IBM really were a malign force in this industry when they were dominant, using grossly unethical tactics against competitors and stifling innovation to an extraordinary extent. Between 1960 and 1980 IBM were the evil empire - probably worse than Microsoft have ever been. These days, ethically, IBM seems to be an 'average company'. It does some good stuff, it acts on the whole as a good citizen, it contributes to standards processes and mostly abides by the standards that are agreed. Of course, this may simply be because it no longer has the power to bully and intimidate like it once did - but this is nevertheless a huge change.
However, 'better' does not necessarily mean 'good', particularly if you start from where IBM started from.
And being 'not quite as bad as IBM at it's worst' doesn't make Microsoft good, either - they have always, from the very beginning, been an exceptionally unethical company.
I was thinking the same thing. I thought one way to handle this more elegantly would be to have two separate touch pads, one on each side of the keyboard:
[TP][ KB ][TP]
Of course, you may lose some manipulation space for your hands, but this would take up considerably less vertical space, which is the more "expensive" dimension, in my opinion.
Or have the keyboard mounted on a powered slide or folding mechanism) over the touchpad. so that at a touch, the keyboard slides over the touchpad allowing you to type on real keys (for composing a document or an email, for example) and then another touch moves or folds the keyboard out of the way, revealing the touchpad again. With this set up I imagine you'd use a 'soft' keyboard for typing short texts, and might retain a conventional mouse or trackball for use when the touchpad was covered.
But your keyboard and touchpad would both be in the same (ergonomically optimal) position when in use, and, depending on how the keyboard moved/slid/retracted/folded out of the way, the composite touchpad/keyboard arrangement would not need to take up more desk space.
This is an idea I see as being potentially useful as a corporate communications app - allowing people inside a company to add commentary on documents on their own Intranet, and also comments visible to others in the same company/community on documents on the public web. I wonder whether Google will sell the server for this as a product? If not, it should not be too hard to reverse engineer.
Qwerty has been around since the 1870s. Touch typing has been relevant for 140 years and counting. That's a pretty good record, especially as the primary input device for what might be called the cornerstone of modern technology.
In the 1900s, the horse and cart had been the cornerstone of land transport for four thousand years - a pretty good record, I'm sure you'll agree. My neighbour across the street, who's now in his late eighties, was apprenticed to a wheelwright. Do you know how many days he worked as a wheelwright after completing his apprenticeship? Precisely none. It was an obsolete skill in the 1920s. Is that what you want for your children?
So why do you think voice recognition and speech to text will supplant the keyboard as the primary means of inputting text (and controlling text editors etc. like vim)? If you can make a good case, I'll read attentively.
How many people, as a proportion of the total workforce, now use vim as an essentially tool of their trade? How many will do so in 20 years time? If you can demonstrate that it's more than, say, 70%, then it may be worth teaching children in schools the special skills needed.
There was a mechanical tabulating machine on many, many desks forty years ago.
Oh, so you mean at one stage, it was very useful for many people to know how to use them
Indeed. But that was before I went to school. By the time I watched girls being taught to use them, they were already largely obsolete - and the teachers knew this. But it was part of the curriculum, so they taught it.
Thirty years from now, the only place you'll see a Querty keyboard is in a museum - and your grandchildren won't even understand what it was used for.
Firstly, you seem to have an amazingly accurate crystal ball; I'd be curious to know what technology you think will replace keyboards as a primary input device for computers.
I have absolutely no idea, because unlike you I can't see the future. But I can look at the current rate of change of technical innovation and say with a fair amount of confidence that something will.
So you propose what, that the kids spend their time playing ball instead? That they magically all be taught to be hyper-adaptable? Most kids just need concrete skills; the most intelligent will be hyper-adaptable anyway.
I propose the children be taught how to learn, how to think, how to communicate, and fundamental knowledge like mathematics and physics which are not ephemeral. With that toolkit they;ll be able to cope with whatever technology they meet in the workplace.
