So the end result is that Google still has articles from authors X and Y, whilst Wikipedia has an article dominated by X, the one supported by reliable references. How is Google's way better again?
I agree that Y will whine that his shoddy edits got reverted, and the Register will whine about it, but I don't see that's a problem with Wikipedia...
I very much doubt that banks would use OpenID, because even if you trust an OpenID server, they won't. Banks are not simply things you sign up for a login, so OpenID is not relevant here (mine required me to get details sent through the post, and I have to use a hand held device which generates codes to use when logging in or performing transactions - OpenID replaces neither of these, and nor is it intended to).
It's not a single point of failure, precisely because anyone can host their own OpenID server. If it had to all go through a single server (like MS Passport?), now sure, that would be a single point of failure.
If you can't trust any servers, then how do you manage to do anything online at all? This is an issue with or without OpenID. The level of trust needed also depends on what I am doing. For example, banks require very secure systems that do not rely on just a login anyway (my banks now require hand-held devices to use). But if I can trust LiveJournal.com to host my blog on (something I have to decide whether OpenID exists or not), then I think I can trust them to use that same account to post to blogger, or Slashdot if it allowed OpenID.
Oh but hang on, you're an Anonymous Coward. Like almost all of the other OpenID critics. So I guess you don't trust any servers after all - whether OpenID or not. So why are you bothered by OpenID?
OpenID lets you use an account on one site on another site. That's it. And very useful it is too. I think some people are reading too much into it, and claiming it dangerous because they think people will use their LiveJournal account to do business with their bank.
If someone hacks my email (for example), they don't get carte blanche to either open accounts elsewhere or check all my other accounts. But OpenID will change all that.
Eh? If someone hacks your OpenID, they won't get access to your other OpenIDs either. If you're worried, you can still have multiple OpenIDs just like you can have multiple email accounts.
But if you have just one email account, they can get access to all your emails, and everyone you send email to. Is that "Monoculture" too?
(I also can't help being amused that most of the OpenID criticisms seem to be from Anonymous Cowards - why are you bothered by OpenID if you don't set up accounts in the first place?)
But your email provider also has access to all your personal emails, so it's the same issue really. No one thinks that a system where you need to sign up for a different email account for every email server you want to write to (e.g., if I want to write to user@aol.com, I need to sign up for an email on AOL) is any kind of sensible solution to this.
Also, OpenID is not so much about having multiple profiles with extensive information, it's often simply leaving comments on other webpages. So I can use my LiveJournal OpenID to leave a comment on blogger. I don't use my OpenID to create any kind of account or profile on blogger (why would I? the whole point with OpenID is I don't need to do that, as people can refer to my LiveJournal profile). If someone hacked my LiveJournal, I'd be annoyed with or without OpenID - the fact that they could also post to blogger as me makes little extra difference.
I think that advertising is important, but there are particular problems with the way it is done on the Internet. Part of it is they are often annoying, which lead people to block them as you describe.
But I also can't help thinking how Internet adverts are more likely to be plain rubbish. There seems to be an awful lot of:
* Avatars/graphical smilies/etc. * Christian or Muslim dating. * Download this 'free' thingy. * Geo-thingy that doesn't work (images of women who all live in the same town, that isn't the town I live in; and today I am getting adverts from Slashdot of some social networking site in German).
Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the first three, obviously they have their market, but they seem to be a disproportionate amount of ads online. On the other hand, adverts for actual products seem to be rare.
The United States law is struck down as a violation of freedom of speech. We do have freedom of expression under the European Convention of Human Rights which some believe this law will violate, however it has the get-out clause "subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society,... for the protection of... morals".
The COPA law is broader than the pic-and-mix "extreme" images law, in that it covers all adult content not just some, but I thought the comparison is interesting. I am glad that the US has made this sensible step, I'm just unfortunate to live somewhere where the prudes are way ahead.
Preaching: "God exists! Jesus exists! Accept Jesus and you will go to heaven!"
Teaching: "Some people believe in God and they believe that Jesus is the son of God. Other people instead believe..."
If you say you should censor religion too
I don't wish to censor religion for adults. I'm just pointing out the inconsistency that people want to ban or make things harder for adults "in case a child might see it", whilst thinking it fine to actively preach and expose religion to children.
