It's a juicier narrative to portray it in the way the summary did--that even though Microsoft once depicted Linux as a "cancer", Linux must now be so awesome that Microsoft is one of its key contributors. Providing context buffs out some of that luster.
I find it far more intriguing that the key contributors to Linux are companies and not independent individuals, since the old storyline used to be that devoted hobbyists were gathering on the internet to do a better job than commercial companies, back when the "year of Linux on the desktop" was always right around the corner.
Neither of the Groklaw links you posted refuted anything I wrote. Bedrock and Google settled after Google lost. You also state that Bedrock "had to willingly dismiss its claims", which is contradictory--if they willingly did it, they didn't have to do anything. You can "lean on zero" if you want just because you don't want to perceive Google in any losing light, but the settlement was likely initiated to immunize Google from further lawsuits related to the first ruling.
Why is there still political uproar over games after all these years? It may have been understandable in the mid-1990s when Doom and Mortal Kombat were portraying a level of violence people hadn't seen in games before in such detail, but that time has passed without effect, and the attention given to games today feels disproportionate. It's just an easy, uncontroversial issue for politicians to pick up in order to appeal to family-first voters.
Google doesn't constantly prevail in patent claims. For example, they lost a Linux server kernel patent case last year and had to pay $5 million to Bedrock Computer Technologies.
I'm curious to know what exactly is being tracked. The summary makes you think that everything is being tracked, like conversations and text messages, but it's actually just location that's being tracked. Companies already track such data for service quality--for example, the iPhone tracks cell phone towers to determine strongest signal areas, which ultimately means it ends up with a history of phone locations. Most smartphones do this. That said, for the government to be able to track private property without permission for purposes of investigation is different, and there should be protection against such invasive surveillance. Unfortunately, I don't think much progress will be made in that regard as long as Obama is in office--he's demonstrated that he's more than happy to embrace warrantless surveillance of all kinds.
Added `single-window-mode'. Basically this feature is known from OS-X, though it's implemented in a more strict way. The `single-window-mode' window should get all of the users attention.
Single window mode hasn't been a standard feature of OS X since the public beta in 2000. I thought at first that it was referring to fullscreen mode in Lion, but it appears to really be talking about the original single window mode, which had a purple button in the upper right corner of a window before the button was turned into a white pill and made into a toolbar toggle. IIRC, the feature is still there if via a hidden defaults key.
So that leaves Google as the last major entity not to implement DNT. Article says: "Google recently said that it will implement the technology in Chrome sometime soon." There's nothing stopping Google from having implemented it already--they're just stalling because they don't want to affect ad revenue. All the other major browsers implemented it long ago. Google loves to give these vague promises of things and then never follow through, especially when it affects their bottom line.
Odd that it was the classification of Star Trek's science fiction that tipped you off and not the "Mars Effect" name and logo that are obviously based on Mass Effect, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Bethesda lawsuit.
He wasn't found guilty by a jury of his peers. He admitted his crime to the judge.
So I must again ask, what kind of wacky police state does the UK have that it forces its police to chase Twitter trolls? "Inciting racial hatred" is a nebulous, highly subjective crime involving the expression of ideas. It's too easily abused by the government. And look at the consequences in this case--he is forbidden from using social networks and jailed for nearly two months because he trolled on Twitter.
I could understand a fine, and I definitely understand getting kicked out of university. But a 56-day jail sentence for online trolling? Do you really not see the absurdity in this?
That is completely wrong. You can't be jailed for years just because a policeman says he thought he smelt marijuana from your house. If the policeman issues a search and discovers a bunch of marijuana, that's a different story. But you portray it as if you don't even have to possess the illegal drug in question to be jailed for years. As for having a sense of perspective, I consider violations of free speech to be far more egregious than violating local drug laws.
Not only does our football barely involve contact with the feet, we also have a First Amendment. I guess that does seem pretty crazy in this day and age.
Can you really be imprisoned in the UK for posting something racially insensitive? Just because he wrote something about a soccer player people liked doesn't mean he should be arrested and sent to jail. What kind of wacky police state does the UK have that this is acceptable legal policy? Don't the police there have better things to do than be made to chase down Twitter trolls?