OK, let me get this straight --- your reasoning is basically "I was taught some skills in school that are now obsolete, therefore touch-typing is obsolete"?
Similarly with touch typing.
Are you stark raving mad? Do you have any idea how many people have to use computers at work on a daily basis? Unlike tabulation machines, there's a keyboard on almost every desk in the world these days.
There was a mechanical tabulating machine on many, many desks forty years ago. Thirty years from now, the only place you'll see a Querty keyboard is in a museum - and your grandchildren won't even understand what it was used for. Technology changes - all the time. In this industry you ought to know this.
Touch-typing is not obsolete today. But kids who are in school today won't hit the workplace for between five and twenty years. In five years they may still see keyboards in the workplace - but in twenty? Are you sure?
When I was at school, we were taught binary arithmetic. Computers, we were told, couldn't do arithmetic in decimal numbers, only in binary, and if we ever wanted to work with computers we would have to be able to do binary arithmetic. Meantime, many of the girls in the school spent hours every week learning to use mechanical tabulator machines, because, as everyone knows, every business in the world needs an army of girls with mechanical tabulators to keep their accounts in order...
Both these skills were completely obsolete before we even left school. Similarly with touch typing. Voice recognition and speech to text is now at a level where it's extremely unlikely that keyboards will be more than a vague memory for mainstream users by the time people now in school are thirty.
For heaven's sake don't waste people's time in school teaching them to use ephemeral, obsolescent technologies. Teach them to use their brains, and teach them fundamental principles. Teach them to learn. Workplace skills can be taught in the workplace, and will in any case change far too rapidly for schools to keep pace.
the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.
Plenty of FTP clients available at the time showed a listing of the files in the current directory of the currently connected server server, with their size, on the left hand side of the screen, and a listing of the files in the currently selected directory on the client with their size on the right hand side of the screen. They also provided means of deleting files on the client (and if authorised on the server) and of selecting which files on the server to download.
Where do people get the idea that apple invented podcasting?
The name?
Did the Hoover company invent the vacuum cleaner? No, they didn't. They popularised it. Did Kleenex invent paper tissues? No, they didn't. They popularised them. Likewise, Apple didn't invent the digital media player which could download content from the net - but they popularised it.
you're modded funny but what that means is that the incredible mileage of that car will be cut in half with one overweight passenger, and two people on it will make short of the mpg promises
The solution is easy. Make the land-whale run behind. Then you get incredible mileage and he loses weight!
My Android G1 - normally cool (in the thermal sense) heats quickly when using GPS for sustained periods. It doesn't become uncomfortable to hold or to use but it's definitely noticable. My bet is that the iPhone problem is also GPS related.
Hardly. This is a set of expenses paid for by the taxpayers, and we have also had to pay to have it censored before it was released. Ostensibly this was for privacy, but it was more likely to hide the shame of our MPs. Some of the most unforgivable expenses-laundering (flipping the status of primary and secondary residences to avoid capital gains tax and to gain a property portfolio at our expense) is hidden in the official release. In the meantime the Telegraph got a hold of the unredacted claims a month before now through a leak.
Although they haven't published it in full yet, preferring to cherry pick. They claim they're going to publish more details tomorrow - we will see. Having now done my share of inputting on the Grauniad's site, I can tell you that I saw one page (John Austin MP) in which the entire page except the amount being claimed was redacted. So we don't know to whom our taxes were paid, and we don't know what for. As far as I'm concerned that is wholly unacceptable.
Bikes work equally well in rain and in dry. What would you expect? They aren't made of rice-paper, you know, or stuck together with gum.
You must live in California, or in one of the southwestern states, then. Riding my bike in 35 degree weather may be chilly but it's possible. If it snowed here in the winter and everything froze over until March or April, that would be another matter.
I live in Scotland;
There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothes.
For snow, there are appropriate tyres, although I prefer not to share roads with motor vehicles when there's ice or snow around.
