfare) when firearms appeared.
Don't forget the high-tech media which is one of the greatest weapons devised.
And what does this have to do with the issue? I, too, can come up with metaphors that use the word "weapon".
In reference to Cambodia and Rawanda you need to check your history a little better.
I do? I don't think so. And, BTW, the country is called Rwanda, not Rawanda.
The USA turned a blined eye to both of these areas as massacures beyond imagination were taking place.
Exactly my point. Thank you for supporting it. Ignatieff's book, it seems, is heavily pro-isolationist and anti-interverntionist. I was making the observation that intervention (even with high-tech weapons) is not necessarily a bad (as in immoral) thing.
If you look at Rawanda's history you'll find that massacures the scale of recent did not take place until colonial Europe arived and pit populations against themselves.
This is pure unadulterated crap.
(1) Massacres of this scale could not take place because there weren't so many people living around. Before the Europeans arrived and hugely upped the local population growth, tribes were small.
(2) As to pitting populations against themselves, it seems to me that Rwanda was independent for quite a while by now, and no massacres were taking place while it was colony.
(3) And how would you know that no genocides occured in the pre-colonial Africa? As a matter of fact, tribes and peoples were wiped out on a regular basis, with most completely forgotten and no trace remaining of them.
While were at it you should'nt fail to mention South America, where in Nicaragua the US CIA spent it's time training soldiers to butcher the civilian population.
Well, I was talking about genocide. I don't think that even the US loonly left claims there was genocide in Nicaragua.
It's easy to think that war without loss of life is a good thing if your side is right.
I'll put it to you that war without loss of life is a good things regardless of who is right.
The problem is that we ( the USA ) is not right.
We is not right about what? Everything in the world?
For all are morel grandstanding our foriegn policy is completely self interested to the point where killing and torturing entire population is justifiable.
Sigh.
(1) Our moral policy is self-interested as opposed to whose?
(2) Care to give some examples of US killing and torturing entire population in recent times?
Look at our atitude tords the UN
Yes, and? UN is a highly hypocritical bureacratic organization mostly interested in the welfare of its own employees. I certainly do not see it as holding any moral high ground. And why should it? Is there something magical about the assembly of 150-odd representatives of various governments?
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or anybody else has the feeling that this, ahem, "article" is shameless plug for a neither-original-nor-particularly-interesting web site?
Kaa
Does Jon Katz believe that MyVideoGames.com is the first site to focus on games??? The first site to report game news and publish articles ruminating on the meaning/use/significance/addiction to games?
Gaming community has been flourishing on the web, and on the 'net before that, for a long, long time. MyVideoGames is just Johnny-come-lately...
Kaa
He hacked his way across the internet and into that computer and captured a screenshot? Please! If he knew how to do that, he'd be far too busy to do what he's doing with it.
Ever heard of something called BackOrfice?
Kaa
anyway, all Occam's razor is is a rough guide on what to work with...it doesn't actually have anything to do with what's "right" or "wrong"...
Not to start an epistemiological debate, but I wonder how you define "right" and "wrong" in the context of contemporary science? Specifically, how can you tell if whether science theory is "right"? Is is possible to *prove* a science theory?
Kaa
Is there any evidence for string theory? I was under the impression that this is somewhat-elegant-but-not-great-friends-with-Occams 's-razor theory which is a long, long way from getting any empirical support. Yet this review mentions accumulating evidence for the sting theory. Did I miss something? (and no, accumulating papers and preprints are not evidence).
Kaa
The beauty of open source (and the thing I overlooked when evaluating my project) is that with open source, "nothing's too lame". Because we're developing on our own time, we're allowed (even encouraged!) to follow our whims.
Second, maybe. First, no.
As to developing on a whim, anybody who develops on his own time -- open source or not -- is free to (not allowed, but free to -- important difference) to do whatever he wants. On my whim I can write some code that I'll never show to another person in my life. Open source has nothing to do with it.
Whether "nothing's too lame", I beg to disagree. The world has enough ugliness as is, and more is not really needed. As long as you write for yourself, it's OK 'cause the ugliness is going to be its own punishment. But I object to people releasing lame code/applications for public consumption. At best it's a waste of everybody's time, at worst it's a slow and non-obvious corruption of data or a root-producing security hole.
Of course, everybody is free to release what he wants. I am not arguing for prohibiting people from releasing code or for licensing programmers (as some misguided souls have suggested). All I am wishing for is a little wisdom from people about to unleash their creation upon the unsuspecting world. I know, I know, I am going to be disappointed. But at least I can bitch in Slashdot about it...
Kaa
It is a marketing coup: you get 1) free programming through the power of open source, 2) free promotion throughout a possible target audience, and 3) happy potential customers. What more could a company ask for?
Not taking a loss at every sale?
