You failed to explain how your claim of a non-bigoted view did not perforce make your view superior. The conclusion stands.
1) What so hard to understand about "non-bigoted" not by definition being "superior"? In fact, if you consider a "non-bigoted" view as superior, it's you who is "recognising" (unmerited) superiority.
2) (More to the point.) I take a factual view. That's not the same as a non-bigoted one. For instance: yes, I am "bigoted" as far as religion is concerned. At least in the eyes of religious people. So there is NO WAY ON EARTH, IN HEAVEN, OR IN HELL that I consider myself "superior" for being "non-bigoted".
Incorrect. If you want to make distinctions like that, you should use separate sentences or phrases. I have been paid for writing articles for several decades, and I know how to parse a sentence (and I wouldn't try to publish this one;).
Well, then it's all quite simple. If you have been writing articles for several decades (in English, I presume), then I wil not argue English (writing) style - or grammar and spelling for that matter - with you because then you're better qualified at that and I'll be the first to admit it. You see, I'm only an engineer (also for decades already) who can speak, read, and write 4 European languages, but as it happens English is not my mother tongue and writing is not my profession. But I would also suggest that you stop measuring "people unknown" by your own standards of whatever you happen to be better at (THAT is what I call considering oneself superior.) and that you open your eyes to the fact that there are other types of people with other backgrounds out there in the wild.
The topic has only wandered as far afield as you have driven it, while I have tried to contain it.
There you have it! I'm the one who started the bloody topic. And, yes, I'm the one who "used" your reference to nostrils etc. to expand the topic. Then YOU are the one who filled out that "enlargement" with silly nonsense such as to "contain the topic", as you say it, or such as "claim that I said stuff that I didn't", as I perceive it. Thus, you should not be surprised when I come back at you and correct your claims.
Perhaps you should write what you mean to say instead of what you write.
As far as I'm concerned, that's what I've been doing all along.
you are claiming to have a "much more objective" and unfettered (hence superior)
That "unfettered (hence superior)" bit is your interpretation, not what I said.
view than Americans and people with religious beliefs
Again you should read what I write, not what you think that I write. Yes, I do have "problems" with religious beliefs because I percieve them as unrational. But other than that, all I wrote about Americans is that their country is "bible haunted", NOT that I have problems with Americans such, let alone ALL Americans. The latter generalisation and specialisation is, once more, entirely yours.
Besides, you're the one who wants to stay "on the goatse topic" so much that you want to twist my words for it, but now you're the one who shifts a completely different topic (albeit one that I hinted at, but that so far was not discussed any further).
Note that the allows the insertion (I can't help the puns, I'm sorry) of any term, including "anuses".
Yes, but if you do the insertion, you can't claim that I did it.
Normally, people use arguments relevant to the discussion to back their claims. If your argument was no longer relevant to the immediate discussion, it might have made more sense to point that out at the time. Personally, now I think you're just blowing smoke . . . no, I won't finish it.
Discussions topics tend to shift or expand. My argument was on topic, as far as I was and am concerned, it's only your interpretation of it that didn't make the sense it was supposed to make. I hereby purposfully leave it in the middle whether that was a misunderstanding or intentional on your behalf, as I do not have the facts to judge that.
But as you say: "normally people use arguments relevant to the discussion to...", which is NOT what you are doing when saying exactly that. Usually when people switch to using such ad hominem attacks, it means that they're out of real arguments that hold water.
You should read what I write, not what you think that I write. At no point did I take the position that my POV is superior in any way. All I said is that I do not understand certain behaviour and why I do (not) do so (and also that religious zealotism is part of the many things that I fail to understand). The very essence of taking a very factual point of view of the world, as I do, is that when the facts prove you wrong, you change your view of things. As Francis Picabia said: "Unser Kopf ist rund, damit das Denken die Richtung wechslen kann." In English: "Our head is round-shaped so as to allow our thinking to change direction."
If the words seem familiar, it's because you wrote them.
I do know what I wrote, thank you. And even if I didn't, there still is/. to remind me. I do tend to re-read whatever I have written in discussions like this before making statements about it.
