See, this is the kind of post I was talking about. There are an awful lot of mysterious anonymous posters now who criticize Apple and try to rally the hardcore nerds against them. The goal with your post is to make everyone see them as Microsoft. Just look at the absurdities in your post:
These days, Apple is doing things that even Microsoft never stooped to doing. Microsoft never limited which programming languages developers could write applications in, for instance.
They most certainly have. For other languages, they embrace, extend, and extinguish them, like what they tried to do with Java. Apple is the one submitting their language changes for standardization and working on a free, BSD-licensed compiler suite, for crying out loud.
In fact, with.NET, Microsoft has gone a long way towards vastly increasing the number of languages that can be used to create Windows applications.
What does that matter if the target is.NET, which is tied to Microsoft platforms? The only alternative you have is Mono, and that's always going to lag behind Microsoft's implementation, not to mention the political hysteria surrounding it due to fears of lawsuits and other nonsense.
Then there are rumors about hidden APIs that Apple won't share with other developers, which is something that Microsoft was also accused of doing.
Now we're citing mysterious "rumors about hidden APIs." Here's reality. Apple uses private frameworks and is public about this to its developers. It uses a private framework until it's functional enough to be made public, and in the next version it becomes a public framework. A recent example off the top of my head is CoreText, which was used internally in Tiger but made public in Leopard. Other examples would be controls like the HUD windows used in iLife or the source list mode of NSOutlineView, used in iTunes and the Finder. Objective-C is full of metadata; you can class dump the run-time information of a Cocoa app and see all the classes and methods they use, so it's not like there's some big secret Apple is keeping from you.
Besides that, there are always going to be APIs a system provider uses that you can't. They're the ones providing the platform; of course they're going to have greater privileges and stricter control over third-party use, for the sake of the platform. The CoreGraphics API for rotating a window as a 3D cube that's used in the OS X installation process isn't public because they don't want everybody making their annoying windows rotate like cubes. There's always going to be a level of control over these things.
Of course, then there are the numerous incidents with perfectly legitimate applications being rejected from the app store without any valid reason. The whole review process itself and the conditions associated with it are quite terrible. The whole process is about treating developers like shit.
There have been a few cases, and Apple has improved the process since then, but those incidents far and few between and certainly not enough to form the conclusion that the point of the review process is to "treat developers like shit." That's just more of your agenda shining through.
So it's easy to see how people may distrust Apple so much that they might even believe Apple is involved in shady practices designed to make Apple's claims stronger.
No, it's not easy to see that. Claims require evidence. If you're going to automatically assume that Apple is performing dastardly deeds, you should really take a step back and see how you look to other people as a paranoid nut. It doesn't even make logical sense--revealing that an iPhone jailbreak can lead to sniffing malware is bad for Apple because it makes their phone sound dangerous and insecure to the uninformed masses.
There was a jailbreak that did allow infection by visiting a website. But hey, you're yet another mysterious, anonymous poster bashing Apple for being closed. I'm sure you won't be posting multiple times here...
I mentioned this elsewhere--I think the bizarre level of Apple hatred is due to astroturfers with a vested interest in Android. The goal is to make Apple look bad and rally the hardcore geeks against them.
Notice how many anonymous posters there are that criticize Apple in a story. You can already see a few posting to this one. Something fishy is going on.
Linux users yesterday: "I hate websites that use Flash. They're slow and awful. Let's hear it for open web standards!"
Linux users today: "Apple is evil for not pre-installing Flash, a third-party, proprietary web plugin. How dare they encourage the use of open web standards. I'm going to mention Steve Jobs by name and rant about how I'm able to do apt-get on the command-line to install Flash, which is somehow the same as having it pre-installed. That's proof that Apple is evil. Wake up, sheep!"
I don't know if you're aware of the Flash experience on the Mac. Flash blockers on the Mac are very common because of how slow and buggy the non-Windows version of the Flash plugin is. When Safari was released to support external process plugins, it was mentioned that the #1 cause of crashes in OS X according to their crash reporter was plugins. They didn't mention it by name, but everyone knew they were talking about Flash. It's notorious for being a piece of shit.