My Latin is not too good. Could you help me out with the translation? Something like, I am--or we are?--always in ____ (faecibus == poo?), only the depth varies.
If Muslims actually followed the ethical code written down by Mohammed, the same applies.
So you're assuming that the things we don't like in sharia law are twisting Mohammed's teachings?
Do you say that based on careful study of the Qur'an? Or is that an assumption, coming from PC sensibilities?
I have read the Koran, but I wouldn't say I'd studied it carefully. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, Mohammed's teaching gives very substantial rights and protections to women, and outlaws attacks on non-combatants, as just two examples. His teaching on this is honoured more in the breach than in the observance by modern so-called 'radical' Muslims. There are many others.
Buddhism is not purely defined by what Buddha said. You cannot discount thousands of years of teaching and tradition as having "no impact".
The plain and simple fact is that the vast majority of Buddhists in the world today believe in spiritual things. Good luck convincing them that the religion they have followed all their lives is really a secular philosophy.
Well said. If Christians actually followed the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the world would be a much better place. If Muslims actually followed the ethical code written down by Mohammed, the same applies. Every one of our great religious traditions (with the possible exception of Judaism) was founded by a great moral teacher with real and humane insights, and then corrupted into something almost diametrically opposite usually within the first couple of hundred years.
one anonymous commenter said: "This must be bogus â" you are not allowed to cycle on public footpaths in the UK, I can't believe Google would have overlooked such a fundamental fact. Not to mention that the vehicle pictured wouldn't fit down most paths."
In Scotland a pedal cycle is deemed in case law to be an 'aid to pedestrianism' and is consequently permitted anywhere where walking is permitted. Furthermore the Land Reform Act 2003 explicitly grants the right to cycle more or less anywhere, with very limited exceptions.
The English are a curious, backward, primitive people with curious views about private land, but they don't (fortunately) constitute the whole of the United Kingdom.
They are indoctrinated to a world of malware, reboots and crashes. They are convinced that's just the way PC's are, so they stick with the devil they know rather than attempt to learn anything new. They refuse to open their minds to anything else. These people will cling onto Windows well after Microsoft go bankrupt and no longer provide updates. These people will sit securely in their own bubble and assume they are safe and secure. If it wasn't for the fact that EVERY user gets the fallout from Microsoft botnets regardless of their OS, I'd say leave them be.
Hear, hear!
It's largely what people are used to. For someone coming from UNIX to Windows for the first time over the past two years, I still can't believe anyone can accept such a buggy, balky, user hostile piece of crap on their desktop. Ubuntu is streets ahead of either XP or Vista on usability and reliability. But lots of people won't believe that even when you show them. Windows - and Microsoft - are what they're used to, and for them it's an article of faith not only that Windows is yet ready for commercial deployment, but that it's better than the alternatives.
There is also the fact that web-based is the new way of making money from software. No piracy since its mostly server-side, lace it with ads and nobody complains about adware.
But people do complain about not being able to access web applications from notebook computers while away from Internet access, such as on the road or in a restaurant that does not offer free Wi-Fi.
Well, that may be where you're up to in the US. Here in Europe, we have these technologies called 'GPRS' and '3G' which mean you're network connected over 95% of the land area. Not as fast as WiFi, granted, but it works.
I agree that movie ratings, as voluntarily enforced by private entities, are not censorship, and are indeed an aid (albeit a minor one) to good parenting.
The concern here is about putting tools in the hand of governments, not restricting private entities' ability to control to whom they disseminate information within the bounds of their own property.
Sorry, this is naive too. The the Internet Watch Foundation is an unaccountable private entity. It effectively blocks most people in Britain from seeing websites which the Internet Watch Foundation deems are unsuitable. What sites are these? We don't know. They don't say. Their claim is that these are mainly child pornography sites - but what does 'mainly' mean?