Again, you should read what I write, not what you think that I write. While the discussion started with that guy's anus, by the time I wrote about cultures in which an enlarged <whatever> is or was considered a sign of beauty, power, social status, sexual desirability, or whatnot, we were talking more in general. In fact, you are the one who broadened the scope by bringing mouths and nostrils up and I merely reacted to that by pointing out more facts that contradict your claim regarding enlarged nostrils. I therefore repeat "Note that I never referred to the existence of "a culture that venerates large anuses". As the French saying goes: "Je persiste et signe." (at least in this matter:-).
Well, first of all I did not say that they do have a free will, as I have no way of knowing that really and as I consider that some forms of life "clearly" can not have one (bacteria, for instance). But if we want to draw a line, where do we do so? Do chimps have a free will, for instance? Did the Neanderthals have one?...
It's interesting that you say "If they do have the capacity for free thought, does that not mean we must hold them accountable for their raping, murdering, stealing, and general mistreatment of their fellow gifted peers?" That assumes that we "free will gifted humans" can/must impose our own moral norms on what's "legal" on "free willed" creatures and take action against them if they do not act the way we would want ourselves and our so-called "peers" to act. (Note that those creatures without a free will are exempt from that, but they get killed nonetheless if we consider them a danger to either ourselves or our possesions.) But wait, even we humans hold and have previously held many culturally different views of what's morally right with respect to dealing with our own brethren. I think it's wrong for to feel any species, any race, or anyone to feel "morally superior" in that way.
I think you're taking this discussion way too seriously.:)
I don't agree, but if I did that would make two of us.:-)
Note that I never referred to the existence of "a culture that venerates large anuses". That's just you twisting my words - and also carefully dropping the part that doesn't suit you regarding individual people, not cultures, doing certain things - in a failed attempt to be humorous.
I think that the fact that someone does not find said photo all that shocking - and is in addition not even hiding this behind the easy screen of Anonymous Cowardness - is blinding you into wanting to persist a useless argument in a way that makes no sense. There is no way a normal head would pass there, given that even abnormally small ones would't, despite the abmormal size of the hole in question. Fetch the picture and make some measurements...
Of course, some people believe that animals deserve the same treatment as humans, but that's another topic.
That as such is another topic indeed. But you assert that animals have no free will and use that to make an essential destinction. I hereby question that assertion, even though I agree with you that there's not always "by definition" an ethical problem involved with "creating life from scratch" as the article calls it.
I can't recall anyone trying to make their mouths or nostrils larger.
You should go study some anthropology (and maybe also some psychology). There are and have always been a lot of people practicing all sorts of what's called "Permanent Body Modification" stuff. Also, there are and have been are lot of cultures in which an enlarged <whatever> is or was considered a sign of beauty, power, social status, sexual desirability, or whatnot. Admittedly, mouths cannot be enlarged due to skeletal constraints (unless the process is started very early on during childhood, that is), but regarding noses/nostrils: yes, I have seen pictures showing enlargements thereof.
Hey, what do you have against people with small heads, Mister Objective-view?
Nothing, Mister Prejudice. It's just that "Nature will not produce a head any smaller than what is needed to house the vital functions of a head. I can't recall anyone with a head so small as to be able to fit it in the goatse man's butthole."
I don't really agree that the size is that much a key issue and the rest of people's general attitude to such stuff isn't, but even then...
I remember seeing that picture for the first time and thinking something like: "Apparantly there's more room for stretching those things than I would have thought. That's actually a (somewhat) interesting fact. (*) But now let's move on and see what else we can find that's actually more relevant to what I'm trying to read right now." In summary, had simply learned something new (albeit something useless), without any shock being involved.
(*) As I wrote before, I have a very objective and factual view of many a thing.
I hate to break this to you, but most people don't really have a rectal orifice big enough to accommodate their head.