The best way to get geeks to care about privacy is to make the argument about Facebook. Geeks HATE Facebook. If you make it about Google, who is much worse when it comes to privacy abuses, you will be ignored, because Google has successful propagandized itself as a harmless, techie-driven web search company and not a multi-billion dollar, data-collecting, advertising behemoth.
Even more amazing, the $0.99 I spend on an app completely removes ads without buggy third-party firmware or manual redirects, for all time. What will they think of next?
Doesn't align with Google's strategy, which is to sell you to as many advertisers as possible. It's the reason Android exists at all and why they encourage free, ad-supported apps over paid apps.
I don't think Google has the same kind of motivations that Microsoft did, though the final effects may be the same. Microsoft was about forcefully expanding their market presence to ensure success, while Google's is to provide free services in order to track more and more personal data and deliver more ads. For what it's worth, I doubt this initiative from Google to create their own web platform will be successful.
It's not about evil intentions. It's about Google's track record of privacy "accidents" and a general lack of respect for privacy rights. Would you trust Microsoft antispyware software? No, because Microsoft's track record is pretty shitty in that regard. So why should you trust Google to generate your passwords, one of the most private pieces of data you own?
The Robots Exclusion (robots.txt) is also an honor system. Google is the only holdout on Do Not Track. Every other major browser vendor has adopted. Google also happens to financially benefit from there being no Do Not Track. Makes you think, doesn't it?
Ever wondered why Chrome bundled Flash despite dropping H.264 in the name of openness? Advertiser Flash cookies. Chrome is also the last major browser not to support the Do Not Track privacy feature. Google wants access to all your data because you are their product, and advertisers are their users.
Of course, trolls will probably accuse me of being a shill again, even though the facts are staring everyone in the face. I'll stick with Firefox and the PwdHash addon for secure password generation, thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
Silly me, I thought the summary was supposed to summarize the article.
It's a juicier narrative to portray it in the way the summary did--that even though Microsoft once depicted Linux as a "cancer", Linux must now be so awesome that Microsoft is one of its key contributors. Providing context buffs out some of that luster.
I find it far more intriguing that the key contributors to Linux are companies and not independent individuals, since the old storyline used to be that devoted hobbyists were gathering on the internet to do a better job than commercial companies, back when the "year of Linux on the desktop" was always right around the corner.
Neither of the Groklaw links you posted refuted anything I wrote. Bedrock and Google settled after Google lost. You also state that Bedrock "had to willingly dismiss its claims", which is contradictory--if they willingly did it, they didn't have to do anything. You can "lean on zero" if you want just because you don't want to perceive Google in any losing light, but the settlement was likely initiated to immunize Google from further lawsuits related to the first ruling.
Why is there still political uproar over games after all these years? It may have been understandable in the mid-1990s when Doom and Mortal Kombat were portraying a level of violence people hadn't seen in games before in such detail, but that time has passed without effect, and the attention given to games today feels disproportionate. It's just an easy, uncontroversial issue for politicians to pick up in order to appeal to family-first voters.
Google doesn't constantly prevail in patent claims. For example, they lost a Linux server kernel patent case last year and had to pay $5 million to Bedrock Computer Technologies.
I'm curious to know what exactly is being tracked. The summary makes you think that everything is being tracked, like conversations and text messages, but it's actually just location that's being tracked. Companies already track such data for service quality--for example, the iPhone tracks cell phone towers to determine strongest signal areas, which ultimately means it ends up with a history of phone locations. Most smartphones do this. That said, for the government to be able to track private property without permission for purposes of investigation is different, and there should be protection against such invasive surveillance. Unfortunately, I don't think much progress will be made in that regard as long as Obama is in office--he's demonstrated that he's more than happy to embrace warrantless surveillance of all kinds.
Deeper analysis revealed the dark energy source is a large, repellent mass located in our solar system.
Single window mode hasn't been a standard feature of OS X since the public beta in 2000. I thought at first that it was referring to fullscreen mode in Lion, but it appears to really be talking about the original single window mode, which had a purple button in the upper right corner of a window before the button was turned into a white pill and made into a toolbar toggle. IIRC, the feature is still there if via a hidden defaults key.
