A big reason to require real names, which is not covered in the article, is to collect information on users. Tracking "SloppyJoe22" on your website isn't worth much, but data on Joseph Brown, of 1493 Main St in Middleton IL is gold.
I suspect that is behind many businesses decisions to use real names, especially places like Facebook whose whole business model is to collect that data. There are many other ways to have good discussions without requiring real names (such as the discussion we're having now).
The move could prove a significant in the ongoing automation of work, as robots have previously been incapable of doing such jobs, and too dangerous to work in close proximity to humans.
The "ongoing automation of work" has been going on for centuries, and will continue thank goodness. Yes, that means rooms of human calculators were displaced by the device you are looking at right now, laundresses were displaced by automatic clothes washers, human dishwashers displaced by their automatic equivalents... (and the last two helped half of humanity get out of the house and into far more rewarding, productive things).
There is always more work to do. If you look at the jobs of 50 years ago, I expect a large portion are gone now, yet people have found new, more productive work. Where would the software developers come from if they were still sewing shirts and digging coal?
The drawback isn't for society, but for individual workers. The economy as a whole becomes more productive, but the individual whose life-long skills become obsolete may be out of luck. We need to find a way to help and take care of those people; all of society benefits, while the entire cost is born by a very few.
You don't need to draw on any racist conspiracy theory...
Yes, you do.
Here's another racist theory: It's not Jews or Christians or Muslims that are the problem, it's racists and bigots. Get rid of the latter, of every ethnicity, and many of our problems would go away.
I'd love to use ebooks and get rid of all my paper, but my books contain a lot of valuable knowledge and I always have these two concerns:
1) Annotations: Is there a way to efficiently make annotations (roughly as quickly as a I can using paper), in a way that I'll be able to read 10-50 years from now?
2) Preservation: Will I be able to read and use the ebook at all in 10-50 years?
Obviously, these needs require a widely-accepted standard format and software that strictly observes it (i.e., doesn't subtly corrupt the format). For example, in the world of PDFs, there PDF/A format. Is there anything similar for ebooks?
It's interesting to watch tech trends change. End-user control used to be a priority; the Internet was built around it. With the rise of widespread connectivity, centrally controlled services have become much simpler and more popular. You don't update the OS on your phone, someone does it for you.
You lose the benefits of end-user control, which include more privacy, freedom (as in speech), openness and innovation. Who will track where you self-driving car takes you? On your iPhone, you only can use apps that Apple approves. Facebook was built on open technologies that emphasized end-user control; it allowed them to create something that the creators of the Internet technologies didn't envision and didn't have to approve; what will be built on Facebook?
I'm not against centralized services completely, and many of these issues could be mitigated if the service providers were motivated to do it, but I am concerned that it's a serious trade-off that's being made without discussion.
Why such a desperate move from the IAB? There are plenty of ways to track users that are just as or more effective, unless I misunderstand something. I don't see the problem.
Either the IAB is tone-deaf or I am; I can't imagine advertisers getting much sympathy from the public. Maybe the advertisers believe their own hype, that their tracking provides such a valuable service for users.
Your vision of economics and policy is in the minority among experts in the field. That doesn't make it wrong and we should have an open debate about it, but it's not widely accepted. Also, the difference between your views and the people you criticize are significant, but will only slow the growth of human development.
Inhofe's views on climate change are universally rejected by experts in the field. They are factually wrong. If his views prevail, the results likely will be catastrophic, and including causing more economic harm than any economic policy will offset. How much will taxpayers spend on NYC's new seawalls? That will be repeated over and over again, not to mention the harm inflicted on communities world-wide who can't afford massive investments.
Just because "liberals" discovered the problem and push to do something about it doesn't make it wrong.
"ALERT: Jane Smith sought as dangerous Communist/Muslim/terrorist/undesirable. Anyone with information about her, including her current location, known associates, or any suspicious behavior, should report it immediately to authorities."
Who needs a jury? Someone was just telling me that in the 1950's, they had to subscribe to some mainstream magazines at someone else's address, to avoid being labeled a Communist and having their reputation and career ruined. Imagine if Joe McCarthy had modern IT, including metadata and alert systems.
What vulnerabilities exist in the PDF format? You seem to be incorrectly conflating issues with a single PDF reader with the format.
