No, I don't, because if you actually read my argument you'll note that my view was given as a demonstration that I wasn't carrying water for Apple, rather than as a reason why the merger wouldn't be approved (I was arguing it probably would be.)
No, actually, I can't. What the hell does this have to do with what I wrote, and in what way is it an objection to the concept that a manufacturer should have no say in what I use something for after they've sold it to me?
Be clear about this: in order to refute my argument with yours, you need to be claiming that the law is so complex, as you state it, that manufacturers need the right to impose additional obscure legal requirements on me after I've bought something.
What. The. Fuck?
Hell no. Complain all you want about the number of obscure laws, about Georgian towns where riding a bicycle while wearing a short skirt makes you liable for nearby breaches of the liquor law every third Sunday, or whatever, but accept that this has nothing to do with the right of someone to use their own property for any legal purpose. Do we have too many laws? I think most would argue yes, or at least, that we don't have the right collection of laws (we have many bad ones, and quite a few things that should have good laws don't), but that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Apple being refused the right to decide who can put DRM'd music on an iPod makes no difference as to whether or not I should be able to hit someone over the head with it, or whether I should be required to recycle it when I dispose of it.
As much as the Obama supporters wanted to twist his words in the notorious 47% video, Romney was NOT saying that he would not represent 47% of the population, or doesn't care about them.
Yes, actually, he did.
These are people who pay no income tax. 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesnâ(TM)t connect⦠my job is not to worry about those people. Iâ(TM)ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romney-my-job-is-not-to-worry-about-those-people/)
His comment was doubly stupid because the 47%, people "who don't pay income tax" (yes, he explicitly defined it that way) is made up in large part of pensioners, the military, and southern blue collar workers - all of which are dominated by Republicans, in my experience.
The supreme court did not disagree. Most of the complaints about the ruling were from people who refused, point blank, to find out what the court actually ruled.
What SCOTUS ruled was that they, as a group of old people in a city hundreds of miles away, who had never visited the area, had no real way to tell whether the city's decision was legitimate - that the city was better qualified to define "Public use" than it was.
That's all. It never ruled the scheme "constitutional", contrary to myth, nor said it was a good idea. It merely stated that they weren't in a position to judge and therefore stop it.
Motorola made a variety of phones prior to the Google take-over. It didn't just make Android phones. I would assume a "consumer choice" issue wouldn't care about phones that a take-over target makes that are likely to continue being made, so much as devices and categories of device that a take-over target makes that are likely to be discontinued.
In addition to many home grown operating systems, Motorola was a maker of Windows Mobile phones, and was talked up as a WP7 OEM until the Google takeover. So if this is about Nokia being a provider of Windows phones, why would this apply to Nokia and not Motorola?
Given Apple's recent history on the use and abuse of patents, I'd be against this, but I have to ask: from a legal and anti-trust point of view, what is the difference between Apple swallowing Nokia, and Google swallowing Motorola? I don't think the regulators really go on the basis of "Well, Google gives us free shit and only sues companies that sue it and its partners, while Apple's got that whole "We must kill Android whatever the cost" stuff going on"
Yeah, I'm going through the objections and finding most of the complaints are either misleading or finding six ways to interpret something and then deliberately pick the one that's wrong. The "Professional web developers" remark would seem an obvious example.
Also this, I thought, was laughable:
An oft-repeated mantra in OSS (and a critique we've already received) is that you shouldn't criticise something unless you're willing to put your money where your mouth is and build something better. It's an admirable ethos, but not really applicable here.
W3Schools has put a lot of effort into positioning itself at the top of search results and, despite our efforts (such as the PromoteJS initiative), appears to be there to stay. Other, better resources already exist, but none of them are capable of overcoming the inertia that W3Schools has built up over the years.
