Is it even legal for AT&T to just hand over personal data, to anyone who asks for it?
Terms of service, and a big proviso they will cooperate with law enforcement.
Don't you guys over in the US have privacy laws
And limit what corporations can do? Are you mad?
If AT&T can freely sell it to the CIA, what's stopping them to sell to other companies, for use as marketing purposes, or maybe even for identity theft purposes?
So the CIA pays AT&T to "voluntarily" hand over somebody else's data?
Ah, but the trick is that, as interpreted, this is actually AT&T's own data collected as part of their business.
The logic goes that since AT&T owns the wires, and needs this information to do billing and monitor their networks, then that data actually belongs to AT&T. And since that data belongs to AT&T (so goes the theory) you don't get a vote in AT&T giving over 'their' data even if 'their' data happens to be about you.
The people concerned have not been asked anything. Neither have they volunteered anything.
Sure you did, you voluntarily used their system, and in the process implicitly provided them with it.
All there in the Terms of Service, and neatly upheld by the courts.
Welcome to the Brave New World, where if you want privacy you are free to not use the phone system, the internet, the banking system, go outside your house, or interact with people lest details of what you do becomes 'property' of a corporation who is free to voluntarily assist intelligence agencies.
Facebook is worse. It keeps asking me where I work, where I went to high school etc.
So, tell it you were born in Auckland New Zealand, went to school at a Yeshiva in Morocco Spain, and currently live in Dublin Ohio and work at Starbucks.
Pollute their data. That was the only way I got them to stop asking (not with that particular combination, but run wild, have fun with it).
If they're so obsessed with having you fill in something, lie to them. What Facebook wants out of the deal isn't my concern.
Hmmm, possibly that, since it can also function as a BluRay player... at which point how you'd escape the spinning disc thing is a mystery to me.
And I'm also assuming (possibly incorrectly) the PS4 will have the same ability as the XBox 360 to install to the HD and then use only the disc to confirm you're allowed to run it.
PS: I heard that Blackberry phones let you remove almost anything you don't want and you can run android apps.
Why yes, I should run right out and buy a phone from a company I expect to be dead within the year.
Sorry, but I bought my wife a BB PlayBook... and in my opinion it's a Steaming Heap of Innovative Technology (SHIT). It, in theory, ran Android apps -- in practice, well, it didn't. And then they stopped providing updates.
I have no interest whatsoever in the crap BlackBerry is selling.
Title should have read: "Disabled apps are disabled."
But there's still likely several you can't actually uninstall.
On my HTC phone, I can't uninstall Facebook, but I can disable it. On my Google Nexus, I've had Google re-enable some apps I've specifically disabled because I don't want them.
They all try to put their crapware on the devices, and can make it awfully difficult to remove or disable them. Because they like to pretend they still own the devices, and they figure their desire to monetize your device outweighs your desire to lock it down.
I specifically went with the Google branded Nexus so I wouldn't have to worry about the crap from a 3rd party, but that doesn't mean Google has made it any easier to strip out the shit you don't want -- I disabled the YouTube app altogether when the first time I launched it to look at it Google automatically signed me up for an account without asking.
Welcome to the exciting future, where you don't own the stuff you buy, and the company who made it has embedded everything possible to give them access to your information.
The information in the documents could be considered trade secrets. Google has a right to keep them sectret.
Or, alternately, we conclude Google is just trying to cover their own asses and drag this on for as long as possible while still doing the exact same thing.
"It took Google almost four years to come up with an antitrust remedy proposal, which would only benefit Google," said Michael Weber from Hot Maps, one of the original complainants. "The search giant's allegation that complainants are obstructionists for rejecting this, is a vivid example of Googlespeak. Their wait-and-see attitude gave them a few more years of time to abuse their dominant position, at the cost of everyone on the Web."
Antritrust laws exist for a reason, and not for the offender to spend several years coming up with ways to make it sound like they've proposed a remedy which does nothing.
It's lawyers doing their best to get off without substantial punishment to the detriment of everyone affected.