Adobe has long been slow to update their core Mac applications, first for OS X and then for Cocoa. Only after Apple deprecated Carbon and cancelled the 64-bit version of it did Adobe finally update Photoshop to use Cocoa, almost a decade after OS X was first released. When a Snow Leopard update shipped with an older version of Flash than what was available because a newer version came out during their update cycle, people shit on Apple. Apple was doing Adobe a favor by shipping Flash with every Mac, but now that they're trying to push open standards like HTML5, and security issues have become a problem in Flash, why should they when a user who wants Flash can get the latest version directly from Adobe like they already do on Windows?
This is ridiculous. The freedom to lock down the platform? If the Android license allows that, than it's not as open as you claim.
This is another example of how many open source advocates have lost perspective and place the idea of something being "open" at a higher priority than quality. People do not give a shit about how open their cell phone is. They just don't. Only hardcore, Linux-using technophiles do.
I've had a suspicion for a while now that Slashdot is being astroturfed by people who are either directly involved with Google or have a vested interested in its platforms like Android. Slashdot used to be friendly to Apple, critical of some things but congratulatory toward their products and success. Since Android has come out, every Apple article now is filled with Apple-bashers, people who really seem to be working unusually hard to convince everyone that Apple is evil, not worth your time, and only used by sheep. Often, they reference Steve Jobs by name, as if he can hear them or something.
I'll get accused of wearing a tinfoil hat, and I don't dismiss the fact that there have always been Apple-haters posting on Slashdot regardless of Google, but watching the tone of the comments shift so radically has been unusual, especially when the tone in articles that are critical of Google are the exact opposite--a ton of defenders justifying Google's every move, even when they're caught archiving emails and passwords from WiFi networks or when it turns out Android isn't open at all because it's controlled by the carriers. People who bash Google get modded down or drowned out by apologists.
Apple can't even introduce a Mac App Store without it some slippery slope argument claiming that the Mac will become a closed platform, despite Apple specifically mentioning that it won't be the only source of software. Linux distros have quality-tested, centralized repositories of software. Microsoft is introducing an app store in Windows 8 according to that leaked presentation. But when Apple does it, it's evil.
There's something suspicious about the sudden antagonism toward Apple. Like I said, there's always been a level of criticism over things like prices or hardware specs, but it's never risen to the degree it's at now where even things like not pre-installing Flash is some crime, even though Windows and Linux don't ship with Flash either. You have to install it yourself, whether it's from Adobe's site or using apt-get. There's a lot of misdirection going on. Look at the recent Java article whose headline and summary implied Apple was deprecating Java itself and not simply deprecating their pre-installed JVM. Again, Windows and Linux distros don't ship with Java pre-installed like that either. Apple was shipping these things back when the Mac was still clawing it's way back out of obscurity, and they couldn't count on companies like Sun to bother with their platform.
I believe Slashdot is getting astroturfed hard. The constant argument that only rubes use Macs is an attempt to rally "independent-minded" Linux users against Apple and keep them away from products like the iPhone, because some of these trolls have--I believe--a vested interest in Android. So many of the posts are just too suspicious. If Apple had been caught archiving people's emails and passwords, or if Steve Jobs had come out and said that the only people who care about privacy are people who have something to hide (as Google CEO Eric Schmidt did), the comments to the stories would have exploded in their level of sheer Apple hatred, yet those Google stories had defenders out in full force protecting the company. Something fishy is going on.
In return for that, you get a superior user experience on a mobile device. I've never understood the big deal--game consoles are locked down too, but you don't see tirades against Nintendo around here.