Apparently this group strongly lacks "professional web developers" because most have a basic understanding of how to put a well designed, well written, relevent and accurate website close to the top of the search results for a given phrase, in the absense of a competing site that's using black-hat SEO methods. And quite honestly, I see no evidence that there's any black-hattedness when it comes to W3Schools methods. There are no link farms, no link spamming of blogs, etc, that I can find. I'm actually inclined to suggest if these people can't put their "good site" near the top of the search results, then their site probably isn't that good to begin with. There. I said it.
I thought Firefox worked under those platforms. If it does, then the HTML5 stuff they're promoting should work fine. Or am I misunderstanding your objection?
...and yet a lot of people, on Slashdot, don't agree with you.
I remember when Real Networks reverse engineered the iPod's DRM and shipped a program that copied Rhapsody (then owned by Real) music to the iPod. How people howled.
Some, rightly, complained that Real's actions were simply propping up DRM and DRM is wrong (although Rhapsody is a fairly good example of a "good" use of DRM if DRM is going to exist anyway, but that's another issue...) But a lot of people were furious that Real had hacked "Apple's" iPod and that Real was being unethical for copying music to "Apple's" devices and it was quite right that Real would need permission from Apple to do that.
The notion that, actually, an iPod belonged to the buyer, not Apple, and that it was the buyer's decision what to do with it was generally considered flamebait...
The world is complex. Technology is complicated. I shouldn't have to bring my lawyer into Best Buy with me when I buy a fucking MP3 player. If I buy one, it should be mine, end of story, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it as long as I don't break the law doing so. You want me not to copy the firmware? That's fine, because I can't legally copy it anyway. You want me to not install my own firmware, or reverse engineer what's on it, or sell content I've recorded on the device using the audio recording feature (contianing no third party content), or paint it blue? F you, that's not your decision.
Exactly. Which is why I generally recommend people disgusted by both parties enough to feel it wouldn't make any difference which wins to vote third party.
Third party votes mean two things to Big Two Party Apparatchiks:
1. These people turned up to vote and will probably do so next time.
2. We lost these people's votes because we didn't share the views of the third party they voted for.
Basically you're signalling to the parties your vote is available, they just have to shift ground a little.
The dangers are:
1. Bush gets in, Gore loses, albeit nobody realized in 2000 what an utter disaster Bush was going to be, so there's a limit to what you can do in those terms. Whether you're left or right wing, neither of the current political candidates for office seems as dramatically underqualified. You genuinely have to be careful when you vote as your strategy may be long term, but you want there to be a country left in four years.
2. You vote for a party for one reason, the Big Two picks policies from it that aren't that reason. You don't want the government interfering in your sex life or telling you what drugs you can take, so you vote Libertarian. The Republicans see you as someone who wants their taxes cut, no matter what the costs. You want universal healthcare and a social safety net so you don't have to be terrified of unemployment or sudden illness, so you vote socialist. The Democrats see you as someone who will vote for them if they impose more regulations on businesses.
In some ways, it'd be better if there were more one-issue parties. Perhaps we'll see that at some point.
The "First to file" thing doesn't mean what people think it means at first glance, FWIW. Prior art still invalidates new patents.
The concept is that two parties working in secret on the same thing get a patent decided upon the basis of which files first, not which can prove through... however... that it came up with the idea first. In practice, I doubt it'll make any difference whatsoever.
No, we can pretty much assume the vast majority of people who consider themselves religious - that is, believing a particular religion answers the questions to life, the universe, and everything, is close to 100%.
You're, perhaps, confusing being religious, and following the life rules of the religion they follow. Failing to be a good Christian does not have any bearing on whether you're religious. And, I might add because it comes up all the time, it doesn't even have any bearing on whether you're a "real" Christian - if you don't believe me, ask an actual priest. Have an abortion and a Catholic priest may say you've disobeyed God, but they won't tell you you're somehow no longer a Christian.
Here's an idea, why not go on to read the next sentence? It actually explains what I'd rather do, which amazingly enough neither involves laughing, or killing them.