Lets take the 10 commandments for example...
That's completely beside the point. Your claim was that irreligion implies amorality. Just because religion teaches morality does not imply that you need religion to teach morality. Perhaps they need to teach logic at school, too:)
I am also amused at the way that you have to misinterpret some of them. So, I am completely fulfilling commandment one if I stick to believing that "Christianity is a load of rubbish, I believe in and worship these other gods instead"? Blasphemy is not the same as swearing, and laws against blasphemy are of dubious ethics (we only recently repealed that law in the UK; shortly before then, the BBC had to defend a blasphemy, at great expense to them).
The sabbath means exactly that. In fact, it could mean exactly the opposite to what you claim - if my obligations involve work, then the commandment says that I should not do those on the sabbath.
As for the remaining points:
Saying that murder is wrong is a tautology, because murder is defined as immoral or unlawful killing - the difficult ethical question is what counts as murder? Saying adultery is unethical is fine, but note that that doesn't mean it should be illegal like it was and still is in some places; it also ignores the possibility of things like open marriages where it's consensual, but it often still gets counted as adultery.
And the rest of the Bible is mostly about Jesus and a few other commandments. There really is nothing morally messed up about it.
I was referring to things like stoning someone to death for working on the sabbath. Or in your case, stoning someone to death for not "fulfilling their obligations", which is still just as messed up (what if gathering sticks was his "obligation"? Looks like the almighty Lord doesn't agree with your interpretation). But given how you've misinterpretted the commandments, you probably read that in a completely different way too.
No, but we do have specialty schools for teaching just about everything else. Religion is no exception, and most of these religious schools are meant to train people to become missionaries/pastors/priests/*insert high-ranking official of your favorite region here*.
I said "preaching". Teaching about religion is completely different, and there's nothing wrong with that.
It is in just about everyone's best interest whether the believe it or not, to give children morals from religion. Put it this way, if you were the owner of a store, would you rather have people teaching "Stealing is wrong" or "When you die you're dead so take whatever because you could die tomorrow".
Where did I say you shouldn't teach morals? How on earth does the tautology "when you die you're dead" lead to an argument for stealing?
By all means teach morals, that's nothing to do with belief in a supernatural being. The Bible has some pretty messed up "morals" in it too, should we teach those?
You obviously were brought up to believe that a lack of religion leads to immorality - all the more reason that we should teach ethics to children, rather than preaching a religion at them. The latter just leads children to believe that right and wrong is simply whatever their religion tells them.
See, let's start with little Johnny that watches lots of porn. Hard-core stuff. Ends up getting out of high school thinking that (a) wimmen like surprises, like rape, and (b) wimmen don't like him.
Why would he need to watch hardcore porn, when he could get that impression just by reading the Bible...
He didn't say "highly sexualized and promiscuous modern culture" - whatever that is. He said "watched a porno movie or read a dirty book". If you have evidence of a link between that and STDs or unwanted pregnancies, then please share it with us.
Well, you don't tend to have organisations and schools preaching at children that they must believe in Santa Claus. You don't have "Santa Claus" schools specifically set up for that purpose. I imagine those are the sorts of things he meant.
FWIW, I wouldn't want to criminalise someone for exposing a child to religion. But I do think it's ridiculous that people are obsessed with censoring (or in some cases, criminalising possession of) media "because a child might see it", yet this is not applied to religion. On the contrary, some of the same people who freak out that a 17 year old might see a nipple or hear a swear word seem happy to preach religion at other people's small children.
"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection"
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
To add to that, the minimum tube price (even for a single stop) is £1.50 with an Oyster card, and £4 without (so about $3 and $8).
They keep increasing the price of the non-Oyster fare, so they can advertise the Oyster card as getting cheaper!
And I think it was Apple that pushed the envelope to the point where people now know that it's possible to have a browser behave very similarly to how it would on the desktop. Before the iPhone, even on smart phones, people were still expecting to have a much different browsing experience on a mobile device than the would on their home computer.
Ah, it's another "Apple invented/popularised it" myth.