I'm just not buying the 'trade secrets' argument, because it sounds more like a stalling tactic as they try to write their own 'punishment' -- which will end with a token fine, no admission of wrong doing, and a very limited set of changes to how they do anything.
So, how exactly is it that Google gets to dictate that these stay private?
It's Google who committed the offenses, and they're being punished by the European regulators.
Why does this seem like Google is the one dictating how this plays out? That makes no sense to me.
These back room deals don't help any but Google -- who is no doubt proposing things which don't actually limit or change how they do things, but just a few token gestures.
Pursuing pedophiles is the new Inquisition, it is the last bastion of the bureaucratic tyrant.
Exactly. Pedophiles and terrorism by now are well understood by governments as the magic keys to sidestep legal protections and process.
See, if you just go straight to sidestepping things, people get upset. But if you say "Zomg the terrorists" or "but, pedophiles" people accept that you're sidestepping things and it's OK.
It's essentially become the point at which you know governments are losing the argument. Because it amounts to the veiled argument of "we're doing this to protect against (terrorists|pedophiles), and if you're opposed to us fighting the (terrorists|pedophiles) then you must be in favor of the (terrotists|pedophiles)"
It's disingenuous in that it basically is used to bully us all into accepting them cutting into our rights and legal protections, because, after all, they're doing it to save us from the (terrorists|pedophiles).
And it's also the point at which all of the other politicians will vote for whatever you're suggesting, and much of the populace will say "well, I'm not a (terrorist|pedophile) so what do I have to hide?".
It is, however, a complete horseshit argument, and a cheap excuse to bypass the controls and protections put in place. But people seem to keep falling for it.
I suspect these days Apple makes a lot of money from iTunes.
I'm happier having Google handle my searches and email than giving money to a company that keeps attempting to lock people to their 'walled garden'.
Have you used an Android tablet? I know my Nexus tries really hard to at least steer (if not downright force) me into using some Google stuff. I've had to actively prevent it from enrolling me in some Google services.
I'm betting Samsung tries to do the same thing. And, gee, I seem to recall Micrsosoft has decided to follow suit with their own 'walled garden'. Apple created a business model which everyone desperately wants to re-create.
Apple can get in all the 'digs' they want on their competition, but the RDF ain't what it used to be.
It remains to be see how they do in the long run, but Apple is still worth around $100 billion dollars or so -- I'd say that so far what you call the reality distortion field has, in reality, been working quite well from a business perspective.
Like 'em or hate 'em, Apple has had people lining up to buy their stuff (literally), and then keep buying stuff from iTunes and give them a pretty steady bit of revenue.
Anything higher than that and it's the fault of a shitty overloaded server, not the pipes.
I honestly have no idea, since I'm not really a 'network guy'.
However, I am taking our network architects at face value when they tell me that the latency can't be addressed because of the distances involved. Since they are the network architects for a multi-billion dollar company, I am going to assume they know more about it than I do.
I guess I'm in that minority that likes the in-store experience and browsing shelves rather than clunky cable box UIs.
I'm with you on this one.
I still buy CDs and BluRay disks by going to the store and looking at what's there. I prefer to have the physical thing, instead of some digital thing they can decide on a whim I no longer 'own' and can no longer use.
Admittedly, I haven't rented a movie in years... but I'm certainly not paying to rent it on-line and then pay my ISP for the bandwidth needed to stream it.
I'm definitely not prepared to give up physical media.
I'll worry about that when my data-center is on Mars.
Then, I'm afraid you might not have enough practical experience on the topic.
I've encountered performance issues across an organization, and definitely been able to identify it as network latency.
And when we spoke with the network architects, they essentially told us it could be made no faster because of the distances involved. I'm not talking trans-continental/trans-oceanic links, I'm talking two data centers separated by only about a thousand miles.
And, with the latency issues, we can't make some things responsive enough to interactive users to not be exceedingly painful. A 60-100ms latency is enough to have users screaming at you as everything they do has a long delay in it -- for interactive applications, that's very noticeable.
You don't need to have data centers on Mars to be able to experience latency which is exceedingly painful. Within the last few months I've personally ran up against it in an organization which has offices through North America.