Another point to make: if you do either of your "solutions", you're more likely to end up dead than the fundies. They outnumber you, and enough of them are violent for it to be a problem.
Generally agree with one caveat: While you pin some apps on the task bar, it starts to become a PITA when you do so for full screen games. (Basically it's a matter of alt-tabbing out, pinning it, and going back in, which takes a little effort, you don't do it as a "You know, I'm always running this, let's make sure it's always pinned" thing.)
I remember all the bitching and moaning about the Start Button when it was created.
I don't, and I remember the release of 95 vividly. Who did you hear bitching and moaning about it?
Everyone I knew who was forced to use Window 3.1 loved 95. It was a massive improvement. I can't actually state how massive it was, it was that big. There's not been such an upgrade since in the Windows world.
Well, yeah, it's not really a reduction ad absurdum because it veers massively off-topic.
(Before I go on, a disclaimer: while I think Wood's joke shows him to be a repulsive individual - he actually posted the "joke" on a FB page dedicated to April's search, presumably read by April's family members, I don't think he should have the force of law thrust upon him.)
Here's the difference: People who have religious views do not have them (and are not expressing them) in order to deliberately wind up and upset people who don't share those views.
Even as a reduction ad absurdum, rarely is the scale - and therefore type - of "offense" to a non-believer close to what's happened here. Believing that the world is 6,000 years old isn't in the same category as making a joke implying a sexual assault against a missing kid in a forum you believe is read by that kid's family, however nerdy and concerned with details you might be.
So, no, I agree with the GP here. Wood's a fucking cretin, and any friend of his - if he has any left - should be telling him that. But a fine, court order, or jail sentence? Fuck no.
Making religion a subject of widespread mockery will be part of the solution, whether you like it or not.
Part of what solution? To make atheists as unpopular as possible?
This is a country where the vast majority of people consider themselves religious. They're happy, for the most part, to accept that the beliefs they were brought up with may need some modification as our scientific understanding of the world advances, but not if it's worded as "Haha! You're a moron! You believe everything in the Bible [no, most Christians don't - ed.] including both the stuff I can show is false and the stuff I can't that's no harm to anyone!"
Nope. Apple II computers were in pretty much every school you cared to walk into during the 1980s at least in the US. In fact we still had Apple II computers in schools well into the 1990s. As a result Apple was often the first choice (budget permitting) of computer for people at home along for middle class (and up) families along with the cheaper C64.
Why did you start the above paragraph with the word "nope" then? It's pretty much a rewrite, with a positive Apple spin, of the comment you're quoting. We both agree, and are saying, that the Apple II was limited to the semi-rich and rich, and to markets like schools where the political elite, answerable to the semi-rich and rich, made the decisions.
Aside from the C64 the market share numbers say otherwise. The Sinclair, and Atari computers barely made a dent and never got above 5% market share combined. The Apple II got up to between 10-15% market share and stayed there until about 1985 when the Mac was introduced.
So again I'm right, but you're making it sound like you disagree with me by:
1. Covering just one of the two markets I was discussing (the Sinclair Spectrum was dominant, and a stronger seller, than the Commodore 64, in the UK.) So, no, I'm not wrong in mentioning the Sinclair brand and Sir Clive's contribution.
2. Covering total computer sales, when the Apple II was a strong seller in businesses (and therefore wouldn't have made up 10-15% of homes against, say, the Commdore 64, which was strong in homes and not in businesses.)
3. Avoiding quoting figures for computers that sold better than the Apple II.
No, it probably isn't. Many of the things you take for granted these days were really made mainstream by Apple. (note I didn't say invented, just made mainstream) That's not to diminish the contributions of others, Apple certainly didn't do it all themselves by any means. But Apple played a key role in the way things actually played out. I'd say that the contributions of others might be underrated but I can't really say that Apple's contributions are overrated.
OK. Like what?
