The difference in American vs. British notions of freedom have been evident since 1776. It's only since 2001 that America seems to have been confused about it's importance.
Fuck your "homespot", get off my lawn. Doesn't "not given the option to opt out before receiving it" sound like digital rape? There will be no vendor supplied WiFi in my house, no sir.
Per TFA: "US provider Comcast caused controversy when it introduced its public home wi-fi service in the summer because customers were not given the option to opt out before receiving it. Such "homespot" public wi-fi will see explosive growth rising to more than 325 million in 2018 and taking wi-fi "from the cities to the suburbs", according to the research."
One of many reasons to increase the useful life of the products we buy. Computers are fast enough that the hardware itself can be viable a much longer term than we currently use products. At some point I'd really like to see us stop using resources for so many pseudo-disposable products. A $600 smart phone, laptop or desktop, a $1200 TV, $130 app enabled blue-ray player are all products that could have a much longer life if they were designed with longevity in mind. As profitable as it is for now, the model where we are all replacing our devices every 2-3 years isn't very good for the planet or for keeping a sustainable supply of resources.
A lot of that I believe is due to the quality of education. I did not go to any college other than a few hand picked for fun classes and a ton of technical training and study, yet I'm finding that when I talk to recent graduates of bachelors degree programs they strike me as undereducated in a broad range of knowledge and the general way of the world around them. People that go through only the prescribed courses and aren't driven by their own curiosity to learn more just aren't coming out ready for the corporate world or for any specialized career where they have to compete with well rounded educated adults. I get the sense the curriculum reads to be both expanded and updated. The pace of change in academia is just outmatched by the pace of change in our society. The problem with linking the available choices of students to specific careers is that we often see the few definable careers that are hiring, quickly saturated. I'm all for reducing predatory lending as I'm sure it exists, but real leadership is going to have to mean reexamining the whole system and striving to give students a worthwhile education. While we are at it, bring back serious vocational training to high school.
It makes some sense. If you use a "real name like" pseudonym they don't know unless you get reported. Turn off ability of people to tag you in photos. Use a selfie that is recongnizable to friends, but useless for facial recognition algorithms. Never access outside TOR, blackhole DNS facebook.com and all known ad networks assuming that wouldn't break it within TOR. Register with a matching pseudonym email. Give a fake location and date of birth. Run AD-Blocker Plus, Ghostery, NoScript, etc.. Preferably dual boot, Live-CD or at least use different user login on the OS level when toggling between TOR and public use. For a normal person who wants to see what your friends are doing, but doesn't want to gave Facebook everything it could work good enough. As others mentioned, the ability to use in a country where it is banned is pretty worth while. If you are in that situation then maybe use a real photo at first if your friends need to recognize you to "add you", but change it later to a picture that isn't recognizable as you. It certainly matters for those in repressed countries to be able to communicate to the outside world. Tip: If you give a fake date of birth remember what you gave! I got locked out of mine because they used that as my only option for security question to access a stale account.
I'd be basically OK with it if they were allowed to charge the peer for the (actual and reasonable) cost of the upgrade and no additional fees were charged, even though they would be willing to meet half way were it not in competitive relationship. We'd almost need to force them to split their businesses into separate walled off cable TV and Internet businesses to end the large incentive to squelch competition for eyeballs on the screen. If they offer better peering deals to some transit providers and worse to another solely in order to screw their competition I'd have to believe there is some Antitrust legal provision being violated. Ever since cable speeds beat out common DSL speeds we have been screwed by lack of competition.
Google will extract their pound of flesh for all historically free services. If I ever use a Google service they get a fake name. Most of the time my computers are not even permitted to talk to Google. Yes, that means using Bing Maps, but it's a worthwhile sacrifice to use anything, but Google. Microsoft is no saint, but since they are the only legitimate rival so be it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I know someone has to pay for services for them to exist, but good security and complete loss of privacy are fundamentally incompatible. I have no solution, but I'll try to keep my privacy either way thanks.
Yep, and I think we know how well it works out for companies that desperately hold on and try to keep the world from changing. The days when even lower income households are willing to pay $90 a month for TV alone is going away. If Comcast wanted more than the $15 a month I pay for basic cable they would be out and even that is only waiting for a better alternative to overcome laziness. Trying to hold back the force of change vs. trying to affect change is the difference between Microsoft and Apple in 2003-2010.
Well, 5 mod points and a dozen donuts for anyone with a solution. It's bad situation considering that U.S. and China depend on each other for business and economic reasons yet we treat each other like adversaries. The Chinese government hasn't given much historical respect to the concerns of intellectual property. When it comes to bringing hard consequences to malicious hackers in their borders they offer us zero cooperation in cases like this. So WTF do we do?