If you're just mirroring data, sure. But running an interactive application over a long-distance link for which latency becomes a factor -- that can be very painful. And even within North America, you can easily get to the point where the latency can't be fixed because the signal can still only travel so fast.
It really doesn't take all that much distance before it becomes observable. And angry/frustrated users don't want to be told about the laws of physics. They want to be able to click a button and not wait several seconds.
A resource can't be shared if no one claims ownership of it.
Right, something must be owned to be shared. That makes total sense -- we all share the atmosphere and the oceans, and you suggesting someone needed to own it for us to share it? Sorry, but we were sharing it before someone claimed ownership. The ownership came later and is, in fact, independent of how much we share it.
In a system where property is not allowed, what is the motivation to be productive? An interest in the common good? That demands altruism.
You throw that out like altruism is inherently immoral. It isn't, we developed society and civilization by having some sense of "we're all in it together", not "fuck you" -- some things pretty much have to be done for (and by) everyone. Roads, government, plumbing. Because we all rely on them.
I guess what we've discovered here is that both capitalism and a demand economy fail when people are immoral.
With the corollary that people will always be immoral, and you can't count on anything else. You essentially have to build in safeguards which assume that at least some fraction of us will be doing things which only benefit them, but actively harm others -- like melamine in baby formula, for instance.
Unfortunately many of the assumptions of capitalism and the free market assume that people will be moral, all play by the same rules, and will have perfect information. That, of course, is false and completely ignores any actual observations of human behavior.
I'm not saying private ownership is inherently evil, or that everything being owned by everybody is inherently good.
I'm saying if you take any system and extrapolate it to its extremes, it breaks down completely -- and capitalism isn't shielded from that because people think it's better. Over time, capitalism has as much ability to turn into despotism -- because once someone controls all of the resources, they declare themselves king. Or people are beholden to the company store and are effectively serfs.
Everyone wants to looks at this as a black and white issue -- either you have full laissez faire capitalism, or you have teh horrible socialism. The reality is, I wouldn't want a pure form of either -- because both of them will degenerate into something else.
But if you don't build checks and balances into your system to prevent the extremes from happening, expecting the system to self-correct is just delusional. Because there's nothing to drive it, and people will exploit the system for their own benefits.
Any system which depends on the innate goodness and fairness of people (isn't that altruism?) to prevail is just pretending or kidding itself. So, much like when Communism says "once we force everyone to do this we'll have harmony" and we all say "bullshit" -- saying that "Capitalism will cause us to all play honestly by the same rules and we will have harmony" is an equal pile of bullshit.
So, my contention is neither system is 100% accurate, covers all cases, achieves all of the goals attributed to them, and works out well for everyone except those in power. And acting as if either of them is perfect or infallible and above the banalities of human nature is just plain moronic.
Does market capitalism solve everything? No. It has some glaring weaknesses.
I'll still take it over totalitarianism - no matter how benign or benevolent it says it will be.
Right up until capitalism leads to its own form or totalitarianism, as corporations and cartels control pretty much everything and we all become serfs again.
Capitalism claims to be benign and benevolent, but since everyone tries to gain an unfair advantage and cheat the system, it just leads to a different form of losing your freedoms. The notion that it will self correct assumes that people are honest and not inherently out to screw everyone over -- which is completely disconnected from reality.
Left to its own devices, capitalism will subject you to the same atrocities, it will just defend them on a different set of principles.
Some people have mythologized capitalism and the free market to the point of it being a religion -- it is uncritically championed as being perfect and infallible, and completely ignores many aspects of human behavior which negate some of its assumptions. And once you are convinced that you are the keeper of Immutable Truth and Knowledge, you will defend that belief to the exclusion of evidence to the contrary.
If, as you say, it's good for each individual, then it mustâ"by definitionâ"be good for the group.
Horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit.
Individuals do not necessarily exhibit fully rational behavior (in fact quite seldom do), and individuals will always try to get 'more better' for themselves -- because people are irrational selfish bastards.