If you're going to bring up the Mac and Lisa here, remember those had nothing to do with the revolution. They post-date the revolution, and while their contributions should not be in any way, undermined, they didn't do the specific job of getting jobs into the hands of the masses - that predates both (well, perhaps not the Lisa, but we can't really say the Lisa was influential at the time computers were becoming mainstream. Hell, DOS remained the primary shell on most PCs until the early nineties.)
What did the original Apple II introduce that was never going to be implemented and popularized by competitors? It was, ultimately, a machine designed to be sold for a high price but built at low cost. It's notable, in many ways, for being the all-in-one home computer that least resembled its successors and future competitors.
Was Apple influential? Of course, but not until 1984. Before that, they could never have existed, and quite honestly, the course of computing would have been unchanged. They produced a computer that, had it come out two months later, would have been considered a "Me too" product by even the most ardent Apple fan.
Growing up, I never met a single person with an Apple computer in the UK. Even in the US, the Apple II seemed to have occupied the same niche as Britain's BBC Micro - a "respectable" computer for the slightly-to-very wealthy, and agencies like schools answerable to the political elite.
The men who actually worked to get computers into the hands of the masses are people like Tramiel, Bushnell, and Sinclair. The computers that built the revolution were the Commodore 64, Atari X[LE], the Sinclair Spectrum, et al. Those were the machines you'd find if you skydived into a random neighborhood and broke into the first house you saw. Those were the computers we used.
I'm not dissing Jobs here but I think Apple's contribution to the revolution is severely overrated. With the PET coming out within a month of the Apple II, it's obvious there was a drive in the late seventies from multiple corners to create this market. But it's also obvious that without Apple, the revolution would have happened anyway. Without Tramiel, and the console-home computer war, I think it's unlikely the home computer would have made it into enough homes to shift it from an expensive gimmick, into a part of everyone's lives.
I have no objection whatsoever to 0.01% (or whatever $50 million is relative to total taxation) of my tax dollars being spent on making solar cars so powerful they can travel at 1,000mph.
I'd be in favor of something like that, as long as the question is given proper context, which the above doesn't. As read, it implies IE will prevent them from being tracked, whereas this is about sending a request to advertisers to not be tracked.
The question should be something like "Some advertisers would like their servers to have access to your webbrowsing history, so they can serve ads their computers think might interest you. Do you want to tell them this is OK, or would you prefer to tell them not to track your web history?"
That explains why, what the information is used for, and also makes it clear that this is a request (equally important, remember, DNT does means "Please don't track me", not "Ha ha! The CIA/FBI/NSA can't track me across the Internets now because I set this flag!!" Oh. Yes. They. Can. Oh. Yes. They. Will.)
They're not doing something right, they're killing DNT by making it meaningless.
There is no difference, to advertisers, between an IE user who hasn't made a decision, and an IE user who has and has opted not to allow their web history to be used to serve ads relevent to them. And given DNT is a voluntary standard, there is no reason for advertisers to assume anything about the DNT flag when sent by IE.
It's that simple. MS might be "doing the right thing" (we can argue about that too) if they set it by default for a legally mandated flag (I think they'd be doing the right thing if they asked users when they start IE for the first time, rather than set it for them), but it's not a legally mandated flag, and therefore the only affect MS's actions will have are to kill the flag completely, or at least make it effectively unimplemented when users are using MS's own browsers.
Secondly, leaving that aside, which doesn't really pertain to anything, there's a difference between an anonymous secured computer trying to figure out what ads you might be interested in based upon information it "sees", and a peeping tom trying to catch you naked in the shower.
Here's a question: would you object if, when installed and first run, IE popped up a message like this:
Some advertisers would like their servers to use your browsing history to serve ads that are relevent to you. Do you want to allow them, or do you want to see generic ads of stuff you're probably not interested in?
Before complaining the above is biased, tell me how. Tell me how it's untrue. And tell me why that would be worse than DNT by default, or no DNT by default.
