If the information in the logs exists, it will leak, no matter what good intentions and policy Google practices in this case. There is nothing particularly wrong with Google; they simply don't have the resources and motivation to protect this information like they should. For example, what if,
Google changes its policy?
Google changes management, which changes policy
Google changes ownership
Google cooperates with the government in other cases, per their privacy policy: We may also share information with third parties in limited circumstances, including when complying with legal process. What if there is an actual war 20 years from now? You saw how Americans protected civil liberties after one terrorist attack.
Google cooperates with a foreign government. They already help China with censorship so they can do business in China. What if the Chinese gov't asks for search information on their citizens? What about the Russian gov't? Is Google crazy enough to keep a reacord of it?
The data simply leaks. As great as Google's reputation is, people inside the company have access to it, and often reputation doesn't match reality. And we're not just talking about hackers: The cost of protecting it from an intelligence service may be more than Google is willing to bear.
Google uses it against someone. The temptation will be there someday, and Google is not operated by saints. Does Google use it for background checks on prospective employees?
Just the political value of the data -- to discredit or spy on enemies -- is so great that I can't imagine it will stay secret forever. With it, the Bush administration (or Putin or any other) can gather dirt on everyone, from congress to the dog catcher candidate. In fact, for censorship purposes it almost doesn't matter if it leaks: By merely seeking the data, the gov't raises legitimate questions in many minds and will have a 'chilling effect' on what they search for.
I think that, until now, most people looked on privacy as something that idealogues worried about and which had no practical significance. I think that attitude was only a lack of experience and foresight. Unfortunately, their information is already on Google's servers; there is no going back.
Google should simply anonymize the data: They can collect aggregate market research, or even person-by-person research, yet remove all identifying information. Until then, I would seriously consider avoiding using Google, or use an anonymizing proxy service to protect yourself. The standard of behavior in privacy matters must be raised.
Well, baseball makes a lot of money, but that's only because fans are willing to pay it. I'm sure you don't really expect a business to offer a discount just as a favor.
I don't fault the players for obtaining their share of the money. Should millionaire players be paid less so billionaire owners can pocket more?
I'm sure if the orignal poster's Thunderbird installation had tens of thousands of servers behind it, like Google, it would be plenty quick.
Can you name a database that meets the specs in my previous post better than Thunderbird? One spec I forgot: No maintenance, other than maybe occasionally (very occasionally) compacting and reindexing.
Maybe there is one; but it's interesting to consider...
I wonder what the relative performance is of different clients and formats.
BTW, Thunderbird seems to handle 800 MB fine, in my experience, and even twice that. Also, it may depend on more than size: Is it # messages? # attachments? # large attachments? etc.
Also, what aspects of performance are we measuring? Message load time? Initial application load time?
One problem I've seen is very large inboxes rebuilding their summary files frequently, each rebuild taking over 10 min....
TB has never really scaled... it slows down as your inbox gets larger for example - now takes over 3 minutes to open one of my work inboxes (10,000+ messages).
I don't think any mail client can do it, though some are better than others. Outlook chokes on large inboxes, too.
Essentially, it's a database. How can they implement a database that efficienty processes 10K records for free, as a component in a 6 MB download, that runs reliably in so many desktop environments?
I do agree that, given the known limitations, something should prompt users to archive and automate the process.
Thanks -- I just tried it out, found my product (among hundreds of thousands), and placed my first order in minutes.
By far the best e-commerce website I've seen: Clear descriptions of every product, very easy to browse, and very efficient from browsing to ordering.
Shopping online always frustrates me because it's so slow, I'd almost prefer going to the store. I hope other web developers take a good look at McMaster.com.
Nobody is perfect, but I've had great experiences with PC Connection for over a decade. For parts they stock, you can usually order until *2am* and it will be delivered the next day (i.e. later the same day).
My particular account manager has been fanstastic. When Airborne lost my order, she even had someone pick another order from the warehouse on a Sunday morning, and had Airborne deliver it same day (again, on a Sunday) so I could make a Monday deadline.
Interesting, and while I agree to a point, I'm not sure we can't have both worlds:
As for semantics, every word processor I know supports it and encourages its use. The 'right' way to use Word is to use Styles for formatting.
The WYSIWYG issues are the same in word processing, and people manage with that: The font issue is not unique to web pages: If you e-mail a word processing document to someone who lacks the right fonts, it will look different on their computer. In fact, unless you use PDF, you'll find line wrapping and pagination vary on different computers, often due to printer drivers. A web page is more likely to be viewed on different computers, of course
Actually hand coding HTML is just not realistic for most users. Even if they don't use 'styles' and screw up other things, better something than nothing at all.