Full non-WAP browsers have been included on phones - even cheap ones - for years. The standard cheap ones may not be brilliant, but then awareness for these users is unlikely to be changed by the release of a high end product from one particular company.
I can't believe a smart phone user would not be aware of the capability of viewing webpages, nor would their usage be changed by the Iphone.
Yes, there seem to be people on Slashdot who seem completely unaware that phones could do webpages before the Iphone came along. But the market of "Apple fans who didn't use phones before" is not typical of the market of people who do use phones.
Your post suggests you believe that we have only now, with the release of the Iphone, made the transition from WAP browsers to standard browsers. In fact, this transition happened years ago.
That may be true, but one has to consider that previous browsing experiences, be they through WEP or even through Opera Mini, were at best mediocre and at worst unusable.
Opera Mini is fine, and even if it wasn't - before there were still earlier versions of Opera Mobile.
Even if speed isn't an issue, for those on PAYG, less information means it costs less money when you're paying for how much you download.
(And remember, Mini is a browser than can run on any bog-standard phone - not everyone is on contracts with no limit on downloads. It means that anyone can access a webpage on a cheap phone through a standard browser, without having to by an Iphone as some people would have them believe.)
but do you really want your bank info being pulled up there?
I've been thinking about this - is it any different to your phone company seeing the details (especially as they can also tie it to your name and address, and other details they have on you).
Whilst this is an advantage of open source, I'm not sure how practical forking it is just to fix a bug or add a feature you like, as you now how a separate fork to maintain everytime the main version is updated.
Ideally you submit the patch back into the main source, but then you need that to be accepted by the developers, who could potentially ignore you just as much as MS/Apple/Opera.
Slashdot Mirror
So the end result is that Google still has articles from authors X and Y, whilst Wikipedia has an article dominated by X, the one supported by reliable references. How is Google's way better again?
I agree that Y will whine that his shoddy edits got reverted, and the Register will whine about it, but I don't see that's a problem with Wikipedia...
I very much doubt that banks would use OpenID, because even if you trust an OpenID server, they won't. Banks are not simply things you sign up for a login, so OpenID is not relevant here (mine required me to get details sent through the post, and I have to use a hand held device which generates codes to use when logging in or performing transactions - OpenID replaces neither of these, and nor is it intended to).
It's not a single point of failure, precisely because anyone can host their own OpenID server. If it had to all go through a single server (like MS Passport?), now sure, that would be a single point of failure.
If you can't trust any servers, then how do you manage to do anything online at all? This is an issue with or without OpenID. The level of trust needed also depends on what I am doing. For example, banks require very secure systems that do not rely on just a login anyway (my banks now require hand-held devices to use). But if I can trust LiveJournal.com to host my blog on (something I have to decide whether OpenID exists or not), then I think I can trust them to use that same account to post to blogger, or Slashdot if it allowed OpenID.
Oh but hang on, you're an Anonymous Coward. Like almost all of the other OpenID critics. So I guess you don't trust any servers after all - whether OpenID or not. So why are you bothered by OpenID?
OpenID lets you use an account on one site on another site. That's it. And very useful it is too. I think some people are reading too much into it, and claiming it dangerous because they think people will use their LiveJournal account to do business with their bank.
I take it you don't use email then. Or perhaps you have a different email account for every person you want to email? Much more secure that way.
If someone hacks my email (for example), they don't get carte blanche to either open accounts elsewhere or check all my other accounts. But OpenID will change all that.
Eh? If someone hacks your OpenID, they won't get access to your other OpenIDs either. If you're worried, you can still have multiple OpenIDs just like you can have multiple email accounts.
But if you have just one email account, they can get access to all your emails, and everyone you send email to. Is that "Monoculture" too?
(I also can't help being amused that most of the OpenID criticisms seem to be from Anonymous Cowards - why are you bothered by OpenID if you don't set up accounts in the first place?)
But your email provider also has access to all your personal emails, so it's the same issue really. No one thinks that a system where you need to sign up for a different email account for every email server you want to write to (e.g., if I want to write to user@aol.com, I need to sign up for an email on AOL) is any kind of sensible solution to this.