The same vulnerabilities exist in many PDF readers, such as JavaScript and remote file access, even if implemented differently in the various applications.
I guess no formats are vulnerable by that reasoning; there is no vulnerability in Flash or Word formats either; it's just the players.
The review doesn't disagree that nuclear is a big part of the solution, it just complains that the authors sweep aside all other considerations and doesn't like their attitude toward anti-nuclear activists. In other words, it wants the anti-nuclear activists to have a voice.
What is disingenuous about Pandora's Promise is the way the new judgment is conveyed. The film mocks groups that continue to protest nuclear power, treating one-time colleagues as extremists and zealots. An audience discussion after a preview at the University of Chicago made it clear I was not the only one who sensed the self-righteous tone of the newly converted in the film's narrative. In the end, by dismissing the protestors and failing to engage them in significant debate about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, the film undermined its own message.
Nobody loves nuclear power, but what else can provide sufficient power to the world without damaging the climate? Burning carbon, including natural gas, will cause a catastrophe. Wind, solar and geothermal can't ramp up fast enough to meet power demand, AFAIK. Only nuclear power provides sufficient energy without causing more climate change.
Who is the market for Firefox OS? Current smartphone users? People who can't afford high-power equipment (e.g., in developing economies)?
I love the idea of an FOSS mobile device OS designed for end-user control, but I'm not sure if Mozilla is designing it for my needs, or how they plan to get market share.
Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms... Imagine deciding that EKGs were not useful because many patients with chest pain did not have EKG changes. That is what we have been doing for decades when we reject a biomarker because it does not detect a DSM category.
Heart attacks are physical events; the muscles in the heart stop contracting, risking death. The patient's experience of it is relatively unimportant, except as an indicator of the physical event. It's the heart attack that needs treatment.
But for mental problems, the patient's perceptual experience often (usually? always?) is the condition that needs treatment. If the patient experiences depression, that is the problem. The physical conditions may be helpful as indicators of the perceptional condition, but it's the depression that needs treatment.
... why the world needs another mobile OS. I imagine they have good reasons, but I read/., I even read Planet Mozilla occasionally, I support Mozilla's overall mission, and I still have no idea.
Perhaps a tagline or a some consistent, widespread marketing message would help.
I get patted down regularly, and the TSA agents have been professional and polite. Occasionally one will talk to me about using the scanner, but it's always a brief, polite discussion and they haven't tried to push me.
I'll say that TSA staff, years ago, were much more aggressive and liked to throw their authority around. Maybe they received customer service training because that isn't a problem any more.
Myhrvold talks about how creating a market for invention give incentives and rewards to inventors. But it also creates a barrier to entry: An inventor needs the resources to participate in the market, to buy patent portfolios and to defend them in court. How many innovators are deterred and how much innovation do we lose?
Also, I'm not sure how necessary that market is, or in what cases it's valuable. Many of the greatest innovations were FOSS, such as the Internet, the World Wide Web (and associated technologies), FTP, SMTP, etc (not to mention almost all scientific research and human knowledge!). In fact, they were successful in part because they were free, lowering the barrier to entry for others to build on top of them, such as Microsoft.
It's trendy in some circles to complain of excessive government regulation interfering with business, but intellectual property is where it really happens. Sometimes it seems like any entrepreneur or innovation can be stopped cold by the legal burden of defending intellectual property.
IIRC, polls showed around 90% of American supported the war on the eve of invasion. I recall an environment where objecting was widely seen as unpatriotic and cowardly -- the jingoism started after 9/11 and I never saw anything like it in our country; it was shocking and frightening. Twitter may have fanned the flames even higher.
Of course, I'm sure a poll today would show that only 10% remember being part of that 90%, and the rest will assure you that they would have protested loudly.
Slashdot Mirror
A big reason to require real names, which is not covered in the article, is to collect information on users. Tracking "SloppyJoe22" on your website isn't worth much, but data on Joseph Brown, of 1493 Main St in Middleton IL is gold.
I suspect that is behind many businesses decisions to use real names, especially places like Facebook whose whole business model is to collect that data. There are many other ways to have good discussions without requiring real names (such as the discussion we're having now).