I know. But that size thing doesn't really matter. It's the picture as such that matters. Most people don't even have a clue at all about possible sizes of such parts of human anatomy. It is stretchable by nature/design/function,after all. Besides, that "head" size assessment of yours is rather exagerated as well, so...:-)
I don't "objectively understand" why that site was ever created (OK, so he wanted to shock people, but what use is this kind of shocking people really?) nor why it became a "success" over here. OK, considering the puerile/. audience I do "understand" the latter half, but even so I would never have joined that crowd even back when I was that old/young. It's all just a useless waste of time, including of that of the poster.
But at the same time I also completely fail to understand what was so shocking about it. I mean: the goatse.cx picture was nothing more than a somewhat unusual display of human anatomy that 50% of the human population shares in almost exactly the same way, and the other 50% in a very similar way. Doctors, nurses, etc. get to see this sort of thing on a regular bais and much "weirder" things as well. Besides, nobody objects when a dog licks his..., or when or horse walks by without "covering up", or...
But then again, I have not been raised in "bible haunted" America and compared to the average religious bigot - be (s)he Muslim, Christian, Jew, or whatever - I have a very much more objective view of many other things as well...
I forgot to mention that I have 2 blacklists. One is Mozilla's cookie manager/filter, set to not accept anything from the sites in question. The other one is my cron script that knows about certain cookies that it should auto-delete. The original idea behind that was to polute the cookie tracking database of the offending company: I wanted them to think that each time I visit their site they've run into somebody new, who "sadly" never returns.
Nowadays I rarely edit the second list, but still I do want to keep it around, because it uses powerful regular expression matching that Mozilla's filter doesn't support, AFAIK. This makes it easy to kill a lot of ad related cookies with just a few regular expressions.
I have a cron script that scans my cookie file on a nightly basis. Anything that does not match my whitelist gets reported to me. If I don't like it (most of the time), it gets blacklisted and I never have to bother with it again. If I'm really sure that I want it, it gets whitelisted. If I'm not sure (yet), it simply gets deleted by default, but - for the time being - not listed.
Another thing that my script does, is edit cookies. Some sites of which I do want to retain cookies have ridiculous ideas about when they expire, so I automatically move the expiration date.
My Google cookie is auto-edited in another way. I want to keep it in order to force the language to English (stupid Google thinks it's neat to automatically redirect you to your local server and most of all your local language based on your IP address, but I strongly disagree). But I do not want them to
track me in any way, so I randomly edit the ID info in the cookie. This makes the cookie invalid, so each time they give me a new one, but in the mean time I still get the language set properly.
MS's best solution at this point would be to force automatic updates to be on for all copies of XP Home, with no way to turn it off (short of registry editing). That way, the computers would get the updates they need, but the few people who want to turn it off would probably know enough to run their computers safely if they knew where to find the instructions and how to change the registry.
I have an XP Pro machime, from which one critical driver update and one non-critical driver update have on purpose been removed because they break the machine. A non-critical buggy video driver update (that is by now over 1 year old and for which still no update has been released) messes with the video mode selection stuff such that certain modes can no longer be reached (esp. those using higher refresh rates) even though thay are in-spec for all hardware. I will on purpose not identify the critical update here (fortunately for me, it concerns an OEM hardware component that isn't all that common in the wild).
Copanies *NEVER* give you something for free! The stuff they hand out costs them money to develop/build/buy/... These costs is calculated into the price of other stuff they sell you (or your neighbour). In the case of WMP: the price of the thing that the "free" item comes with.
So if drivers can emerge even under these tough circumstances a documentation would probably almost always ease the development, even if it was a bad one.
No. Documentation that tells lies is worse that none at all.
We're fighting with a board like that right now. It's a multi-processor board, with 2 TI DSP chips, memory, etc. etc. It came with 3 A4 pages of "internal" docs, two of which are factually incorrect. To notice this, the poor luser doesn't even need to try using it: just looking at the board already tells one that it carries different components than the docs claim it does. When trying use the memories as documented, we discovered more functional discrepancies between the docs and reality. Etc. etc. Basically, we now ignore the docs, because if one tries to use the info in there, one is very likely to be loosing one's time.