So, if I decide that what is better for me is to take away what you have, that isn't better (or even good) for the group if we depend on one another. Very often, what's good for an individual is detrimental to the group if the individual is utterly selfish or shortsighted -- like eating all of the food now and leaving none for later. Taking fresh water, bottling it and selling it isn't good for anybody except the ones selling it -- and once it's all gone, we're all fucked. But, for the short term, it was beneficial for some individuals to do what is best for them, and the group suffers.
The prisoners dilemma demonstrates that if everyone does what is strictly in their own best interests, everybody loses.
Capitalism just tries to take the things which are shared resources, and make sure someone gets to it first and claims ownership of it. And when we're talking about our environment and ecosystem, it impacts all of us. And in the end you get the selfish decisions of a few impacting everybody else.
People like to pretend that 'the market' will solve these problems, when in fact it's mostly a race to the bottom where every sociopath around grabs as much as he can, to the detriment of those around him.
No, the internet runs on computers. It's being co-opted by advertisers.
and 3rd cookies are a HUGE part of tracking profitability for all online advertisers.
Not my fucking problem. I don't give a rats ass about the profitability of online advertisers, I care about my privacy.
Concerned about your privacy with ads? Wait till everyone starts "pay-walling" their websites (eg WSJ, NYT etc) and you have to shell out cash AND give up your credit card.
Or stop using them. The day I need to pay money to a website and provide them with credit card details is the day I stop visiting a site.
The ad industry has a ton of people, basically lobbyists, who spent a lot of time trying to convince Mozilla this was bad for the economy... I think they were somewhat successful.' Not a good showing for the purportedly pro-user organization.
The organization I most expected to be working towards our privacy and telling lobbyists to piss off has now sold out, apparently.
Do you have any idea how many metrics and tracking companies have their shit on pages? Do you think that we want all of that crap so that some marketing asshole can know everything we do and monetize it?
Apple is apparently incompetent at blocking 3rd party cookies in Safari (because it doesn't work), and now Mozilla is deciding not to do it. I doubt very much Google is going to do anything in Chrome which would cut into their revenues.
So, I have to conclude that Mozilla has decided they no longer want to be the ones to champion our privacy and keep the ugly bits of the internet at bay.
On behalf of your users, let me say: you suck, and you've sold out.
You may not like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but they are the law.
Except, as the poster you replied to says, once these been upheld by courts... well, they're now the law too.
Increasingly, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are more or less being bypassed -- by allowing a 'border' stop within 100 miles of a border, warrantless wiretapping, 'free speech zones' and all sorts of stuff.
What you say is good in principle, but in practice, those documents seem to be getting over-ruled in the name of security and expediency. And as long as the courts keep upholding the laws which violate the Constitution, you pretty much have to conclude it's no longer the supreme law of the land.
Or, Nintendo has enough data to suggest there is room for a budget console with no internet capability.
If you have a large segment of your market which never uses the internet for gaming, they don't need internet capability.
If you want the big shiny one with an internet connection, you probably already own it. But if you have a 5 year old who just wants to play a Mario game, you may not even want internet connectivity.
Not everyone plays games on-line. I know I don't, so surely in the demographic for a Wii there's plenty of people who don't either.
Slashdot Mirror
Terms of service, and a big proviso they will cooperate with law enforcement.
And limit what corporations can do? Are you mad?
What's to say they don't?
Think of it as an 'incentive' to do it without a subpoena, and a friendly gesture of good-will towards the national security people.
It's patriotism, honestly.
Ah, but the trick is that, as interpreted, this is actually AT&T's own data collected as part of their business.
The logic goes that since AT&T owns the wires, and needs this information to do billing and monitor their networks, then that data actually belongs to AT&T. And since that data belongs to AT&T (so goes the theory) you don't get a vote in AT&T giving over 'their' data even if 'their' data happens to be about you.
Sure you did, you voluntarily used their system, and in the process implicitly provided them with it.
All there in the Terms of Service, and neatly upheld by the courts.
Welcome to the Brave New World, where if you want privacy you are free to not use the phone system, the internet, the banking system, go outside your house, or interact with people lest details of what you do becomes 'property' of a corporation who is free to voluntarily assist intelligence agencies.
Grand, aint it?