Now, given all that, I'd still prefer an html-specific WYSIWYG editor that addressed these issues.
I made one simple site from Nvu in January, to try it out. It was buggy, crashed frequently -- maybe just my bad luck -- and I don't think the interface was ready for the end users I have in mind.
I'm just looking for a word processor interface that will output decent html. I know Word can output html, but it doesn't look the same in Word and in Firefox.
I'm often asked for a simple WYSIWYG html editor, and I wonder if OpenOffice would do the job.
First, is What the designer sees the same as What the various browser users get? i.e. Does the page look the same in Open Office as it does in Firefox, Safari and IE?
Second, how clean is the code, esp. for editing in a text editor?
liberals scream, "Oh you're just forcing your will upon them. What makes you think they want to be free!?"
Who says this stuff? Seriously, read some 'liberal' writings -- you'll find that nobody says these things. Whoever is telling you that they do is the one who is full of it.
Whoopee! We're better than Saddam Hussein! I'm so proud.
Seriously, try thinking for yourself and not parrotting the party line.
Anyone who says we shouldn't have gone to war is saying that Iraq was better off with Sadam.
It's fun to put words in other people's mouths, but that's not really what anyone says. For example, I think it was a bad idea because,
It undermined the international system that managed conflict without war: Look at the international conflicts before the post war institutions (UN, Geneva conventions, etc) and after. Not many countries invading each other since 1945 relative to before then. It's better for all concerned: People die in wars, the survivors' lives and cities are ruined, their societies are in ashes and take a generation to rebuild. Some never recover. Lots of money is spent. Nobody with experience in war recommends it as a solution to any problem, just a last desperate resort.
Undermining that international system will lead to more net suffering: Now others will say pre-emtive war as justified, even when only supported by weak intelligence and loose conjecture.
It will also increase costs to the US: We have many interests worldwide; we can't afford to invade someone every time we don't like them. The old system provided a way to manage those issues much less expensively.
It may not have been worth the cost to the US: Much as I'm happy to see Hussein gone, I saw a mother ask, 'what did my son die for'? Well, what? Are you sure it's worth it? And if so, why Iraq? There is far more suffering in the Congo, Sudan and other places. Should we invade all these countries? Would you raise taxes to pay for it?
The Iraqi people are greatful
Says who? Grateful for what? In every survey I've seen, Iraqis say they dislike the U.S. occupation.
we're doing far more good than is ever being publicized.
Out of curiosity, if it's not publicized, how do you know about it?
The only country in the world yet to run a benevolent empire and give it up when asked. A country that has only ever fought for freedom and never to oppress? They seem like a good bet in my book.
With all due respect to Great Britain, no. Just as a start, try googling 'Rhodes africa'.
Every empire, from Rome to the USSR, makes those claims, often to get support from an otherwise ignorent public. Guess why the US gov't says they went into Iraq? The same reason Hussein invaded Kuwait, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan: To liberate! I'm not equating their real motives (the U.S's are far more benign, I think, than Hussein and the USSR), I'm just observing that the rhetoric is always the same, and thus does not correlate with the reality.
Honestly, I think having something where a slightly greater burden lies on readers to evaluate the quality of information is probably a good thing - we should really be doing that more with all "authoritative" information sources anyway.
I couldn't agree more: Tell me, what is authoritative? CNN? The New York Times? The Wall Street Journal? Never see any slander, errors or pure fraud sneak into those sources.
To be fair, CNN and the Times are probably more accurate (if you ignore editorial pages/shows), but they're in no position to throw stones.
"Now, you - you see the word Wikipedia, so you think encyclopedia and you think "Oh, okay, this is valid, good information." But yet, if you look at what happened to John, that's not the case, [quoting Kyra Phillips, CNN interviewer].
Yeah, and some people see the words CNN and think, "okay, this is valid, good information."
I should add that Wales, in what I hope was a weak moment, tried to blame ISPs for not cooperating in censoring (or ratting out?) Wikipedia users.
Wales had (has) a great idea and runs a great project. I wonder, though, if his skills as a spokesman are up to the task. That's not criticism: I defy most Slashdot readers to appear on CNN and respond persuasively. Nevertheless, Wikipedia needs someone who has those skills.
OTOH, as one poster said, why not just ignore Siegenthaler? I promise that Wales' response encourage other big shots with connections to take the offensive. There could be a flood of attacks on Wikipedia. Maybe Wales should delegate public appearances to someone else.