Kaa
In a small town, a lot of what we now consider basic privacy was impossible. "Everyone knew your business": your salary, work history, the embarrassing things you did in third grade.
That's a common objection to privacy as a right -- "we didn't have any before urbanization". It has a bit of validity, but not much. Some problems with it:
(1) Just because something hasn't always been a right does not mean it's not what we consider a "natural right". For example in ancient Greece personal freedom was not a basic right -- you could become a slave by being captured, by not paying your debts, etc. In medieval Europe (and in the Soviet Union until early 90s, that's 1990's) people could not freely change their place of living, though most American consider the right to settle anywhere to be a "natural right".
(2) Even if you had no privacy against other inhabitants of your village, you had privacy against the world. A stranger coming into the village and asking about you would gain little information. Compare to contemporary situation where anybody with the right tools and access can get what's available.
(3) The village's information-gathering system was highly imperfect. Some information was known by all, some by few, some by nobody. Yes, everybody knew what you did and how much you made, but goings-on inside the house were generally private. Nowaday the ability to concentrate information in one place is much higher.
(4) The village's storage of information was short-term. Human memory is selective and lossy. Nobody remembers your third-grade grades or the fact that you were expelled from the class five times for being disrespectful to a teacher. Compare to now -- databases never forget.
(5) The villagers would not generalize about you because they had too little information about people like you (and too little processing capability, too). Today it's perfectly feasible to make the following chain of connections: "This guy buys a lot of red meat and butter and we see no gym payments anywhere -- we know that statistically such people die early from heart disease -- so let's target this guy for cholesterol-lowering medication and raise his life insurance rates".
So, no, "we all lived in villages with no privacy" is not a good argument.
Kaa
Privacy isn't important in the world of e-commerce, unless it is a product unto itself.
Yep.
Companies will sell you software to help violate someone else's privacy, and software to protect your privacy, which means that privacy itself is for sale.
Nope. Just because tools for for invasion/protection of privacy are being sold, does not mean privacy itself is being sold. I could download some, say, nasty sniffer software, and I could download some military-strength encryption software. Does this mean privacy is being downloaded?
Unless protecting my privacy becomes profitable, companies will sell my details to the highest bidder.
They most certainly will.
This leads to the question: is there a way to guarantee that it is in Company X's best interest to protect my privacy?
Why should that be so? Why should company X be concerned about your privacy? You are not in the business of protecting the privacy of your next-door neighbor, and company X is not in the business of protecting your privacy. Your privacy is your own concern -- if you care about it, you can protect it.
I don't want anybody to protect my privacy -- but I want tools and rights to do the job on my own.
Kaa
holding users responsible for their privileged passwords is a good idea.
To the tune of putting them in jail for five years?! Doesn't this strike you as something between utterly ridiculous and very, very scary?
Kaa
IANAL, But I believe you'll find that intent is important in US law. If your intent is to do harm (dropping bricks on people) and you kill someone, then you are guilty of a some kind of Manslaughter. Usually, you have to intend to kill to be convicted of 1st degree murder. The kids you cite are probably guilty of some other kind of Manslaughter.
... er, forgot the proper word, but the meaning is that maybe you didn't want to kill but you should have known that what you are doing will kill ("a reasonable person in the same situation will realize that...") -- 2nd degree murder.
IANAL, too, but as far as I know:
Intent to kill -- 1st degree murder
No intent to kill, but either intent to do harm, or
No intent to kill, no intent to do harm, but something like negligence -- manslaughter.
Kaa
Now, they wanted proof that the credit card details I sent them really belonged to me, in the form of a photo of me and a photo of my credit card (actual size I suppose).
Amazing. And you didn't tell them to fuck off? You must be a really kindhearted soul.
In any case, they are waaaay out of line and, of course, breathtakingly stupid. I mean, what's to stop you from sending them a photograph of some random Joe Q. Loser and slightly-Photoshop-processed picture of a credit card showing whatever numbers you want it to show?
If I were you, I'd tell these guys that they are being bloody utterly ridiculous and that you'll be glad to see the survival-of-the-fittest principle demonstrated on them. I mean who would ever buy from them??
Kaa
what makes you think that they're just searching for the name "metallica" rather than the actual names of their songs?
/real/" and "Metallica -- Hellraiser /bogus/". Again, a human can deal with it easily, software -- not so easily.
And what difference would that make? I don't know the names of Metallica songs, but for the sake of argument let's say it has a song called "Hellraiser". So my two files are going to be called "Metallica -- Hellraiser
Kaa
It's a very sensible thing to do and entirely in the spirit of the net.
It is a sensible thing to do, but I beg to disagree on the "spirit of the net" issue. I am quite sure that assembling databases of who owns which files is not in the spirit of the net. Sniffing packets -- yeah, sure. Assembling hit lists for corporations' legal departments -- not really.