Advertisers ignoring DNT is bad for customers because those who are concerned about being "tracked" for advertising purposes have no way to turn off tracking.
Not everyone falls into the category of being concerned however. In fact, most people probably benefit from advertisers "tracking" them (that is, an anonymous, secure, computer determining what ads to show based upon the websites a browser has recently visited, largely to ensure that ads appear that are relevent to that person's interests.) Long before you'd turn on "do not track" you'd probably install an ad blocker anyway if you really, sincerely, do not want to be shown relevent ads.
A default DNT is bad for customers generally because it'll be ignored. It'll be ignored because if the majority of people fall into the category of benefiting from tracking, and if most advertisers lose out if tracking is not done, then advertisers will, absent some mandate, ignore it, which means those who actively don't want to be tracked, because they happen to use that machine to download their midget porn, don't get a say in the matter.
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No, I don't, because if you actually read my argument you'll note that my view was given as a demonstration that I wasn't carrying water for Apple, rather than as a reason why the merger wouldn't be approved (I was arguing it probably would be.)
No, actually, I can't. What the hell does this have to do with what I wrote, and in what way is it an objection to the concept that a manufacturer should have no say in what I use something for after they've sold it to me?
Be clear about this: in order to refute my argument with yours, you need to be claiming that the law is so complex, as you state it, that manufacturers need the right to impose additional obscure legal requirements on me after I've bought something.
What. The. Fuck?
Hell no. Complain all you want about the number of obscure laws, about Georgian towns where riding a bicycle while wearing a short skirt makes you liable for nearby breaches of the liquor law every third Sunday, or whatever, but accept that this has nothing to do with the right of someone to use their own property for any legal purpose. Do we have too many laws? I think most would argue yes, or at least, that we don't have the right collection of laws (we have many bad ones, and quite a few things that should have good laws don't), but that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Apple being refused the right to decide who can put DRM'd music on an iPod makes no difference as to whether or not I should be able to hit someone over the head with it, or whether I should be required to recycle it when I dispose of it.
Yes, actually, he did.
These are people who pay no income tax. 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesnâ(TM)t connect⦠my job is not to worry about those people. Iâ(TM)ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romney-my-job-is-not-to-worry-about-those-people/)
His comment was doubly stupid because the 47%, people "who don't pay income tax" (yes, he explicitly defined it that way) is made up in large part of pensioners, the military, and southern blue collar workers - all of which are dominated by Republicans, in my experience.
The supreme court did not disagree. Most of the complaints about the ruling were from people who refused, point blank, to find out what the court actually ruled.
What SCOTUS ruled was that they, as a group of old people in a city hundreds of miles away, who had never visited the area, had no real way to tell whether the city's decision was legitimate - that the city was better qualified to define "Public use" than it was.
That's all. It never ruled the scheme "constitutional", contrary to myth, nor said it was a good idea. It merely stated that they weren't in a position to judge and therefore stop it.
Motorola made a variety of phones prior to the Google take-over. It didn't just make Android phones. I would assume a "consumer choice" issue wouldn't care about phones that a take-over target makes that are likely to continue being made, so much as devices and categories of device that a take-over target makes that are likely to be discontinued.
In addition to many home grown operating systems, Motorola was a maker of Windows Mobile phones, and was talked up as a WP7 OEM until the Google takeover. So if this is about Nokia being a provider of Windows phones, why would this apply to Nokia and not Motorola?
Given Apple's recent history on the use and abuse of patents, I'd be against this, but I have to ask: from a legal and anti-trust point of view, what is the difference between Apple swallowing Nokia, and Google swallowing Motorola? I don't think the regulators really go on the basis of "Well, Google gives us free shit and only sues companies that sue it and its partners, while Apple's got that whole "We must kill Android whatever the cost" stuff going on"
Yeah, I'm going through the objections and finding most of the complaints are either misleading or finding six ways to interpret something and then deliberately pick the one that's wrong. The "Professional web developers" remark would seem an obvious example.