Wow, is it just me or did that interview really rag on Wikipedia
Kyra Phillips, the CNN interviewer, took Siegenthaler's side the whole time. She essentially helped him grill and attack Wales. CNN did nothing to present a balanced story: Nothing positive about Wikipedia, and nothing negative about Siegenthaler or his arguments. She might as well have been Siegenthaler's attorney.
I must say that Wales didn't speak up well -- not one word on the benefits of Wikipedia or the ideas behind 'open source' editing. He looked defensive, nervous and frankly guilty the whole time.
Moderation systems may fail for any political issue, where the readership seeks to pursuade or 'win' the argument, regardless of facts. I think it would be more like Crossfire, with loud, partisan but meaningless arguments getting moderated up.
Slashdot mostly discusses technical issues and much of the readership seems to seek information and analysis. Even for political issues, most share the same libertarian / anti-authoritarian / liberal views.
Imagine the NY Times using a moderation system, and the topic was something political, like Supreme Court nominee Alito: Left-wing moderators would mod their partisan comments up and right-wing partisan comments down, and visa-versa. Actual meaningful posts and analysis would get little attention.
If the forum affected public opinion, you can be sure that political operatives would game the system to get moderator points (e.g. using multiple logins from multiple IPs), increasing partisan moderation.
I'm not sure how it could work, without a benevolent dictator assigning mod points to perceived non-partisans.
Maybe the partisan nuts would balance each other out. Or maybe all readers could be assigned one "-1 Partisan Quackery" mod point per day.
I agree to an extent, but to an extent that is an easy way for people to absolve themselves of responsibility. Corporations do support communities, and will not do "evil" under the public eye.
Corporations are run by humans. Come to think of it -- and I'm just going off the cuff here -- I was encouraged to incorporate my business, thus forming a fictional entitity that can act in its own name, in order to protect myself from financial liability. The corporation owes the money, injures the employee, fails to pay taxes, fires the guy with a family to feed, etc....
Perhaps it also protects people from moral liabilitiy. It provides the same cushion -- its the fictional entity acting, not me or you. It's just business. It's the nature of the beast.
I believe you believe it, and I agree a growing middle class will create a constituency for democracy; I believe some people feel that way, but...
The Chinese themselves -- the ones directly affected by the government's lack of respect for human rights -- are for the most part supportive of the government, extremely nationalistic, and hopeful about the future.
How many people are hate the Communist government and want them out of power? How would you or anyone know? Does the above quote represent all of China, all of Shanghai, or just the regulars on one bus and what they are willing to say to a foreign stranger?
What do the Muslims in the Northwest think? The residents of Hong Kong? Tibet? Parents who want a second child? Journalists in prison? Political prisoners? Taiwanese? The impovrished majority far from the cities?
How exactly is Google's censorship, Cisco's firewalls, and Yahoo's collusion with the police making anyone in China wealthier? How do they make people in China more connected to the outside world?
I do believe that engagement, trade and economic development have their places, but so does outside pressure. You propose to simply do nothing and everything will work out. Dr. Pangloss comes to mind. Is that how any of us would manage our personal affairs? Our business? Would that be the response if it was our family member in jail or our religion oppressed or our parents taken by the secret police? Martin Luther King wrote, from jail,
... I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Yes, it's more complicated then simply boycotting what we don't approve of, and again, trade and engagement have their place. But your analysis is equally simplistic on the other side: Do nothing. It's too convenient for us to dismiss the oppression of Chinese people (who can't speak for themselves, partly thanks to Google, Yahoo and Cisco) as "improving", or not an urgent issue, or something that will all work out in the end. Wouldn't it be convenient for us, and our interests and agendas, if that were actually the case?
Slashdot Mirror
Just the political value of the data -- to discredit or spy on enemies -- is so great that I can't imagine it will stay secret forever. With it, the Bush administration (or Putin or any other) can gather dirt on everyone, from congress to the dog catcher candidate. In fact, for censorship purposes it almost doesn't matter if it leaks: By merely seeking the data, the gov't raises legitimate questions in many minds and will have a 'chilling effect' on what they search for.
I think that, until now, most people looked on privacy as something that idealogues worried about and which had no practical significance. I think that attitude was only a lack of experience and foresight. Unfortunately, their information is already on Google's servers; there is no going back.
Google should simply anonymize the data: They can collect aggregate market research, or even person-by-person research, yet remove all identifying information. Until then, I would seriously consider avoiding using Google, or use an anonymizing proxy service to protect yourself. The standard of behavior in privacy matters must be raised.
Attendance is down
Attendance is up.
These guys are already over paid.
Well, baseball makes a lot of money, but that's only because fans are willing to pay it. I'm sure you don't really expect a business to offer a discount just as a favor.