As for the re-naming of files, that's a complete red herring. People find songs on Napster because the songs are filed under sensible names - i.e. the name of the song. Whatever filing mechanism you decide to use, if you don't want to use names, then software such as this will always be able to access that filing mechanism just as easily as the official client software.
Bullshit. This is completely equivalent to spam-proofing email addresses. If I have two files, one of which is called "Metallica -- track 13" and the other is called "Metallica -- RIAA bait", a human will be able to know what's happening perfectly well. Software is likely to have severe problems.
Remember -- we are not really talking about 'hiding' files from RIAA, though it's doable, too. We are talking about spamming their search engines with bogus data which is trivial.
Kaa
Most of these net play versions seem to focus on dweebs at home fragging their buddies across the net. Give me a world where I get to shoot the baddies, discover levels and fight to survive. An a believable reason for doing so.
Two words: System Shock.
And a word of advice: don't play it alone in a dark room. You'll have nightmares.
Kaa
Without anonymity, there can be no privacy on the Internet.
Well, technically speaking that's not true. Just encrypt everything and you have quite good privacy, but not necessarily anonymity. Yes, you are still vulnerable to traffic analysis, but this is a huge step up from the current situation.
[excuse]It's not that I don't value anonymity. It's just that this particular argument fails.[/excuse]
Pretty much anyone can be tracked down, despite the "anonymous" quality of the Internet as it exists today. If I happen to view a website that the government doesn't like, they can trace my IP, check with my ISP, and get a lock on me pretty quickly.
It depends. Generally, if you don't cover your tracks, tracing you is very, very easy. But if you do cover your tracks and have a clue, then finding you is hard. Exhibit A: The Freedom software (www.freedom.net). Exhibit B: DDOS attacks.
Kaa
If you aren't willing to take responsibility for what you do or say, you shouldn't do or say it.
:-) )
It's not a question of responsibility. It's a question of pressure from the majority and/or a vocal minority. It has long been recognized that anonymous speech is very, very important to a democracy. There are multiple Supreme Court cases where this is said explicitly.
And "stand up to be counted" is sometimes the right thing to do, but often is not. For example, I believe that drugs should be legalized. I am prepared to argue the point in forums like Slashdot, but I will not attempt to convert my co-workers to the idea (they consider me enough weirdo as is
Besides, you cannot really separate privacy and anonymity. Both of them break the link between the actor and the action, it's just that in privacy the actor is known, but the action is not, while in anonymity the action is known, but the actor is not. They are just two sides of the same coin.
Kaa
The list of Apogee's trademarks also includes such gems as "Prey" and "Come get some".
I think some lawyers are being overzealous. If you read the text, you'll notice that you have to ask Apogee's permission before using the trademarks, anyway. And no, I don't think it has anything to do with UCITA. This is pure trademark law and AFAIK the terms on Apogee's site have nothing to do with buying a software product from them. For example, I never bought any software from them, and yet I am sure that they feel I would be bound by these trademark use restrictions.
Kaa
[Meta tags] They're still there, and still used correctly by some sites.
Sure, but does anybody care? Meta tags are now 'tainted' and no search engine even spares as much as a glance in their direction.
Perhaps collaborative trust-based filtering is the way to go.
I don't understand how this could work. It's doable for a tree-like reference site (Yahoo), but seems impossible for a pure search engine (Google). Let's say I type "support vector machines Vapnik" into the engine -- who and how is going to filter the results so that I don't get "naked and petrified young girls" matches? The only feasible thing seems to be locking out of IP addresses which supply bogus data, but this will get extremely messy extremely fast.
You MUST provide an ALT text alternative to any images, otherwise you will drive away viewers
So instead of a banner I will see "Come to our site for hot chicks, naked and petrified...". I don't think this is going to help much.
I wasn't really concerned with bandwidth. I was concerned with the fact that a search becomes a request to send targeted advertising to you, and nothing more.
Kaa
Your list of suggestions reads like a kindergarden points list: be nice, share, play fair. What makes you think these tactics will be effective in the political arena where spin and perception manipulation rule the day?
Kaa
There is one quite amazing guy -- calls himself a technomad -- that seems intent on building for himself (and his current girlfriend) a human- (or wind-) powered mobile home jam-packed with electronics. He started with a bike, switched to trimaranish kayak, then to a big almost-blue-water trimaran, then back to a canoe-based small trimaran. The site is called www.microship.com and there are, basically, work diaries online -- makes for very interesting reading.
I think that of all people he should be the most knowledgeable about the issue of 'net access from the middle of nowhere. There may even be information on his site -- plenty of stuff there.