The move could prove a significant in the ongoing automation of work, as robots have previously been incapable of doing such jobs, and too dangerous to work in close proximity to humans.
The "ongoing automation of work" has been going on for centuries, and will continue thank goodness. Yes, that means rooms of human calculators were displaced by the device you are looking at right now, laundresses were displaced by automatic clothes washers, human dishwashers displaced by their automatic equivalents ... (and the last two helped half of humanity get out of the house and into far more rewarding, productive things).
There is always more work to do. If you look at the jobs of 50 years ago, I expect a large portion are gone now, yet people have found new, more productive work. Where would the software developers come from if they were still sewing shirts and digging coal?
The drawback isn't for society, but for individual workers. The economy as a whole becomes more productive, but the individual whose life-long skills become obsolete may be out of luck. We need to find a way to help and take care of those people; all of society benefits, while the entire cost is born by a very few.
You don't need to draw on any racist conspiracy theory ...
Yes, you do.
Here's another racist theory: It's not Jews or Christians or Muslims that are the problem, it's racists and bigots. Get rid of the latter, of every ethnicity, and many of our problems would go away.
Awesome.
I'd love to use ebooks and get rid of all my paper, but my books contain a lot of valuable knowledge and I always have these two concerns:
1) Annotations: Is there a way to efficiently make annotations (roughly as quickly as a I can using paper), in a way that I'll be able to read 10-50 years from now?
2) Preservation: Will I be able to read and use the ebook at all in 10-50 years?
Obviously, these needs require a widely-accepted standard format and software that strictly observes it (i.e., doesn't subtly corrupt the format). For example, in the world of PDFs, there PDF/A format. Is there anything similar for ebooks?
It's interesting to watch tech trends change. End-user control used to be a priority; the Internet was built around it. With the rise of widespread connectivity, centrally controlled services have become much simpler and more popular. You don't update the OS on your phone, someone does it for you.
You lose the benefits of end-user control, which include more privacy, freedom (as in speech), openness and innovation. Who will track where you self-driving car takes you? On your iPhone, you only can use apps that Apple approves. Facebook was built on open technologies that emphasized end-user control; it allowed them to create something that the creators of the Internet technologies didn't envision and didn't have to approve; what will be built on Facebook?
I'm not against centralized services completely, and many of these issues could be mitigated if the service providers were motivated to do it, but I am concerned that it's a serious trade-off that's being made without discussion.
Their ad would be more effective if they simply provided instructions for enabling third-party cookies.
How about an add-on, with enhanced tracking for more personalized ads? It would be interesting to see how many people used it.
Why such a desperate move from the IAB? There are plenty of ways to track users that are just as or more effective, unless I misunderstand something. I don't see the problem.
Either the IAB is tone-deaf or I am; I can't imagine advertisers getting much sympathy from the public. Maybe the advertisers believe their own hype, that their tracking provides such a valuable service for users.
Perhaps people have noticed some recent news about surveillance and tracking, by government and business, of people's computer use.
That's how people want to submit their secret ballots?
If the FTC is serious about innovation, they'll look into everyone who uses patent portfolios to block innovation by competitors.
If they are merely helping large corporations with a problem, they'll focus on patent trolls only.
Your vision of economics and policy is in the minority among experts in the field. That doesn't make it wrong and we should have an open debate about it, but it's not widely accepted. Also, the difference between your views and the people you criticize are significant, but will only slow the growth of human development.
Inhofe's views on climate change are universally rejected by experts in the field. They are factually wrong. If his views prevail, the results likely will be catastrophic, and including causing more economic harm than any economic policy will offset. How much will taxpayers spend on NYC's new seawalls? That will be repeated over and over again, not to mention the harm inflicted on communities world-wide who can't afford massive investments.
Just because "liberals" discovered the problem and push to do something about it doesn't make it wrong.
Now we debunk even nuclear war. 'It's all a conspiracy of misinformation to scare you -- like climate change.'
"ALERT: Jane Smith sought as dangerous Communist/Muslim/terrorist/undesirable. Anyone with information about her, including her current location, known associates, or any suspicious behavior, should report it immediately to authorities."
Who needs a jury? Someone was just telling me that in the 1950's, they had to subscribe to some mainstream magazines at someone else's address, to avoid being labeled a Communist and having their reputation and career ruined. Imagine if Joe McCarthy had modern IT, including metadata and alert systems.