I don't fault the players for obtaining their share of the money. Should millionaire players be paid less so billionaire owners can pocket more?
I'm sure if the orignal poster's Thunderbird installation had tens of thousands of servers behind it, like Google, it would be plenty quick.
...
Can you name a database that meets the specs in my previous post better than Thunderbird? One spec I forgot: No maintenance, other than maybe occasionally (very occasionally) compacting and reindexing.
Maybe there is one; but it's interesting to consider
I wonder what the relative performance is of different clients and formats.
...
BTW, Thunderbird seems to handle 800 MB fine, in my experience, and even twice that. Also, it may depend on more than size: Is it # messages? # attachments? # large attachments? etc.
Also, what aspects of performance are we measuring? Message load time? Initial application load time?
One problem I've seen is very large inboxes rebuilding their summary files frequently, each rebuild taking over 10 min.
TB has never really scaled... it slows down as your inbox gets larger for example - now takes over 3 minutes to open one of my work inboxes (10,000+ messages).
I don't think any mail client can do it, though some are better than others. Outlook chokes on large inboxes, too.
Essentially, it's a database. How can they implement a database that efficienty processes 10K records for free, as a component in a 6 MB download, that runs reliably in so many desktop environments?
I do agree that, given the known limitations, something should prompt users to archive and automate the process.
Thanks -- I just tried it out, found my product (among hundreds of thousands), and placed my first order in minutes.
By far the best e-commerce website I've seen: Clear descriptions of every product, very easy to browse, and very efficient from browsing to ordering.
Shopping online always frustrates me because it's so slow, I'd almost prefer going to the store. I hope other web developers take a good look at McMaster.com.
Nobody is perfect, but I've had great experiences with PC Connection for over a decade. For parts they stock, you can usually order until *2am* and it will be delivered the next day (i.e. later the same day).
My particular account manager has been fanstastic. When Airborne lost my order, she even had someone pick another order from the warehouse on a Sunday morning, and had Airborne deliver it same day (again, on a Sunday) so I could make a Monday deadline.
Now, given all that, I'd still prefer an html-specific WYSIWYG editor that addressed these issues.
I made one simple site from Nvu in January, to try it out. It was buggy, crashed frequently -- maybe just my bad luck -- and I don't think the interface was ready for the end users I have in mind.
I'm just looking for a word processor interface that will output decent html. I know Word can output html, but it doesn't look the same in Word and in Firefox.
I'm often asked for a simple WYSIWYG html editor, and I wonder if OpenOffice would do the job.
First, is What the designer sees the same as What the various browser users get? i.e. Does the page look the same in Open Office as it does in Firefox, Safari and IE?
Second, how clean is the code, esp. for editing in a text editor?
the anti-aliasing make the overall impression of the font too blurry
e r/Step1.aspx
Try this; it worked well -- much better than I'd hoped -- for me:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tun
liberals scream, "Oh you're just forcing your will upon them. What makes you think they want to be free!?"
Who says this stuff? Seriously, read some 'liberal' writings -- you'll find that nobody says these things. Whoever is telling you that they do is the one who is full of it.
Seriously, try thinking for yourself and not parrotting the party line.
Anyone who says we shouldn't have gone to war is saying that Iraq was better off with Sadam.
It's fun to put words in other people's mouths, but that's not really what anyone says. For example, I think it was a bad idea because,
The Iraqi people are greatful
Says who? Grateful for what? In every survey I've seen, Iraqis say they dislike the U.S. occupation.
we're doing far more good than is ever being publicized.
Out of curiosity, if it's not publicized, how do you know about it?
The only country in the world yet to run a benevolent empire and give it up when asked. A country that has only ever fought for freedom and never to oppress? They seem like a good bet in my book.
With all due respect to Great Britain, no. Just as a start, try googling 'Rhodes africa'.
Every empire, from Rome to the USSR, makes those claims, often to get support from an otherwise ignorent public. Guess why the US gov't says they went into Iraq? The same reason Hussein invaded Kuwait, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan: To liberate! I'm not equating their real motives (the U.S's are far more benign, I think, than Hussein and the USSR), I'm just observing that the rhetoric is always the same, and thus does not correlate with the reality.
Each country has roughly 3 - 4 times the number of citizens that the US has. On sheer numbers alone, you'd expect them to overtake eventually.
A reasonable expectation, but it rarely works out that way. Just look at history.
Honestly, I think having something where a slightly greater burden lies on readers to evaluate the quality of information is probably a good thing - we should really be doing that more with all "authoritative" information sources anyway.