"The study was inspired by the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, as lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras."
Yeah, I've been both of those guys at one time or another. I'll admit to falling into the confidence trap. If you think you are a smart person it easy to think you are also better at guessing the right answer. I find it difficult to hold both the idea that I am smart and that guessing is never reliable and often makes one seem stupid. I'm finding this is also a principle flaw in democracy. People vote without doing any research whatsoever on the issues and are very willing to have a firm opinion about things that they know nothing about.
I read the ToS and I agree that could be considered to fulfill the consideration aspect though it isn't really worded as quid pro quo. The consideration terms would be shredded in court. It also lacks so far as I can see, a contract duration which is a required element of a contract. They say they have the right to reproduce your content indefinitely as it may be shared with others outside their control, but I don't think it has enough there to meet the standards of a contract. It's fine in my mind, a promise is good enough. If they sell the company or change their terms later the user can just choose to leave and go elsewhere. They at least claim to make a reasonable effort to delete your content on account termination.
As I understand it a contract is only valid if there is some form of consideration paid and a there is a defined length of the contract. So unless Ello users pay a fee in exchange for the contract guarantee there is no consideration and it would not be an enforceable contract. If the user paid $10 and had an actual contract that stated the ToS for the life of the account then that could be worth something.
Yeah, also watch "The Revisionaries" and you can see just how much some people in the education system are willing to mind fuck our students to maintain their ideological hold.
I think you are right that is the sort of critical thinking they want. I'd like to think the demands for critical thinking are a step in the right direction towards developing future leaders that aren't short term thinkers, but independent critical thinking doesn't really leave much room for ideology of any flavor. What you describe is more akin to thinking as part of the collective and acting and using critical thinking, but only as much as it benefits the collective organization interest. One one hand it sounds Borg like and creepy, but if a person is being paid it is reasonable to expect them to act in the interest of the organization.
That's the dilemma for regulators. What do you do when the public is demanding something that is "bad for business" for the companies who have captured the regulatory body? OK listen, you folks down at the FCC, stop fucking waiting for Comcast's or AT&T's or any other company's permission to do what's right! We the people, don't give a shit what they have to say about it.
"Just because someone exercises critical thinking does not mean that that person will come to the same conclusions that you have. They probably aren't starting with the same objectives as you."
And there you have the reason written tests are a generally a lame way to test critical thinking. Even those who are good at critical thinking are often wrong on the first pass. Good critical thinking often takes multiple iterations and fact seeking to get to what might be considered a good answer.
Thanks SuricouRaven and wertigon. I appreciate the info I hadn't heard of those either. I think I have a good concept, but I'm a little out of my element in the Social Networking space.
The first part rambles and it seems like he isn't going to tell us anything then it winds into commentary that is spot on. I fear Google, but even I can't envision how the public perception will ever swing far enough negative to stop them. Google is a stranger with candy, sure it's free, but it pays to question the motives. ---- "By all appearances, Google's bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment of the "benevolent superpower." "
"This is the impenetrable banality of "don't be evil." They believe that they are doing good. And that is a problem."
"For an American Internet services monopoly to ensure global market dominance, it cannot simply keep doing what it is doing and let politics take care of itself."
I had not heard of Diaspora, I am currently working on a personal project to create something to fill a similar gap in the social media framework. (Project yet to be named) My project is different, but I'm not ready to expand on it publicly.
It'll have to start with teaching the business school drones a different sort of logic. Right now designing products to suit the western taste makers and having someone else do all the dirty dangerous work that creates pollution, do it for cheap, resell the product and just collect the money in the U.S. is working quite well. This way we can make products by the millions and not have to listen to OSHA, the unions or the enviro-hippies. I don't think America is sinking into irrelevance, America will be just fine. We'll make different choices as time goes on, we will create new industry. There will be a large segment left unemployed, but it is like it always has been, each person has a chance make their way and if they fail then society will do little to help. I believe people on a micro scale will find ways to offer value to the marketplace, even those we call unskilled are more intelligent and creative than we give them credit. IBM is largely irrelevant and that is unlikely to change.
It's vulnerable from a packet sniffer standpoint, but a remote vulnerability makes it worse. Many companies have old Cisco code that doesn't have the feature set to support SSH. Why Cisco thought you should have to buy "firewall feature set" on a router in order to get SSH, even long ago still baffles me. Using SSH to get to a management host and allowing telnet across your data center management LAN only from said management host isn't ideal, but it isn't the greatest security sin.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference in American vs. British notions of freedom have been evident since 1776. It's only since 2001 that America seems to have been confused about it's importance.
Fuck your "homespot", get off my lawn. Doesn't "not given the option to opt out before receiving it" sound like digital rape? There will be no vendor supplied WiFi in my house, no sir.