Flash for the Mac is so terrible that an Adobe evangelist actually recommended using a Flash blocker in response to people's complaints about its instability. I'm not sure if Slashdotters criticizing Apple for antagonizing Adobe are aware of how slow and buggy the non-Windows version of the plugin is. Apple is eager to replace its functionality with open web standards. Adobe is so deluded that it accused Apple of being closed and of Flash being open simply because it's a commonly-installed plugin.
Here's a John Gruber article explaining the situation between Apple and Flash better.
Flash on Safari doesn't use an auto-updater. Apple got some shit a while back when a newer version of Flash with security updates came out during one of their update cycles, and a system update shipped with an older version of Flash and ended up overwriting the newer version. It's better for everyone if Flash is installed directly from Adobe. Windows doesn't ship with Flash either.
But, like I've said in other stories, Apple-haters have completely taken over Slashdot, so it doesn't matter what's true anymore. The comments will just be filled with more bashers referencing Steve Jobs by name as if he can hear them.
I know Slashdot is full of Apple-haters, but these old trolling figures aren't even correct. Aside from the fact that Macs are up to 20% in the U.S., Apple is doing very well in the market with the iPhone and iPad. The notion that Apple is some marginal player hasn't been true for almost a decade.
Java isn't being "deprecated" on OS X. Apple is just not going to work on its native JVM implementation anymore. This isn't surprising since the Java-Cocoa bridge was deprecated years ago. Third-party JVMs, such as SoyLatte, will continue to work as usual.
While saying "Apple isn't blocking Sun/Oracle's ability to ship Java for the OS X platform" sounds wonderful, it neglects reality.
Your implication with this statement is that Apple is actually blocking Java on OS X, but that's completely untrue. You act as if it's Apple's obligation to be providing a JVM. It's none of Apple's problem that Sun never did. Apple was doing them a favor by providing their own JVM all these years. Keeping it updated wouldn't be any more difficult than any other third-party updater. Right now, Mac apps already use their own updaters, often through a framework called Sparkle.
Your dismissal of these points as "a good Apple PR position" doesn't change the fact that Apple has never stopped anyone from providing a JVM. In fact, here's a third-party port of BSD Java for the Mac.
If Oracle wants Java on OS X, they can do it themselves like they already do for Windows. Absolutely nothing is stopping them.
Except that Java isn't being "deprecated" either. I have no idea why nobody is pointing this out. All Apple is doing is halting updates to their implementation of the JVM, which often lagged behind official Java releases anyway. Other Java implementations are still free to be installed on a Mac.
Since the summary and article are pretty much crap (Apple isn't locking down the Mac; you're free not to use the App Store), I just want to point out that Linux distros have centralized software repositories, Windows 8 will have an app store of its own--what did you expect Apple to do? The Mac clearly needed an app store of its own, and obviously what gets hosted on it is going to go through a bit of an approval process.
You will be able to install software outside the app store, but I do want to mention that only people on Slashdot give a shit about things like that anyway. Everyone else is too busy having a life to worry about how "open" something is. They just want something that works. The fact people don't get that is why Linux on the desktop was a complete and total failure with the mainstream, even after all these years.
This is hilarious. Google fans have gone so far as to actually turn this around into a "good" thing that Google sniffed emails and passwords from people's WiFi networks.
Google reported this from DAY ONE, and rather than sweeping it under the rug they tattled on themselves, and asked world governments what they should do with the data rather than simply destroying it.
When they got caught, they were forced to own up to it or risk a backlash. That totally makes them not evil! Nobody pay attention to this critical story about Google!
The news here is that what was in the data is specifically being detailed. It says right in the article that they didn't know exactly what was in the data at first, so you're lying when you say there's nothing new here. The news is that it's been confirmed by regulators (not Google) that there were entire emails, URLs, passwords, and more archived by Google.
Like I said in another post, Google can do no wrong to some folks around here. Eric Schmidt actually came out and said that only people with something to hide care about privacy, and even that doesn't sway people like you. Fans to the bitter end, I guess.
What claims are outrageous? PC game developers are public about how piracy has decimated PC gaming. Why do you think they moved to consoles? Why do you think the remaining PC developers require you to log into online services to play? It's the only way they can make any money.