I couldn't agree more: Tell me, what is authoritative? CNN? The New York Times? The Wall Street Journal? Never see any slander, errors or pure fraud sneak into those sources.
To be fair, CNN and the Times are probably more accurate (if you ignore editorial pages/shows), but they're in no position to throw stones.
"Now, you - you see the word Wikipedia, so you think encyclopedia and you think "Oh, okay, this is valid, good information." But yet, if you look at what happened to John, that's not the case, [quoting Kyra Phillips, CNN interviewer].
Yeah, and some people see the words CNN and think, "okay, this is valid, good information."
I should add that Wales, in what I hope was a weak moment, tried to blame ISPs for not cooperating in censoring (or ratting out?) Wikipedia users.
Wales had (has) a great idea and runs a great project. I wonder, though, if his skills as a spokesman are up to the task. That's not criticism: I defy most Slashdot readers to appear on CNN and respond persuasively. Nevertheless, Wikipedia needs someone who has those skills.
OTOH, as one poster said, why not just ignore Siegenthaler? I promise that Wales' response encourage other big shots with connections to take the offensive. There could be a flood of attacks on Wikipedia. Maybe Wales should delegate public appearances to someone else.
Wow, is it just me or did that interview really rag on Wikipedia
Kyra Phillips, the CNN interviewer, took Siegenthaler's side the whole time. She essentially helped him grill and attack Wales. CNN did nothing to present a balanced story: Nothing positive about Wikipedia, and nothing negative about Siegenthaler or his arguments. She might as well have been Siegenthaler's attorney.
You can submit your comments on the interview here:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?16
I must say that Wales didn't speak up well -- not one word on the benefits of Wikipedia or the ideas behind 'open source' editing. He looked defensive, nervous and frankly guilty the whole time.
An important bit of context: John Perry Barlow co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
His position on the issue shouldn't be surprising.
Moderation systems may fail for any political issue, where the readership seeks to pursuade or 'win' the argument, regardless of facts. I think it would be more like Crossfire, with loud, partisan but meaningless arguments getting moderated up.
Slashdot mostly discusses technical issues and much of the readership seems to seek information and analysis. Even for political issues, most share the same libertarian / anti-authoritarian / liberal views.
Imagine the NY Times using a moderation system, and the topic was something political, like Supreme Court nominee Alito: Left-wing moderators would mod their partisan comments up and right-wing partisan comments down, and visa-versa. Actual meaningful posts and analysis would get little attention.
If the forum affected public opinion, you can be sure that political operatives would game the system to get moderator points (e.g. using multiple logins from multiple IPs), increasing partisan moderation.
I'm not sure how it could work, without a benevolent dictator assigning mod points to perceived non-partisans.
Maybe the partisan nuts would balance each other out. Or maybe all readers could be assigned one "-1 Partisan Quackery" mod point per day.
Who do you think runs the root servers? ARIN?
I agree to an extent, but to an extent that is an easy way for people to absolve themselves of responsibility. Corporations do support communities, and will not do "evil" under the public eye.
...
...
Corporations are run by humans. Come to think of it -- and I'm just going off the cuff here -- I was encouraged to incorporate my business, thus forming a fictional entitity that can act in its own name, in order to protect myself from financial liability. The corporation owes the money, injures the employee, fails to pay taxes, fires the guy with a family to feed, etc.
Perhaps it also protects people from moral liabilitiy. It provides the same cushion -- its the fictional entity acting, not me or you. It's just business. It's the nature of the beast.
I never realized what an innovation it is
How many people are hate the Communist government and want them out of power? How would you or anyone know? Does the above quote represent all of China, all of Shanghai, or just the regulars on one bus and what they are willing to say to a foreign stranger?
What do the Muslims in the Northwest think? The residents of Hong Kong? Tibet? Parents who want a second child? Journalists in prison? Political prisoners? Taiwanese? The impovrished majority far from the cities?
I do believe that engagement, trade and economic development have their places, but so does outside pressure. You propose to simply do nothing and everything will work out. Dr. Pangloss comes to mind. Is that how any of us would manage our personal affairs? Our business? Would that be the response if it was our family member in jail or our religion oppressed or our parents taken by the secret police? Martin Luther King wrote, from jail,
Yes, it's more complicated then simply boycotting what we don't approve of, and again, trade and engagement have their place. But your analysis is equally simplistic on the other side: Do nothing. It's too convenient for us to dismiss the oppression of Chinese people (who can't speak for themselves, partly thanks to Google, Yahoo and Cisco) as "improving", or not an urgent issue, or something that will all work out in the end. Wouldn't it be convenient for us, and our interests and agendas, if that were actually the case?