Also this, I thought, was laughable:
Apparently this group strongly lacks "professional web developers" because most have a basic understanding of how to put a well designed, well written, relevent and accurate website close to the top of the search results for a given phrase, in the absense of a competing site that's using black-hat SEO methods. And quite honestly, I see no evidence that there's any black-hattedness when it comes to W3Schools methods. There are no link farms, no link spamming of blogs, etc, that I can find. I'm actually inclined to suggest if these people can't put their "good site" near the top of the search results, then their site probably isn't that good to begin with. There. I said it.
I thought Firefox worked under those platforms. If it does, then the HTML5 stuff they're promoting should work fine. Or am I misunderstanding your objection?
I remember when Real Networks reverse engineered the iPod's DRM and shipped a program that copied Rhapsody (then owned by Real) music to the iPod. How people howled.
Some, rightly, complained that Real's actions were simply propping up DRM and DRM is wrong (although Rhapsody is a fairly good example of a "good" use of DRM if DRM is going to exist anyway, but that's another issue...) But a lot of people were furious that Real had hacked "Apple's" iPod and that Real was being unethical for copying music to "Apple's" devices and it was quite right that Real would need permission from Apple to do that.
The notion that, actually, an iPod belonged to the buyer, not Apple, and that it was the buyer's decision what to do with it was generally considered flamebait...
The world is complex. Technology is complicated. I shouldn't have to bring my lawyer into Best Buy with me when I buy a fucking MP3 player. If I buy one, it should be mine, end of story, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it as long as I don't break the law doing so. You want me not to copy the firmware? That's fine, because I can't legally copy it anyway. You want me to not install my own firmware, or reverse engineer what's on it, or sell content I've recorded on the device using the audio recording feature (contianing no third party content), or paint it blue? F you, that's not your decision.
Third party votes mean two things to Big Two Party Apparatchiks:
1. These people turned up to vote and will probably do so next time.
2. We lost these people's votes because we didn't share the views of the third party they voted for.
Basically you're signalling to the parties your vote is available, they just have to shift ground a little.
The dangers are:
1. Bush gets in, Gore loses, albeit nobody realized in 2000 what an utter disaster Bush was going to be, so there's a limit to what you can do in those terms. Whether you're left or right wing, neither of the current political candidates for office seems as dramatically underqualified. You genuinely have to be careful when you vote as your strategy may be long term, but you want there to be a country left in four years.
2. You vote for a party for one reason, the Big Two picks policies from it that aren't that reason. You don't want the government interfering in your sex life or telling you what drugs you can take, so you vote Libertarian. The Republicans see you as someone who wants their taxes cut, no matter what the costs. You want universal healthcare and a social safety net so you don't have to be terrified of unemployment or sudden illness, so you vote socialist. The Democrats see you as someone who will vote for them if they impose more regulations on businesses.
In some ways, it'd be better if there were more one-issue parties. Perhaps we'll see that at some point.
The "First to file" thing doesn't mean what people think it means at first glance, FWIW. Prior art still invalidates new patents.
The concept is that two parties working in secret on the same thing get a patent decided upon the basis of which files first, not which can prove through... however... that it came up with the idea first. In practice, I doubt it'll make any difference whatsoever.
No, we can pretty much assume the vast majority of people who consider themselves religious - that is, believing a particular religion answers the questions to life, the universe, and everything, is close to 100%.
You're, perhaps, confusing being religious, and following the life rules of the religion they follow. Failing to be a good Christian does not have any bearing on whether you're religious. And, I might add because it comes up all the time, it doesn't even have any bearing on whether you're a "real" Christian - if you don't believe me, ask an actual priest. Have an abortion and a Catholic priest may say you've disobeyed God, but they won't tell you you're somehow no longer a Christian.
Here's an idea, why not go on to read the next sentence? It actually explains what I'd rather do, which amazingly enough neither involves laughing, or killing them.