Per TFA:
"US provider Comcast caused controversy when it introduced its public home wi-fi service in the summer because customers were not given the option to opt out before receiving it.
Such "homespot" public wi-fi will see explosive growth rising to more than 325 million in 2018 and taking wi-fi "from the cities to the suburbs", according to the research."
Credit: http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...
One of many reasons to increase the useful life of the products we buy. Computers are fast enough that the hardware itself can be viable a much longer term than we currently use products. At some point I'd really like to see us stop using resources for so many pseudo-disposable products. A $600 smart phone, laptop or desktop, a $1200 TV, $130 app enabled blue-ray player are all products that could have a much longer life if they were designed with longevity in mind. As profitable as it is for now, the model where we are all replacing our devices every 2-3 years isn't very good for the planet or for keeping a sustainable supply of resources.
Last I checked Seattle is also a hell of a lot whiter than Silicon Valley.
According to BestPlaces.net
Seattle 70.60% White
San Jose, CA 47.00% White
Mountain View, CA 59.70% White
A lot of that I believe is due to the quality of education. I did not go to any college other than a few hand picked for fun classes and a ton of technical training and study, yet I'm finding that when I talk to recent graduates of bachelors degree programs they strike me as undereducated in a broad range of knowledge and the general way of the world around them. People that go through only the prescribed courses and aren't driven by their own curiosity to learn more just aren't coming out ready for the corporate world or for any specialized career where they have to compete with well rounded educated adults. I get the sense the curriculum reads to be both expanded and updated. The pace of change in academia is just outmatched by the pace of change in our society. The problem with linking the available choices of students to specific careers is that we often see the few definable careers that are hiring, quickly saturated. I'm all for reducing predatory lending as I'm sure it exists, but real leadership is going to have to mean reexamining the whole system and striving to give students a worthwhile education. While we are at it, bring back serious vocational training to high school.
It makes some sense. If you use a "real name like" pseudonym they don't know unless you get reported. Turn off ability of people to tag you in photos. Use a selfie that is recongnizable to friends, but useless for facial recognition algorithms. Never access outside TOR, blackhole DNS facebook.com and all known ad networks assuming that wouldn't break it within TOR. Register with a matching pseudonym email. Give a fake location and date of birth. Run AD-Blocker Plus, Ghostery, NoScript, etc.. Preferably dual boot, Live-CD or at least use different user login on the OS level when toggling between TOR and public use. For a normal person who wants to see what your friends are doing, but doesn't want to gave Facebook everything it could work good enough. As others mentioned, the ability to use in a country where it is banned is pretty worth while. If you are in that situation then maybe use a real photo at first if your friends need to recognize you to "add you", but change it later to a picture that isn't recognizable as you. It certainly matters for those in repressed countries to be able to communicate to the outside world. Tip: If you give a fake date of birth remember what you gave! I got locked out of mine because they used that as my only option for security question to access a stale account.
I'd be basically OK with it if they were allowed to charge the peer for the (actual and reasonable) cost of the upgrade and no additional fees were charged, even though they would be willing to meet half way were it not in competitive relationship. We'd almost need to force them to split their businesses into separate walled off cable TV and Internet businesses to end the large incentive to squelch competition for eyeballs on the screen. If they offer better peering deals to some transit providers and worse to another solely in order to screw their competition I'd have to believe there is some Antitrust legal provision being violated. Ever since cable speeds beat out common DSL speeds we have been screwed by lack of competition.
Google will extract their pound of flesh for all historically free services. If I ever use a Google service they get a fake name. Most of the time my computers are not even permitted to talk to Google. Yes, that means using Bing Maps, but it's a worthwhile sacrifice to use anything, but Google. Microsoft is no saint, but since they are the only legitimate rival so be it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I know someone has to pay for services for them to exist, but good security and complete loss of privacy are fundamentally incompatible. I have no solution, but I'll try to keep my privacy either way thanks.
Yep, and I think we know how well it works out for companies that desperately hold on and try to keep the world from changing. The days when even lower income households are willing to pay $90 a month for TV alone is going away. If Comcast wanted more than the $15 a month I pay for basic cable they would be out and even that is only waiting for a better alternative to overcome laziness. Trying to hold back the force of change vs. trying to affect change is the difference between Microsoft and Apple in 2003-2010.
Well, 5 mod points and a dozen donuts for anyone with a solution. It's bad situation considering that U.S. and China depend on each other for business and economic reasons yet we treat each other like adversaries. The Chinese government hasn't given much historical respect to the concerns of intellectual property. When it comes to bringing hard consequences to malicious hackers in their borders they offer us zero cooperation in cases like this. So WTF do we do?
"The study was inspired by the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, as lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras."