Kaa
The idea is interesting, no doubt. However there are three major (from my POV) with it:
(1) An obvious point: if a site itself decides which queries to respond to, there'll be a lot of spamming the index. Doesn't anybody remember the fate of the [meta] tags?
(2) This search technology essentially turns a search into an advertising stream. Since the site decides what to return, it'll return a blurb instead of a context around the match. And if the site can returns graphics and not just text strings... oh, my! Advertising banners as search results! Joy.
(3) The results are going to be dependent on the location of the query. Same question asked from a machine in California is likely to return different results if asked from a machine in Germany (especially with low timeouts). This isn't horrible, but not all that good. In particular, it means that I cannot tell other people "Search for 'foo', you'll find the site I am talking about on the first page".
Out of the three, the first is so obvious, something will be done about it. I don't know what, though. It's the second that worries me most of all. Besides more advertising, there is a basic problem here -- I want to see what the site has, not necessarily what they prefer to show me. To give a trivial example, a company could have a recalls/warnings/manufacturing defects page somewhere on its site to satisfy disclosure requirements, but never return this page to any search.
All in all, I'll stick with Google for the time being, thank you very much.
Kaa
If true, doesn't speak too well for them considering how many UN types are constantly being kidnapped / killed / etc.
I speak of UN employees, as opposed to local military types who were temporarily issued blue helmets.
Kaa
But you cannot claim to be fighting for right when you are willing to expose innocents to more risk than you are willing to take on yourself.
I don't see why. In particular, this means that almost all air-to-ground warfare is highly immoral. Consider an enemy (whatever the enemy might be) group that took cover in an abandoned village. The group has no AA weapons. There are still a few villagers left around -- probably those too old or sick to run away. Your position implies that to bomb this village is immoral, but to stage an infantry assault on it is perfectly OK. Doesn't make sense to me.
Bombing the shit out of the countryside and creating all sorts of "collateral damage" - i.e., dead innocents - from your safe little airplane because you're not willing to get down on the much more dangerous dirt and apply selective force is not heroism.
Agreed. But nobody is talking about heroism. We are talking about morality of relatively riskless application of overwhelming force. I don't think anybody ever claimed there was something heroic in this.
Kaa
You seem to be quite thoroughly confused.
The dehumanization factor of so called "high-tech" warfare creates a social/political climet that allows for justifications of mass suffering.
I don't see why -- you'll have to come up with some arguments as to why do you think this is so. Besides, these kinds of arguments were put forward each time a better ranged weapon came along. For example, there was a great deal of bitching and whining on the part of knights (about the dehumanizing factor of high-tech warfare) when firearms appeared.
Don't forget the high-tech media which is one of the greatest weapons devised.
And what does this have to do with the issue? I, too, can come up with metaphors that use the word "weapon".
In reference to Cambodia and Rawanda you need to check your history a little better.
I do? I don't think so. And, BTW, the country is called Rwanda, not Rawanda.
The USA turned a blined eye to both of these areas as massacures beyond imagination were taking place.
Exactly my point. Thank you for supporting it. Ignatieff's book, it seems, is heavily pro-isolationist and anti-interverntionist. I was making the observation that intervention (even with high-tech weapons) is not necessarily a bad (as in immoral) thing.
If you look at Rawanda's history you'll find that massacures the scale of recent did not take place until colonial Europe arived and pit populations against themselves.
This is pure unadulterated crap.
(1) Massacres of this scale could not take place because there weren't so many people living around. Before the Europeans arrived and hugely upped the local population growth, tribes were small.
(2) As to pitting populations against themselves, it seems to me that Rwanda was independent for quite a while by now, and no massacres were taking place while it was colony.
(3) And how would you know that no genocides occured in the pre-colonial Africa? As a matter of fact, tribes and peoples were wiped out on a regular basis, with most completely forgotten and no trace remaining of them.
While were at it you should'nt fail to mention South America, where in Nicaragua the US CIA spent it's time training soldiers to butcher the civilian population.
Well, I was talking about genocide. I don't think that even the US loonly left claims there was genocide in Nicaragua.
It's easy to think that war without loss of life is a good thing if your side is right.
I'll put it to you that war without loss of life is a good things regardless of who is right.
The problem is that we ( the USA ) is not right.
We is not right about what? Everything in the world?
For all are morel grandstanding our foriegn policy is completely self interested to the point where killing and torturing entire population is justifiable.
Sigh.
(1) Our moral policy is self-interested as opposed to whose?
(2) Care to give some examples of US killing and torturing entire population in recent times?
Look at our atitude tords the UN
Yes, and? UN is a highly hypocritical bureacratic organization mostly interested in the welfare of its own employees. I certainly do not see it as holding any moral high ground. And why should it? Is there something magical about the assembly of 150-odd representatives of various governments?
Kaa