The difference between this and film ratings is that the film ratings are advisory - you are not actually prevented from seeing the films which are rated as unsuitable. Internet censorship actually prevents people from accessing the censored material, actually prevents them from forming their own judgements. We cannot know what has been censored, because we cannot see it.
How many sites critical of the Internet Watch Foundation are blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation? We don't know - there is literally no way of finding out. How many sites sites critical of the UK Government are blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation? We don't know that either.
It does not matter whether these censors are 'public' or 'private'. What matters is that we cannot challenge their judgement of what it is 'suitable' for us to see. That we cannot bypass the filter they put between us and the information which would be necessary for us to challenge their 'benevolent' governance.
Civil liberties and this sort of unaccountable censorship are completely incompatible.
So you are saying you don't know of anyone that wants the internet censored to protect their children from porn and swear words and terrorists?
(boggles)
I'm speechless. How can you get the above from what I requested? You make some totally weird logical leap from "Can you list an example" of how this case is like another in which "censorship" is called for.
Perhaps *YOU* can tell me how this case is like your "anyone that wants the internet censored to protect their children"?
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but are you suggesting there should not be ANY limits on "free speech"? Should we do away with libel? Calumny? Slander? Allow people to yell "FIRE" in a theater? Because these limits on speech are NOT censorship.
Lad, I'm afraid you're naive. If you give anyone the right to control content on the Internet, then governments will take it, and whistle-blowing will be effectively prevented. Britain has in theory legislation protecting whistle blowers (the Public Interest Disclosure Orders of 1999), but even here you're likely at a minimum to lose your job and quite likely to be prosecuted. In the US, you may even be killed. It's very much in the public interest that people who blow whistles should be protected, but it's equally strongly in the interests of those in power that they should be suppressed.
Sadly, if you accept that unaccountable and secretive people have a right to control what you can see on the 'net, you have sold the bridgehead, and basic civil liberties will inevitably follow.
Slashdot Mirror
"But IBM *did* actually reform."
Really, how so?
IBM really were a malign force in this industry when they were dominant, using grossly unethical tactics against competitors and stifling innovation to an extraordinary extent. Between 1960 and 1980 IBM were the evil empire - probably worse than Microsoft have ever been. These days, ethically, IBM seems to be an 'average company'. It does some good stuff, it acts on the whole as a good citizen, it contributes to standards processes and mostly abides by the standards that are agreed. Of course, this may simply be because it no longer has the power to bully and intimidate like it once did - but this is nevertheless a huge change.
However, 'better' does not necessarily mean 'good', particularly if you start from where IBM started from.
And being 'not quite as bad as IBM at it's worst' doesn't make Microsoft good, either - they have always, from the very beginning, been an exceptionally unethical company.
I was thinking the same thing. I thought one way to handle this more elegantly would be to have two separate touch pads, one on each side of the keyboard:
[TP][ KB ][TP]
Of course, you may lose some manipulation space for your hands, but this would take up considerably less vertical space, which is the more "expensive" dimension, in my opinion.
Or have the keyboard mounted on a powered slide or folding mechanism) over the touchpad. so that at a touch, the keyboard slides over the touchpad allowing you to type on real keys (for composing a document or an email, for example) and then another touch moves or folds the keyboard out of the way, revealing the touchpad again. With this set up I imagine you'd use a 'soft' keyboard for typing short texts, and might retain a conventional mouse or trackball for use when the touchpad was covered.
But your keyboard and touchpad would both be in the same (ergonomically optimal) position when in use, and, depending on how the keyboard moved/slid/retracted/folded out of the way, the composite touchpad/keyboard arrangement would not need to take up more desk space.
The commercial implementation can be done by MS or Apple or whoever wants to do it.
This is innovative enough to be totally worth implementing.
Anyone got pointers to any free software project working on anything like this? It would certainly be worth playing with.
This is an idea I see as being potentially useful as a corporate communications app - allowing people inside a company to add commentary on documents on their own Intranet, and also comments visible to others in the same company/community on documents on the public web. I wonder whether Google will sell the server for this as a product? If not, it should not be too hard to reverse engineer.