Pro-piracy advocates are leeches who don't want the free ride to go away. They'll use any justification, from claiming piracy somehow helps sales (not buying something is apparently the same as buying something) to portraying other entities as the bad people, such as the RIAA. You can see it in the comments to this story. It's almost automatic at this point--"I'm not the one doing bad things, they are! It's their fault."
It's been an obvious agenda on Slashdot for years. I'm probably going to get modbombed again for saying it, but I've got karma to burn. The most amusing part of it all is how up-in-arms people get over GPL "theft." The double-standard never occurs to them.
Eric Schmidt flat-out said that the only people who care about privacy have something to hide, and they were caught archiving neighborhood WiFi data "accidentally." I don't know why people still treat Google as some benevolent open source company--their search and advertising platform is as closed source and proprietary as Windows.
Every free service they offer is to get you onto their indexing and advertising platforms. They use the moniker of "open" to attract people and trick them into think Google is ethical and is "one of them." And yet, no matter how many times it's proven what a sham their do-no-evil mantra is, they continue to have defenders who want everything they use to be Google-branded.
Eventually, the tide is going to turn, and they're going to be as derided as Microsoft. The transition is happening. Until then, you'll still get people who actually believe Google is an open company that's all about the engineering.
Slashdot has an extremely pro-piracy agenda. You never hear stories about piracy hurting anything. You only hear stories of how piracy supposedly increased sales or how some faceless corporate group is doing something horrible when it tries to protect its property.
You also never hear from content creators who are opposed to piracy, and you rarely hear about its negative effects. Here's one of the rare occasions that Slashdot reported on it, a story about how DRM-free game Machinarium suffered 90% piracy rates, to the point they had to offer an amnesty sale.
The Slashdot agenda is that artists have no rights and should never try to stop pirates, and that if they simply "engage" them, their sales will skyrocket. Apparently, some comic book on 4chan is supposed to prove this. Meanwhile, PC gaming is dead and software is moving to online services...I wonder why?
I couldn't make changes to anything I had originally written, not even the summary. Usually I go through several iterations to make the submission clearer. There was even a typo I couldn't change, but apparently it was fixed by one of the site's editors.
Slashdot Mirror
See, this is the kind of post I was talking about. There are an awful lot of mysterious anonymous posters now who criticize Apple and try to rally the hardcore nerds against them. The goal with your post is to make everyone see them as Microsoft. Just look at the absurdities in your post:
They most certainly have. For other languages, they embrace, extend, and extinguish them, like what they tried to do with Java. Apple is the one submitting their language changes for standardization and working on a free, BSD-licensed compiler suite, for crying out loud.
What does that matter if the target is .NET, which is tied to Microsoft platforms? The only alternative you have is Mono, and that's always going to lag behind Microsoft's implementation, not to mention the political hysteria surrounding it due to fears of lawsuits and other nonsense.
Now we're citing mysterious "rumors about hidden APIs." Here's reality. Apple uses private frameworks and is public about this to its developers. It uses a private framework until it's functional enough to be made public, and in the next version it becomes a public framework. A recent example off the top of my head is CoreText, which was used internally in Tiger but made public in Leopard. Other examples would be controls like the HUD windows used in iLife or the source list mode of NSOutlineView, used in iTunes and the Finder. Objective-C is full of metadata; you can class dump the run-time information of a Cocoa app and see all the classes and methods they use, so it's not like there's some big secret Apple is keeping from you.
Besides that, there are always going to be APIs a system provider uses that you can't. They're the ones providing the platform; of course they're going to have greater privileges and stricter control over third-party use, for the sake of the platform. The CoreGraphics API for rotating a window as a 3D cube that's used in the OS X installation process isn't public because they don't want everybody making their annoying windows rotate like cubes. There's always going to be a level of control over these things.