But don't worry; that could never happen here.
What vulnerabilities exist in the PDF format? You seem to be incorrectly conflating issues with a single PDF reader with the format.
The same vulnerabilities exist in many PDF readers, such as JavaScript and remote file access, even if implemented differently in the various applications.
I guess no formats are vulnerable by that reasoning; there is no vulnerability in Flash or Word formats either; it's just the players.
The review doesn't disagree that nuclear is a big part of the solution, it just complains that the authors sweep aside all other considerations and doesn't like their attitude toward anti-nuclear activists. In other words, it wants the anti-nuclear activists to have a voice.
What is disingenuous about Pandora's Promise is the way the new judgment is conveyed. The film mocks groups that continue to protest nuclear power, treating one-time colleagues as extremists and zealots. An audience discussion after a preview at the University of Chicago made it clear I was not the only one who sensed the self-righteous tone of the newly converted in the film's narrative. In the end, by dismissing the protestors and failing to engage them in significant debate about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, the film undermined its own message.
Nobody loves nuclear power, but what else can provide sufficient power to the world without damaging the climate? Burning carbon, including natural gas, will cause a catastrophe. Wind, solar and geothermal can't ramp up fast enough to meet power demand, AFAIK. Only nuclear power provides sufficient energy without causing more climate change.
Who is the market for Firefox OS? Current smartphone users? People who can't afford high-power equipment (e.g., in developing economies)?
I love the idea of an FOSS mobile device OS designed for end-user control, but I'm not sure if Mozilla is designing it for my needs, or how they plan to get market share.
Hey, maybe that Bill Atkinson was really on to something with that dadgum HyperCard software of his back in the '80s!"
And perhaps Microsoft is onto something applying it to current OS interfaces with Live Tiles.
Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms ... Imagine deciding that EKGs were not useful because many patients with chest pain did not have EKG changes. That is what we have been doing for decades when we reject a biomarker because it does not detect a DSM category.
Heart attacks are physical events; the muscles in the heart stop contracting, risking death. The patient's experience of it is relatively unimportant, except as an indicator of the physical event. It's the heart attack that needs treatment.
But for mental problems, the patient's perceptual experience often (usually? always?) is the condition that needs treatment. If the patient experiences depression, that is the problem. The physical conditions may be helpful as indicators of the perceptional condition, but it's the depression that needs treatment.
Perhaps a tagline or a some consistent, widespread marketing message would help.
At least The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and the NYRB are available online.
I get patted down regularly, and the TSA agents have been professional and polite. Occasionally one will talk to me about using the scanner, but it's always a brief, polite discussion and they haven't tried to push me.
I'll say that TSA staff, years ago, were much more aggressive and liked to throw their authority around. Maybe they received customer service training because that isn't a problem any more.
they weren't free, they were paid for by the US Government along with the EU governments. who do you think pays for CERN?
Agreed. I meant that their output was free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer for others to use.
Myhrvold talks about how creating a market for invention give incentives and rewards to inventors. But it also creates a barrier to entry: An inventor needs the resources to participate in the market, to buy patent portfolios and to defend them in court. How many innovators are deterred and how much innovation do we lose?
Also, I'm not sure how necessary that market is, or in what cases it's valuable. Many of the greatest innovations were FOSS, such as the Internet, the World Wide Web (and associated technologies), FTP, SMTP, etc (not to mention almost all scientific research and human knowledge!). In fact, they were successful in part because they were free, lowering the barrier to entry for others to build on top of them, such as Microsoft.
It's trendy in some circles to complain of excessive government regulation interfering with business, but intellectual property is where it really happens. Sometimes it seems like any entrepreneur or innovation can be stopped cold by the legal burden of defending intellectual property.
IIRC, polls showed around 90% of American supported the war on the eve of invasion. I recall an environment where objecting was widely seen as unpatriotic and cowardly -- the jingoism started after 9/11 and I never saw anything like it in our country; it was shocking and frightening. Twitter may have fanned the flames even higher.
Of course, I'm sure a poll today would show that only 10% remember being part of that 90%, and the rest will assure you that they would have protested loudly.