It will come with some unique features, though, like an HD radio tuner
Hey, I know the pictures are better on Radio, but HD? Wow!
From the article:
Well, that's because you used email. If you'd sent it pigeon post, it would have got through!
Qwerty has been around since the 1870s. Touch typing has been relevant for 140 years and counting. That's a pretty good record, especially as the primary input device for what might be called the cornerstone of modern technology.
In the 1900s, the horse and cart had been the cornerstone of land transport for four thousand years - a pretty good record, I'm sure you'll agree. My neighbour across the street, who's now in his late eighties, was apprenticed to a wheelwright. Do you know how many days he worked as a wheelwright after completing his apprenticeship? Precisely none. It was an obsolete skill in the 1920s. Is that what you want for your children?
So why do you think voice recognition and speech to text will supplant the keyboard as the primary means of inputting text (and controlling text editors etc. like vim)? If you can make a good case, I'll read attentively.
How many people, as a proportion of the total workforce, now use vim as an essentially tool of their trade? How many will do so in 20 years time? If you can demonstrate that it's more than, say, 70%, then it may be worth teaching children in schools the special skills needed.
There was a mechanical tabulating machine on many, many desks forty years ago.
Oh, so you mean at one stage, it was very useful for many people to know how to use them
Indeed. But that was before I went to school. By the time I watched girls being taught to use them, they were already largely obsolete - and the teachers knew this. But it was part of the curriculum, so they taught it.
Thirty years from now, the only place you'll see a Querty keyboard is in a museum - and your grandchildren won't even understand what it was used for.
Firstly, you seem to have an amazingly accurate crystal ball; I'd be curious to know what technology you think will replace keyboards as a primary input device for computers.
I have absolutely no idea, because unlike you I can't see the future. But I can look at the current rate of change of technical innovation and say with a fair amount of confidence that something will.
So you propose what, that the kids spend their time playing ball instead? That they magically all be taught to be hyper-adaptable? Most kids just need concrete skills; the most intelligent will be hyper-adaptable anyway.
I propose the children be taught how to learn, how to think, how to communicate, and fundamental knowledge like mathematics and physics which are not ephemeral. With that toolkit they;ll be able to cope with whatever technology they meet in the workplace.
OK, let me get this straight --- your reasoning is basically "I was taught some skills in school that are now obsolete, therefore touch-typing is obsolete"?
Similarly with touch typing.
Are you stark raving mad? Do you have any idea how many people have to use computers at work on a daily basis? Unlike tabulation machines, there's a keyboard on almost every desk in the world these days .
There was a mechanical tabulating machine on many, many desks forty years ago. Thirty years from now, the only place you'll see a Querty keyboard is in a museum - and your grandchildren won't even understand what it was used for. Technology changes - all the time. In this industry you ought to know this.
Touch-typing is not obsolete today. But kids who are in school today won't hit the workplace for between five and twenty years. In five years they may still see keyboards in the workplace - but in twenty? Are you sure?
When I was at school, we were taught binary arithmetic. Computers, we were told, couldn't do arithmetic in decimal numbers, only in binary, and if we ever wanted to work with computers we would have to be able to do binary arithmetic. Meantime, many of the girls in the school spent hours every week learning to use mechanical tabulator machines, because, as everyone knows, every business in the world needs an army of girls with mechanical tabulators to keep their accounts in order...
Both these skills were completely obsolete before we even left school. Similarly with touch typing. Voice recognition and speech to text is now at a level where it's extremely unlikely that keyboards will be more than a vague memory for mainstream users by the time people now in school are thirty.
For heaven's sake don't waste people's time in school teaching them to use ephemeral, obsolescent technologies. Teach them to use their brains, and teach them fundamental principles. Teach them to learn. Workplace skills can be taught in the workplace, and will in any case change far too rapidly for schools to keep pace.
the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.