There have been a few cases, and Apple has improved the process since then, but those incidents far and few between and certainly not enough to form the conclusion that the point of the review process is to "treat developers like shit." That's just more of your agenda shining through.
No, it's not easy to see that. Claims require evidence. If you're going to automatically assume that Apple is performing dastardly deeds, you should really take a step back and see how you look to other people as a paranoid nut. It doesn't even make logical sense--revealing that an iPhone jailbreak can lead to sniffing malware is bad for Apple because it makes their phone sound dangerous and insecure to the uninformed masses.
There was a jailbreak that did allow infection by visiting a website. But hey, you're yet another mysterious, anonymous poster bashing Apple for being closed. I'm sure you won't be posting multiple times here...
I mentioned this elsewhere--I think the bizarre level of Apple hatred is due to astroturfers with a vested interest in Android. The goal is to make Apple look bad and rally the hardcore geeks against them.
Notice how many anonymous posters there are that criticize Apple in a story. You can already see a few posting to this one. Something fishy is going on.
Linux users yesterday: "I hate websites that use Flash. They're slow and awful. Let's hear it for open web standards!"
Linux users today: "Apple is evil for not pre-installing Flash, a third-party, proprietary web plugin. How dare they encourage the use of open web standards. I'm going to mention Steve Jobs by name and rant about how I'm able to do apt-get on the command-line to install Flash, which is somehow the same as having it pre-installed. That's proof that Apple is evil. Wake up, sheep!"
I don't know if you're aware of the Flash experience on the Mac. Flash blockers on the Mac are very common because of how slow and buggy the non-Windows version of the Flash plugin is. When Safari was released to support external process plugins, it was mentioned that the #1 cause of crashes in OS X according to their crash reporter was plugins. They didn't mention it by name, but everyone knew they were talking about Flash. It's notorious for being a piece of shit.
Adobe has long been slow to update their core Mac applications, first for OS X and then for Cocoa. Only after Apple deprecated Carbon and cancelled the 64-bit version of it did Adobe finally update Photoshop to use Cocoa, almost a decade after OS X was first released. When a Snow Leopard update shipped with an older version of Flash than what was available because a newer version came out during their update cycle, people shit on Apple. Apple was doing Adobe a favor by shipping Flash with every Mac, but now that they're trying to push open standards like HTML5, and security issues have become a problem in Flash, why should they when a user who wants Flash can get the latest version directly from Adobe like they already do on Windows?
This is ridiculous. The freedom to lock down the platform? If the Android license allows that, than it's not as open as you claim.
This is another example of how many open source advocates have lost perspective and place the idea of something being "open" at a higher priority than quality. People do not give a shit about how open their cell phone is. They just don't. Only hardcore, Linux-using technophiles do.
I've had a suspicion for a while now that Slashdot is being astroturfed by people who are either directly involved with Google or have a vested interested in its platforms like Android. Slashdot used to be friendly to Apple, critical of some things but congratulatory toward their products and success. Since Android has come out, every Apple article now is filled with Apple-bashers, people who really seem to be working unusually hard to convince everyone that Apple is evil, not worth your time, and only used by sheep. Often, they reference Steve Jobs by name, as if he can hear them or something.
I'll get accused of wearing a tinfoil hat, and I don't dismiss the fact that there have always been Apple-haters posting on Slashdot regardless of Google, but watching the tone of the comments shift so radically has been unusual, especially when the tone in articles that are critical of Google are the exact opposite--a ton of defenders justifying Google's every move, even when they're caught archiving emails and passwords from WiFi networks or when it turns out Android isn't open at all because it's controlled by the carriers. People who bash Google get modded down or drowned out by apologists.
Apple can't even introduce a Mac App Store without it some slippery slope argument claiming that the Mac will become a closed platform, despite Apple specifically mentioning that it won't be the only source of software. Linux distros have quality-tested, centralized repositories of software. Microsoft is introducing an app store in Windows 8 according to that leaked presentation. But when Apple does it, it's evil.