So, tell it you were born in Auckland New Zealand, went to school at a Yeshiva in Morocco Spain, and currently live in Dublin Ohio and work at Starbucks.
Pollute their data. That was the only way I got them to stop asking (not with that particular combination, but run wild, have fun with it).
If they're so obsessed with having you fill in something, lie to them. What Facebook wants out of the deal isn't my concern.
Or, even more awesome ... the disc stays still while the console spins around.
Probably more efficient to spin the disc though.
Hmmm, possibly that, since it can also function as a BluRay player ... at which point how you'd escape the spinning disc thing is a mystery to me.
And I'm also assuming (possibly incorrectly) the PS4 will have the same ability as the XBox 360 to install to the HD and then use only the disc to confirm you're allowed to run it.
Which gets you back to the "spinning disc" the OP was complaining about.
If you want non-spinning, it's SSD.
As a public service, everyone should put up at least a link to the story (if not the pictures).
Show them the Streisand effect in action.
Why yes, I should run right out and buy a phone from a company I expect to be dead within the year.
Sorry, but I bought my wife a BB PlayBook ... and in my opinion it's a Steaming Heap of Innovative Technology (SHIT). It, in theory, ran Android apps -- in practice, well, it didn't. And then they stopped providing updates.
I have no interest whatsoever in the crap BlackBerry is selling.
But there's still likely several you can't actually uninstall.
On my HTC phone, I can't uninstall Facebook, but I can disable it. On my Google Nexus, I've had Google re-enable some apps I've specifically disabled because I don't want them.
They all try to put their crapware on the devices, and can make it awfully difficult to remove or disable them. Because they like to pretend they still own the devices, and they figure their desire to monetize your device outweighs your desire to lock it down.
I specifically went with the Google branded Nexus so I wouldn't have to worry about the crap from a 3rd party, but that doesn't mean Google has made it any easier to strip out the shit you don't want -- I disabled the YouTube app altogether when the first time I launched it to look at it Google automatically signed me up for an account without asking.
Welcome to the exciting future, where you don't own the stuff you buy, and the company who made it has embedded everything possible to give them access to your information.
Or, alternately, we conclude Google is just trying to cover their own asses and drag this on for as long as possible while still doing the exact same thing.
Antritrust laws exist for a reason, and not for the offender to spend several years coming up with ways to make it sound like they've proposed a remedy which does nothing.
It's lawyers doing their best to get off without substantial punishment to the detriment of everyone affected.
I'm just not buying the 'trade secrets' argument, because it sounds more like a stalling tactic as they try to write their own 'punishment' -- which will end with a token fine, no admission of wrong doing, and a very limited set of changes to how they do anything.
So, how exactly is it that Google gets to dictate that these stay private?
It's Google who committed the offenses, and they're being punished by the European regulators.
Why does this seem like Google is the one dictating how this plays out? That makes no sense to me.
These back room deals don't help any but Google -- who is no doubt proposing things which don't actually limit or change how they do things, but just a few token gestures.
Exactly. Pedophiles and terrorism by now are well understood by governments as the magic keys to sidestep legal protections and process.
See, if you just go straight to sidestepping things, people get upset. But if you say "Zomg the terrorists" or "but, pedophiles" people accept that you're sidestepping things and it's OK.
It's essentially become the point at which you know governments are losing the argument. Because it amounts to the veiled argument of "we're doing this to protect against (terrorists|pedophiles), and if you're opposed to us fighting the (terrorists|pedophiles) then you must be in favor of the (terrotists|pedophiles)"
It's disingenuous in that it basically is used to bully us all into accepting them cutting into our rights and legal protections, because, after all, they're doing it to save us from the (terrorists|pedophiles).
And it's also the point at which all of the other politicians will vote for whatever you're suggesting, and much of the populace will say "well, I'm not a (terrorist|pedophile) so what do I have to hide?".
It is, however, a complete horseshit argument, and a cheap excuse to bypass the controls and protections put in place. But people seem to keep falling for it.
I suspect these days Apple makes a lot of money from iTunes.
Have you used an Android tablet? I know my Nexus tries really hard to at least steer (if not downright force) me into using some Google stuff. I've had to actively prevent it from enrolling me in some Google services.