Now that's funny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Yeah, I've been both of those guys at one time or another. I'll admit to falling into the confidence trap. If you think you are a smart person it easy to think you are also better at guessing the right answer. I find it difficult to hold both the idea that I am smart and that guessing is never reliable and often makes one seem stupid. I'm finding this is also a principle flaw in democracy. People vote without doing any research whatsoever on the issues and are very willing to have a firm opinion about things that they know nothing about.
The tin-foil hat defeated by ingestible Google. Excuse me waiter, is this cheeseburger Google free?
I read the ToS and I agree that could be considered to fulfill the consideration aspect though it isn't really worded as quid pro quo. The consideration terms would be shredded in court. It also lacks so far as I can see, a contract duration which is a required element of a contract. They say they have the right to reproduce your content indefinitely as it may be shared with others outside their control, but I don't think it has enough there to meet the standards of a contract. It's fine in my mind, a promise is good enough. If they sell the company or change their terms later the user can just choose to leave and go elsewhere. They at least claim to make a reasonable effort to delete your content on account termination.
As I understand it a contract is only valid if there is some form of consideration paid and a there is a defined length of the contract. So unless Ello users pay a fee in exchange for the contract guarantee there is no consideration and it would not be an enforceable contract. If the user paid $10 and had an actual contract that stated the ToS for the life of the account then that could be worth something.
It's only evil when Monsanto does it.
Yeah, also watch "The Revisionaries" and you can see just how much some people in the education system are willing to mind fuck our students to maintain their ideological hold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
I think you are right that is the sort of critical thinking they want. I'd like to think the demands for critical thinking are a step in the right direction towards developing future leaders that aren't short term thinkers, but independent critical thinking doesn't really leave much room for ideology of any flavor. What you describe is more akin to thinking as part of the collective and acting and using critical thinking, but only as much as it benefits the collective organization interest. One one hand it sounds Borg like and creepy, but if a person is being paid it is reasonable to expect them to act in the interest of the organization.
That's the dilemma for regulators. What do you do when the public is demanding something that is "bad for business" for the companies who have captured the regulatory body? OK listen, you folks down at the FCC, stop fucking waiting for Comcast's or AT&T's or any other company's permission to do what's right! We the people, don't give a shit what they have to say about it.
"Just because someone exercises critical thinking does not mean that that person will come to the same conclusions that you have. They probably aren't starting with the same objectives as you."
And there you have the reason written tests are a generally a lame way to test critical thinking. Even those who are good at critical thinking are often wrong on the first pass. Good critical thinking often takes multiple iterations and fact seeking to get to what might be considered a good answer.
Thanks SuricouRaven and wertigon. I appreciate the info I hadn't heard of those either. I think I have a good concept, but I'm a little out of my element in the Social Networking space.
The first part rambles and it seems like he isn't going to tell us anything then it winds into commentary that is spot on. I fear Google, but even I can't envision how the public perception will ever swing far enough negative to stop them. Google is a stranger with candy, sure it's free, but it pays to question the motives.
----
"By all appearances, Google's bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment of the "benevolent superpower." "
"This is the impenetrable banality of "don't be evil." They believe that they are doing good. And that is a problem."
"For an American Internet services monopoly to ensure global market dominance, it cannot simply keep doing what it is doing and let politics take care of itself."
Credit: Newsweek: Google Is Not What It Seems, by By Julian Assange
http://www.newsweek.com/assang...
-----
I had not heard of Diaspora, I am currently working on a personal project to create something to fill a similar gap in the social media framework. (Project yet to be named) My project is different, but I'm not ready to expand on it publicly.
It'll have to start with teaching the business school drones a different sort of logic. Right now designing products to suit the western taste makers and having someone else do all the dirty dangerous work that creates pollution, do it for cheap, resell the product and just collect the money in the U.S. is working quite well. This way we can make products by the millions and not have to listen to OSHA, the unions or the enviro-hippies. I don't think America is sinking into irrelevance, America will be just fine. We'll make different choices as time goes on, we will create new industry. There will be a large segment left unemployed, but it is like it always has been, each person has a chance make their way and if they fail then society will do little to help. I believe people on a micro scale will find ways to offer value to the marketplace, even those we call unskilled are more intelligent and creative than we give them credit. IBM is largely irrelevant and that is unlikely to change.
It's vulnerable from a packet sniffer standpoint, but a remote vulnerability makes it worse. Many companies have old Cisco code that doesn't have the feature set to support SSH. Why Cisco thought you should have to buy "firewall feature set" on a router in order to get SSH, even long ago still baffles me. Using SSH to get to a management host and allowing telnet across your data center management LAN only from said management host isn't ideal, but it isn't the greatest security sin.