There's something suspicious about the sudden antagonism toward Apple. Like I said, there's always been a level of criticism over things like prices or hardware specs, but it's never risen to the degree it's at now where even things like not pre-installing Flash is some crime, even though Windows and Linux don't ship with Flash either. You have to install it yourself, whether it's from Adobe's site or using apt-get. There's a lot of misdirection going on. Look at the recent Java article whose headline and summary implied Apple was deprecating Java itself and not simply deprecating their pre-installed JVM. Again, Windows and Linux distros don't ship with Java pre-installed like that either. Apple was shipping these things back when the Mac was still clawing it's way back out of obscurity, and they couldn't count on companies like Sun to bother with their platform.
I believe Slashdot is getting astroturfed hard. The constant argument that only rubes use Macs is an attempt to rally "independent-minded" Linux users against Apple and keep them away from products like the iPhone, because some of these trolls have--I believe--a vested interest in Android. So many of the posts are just too suspicious. If Apple had been caught archiving people's emails and passwords, or if Steve Jobs had come out and said that the only people who care about privacy are people who have something to hide (as Google CEO Eric Schmidt did), the comments to the stories would have exploded in their level of sheer Apple hatred, yet those Google stories had defenders out in full force protecting the company. Something fishy is going on.
In return for that, you get a superior user experience on a mobile device. I've never understood the big deal--game consoles are locked down too, but you don't see tirades against Nintendo around here.
So you had to manually install it instead of it being pre-installed with your browser, just like the post said?
The "billions" claim is amusing, though.
Flash for the Mac is so terrible that an Adobe evangelist actually recommended using a Flash blocker in response to people's complaints about its instability. I'm not sure if Slashdotters criticizing Apple for antagonizing Adobe are aware of how slow and buggy the non-Windows version of the plugin is. Apple is eager to replace its functionality with open web standards. Adobe is so deluded that it accused Apple of being closed and of Flash being open simply because it's a commonly-installed plugin.
Here's a John Gruber article explaining the situation between Apple and Flash better.
Flash on Safari doesn't use an auto-updater. Apple got some shit a while back when a newer version of Flash with security updates came out during one of their update cycles, and a system update shipped with an older version of Flash and ended up overwriting the newer version. It's better for everyone if Flash is installed directly from Adobe. Windows doesn't ship with Flash either.
But, like I've said in other stories, Apple-haters have completely taken over Slashdot, so it doesn't matter what's true anymore. The comments will just be filled with more bashers referencing Steve Jobs by name as if he can hear them.
I know Slashdot is full of Apple-haters, but these old trolling figures aren't even correct. Aside from the fact that Macs are up to 20% in the U.S., Apple is doing very well in the market with the iPhone and iPad. The notion that Apple is some marginal player hasn't been true for almost a decade.
Java isn't being "deprecated" on OS X. Apple is just not going to work on its native JVM implementation anymore. This isn't surprising since the Java-Cocoa bridge was deprecated years ago. Third-party JVMs, such as SoyLatte, will continue to work as usual.
Your implication with this statement is that Apple is actually blocking Java on OS X, but that's completely untrue. You act as if it's Apple's obligation to be providing a JVM. It's none of Apple's problem that Sun never did. Apple was doing them a favor by providing their own JVM all these years. Keeping it updated wouldn't be any more difficult than any other third-party updater. Right now, Mac apps already use their own updaters, often through a framework called Sparkle.
Your dismissal of these points as "a good Apple PR position" doesn't change the fact that Apple has never stopped anyone from providing a JVM. In fact, here's a third-party port of BSD Java for the Mac.
If Oracle wants Java on OS X, they can do it themselves like they already do for Windows. Absolutely nothing is stopping them.
Except that Java isn't being "deprecated" either. I have no idea why nobody is pointing this out. All Apple is doing is halting updates to their implementation of the JVM, which often lagged behind official Java releases anyway. Other Java implementations are still free to be installed on a Mac.