Another point to make: if you do either of your "solutions", you're more likely to end up dead than the fundies. They outnumber you, and enough of them are violent for it to be a problem.
Generally agree with one caveat: While you pin some apps on the task bar, it starts to become a PITA when you do so for full screen games. (Basically it's a matter of alt-tabbing out, pinning it, and going back in, which takes a little effort, you don't do it as a "You know, I'm always running this, let's make sure it's always pinned" thing.)
I don't, and I remember the release of 95 vividly. Who did you hear bitching and moaning about it?
Everyone I knew who was forced to use Window 3.1 loved 95. It was a massive improvement. I can't actually state how massive it was, it was that big. There's not been such an upgrade since in the Windows world.
No, I was making the mistake of repeating what I'd read on Slashdot: https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3169021&cid=41582565
Which was probably a mistake, see reply to that post.
Well, yeah, it's not really a reduction ad absurdum because it veers massively off-topic.
(Before I go on, a disclaimer: while I think Wood's joke shows him to be a repulsive individual - he actually posted the "joke" on a FB page dedicated to April's search, presumably read by April's family members, I don't think he should have the force of law thrust upon him.)
Here's the difference: People who have religious views do not have them (and are not expressing them) in order to deliberately wind up and upset people who don't share those views.
Even as a reduction ad absurdum, rarely is the scale - and therefore type - of "offense" to a non-believer close to what's happened here. Believing that the world is 6,000 years old isn't in the same category as making a joke implying a sexual assault against a missing kid in a forum you believe is read by that kid's family, however nerdy and concerned with details you might be.
So, no, I agree with the GP here. Wood's a fucking cretin, and any friend of his - if he has any left - should be telling him that. But a fine, court order, or jail sentence? Fuck no.
Part of what solution? To make atheists as unpopular as possible?
This is a country where the vast majority of people consider themselves religious. They're happy, for the most part, to accept that the beliefs they were brought up with may need some modification as our scientific understanding of the world advances, but not if it's worded as "Haha! You're a moron! You believe everything in the Bible [no, most Christians don't - ed.] including both the stuff I can show is false and the stuff I can't that's no harm to anyone!"
Why did you start the above paragraph with the word "nope" then? It's pretty much a rewrite, with a positive Apple spin, of the comment you're quoting. We both agree, and are saying, that the Apple II was limited to the semi-rich and rich, and to markets like schools where the political elite, answerable to the semi-rich and rich, made the decisions.
So again I'm right, but you're making it sound like you disagree with me by:
1. Covering just one of the two markets I was discussing (the Sinclair Spectrum was dominant, and a stronger seller, than the Commodore 64, in the UK.) So, no, I'm not wrong in mentioning the Sinclair brand and Sir Clive's contribution.
2. Covering total computer sales, when the Apple II was a strong seller in businesses (and therefore wouldn't have made up 10-15% of homes against, say, the Commdore 64, which was strong in homes and not in businesses.)
3. Avoiding quoting figures for computers that sold better than the Apple II.
OK. Like what?
If you're going to bring up the Mac and Lisa here, remember those had nothing to do with the revolution. They post-date the revolution, and while their contributions should not be in any way, undermined, they didn't do the specific job of getting jobs into the hands of the masses - that predates both (well, perhaps not the Lisa, but we can't really say the Lisa was influential at the time computers were becoming mainstream. Hell, DOS remained the primary shell on most PCs until the early nineties.)
What did the original Apple II introduce that was never going to be implemented and popularized by competitors? It was, ultimately, a machine designed to be sold for a high price but built at low cost. It's notable, in many ways, for being the all-in-one home computer that least resembled its successors and future competitors.
Was Apple influential? Of course, but not until 1984. Before that, they could never have existed, and quite honestly, the course of computing would have been unchanged. They produced a computer that, had it come out two months later, would have been considered a "Me too" product by even the most ardent Apple fan.