I'm betting Samsung tries to do the same thing. And, gee, I seem to recall Micrsosoft has decided to follow suit with their own 'walled garden'. Apple created a business model which everyone desperately wants to re-create.
It remains to be see how they do in the long run, but Apple is still worth around $100 billion dollars or so -- I'd say that so far what you call the reality distortion field has, in reality, been working quite well from a business perspective.
Like 'em or hate 'em, Apple has had people lining up to buy their stuff (literally), and then keep buying stuff from iTunes and give them a pretty steady bit of revenue.
I honestly have no idea, since I'm not really a 'network guy'.
However, I am taking our network architects at face value when they tell me that the latency can't be addressed because of the distances involved. Since they are the network architects for a multi-billion dollar company, I am going to assume they know more about it than I do.
I'm with you on this one.
I still buy CDs and BluRay disks by going to the store and looking at what's there. I prefer to have the physical thing, instead of some digital thing they can decide on a whim I no longer 'own' and can no longer use.
Admittedly, I haven't rented a movie in years ... but I'm certainly not paying to rent it on-line and then pay my ISP for the bandwidth needed to stream it.
I'm definitely not prepared to give up physical media.
Then, I'm afraid you might not have enough practical experience on the topic.
I've encountered performance issues across an organization, and definitely been able to identify it as network latency.
And when we spoke with the network architects, they essentially told us it could be made no faster because of the distances involved. I'm not talking trans-continental/trans-oceanic links, I'm talking two data centers separated by only about a thousand miles.
And, with the latency issues, we can't make some things responsive enough to interactive users to not be exceedingly painful. A 60-100ms latency is enough to have users screaming at you as everything they do has a long delay in it -- for interactive applications, that's very noticeable.
You don't need to have data centers on Mars to be able to experience latency which is exceedingly painful. Within the last few months I've personally ran up against it in an organization which has offices through North America.
If you're just mirroring data, sure. But running an interactive application over a long-distance link for which latency becomes a factor -- that can be very painful. And even within North America, you can easily get to the point where the latency can't be fixed because the signal can still only travel so fast.
It really doesn't take all that much distance before it becomes observable. And angry/frustrated users don't want to be told about the laws of physics. They want to be able to click a button and not wait several seconds.
Right, something must be owned to be shared. That makes total sense -- we all share the atmosphere and the oceans, and you suggesting someone needed to own it for us to share it? Sorry, but we were sharing it before someone claimed ownership. The ownership came later and is, in fact, independent of how much we share it.
You throw that out like altruism is inherently immoral. It isn't, we developed society and civilization by having some sense of "we're all in it together", not "fuck you" -- some things pretty much have to be done for (and by) everyone. Roads, government, plumbing. Because we all rely on them.
With the corollary that people will always be immoral, and you can't count on anything else. You essentially have to build in safeguards which assume that at least some fraction of us will be doing things which only benefit them, but actively harm others -- like melamine in baby formula, for instance.
Unfortunately many of the assumptions of capitalism and the free market assume that people will be moral, all play by the same rules, and will have perfect information. That, of course, is false and completely ignores any actual observations of human behavior.
I'm not saying private ownership is inherently evil, or that everything being owned by everybody is inherently good.
I'm saying if you take any system and extrapolate it to its extremes, it breaks down completely -- and capitalism isn't shielded from that because people think it's better. Over time, capitalism has as much ability to turn into despotism -- because once someone controls all of the resources, they declare themselves king. Or people are beholden to the company store and are effectively serfs.
Everyone wants to looks at this as a black and white issue -- either you have full laissez faire capitalism, or you have teh horrible socialism. The reality is, I wouldn't want a pure form of either -- because both of them will degenerate into something else.
But if you don't build checks and balances into your system to prevent the extremes from happening, expecting the system to self-correct is just delusional. Because there's nothing to drive it, and people will exploit the system for their own benefits.
Any system which depends on the innate goodness and fairness of people (isn't that altruism?) to prevail is just pretending or kidding itself. So, much like when Communism says "once we force everyone to do this we'll have harmony" and we all say "bullshit" -- saying that "Capitalism will cause us to all play honestly by the same rules and we will have harmony" is an equal pile of bullshit.