Silcon circuts don't need graceful degradation, as they do not degrade in any meaningful manner once they have left the factory.
Silcon circuits most certainly do degrade over time, even in normal use. It just so happens that so far this has been "under control". But as technologists keep reducing the feature size, these effects will become much more important.
Several people in my team work in exactly this area of micro-electronics research by the way: how to optimally compensate for these (and other related) effects at the system/architecture level. Other research groups at the place where I work (we have 2 full featured cleanrooms of our own, just for research purposes) are part of the "gang" that causes these problems to grow in importance.
I do not see people thinking of iTunes as where music files exist as a bad thing. This gets to the point of the original article - the removal of the old file/folder paradigm. If iTunes can do everything you could possibly need to do with your song files, why would you NEED to go into the folder hierarchy and deal with the actual song files?
Maybe because:
1) I don't want iTunes to become the monopoly that almost "is" all my music.
2) I want to group together stuff that logically goes together, where "logically goes together" does NOT mean "it's all music and nothing but music", but DOES mean that what I want it to mean at that particular moment in time and in that particular context.
Please note that the above does NOT say that folders must stay. That's a different completely discussion and it IS possible to give me the kind of control that I want in folderless systems. But it DOES say that I don't want individual programs such as iTunes (or, for intance, Windows that also has this crazy idea that by default all documents are to be stored in one place and all pictures in another) taking over control of what they think they "own", without taking into account that, just maybe, I might have other concerns and priorities.
The part that amazes me these days is that people bother to send personal email through their work address when perfectly good webmail clients exist
I do this because:
1) I have direct access to my work related e-mail account for up to 10 to 12 hours each day including immediate noticifation of arrival, whereas I have access to my private account only for a few hours a day (if I find the time for it), irrespective of webmail. Not everyone likes to use Hotmail or Yahoo to permanently store private data (and some people even have their own mail server).
2) The personal mail that I use my work e-mail address for actually stands a chance of affecting my work. E.g.: When my country's navy wants to get in touch with me (I'm a reserve officer), they want to do this during office hours and I want to be able to check my work schedule and consult my boss and/or subordinates about when I'm available for the navy as soon as possible.
3) The really personal mail I want to keep radically out of my work context, which means that using webmail to check my private account at work would not do for me, even if it would be available, no matter what you say about the "unlikelyhood of the sysadmin capturing the bits". Hey, everyboy has a preference of his own...
More correct French would be: La merde vient de frapper le ventilateur.
Although even that isn't what it should be, because frapper implies that the shit actively hit the fan out of its own initiative, where as what one really wants to say is that the shit "reached" the fan, no matter who or what caused this to happen. I can't think of a really good alternative verb, tough, because arriver sounds too much like "it got there, but in reality nothing much happened because of that".
I'm absolutely not at all in favour of these things either, but why does it matter what the security guard thinks, as long as he or she does not act in any way? Anybody you encounter anywhere can possibly have "naughty thoughts" triggered by you passing by. Do you hide in the closet 24/7 because of that?
Because: 1) they did change their terms a few years later; 2) they don't exist anymore, as the ISP market over here has gone through a major restructuring since then.
Slashdot Mirror
No.
You failed to explain how your claim of a non-bigoted view did not perforce make your view superior. The conclusion stands.
1) What so hard to understand about "non-bigoted" not by definition being "superior"? In fact, if you consider a "non-bigoted" view as superior, it's you who is "recognising" (unmerited) superiority.
2) (More to the point.) I take a factual view. That's not the same as a non-bigoted one. For instance: yes, I am "bigoted" as far as religion is concerned. At least in the eyes of religious people. So there is NO WAY ON EARTH, IN HEAVEN, OR IN HELL that I consider myself "superior" for being "non-bigoted".
Incorrect. If you want to make distinctions like that, you should use separate sentences or phrases. I have been paid for writing articles for several decades, and I know how to parse a sentence (and I wouldn't try to publish this one ;).