Damned right.
Growing up, I never met a single person with an Apple computer in the UK. Even in the US, the Apple II seemed to have occupied the same niche as Britain's BBC Micro - a "respectable" computer for the slightly-to-very wealthy, and agencies like schools answerable to the political elite.
The men who actually worked to get computers into the hands of the masses are people like Tramiel, Bushnell, and Sinclair. The computers that built the revolution were the Commodore 64, Atari X[LE], the Sinclair Spectrum, et al. Those were the machines you'd find if you skydived into a random neighborhood and broke into the first house you saw. Those were the computers we used.
I'm not dissing Jobs here but I think Apple's contribution to the revolution is severely overrated. With the PET coming out within a month of the Apple II, it's obvious there was a drive in the late seventies from multiple corners to create this market. But it's also obvious that without Apple, the revolution would have happened anyway. Without Tramiel, and the console-home computer war, I think it's unlikely the home computer would have made it into enough homes to shift it from an expensive gimmick, into a part of everyone's lives.
I have no objection whatsoever to 0.01% (or whatever $50 million is relative to total taxation) of my tax dollars being spent on making solar cars so powerful they can travel at 1,000mph.
I'd be in favor of something like that, as long as the question is given proper context, which the above doesn't. As read, it implies IE will prevent them from being tracked, whereas this is about sending a request to advertisers to not be tracked.
The question should be something like "Some advertisers would like their servers to have access to your webbrowsing history, so they can serve ads their computers think might interest you. Do you want to tell them this is OK, or would you prefer to tell them not to track your web history?"
That explains why, what the information is used for, and also makes it clear that this is a request (equally important, remember, DNT does means "Please don't track me", not "Ha ha! The CIA/FBI/NSA can't track me across the Internets now because I set this flag!!" Oh. Yes. They. Can. Oh. Yes. They. Will.)
They're not doing something right, they're killing DNT by making it meaningless.
There is no difference, to advertisers, between an IE user who hasn't made a decision, and an IE user who has and has opted not to allow their web history to be used to serve ads relevent to them. And given DNT is a voluntary standard, there is no reason for advertisers to assume anything about the DNT flag when sent by IE.
It's that simple. MS might be "doing the right thing" (we can argue about that too) if they set it by default for a legally mandated flag (I think they'd be doing the right thing if they asked users when they start IE for the first time, rather than set it for them), but it's not a legally mandated flag, and therefore the only affect MS's actions will have are to kill the flag completely, or at least make it effectively unimplemented when users are using MS's own browsers.
That's a very poor analogy.
First of all, most curtains are open by default!
Secondly, leaving that aside, which doesn't really pertain to anything, there's a difference between an anonymous secured computer trying to figure out what ads you might be interested in based upon information it "sees", and a peeping tom trying to catch you naked in the shower.
Here's a question: would you object if, when installed and first run, IE popped up a message like this:
Before complaining the above is biased, tell me how. Tell me how it's untrue. And tell me why that would be worse than DNT by default, or no DNT by default.
Advertisers ignoring DNT is bad for customers because those who are concerned about being "tracked" for advertising purposes have no way to turn off tracking.
Not everyone falls into the category of being concerned however. In fact, most people probably benefit from advertisers "tracking" them (that is, an anonymous, secure, computer determining what ads to show based upon the websites a browser has recently visited, largely to ensure that ads appear that are relevent to that person's interests.) Long before you'd turn on "do not track" you'd probably install an ad blocker anyway if you really, sincerely, do not want to be shown relevent ads.
A default DNT is bad for customers generally because it'll be ignored. It'll be ignored because if the majority of people fall into the category of benefiting from tracking, and if most advertisers lose out if tracking is not done, then advertisers will, absent some mandate, ignore it, which means those who actively don't want to be tracked, because they happen to use that machine to download their midget porn, don't get a say in the matter.
Does it make sense now?