Plenty of FTP clients available at the time showed a listing of the files in the current directory of the currently connected server server, with their size, on the left hand side of the screen, and a listing of the files in the currently selected directory on the client with their size on the right hand side of the screen. They also provided means of deleting files on the client (and if authorised on the server) and of selecting which files on the server to download.
This meets all the features of the above claim.
Where do people get the idea that apple invented podcasting?
The name?
Did the Hoover company invent the vacuum cleaner? No, they didn't. They popularised it. Did Kleenex invent paper tissues? No, they didn't. They popularised them. Likewise, Apple didn't invent the digital media player which could download content from the net - but they popularised it.
you're modded funny but what that means is that the incredible mileage of that car will be cut in half with one overweight passenger, and two people on it will make short of the mpg promises
The solution is easy. Make the land-whale run behind. Then you get incredible mileage and he loses weight!
My Android G1 - normally cool (in the thermal sense) heats quickly when using GPS for sustained periods. It doesn't become uncomfortable to hold or to use but it's definitely noticable. My bet is that the iPhone problem is also GPS related.
Hardly. This is a set of expenses paid for by the taxpayers, and we have also had to pay to have it censored before it was released. Ostensibly this was for privacy, but it was more likely to hide the shame of our MPs. Some of the most unforgivable expenses-laundering (flipping the status of primary and secondary residences to avoid capital gains tax and to gain a property portfolio at our expense) is hidden in the official release. In the meantime the Telegraph got a hold of the unredacted claims a month before now through a leak.
Although they haven't published it in full yet, preferring to cherry pick. They claim they're going to publish more details tomorrow - we will see. Having now done my share of inputting on the Grauniad's site, I can tell you that I saw one page (John Austin MP) in which the entire page except the amount being claimed was redacted. So we don't know to whom our taxes were paid, and we don't know what for. As far as I'm concerned that is wholly unacceptable.
Bikes work equally well in rain and in dry. What would you expect? They aren't made of rice-paper, you know, or stuck together with gum.
You must live in California, or in one of the southwestern states, then. Riding my bike in 35 degree weather may be chilly but it's possible. If it snowed here in the winter and everything froze over until March or April, that would be another matter.
For snow, there are appropriate tyres, although I prefer not to share roads with motor vehicles when there's ice or snow around.
My Latin is not too good. Could you help me out with the translation? Something like, I am--or we are?--always in ____ (faecibus == poo?), only the depth varies.
We're always in the shit, only the depth varies.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
How well does a bike work in the rain?
Bikes work equally well in rain and in dry. What would you expect? They aren't made of rice-paper, you know, or stuck together with gum.
So you're assuming that the things we don't like in sharia law are twisting Mohammed's teachings?
Do you say that based on careful study of the Qur'an? Or is that an assumption, coming from PC sensibilities?
I have read the Koran, but I wouldn't say I'd studied it carefully. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, Mohammed's teaching gives very substantial rights and protections to women, and outlaws attacks on non-combatants, as just two examples. His teaching on this is honoured more in the breach than in the observance by modern so-called 'radical' Muslims. There are many others.
Buddhism is not purely defined by what Buddha said. You cannot discount thousands of years of teaching and tradition as having "no impact".
The plain and simple fact is that the vast majority of Buddhists in the world today believe in spiritual things. Good luck convincing them that the religion they have followed all their lives is really a secular philosophy.
Well said. If Christians actually followed the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the world would be a much better place. If Muslims actually followed the ethical code written down by Mohammed, the same applies. Every one of our great religious traditions (with the possible exception of Judaism) was founded by a great moral teacher with real and humane insights, and then corrupted into something almost diametrically opposite usually within the first couple of hundred years.
In Scotland a pedal cycle is deemed in case law to be an 'aid to pedestrianism' and is consequently permitted anywhere where walking is permitted. Furthermore the Land Reform Act 2003 explicitly grants the right to cycle more or less anywhere, with very limited exceptions.