Since the summary and article are pretty much crap (Apple isn't locking down the Mac; you're free not to use the App Store), I just want to point out that Linux distros have centralized software repositories, Windows 8 will have an app store of its own--what did you expect Apple to do? The Mac clearly needed an app store of its own, and obviously what gets hosted on it is going to go through a bit of an approval process.
You will be able to install software outside the app store, but I do want to mention that only people on Slashdot give a shit about things like that anyway. Everyone else is too busy having a life to worry about how "open" something is. They just want something that works. The fact people don't get that is why Linux on the desktop was a complete and total failure with the mainstream, even after all these years.
This is hilarious. Google fans have gone so far as to actually turn this around into a "good" thing that Google sniffed emails and passwords from people's WiFi networks.
When they got caught, they were forced to own up to it or risk a backlash. That totally makes them not evil! Nobody pay attention to this critical story about Google!
The news here is that what was in the data is specifically being detailed. It says right in the article that they didn't know exactly what was in the data at first, so you're lying when you say there's nothing new here. The news is that it's been confirmed by regulators (not Google) that there were entire emails, URLs, passwords, and more archived by Google.
Like I said in another post, Google can do no wrong to some folks around here. Eric Schmidt actually came out and said that only people with something to hide care about privacy, and even that doesn't sway people like you. Fans to the bitter end, I guess.
You just need a bigger injection of Hopenchange(tm).
Well, perception is initially created by witnessing facts. It's not exactly a secret that Wikipedia is dysfunctional.
What claims are outrageous? PC game developers are public about how piracy has decimated PC gaming. Why do you think they moved to consoles? Why do you think the remaining PC developers require you to log into online services to play? It's the only way they can make any money.
Pro-piracy advocates are leeches who don't want the free ride to go away. They'll use any justification, from claiming piracy somehow helps sales (not buying something is apparently the same as buying something) to portraying other entities as the bad people, such as the RIAA. You can see it in the comments to this story. It's almost automatic at this point--"I'm not the one doing bad things, they are! It's their fault."
It's been an obvious agenda on Slashdot for years. I'm probably going to get modbombed again for saying it, but I've got karma to burn. The most amusing part of it all is how up-in-arms people get over GPL "theft." The double-standard never occurs to them.
Eric Schmidt flat-out said that the only people who care about privacy have something to hide, and they were caught archiving neighborhood WiFi data "accidentally." I don't know why people still treat Google as some benevolent open source company--their search and advertising platform is as closed source and proprietary as Windows.
Every free service they offer is to get you onto their indexing and advertising platforms. They use the moniker of "open" to attract people and trick them into think Google is ethical and is "one of them." And yet, no matter how many times it's proven what a sham their do-no-evil mantra is, they continue to have defenders who want everything they use to be Google-branded.
Eventually, the tide is going to turn, and they're going to be as derided as Microsoft. The transition is happening. Until then, you'll still get people who actually believe Google is an open company that's all about the engineering.
Slashdot has an extremely pro-piracy agenda. You never hear stories about piracy hurting anything. You only hear stories of how piracy supposedly increased sales or how some faceless corporate group is doing something horrible when it tries to protect its property.
You also never hear from content creators who are opposed to piracy, and you rarely hear about its negative effects. Here's one of the rare occasions that Slashdot reported on it, a story about how DRM-free game Machinarium suffered 90% piracy rates, to the point they had to offer an amnesty sale.
The Slashdot agenda is that artists have no rights and should never try to stop pirates, and that if they simply "engage" them, their sales will skyrocket. Apparently, some comic book on 4chan is supposed to prove this. Meanwhile, PC gaming is dead and software is moving to online services...I wonder why?
His "anti-terrorism activities" sure stopped Bin Laden from beginning the plans for 9/11 in 1998.
I couldn't make changes to anything I had originally written, not even the summary. Usually I go through several iterations to make the submission clearer. There was even a typo I couldn't change, but apparently it was fixed by one of the site's editors.