Well, then it's all quite simple. If you have been writing articles for several decades (in English, I presume), then I wil not argue English (writing) style - or grammar and spelling for that matter - with you because then you're better qualified at that and I'll be the first to admit it. You see, I'm only an engineer (also for decades already) who can speak, read, and write 4 European languages, but as it happens English is not my mother tongue and writing is not my profession. But I would also suggest that you stop measuring "people unknown" by your own standards of whatever you happen to be better at (THAT is what I call considering oneself superior.) and that you open your eyes to the fact that there are other types of people with other backgrounds out there in the wild.
The topic has only wandered as far afield as you have driven it, while I have tried to contain it.
There you have it! I'm the one who started the bloody topic. And, yes, I'm the one who "used" your reference to nostrils etc. to expand the topic. Then YOU are the one who filled out that "enlargement" with silly nonsense such as to "contain the topic", as you say it, or such as "claim that I said stuff that I didn't", as I perceive it. Thus, you should not be surprised when I come back at you and correct your claims.
As far as I'm concerned, that's what I've been doing all along.
you are claiming to have a "much more objective" and unfettered (hence superior)
That "unfettered (hence superior)" bit is your interpretation, not what I said.
view than Americans and people with religious beliefs
Again you should read what I write, not what you think that I write. Yes, I do have "problems" with religious beliefs because I percieve them as unrational. But other than that, all I wrote about Americans is that their country is "bible haunted", NOT that I have problems with Americans such, let alone ALL Americans. The latter generalisation and specialisation is, once more, entirely yours.
Besides, you're the one who wants to stay "on the goatse topic" so much that you want to twist my words for it, but now you're the one who shifts a completely different topic (albeit one that I hinted at, but that so far was not discussed any further).
Note that the allows the insertion (I can't help the puns, I'm sorry) of any term, including "anuses".
Yes, but if you do the insertion, you can't claim that I did it.
Normally, people use arguments relevant to the discussion to back their claims. If your argument was no longer relevant to the immediate discussion, it might have made more sense to point that out at the time. Personally, now I think you're just blowing smoke . . . no, I won't finish it.
Discussions topics tend to shift or expand. My argument was on topic, as far as I was and am concerned, it's only your interpretation of it that didn't make the sense it was supposed to make. I hereby purposfully leave it in the middle whether that was a misunderstanding or intentional on your behalf, as I do not have the facts to judge that.
But as you say: "normally people use arguments relevant to the discussion to ...", which is NOT what you are doing when saying exactly that. Usually when people switch to using such ad hominem attacks, it means that they're out of real arguments that hold water.
You should read what I write, not what you think that I write. At no point did I take the position that my POV is superior in any way. All I said is that I do not understand certain behaviour and why I do (not) do so (and also that religious zealotism is part of the many things that I fail to understand). The very essence of taking a very factual point of view of the world, as I do, is that when the facts prove you wrong, you change your view of things. As Francis Picabia said: "Unser Kopf ist rund, damit das Denken die Richtung wechslen kann." In English: "Our head is round-shaped so as to allow our thinking to change direction."
You might also wat to look at what I wrote regarding feeling superior in another http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159522&cid=133 77904 ongoing discussion.
If the words seem familiar, it's because you wrote them.
I do know what I wrote, thank you. And even if I didn't, there still is /. to remind me. I do tend to re-read whatever I have written in discussions like this before making statements about it.
Again, you should read what I write, not what you think that I write. While the discussion started with that guy's anus, by the time I wrote about cultures in which an enlarged <whatever> is or was considered a sign of beauty, power, social status, sexual desirability, or whatnot, we were talking more in general. In fact, you are the one who broadened the scope by bringing mouths and nostrils up and I merely reacted to that by pointing out more facts that contradict your claim regarding enlarged nostrils. I therefore repeat "Note that I never referred to the existence of "a culture that venerates large anuses". As the French saying goes: "Je persiste et signe." (at least in this matter :-).