So that leaves Google as the last major entity not to implement DNT. Article says: "Google recently said that it will implement the technology in Chrome sometime soon." There's nothing stopping Google from having implemented it already--they're just stalling because they don't want to affect ad revenue. All the other major browsers implemented it long ago. Google loves to give these vague promises of things and then never follow through, especially when it affects their bottom line.
Mars Effect logo: http://marseffect.net/logo.gif
Mass Effect logo: http://www.logowallpaper.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Mass-Effect-Logo-Wallpaper.jpg
Come on, people, this one wasn't hard to figure out.
Odd that it was the classification of Star Trek's science fiction that tipped you off and not the "Mars Effect" name and logo that are obviously based on Mass Effect, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Bethesda lawsuit.
He wasn't found guilty by a jury of his peers. He admitted his crime to the judge.
So I must again ask, what kind of wacky police state does the UK have that it forces its police to chase Twitter trolls? "Inciting racial hatred" is a nebulous, highly subjective crime involving the expression of ideas. It's too easily abused by the government. And look at the consequences in this case--he is forbidden from using social networks and jailed for nearly two months because he trolled on Twitter.
I could understand a fine, and I definitely understand getting kicked out of university. But a 56-day jail sentence for online trolling? Do you really not see the absurdity in this?
That is completely wrong. You can't be jailed for years just because a policeman says he thought he smelt marijuana from your house. If the policeman issues a search and discovers a bunch of marijuana, that's a different story. But you portray it as if you don't even have to possess the illegal drug in question to be jailed for years. As for having a sense of perspective, I consider violations of free speech to be far more egregious than violating local drug laws.
Not only does our football barely involve contact with the feet, we also have a First Amendment. I guess that does seem pretty crazy in this day and age.
Can you really be imprisoned in the UK for posting something racially insensitive? Just because he wrote something about a soccer player people liked doesn't mean he should be arrested and sent to jail. What kind of wacky police state does the UK have that this is acceptable legal policy? Don't the police there have better things to do than be made to chase down Twitter trolls?
The best way to get geeks to care about privacy is to make the argument about Facebook. Geeks HATE Facebook. If you make it about Google, who is much worse when it comes to privacy abuses, you will be ignored, because Google has successful propagandized itself as a harmless, techie-driven web search company and not a multi-billion dollar, data-collecting, advertising behemoth.
Even more amazing, the $0.99 I spend on an app completely removes ads without buggy third-party firmware or manual redirects, for all time. What will they think of next?
Doesn't align with Google's strategy, which is to sell you to as many advertisers as possible. It's the reason Android exists at all and why they encourage free, ad-supported apps over paid apps.
Why doesn't Twitter count as a social network? I realize the CEO has claimed it's not, but you create a profile and network socially with other users.
I don't think Google has the same kind of motivations that Microsoft did, though the final effects may be the same. Microsoft was about forcefully expanding their market presence to ensure success, while Google's is to provide free services in order to track more and more personal data and deliver more ads. For what it's worth, I doubt this initiative from Google to create their own web platform will be successful.
Unfortunately, most people have been conditioned to accept that they have no rights.
It's not about evil intentions. It's about Google's track record of privacy "accidents" and a general lack of respect for privacy rights. Would you trust Microsoft antispyware software? No, because Microsoft's track record is pretty shitty in that regard. So why should you trust Google to generate your passwords, one of the most private pieces of data you own?
The Robots Exclusion (robots.txt) is also an honor system. Google is the only holdout on Do Not Track. Every other major browser vendor has adopted. Google also happens to financially benefit from there being no Do Not Track. Makes you think, doesn't it?
Let's trust an ad-serving company with a track record of intentional privacy violations and a publicly hostile attitude toward privacy rights to generate our passwords for us.
Ever wondered why Chrome bundled Flash despite dropping H.264 in the name of openness? Advertiser Flash cookies. Chrome is also the last major browser not to support the Do Not Track privacy feature. Google wants access to all your data because you are their product, and advertisers are their users.
Of course, trolls will probably accuse me of being a shill again, even though the facts are staring everyone in the face. I'll stick with Firefox and the PwdHash addon for secure password generation, thanks.