The English are a curious, backward, primitive people with curious views about private land, but they don't (fortunately) constitute the whole of the United Kingdom.
They are indoctrinated to a world of malware, reboots and crashes. They are convinced that's just the way PC's are, so they stick with the devil they know rather than attempt to learn anything new. They refuse to open their minds to anything else. These people will cling onto Windows well after Microsoft go bankrupt and no longer provide updates. These people will sit securely in their own bubble and assume they are safe and secure. If it wasn't for the fact that EVERY user gets the fallout from Microsoft botnets regardless of their OS, I'd say leave them be.
Hear, hear!
It's largely what people are used to. For someone coming from UNIX to Windows for the first time over the past two years, I still can't believe anyone can accept such a buggy, balky, user hostile piece of crap on their desktop. Ubuntu is streets ahead of either XP or Vista on usability and reliability. But lots of people won't believe that even when you show them. Windows - and Microsoft - are what they're used to, and for them it's an article of faith not only that Windows is yet ready for commercial deployment, but that it's better than the alternatives.
There is also the fact that web-based is the new way of making money from software. No piracy since its mostly server-side, lace it with ads and nobody complains about adware.
But people do complain about not being able to access web applications from notebook computers while away from Internet access, such as on the road or in a restaurant that does not offer free Wi-Fi.
Well, that may be where you're up to in the US. Here in Europe, we have these technologies called 'GPRS' and '3G' which mean you're network connected over 95% of the land area. Not as fast as WiFi, granted, but it works.
I agree that movie ratings, as voluntarily enforced by private entities, are not censorship, and are indeed an aid (albeit a minor one) to good parenting.
The concern here is about putting tools in the hand of governments, not restricting private entities' ability to control to whom they disseminate information within the bounds of their own property.
Sorry, this is naive too. The the Internet Watch Foundation is an unaccountable private entity. It effectively blocks most people in Britain from seeing websites which the Internet Watch Foundation deems are unsuitable. What sites are these? We don't know. They don't say. Their claim is that these are mainly child pornography sites - but what does 'mainly' mean?
The difference between this and film ratings is that the film ratings are advisory - you are not actually prevented from seeing the films which are rated as unsuitable. Internet censorship actually prevents people from accessing the censored material, actually prevents them from forming their own judgements. We cannot know what has been censored, because we cannot see it.
How many sites critical of the Internet Watch Foundation are blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation? We don't know - there is literally no way of finding out. How many sites sites critical of the UK Government are blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation? We don't know that either.
It does not matter whether these censors are 'public' or 'private'. What matters is that we cannot challenge their judgement of what it is 'suitable' for us to see. That we cannot bypass the filter they put between us and the information which would be necessary for us to challenge their 'benevolent' governance.
Civil liberties and this sort of unaccountable censorship are completely incompatible.
(boggles)
I'm speechless. How can you get the above from what I requested? You make some totally weird logical leap from "Can you list an example" of how this case is like another in which "censorship" is called for.
Perhaps *YOU* can tell me how this case is like your "anyone that wants the internet censored to protect their children"?
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but are you suggesting there should not be ANY limits on "free speech"? Should we do away with libel? Calumny? Slander? Allow people to yell "FIRE" in a theater? Because these limits on speech are NOT censorship.
Lad, I'm afraid you're naive. If you give anyone the right to control content on the Internet, then governments will take it, and whistle-blowing will be effectively prevented. Britain has in theory legislation protecting whistle blowers (the Public Interest Disclosure Orders of 1999), but even here you're likely at a minimum to lose your job and quite likely to be prosecuted. In the US, you may even be killed. It's very much in the public interest that people who blow whistles should be protected, but it's equally strongly in the interests of those in power that they should be suppressed.
Sadly, if you accept that unaccountable and secretive people have a right to control what you can see on the 'net, you have sold the bridgehead, and basic civil liberties will inevitably follow.