It's interesting that you say "If they do have the capacity for free thought, does that not mean we must hold them accountable for their raping, murdering, stealing, and general mistreatment of their fellow gifted peers?" That assumes that we "free will gifted humans" can/must impose our own moral norms on what's "legal" on "free willed" creatures and take action against them if they do not act the way we would want ourselves and our so-called "peers" to act. (Note that those creatures without a free will are exempt from that, but they get killed nonetheless if we consider them a danger to either ourselves or our possesions.) But wait, even we humans hold and have previously held many culturally different views of what's morally right with respect to dealing with our own brethren. I think it's wrong for to feel any species, any race, or anyone to feel "morally superior" in that way.
I don't agree, but if I did that would make two of us. :-)
Note that I never referred to the existence of "a culture that venerates large anuses". That's just you twisting my words - and also carefully dropping the part that doesn't suit you regarding individual people, not cultures, doing certain things - in a failed attempt to be humorous.
I think that the fact that someone does not find said photo all that shocking - and is in addition not even hiding this behind the easy screen of Anonymous Cowardness - is blinding you into wanting to persist a useless argument in a way that makes no sense. There is no way a normal head would pass there, given that even abnormally small ones would't, despite the abmormal size of the hole in question. Fetch the picture and make some measurements...
That as such is another topic indeed. But you assert that animals have no free will and use that to make an essential destinction. I hereby question that assertion, even though I agree with you that there's not always "by definition" an ethical problem involved with "creating life from scratch" as the article calls it.
You should go study some anthropology (and maybe also some psychology). There are and have always been a lot of people practicing all sorts of what's called "Permanent Body Modification" stuff. Also, there are and have been are lot of cultures in which an enlarged <whatever> is or was considered a sign of beauty, power, social status, sexual desirability, or whatnot. Admittedly, mouths cannot be enlarged due to skeletal constraints (unless the process is started very early on during childhood, that is), but regarding noses/nostrils: yes, I have seen pictures showing enlargements thereof.
Hey, what do you have against people with small heads, Mister Objective-view?
Nothing, Mister Prejudice. It's just that "Nature will not produce a head any smaller than what is needed to house the vital functions of a head. I can't recall anyone with a head so small as to be able to fit it in the goatse man's butthole."
I remember seeing that picture for the first time and thinking something like: "Apparantly there's more room for stretching those things than I would have thought. That's actually a (somewhat) interesting fact. (*) But now let's move on and see what else we can find that's actually more relevant to what I'm trying to read right now." In summary, had simply learned something new (albeit something useless), without any shock being involved.
(*) As I wrote before, I have a very objective and factual view of many a thing.
I know. But that size thing doesn't really matter. It's the picture as such that matters. Most people don't even have a clue at all about possible sizes of such parts of human anatomy. It is stretchable by nature/design/function,after all. Besides, that "head" size assessment of yours is rather exagerated as well, so ... :-)
But at the same time I also completely fail to understand what was so shocking about it. I mean: the goatse.cx picture was nothing more than a somewhat unusual display of human anatomy that 50% of the human population shares in almost exactly the same way, and the other 50% in a very similar way. Doctors, nurses, etc. get to see this sort of thing on a regular bais and much "weirder" things as well. Besides, nobody objects when a dog licks his ..., or when or horse walks by without "covering up", or...
But then again, I have not been raised in "bible haunted" America and compared to the average religious bigot - be (s)he Muslim, Christian, Jew, or whatever - I have a very much more objective view of many other things as well...
Nowadays I rarely edit the second list, but still I do want to keep it around, because it uses powerful regular expression matching that Mozilla's filter doesn't support, AFAIK. This makes it easy to kill a lot of ad related cookies with just a few regular expressions.
Another thing that my script does, is edit cookies. Some sites of which I do want to retain cookies have ridiculous ideas about when they expire, so I automatically move the expiration date.
My Google cookie is auto-edited in another way. I want to keep it in order to force the language to English (stupid Google thinks it's neat to automatically redirect you to your local server and most of all your local language based on your IP address, but I strongly disagree). But I do not want them to track me in any way, so I randomly edit the ID info in the cookie. This makes the cookie invalid, so each time they give me a new one, but in the mean time I still get the language set properly.