So, my contention is neither system is 100% accurate, covers all cases, achieves all of the goals attributed to them, and works out well for everyone except those in power. And acting as if either of them is perfect or infallible and above the banalities of human nature is just plain moronic.
Right up until capitalism leads to its own form or totalitarianism, as corporations and cartels control pretty much everything and we all become serfs again.
Capitalism claims to be benign and benevolent, but since everyone tries to gain an unfair advantage and cheat the system, it just leads to a different form of losing your freedoms. The notion that it will self correct assumes that people are honest and not inherently out to screw everyone over -- which is completely disconnected from reality.
Left to its own devices, capitalism will subject you to the same atrocities, it will just defend them on a different set of principles.
Some people have mythologized capitalism and the free market to the point of it being a religion -- it is uncritically championed as being perfect and infallible, and completely ignores many aspects of human behavior which negate some of its assumptions. And once you are convinced that you are the keeper of Immutable Truth and Knowledge, you will defend that belief to the exclusion of evidence to the contrary.
Horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit.
Individuals do not necessarily exhibit fully rational behavior (in fact quite seldom do), and individuals will always try to get 'more better' for themselves -- because people are irrational selfish bastards.
So, if I decide that what is better for me is to take away what you have, that isn't better (or even good) for the group if we depend on one another. Very often, what's good for an individual is detrimental to the group if the individual is utterly selfish or shortsighted -- like eating all of the food now and leaving none for later. Taking fresh water, bottling it and selling it isn't good for anybody except the ones selling it -- and once it's all gone, we're all fucked. But, for the short term, it was beneficial for some individuals to do what is best for them, and the group suffers.
The prisoners dilemma demonstrates that if everyone does what is strictly in their own best interests, everybody loses.
Capitalism just tries to take the things which are shared resources, and make sure someone gets to it first and claims ownership of it. And when we're talking about our environment and ecosystem, it impacts all of us. And in the end you get the selfish decisions of a few impacting everybody else.
People like to pretend that 'the market' will solve these problems, when in fact it's mostly a race to the bottom where every sociopath around grabs as much as he can, to the detriment of those around him.
No, the internet runs on computers. It's being co-opted by advertisers.
Not my fucking problem. I don't give a rats ass about the profitability of online advertisers, I care about my privacy.
Or stop using them. The day I need to pay money to a website and provide them with credit card details is the day I stop visiting a site.
The organization I most expected to be working towards our privacy and telling lobbyists to piss off has now sold out, apparently.
Do you have any idea how many metrics and tracking companies have their shit on pages? Do you think that we want all of that crap so that some marketing asshole can know everything we do and monetize it?
Apple is apparently incompetent at blocking 3rd party cookies in Safari (because it doesn't work), and now Mozilla is deciding not to do it. I doubt very much Google is going to do anything in Chrome which would cut into their revenues.
So, I have to conclude that Mozilla has decided they no longer want to be the ones to champion our privacy and keep the ugly bits of the internet at bay.
On behalf of your users, let me say: you suck, and you've sold out.
Except, as the poster you replied to says, once these been upheld by courts ... well, they're now the law too.
Increasingly, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are more or less being bypassed -- by allowing a 'border' stop within 100 miles of a border, warrantless wiretapping, 'free speech zones' and all sorts of stuff.
What you say is good in principle, but in practice, those documents seem to be getting over-ruled in the name of security and expediency. And as long as the courts keep upholding the laws which violate the Constitution, you pretty much have to conclude it's no longer the supreme law of the land.
Which is very depressing.
Or, Nintendo has enough data to suggest there is room for a budget console with no internet capability.
If you have a large segment of your market which never uses the internet for gaming, they don't need internet capability.
If you want the big shiny one with an internet connection, you probably already own it. But if you have a 5 year old who just wants to play a Mario game, you may not even want internet connectivity.
Not everyone plays games on-line. I know I don't, so surely in the demographic for a Wii there's plenty of people who don't either.
A $99 price tag, I believe.