I have an XP Pro machime, from which one critical driver update and one non-critical driver update have on purpose been removed because they break the machine. A non-critical buggy video driver update (that is by now over 1 year old and for which still no update has been released) messes with the video mode selection stuff such that certain modes can no longer be reached (esp. those using higher refresh rates) even though thay are in-spec for all hardware. I will on purpose not identify the critical update here (fortunately for me, it concerns an OEM hardware component that isn't all that common in the wild).
So you encrypt that. No where's the guilt?
Copanies *NEVER* give you something for free! The stuff they hand out costs them money to develop/build/buy/... These costs is calculated into the price of other stuff they sell you (or your neighbour). In the case of WMP: the price of the thing that the "free" item comes with.
No. Documentation that tells lies is worse that none at all.
We're fighting with a board like that right now. It's a multi-processor board, with 2 TI DSP chips, memory, etc. etc. It came with 3 A4 pages of "internal" docs, two of which are factually incorrect. To notice this, the poor luser doesn't even need to try using it: just looking at the board already tells one that it carries different components than the docs claim it does. When trying use the memories as documented, we discovered more functional discrepancies between the docs and reality. Etc. etc. Basically, we now ignore the docs, because if one tries to use the info in there, one is very likely to be loosing one's time.
Whether or not that was a hoax does not matter for "strategic (in)validity" of the current story.
Silcon circuits most certainly do degrade over time, even in normal use. It just so happens that so far this has been "under control". But as technologists keep reducing the feature size, these effects will become much more important.
Several people in my team work in exactly this area of micro-electronics research by the way: how to optimally compensate for these (and other related) effects at the system/architecture level. Other research groups at the place where I work (we have 2 full featured cleanrooms of our own, just for research purposes) are part of the "gang" that causes these problems to grow in importance.
Maybe because:
1) I don't want iTunes to become the monopoly that almost "is" all my music.
2) I want to group together stuff that logically goes together, where "logically goes together" does NOT mean "it's all music and nothing but music", but DOES mean that what I want it to mean at that particular moment in time and in that particular context.
Please note that the above does NOT say that folders must stay. That's a different completely discussion and it IS possible to give me the kind of control that I want in folderless systems. But it DOES say that I don't want individual programs such as iTunes (or, for intance, Windows that also has this crazy idea that by default all documents are to be stored in one place and all pictures in another) taking over control of what they think they "own", without taking into account that, just maybe, I might have other concerns and priorities.
I do this because:
1) I have direct access to my work related e-mail account for up to 10 to 12 hours each day including immediate noticifation of arrival, whereas I have access to my private account only for a few hours a day (if I find the time for it), irrespective of webmail. Not everyone likes to use Hotmail or Yahoo to permanently store private data (and some people even have their own mail server).
2) The personal mail that I use my work e-mail address for actually stands a chance of affecting my work. E.g.: When my country's navy wants to get in touch with me (I'm a reserve officer), they want to do this during office hours and I want to be able to check my work schedule and consult my boss and/or subordinates about when I'm available for the navy as soon as possible.
3) The really personal mail I want to keep radically out of my work context, which means that using webmail to check my private account at work would not do for me, even if it would be available, no matter what you say about the "unlikelyhood of the sysadmin capturing the bits". Hey, everyboy has a preference of his own...
More correct French would be: La merde vient de frapper le ventilateur. Although even that isn't what it should be, because frapper implies that the shit actively hit the fan out of its own initiative, where as what one really wants to say is that the shit "reached" the fan, no matter who or what caused this to happen. I can't think of a really good alternative verb, tough, because arriver sounds too much like "it got there, but in reality nothing much happened because of that".
I'm absolutely not at all in favour of these things either, but why does it matter what the security guard thinks, as long as he or she does not act in any way? Anybody you encounter anywhere can possibly have "naughty thoughts" triggered by you passing by. Do you hide in the closet 24/7 because of that?
Because: 1) they did change their terms a few years later; 2) they don't exist anymore, as the ISP market over here has gone through a major restructuring since then.