Also, OpenID is not so much about having multiple profiles with extensive information, it's often simply leaving comments on other webpages. So I can use my LiveJournal OpenID to leave a comment on blogger. I don't use my OpenID to create any kind of account or profile on blogger (why would I? the whole point with OpenID is I don't need to do that, as people can refer to my LiveJournal profile). If someone hacked my LiveJournal, I'd be annoyed with or without OpenID - the fact that they could also post to blogger as me makes little extra difference.
Now if we hack Email we can get EVERYONES account to EVERY email address.
Email makes life easier for hackers.
I think that advertising is important, but there are particular problems with the way it is done on the Internet. Part of it is they are often annoying, which lead people to block them as you describe.
But I also can't help thinking how Internet adverts are more likely to be plain rubbish. There seems to be an awful lot of:
* Avatars/graphical smilies/etc.
* Christian or Muslim dating.
* Download this 'free' thingy.
* Geo-thingy that doesn't work (images of women who all live in the same town, that isn't the town I live in; and today I am getting adverts from Slashdot of some social networking site in German).
Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the first three, obviously they have their market, but they seem to be a disproportionate amount of ads online. On the other hand, adverts for actual products seem to be rare.
The United States wishes to require adult websites to verify ages of visitors "in case a child might see it".
The United Kingdom has recently criminalised possession of some adult material, "in case a child might see it" (well, the reasons are varied, but their "justifications" include this as a reason).
The United States law is struck down as a violation of freedom of speech. We do have freedom of expression under the European Convention of Human Rights which some believe this law will violate, however it has the get-out clause "subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, ... for the protection of ... morals".
The COPA law is broader than the pic-and-mix "extreme" images law, in that it covers all adult content not just some, but I thought the comparison is interesting. I am glad that the US has made this sensible step, I'm just unfortunate to live somewhere where the prudes are way ahead.
Preaching: "God exists! Jesus exists! Accept Jesus and you will go to heaven!"
Teaching: "Some people believe in God and they believe that Jesus is the son of God. Other people instead believe ..."
If you say you should censor religion too
I don't wish to censor religion for adults. I'm just pointing out the inconsistency that people want to ban or make things harder for adults "in case a child might see it", whilst thinking it fine to actively preach and expose religion to children.
Lets take the 10 commandments for example...
That's completely beside the point. Your claim was that irreligion implies amorality. Just because religion teaches morality does not imply that you need religion to teach morality. Perhaps they need to teach logic at school, too :)
I am also amused at the way that you have to misinterpret some of them. So, I am completely fulfilling commandment one if I stick to believing that "Christianity is a load of rubbish, I believe in and worship these other gods instead"? Blasphemy is not the same as swearing, and laws against blasphemy are of dubious ethics (we only recently repealed that law in the UK; shortly before then, the BBC had to defend a blasphemy, at great expense to them).
The sabbath means exactly that. In fact, it could mean exactly the opposite to what you claim - if my obligations involve work, then the commandment says that I should not do those on the sabbath.
As for the remaining points:
Saying that murder is wrong is a tautology, because murder is defined as immoral or unlawful killing - the difficult ethical question is what counts as murder? Saying adultery is unethical is fine, but note that that doesn't mean it should be illegal like it was and still is in some places; it also ignores the possibility of things like open marriages where it's consensual, but it often still gets counted as adultery.
And the rest of the Bible is mostly about Jesus and a few other commandments. There really is nothing morally messed up about it.
I was referring to things like stoning someone to death for working on the sabbath. Or in your case, stoning someone to death for not "fulfilling their obligations", which is still just as messed up (what if gathering sticks was his "obligation"? Looks like the almighty Lord doesn't agree with your interpretation). But given how you've misinterpretted the commandments, you probably read that in a completely different way too.
No, but we do have specialty schools for teaching just about everything else. Religion is no exception, and most of these religious schools are meant to train people to become missionaries/pastors/priests/*insert high-ranking official of your favorite region here*.
I said "preaching". Teaching about religion is completely different, and there's nothing wrong with that.
It is in just about everyone's best interest whether the believe it or not, to give children morals from religion. Put it this way, if you were the owner of a store, would you rather have people teaching "Stealing is wrong" or "When you die you're dead so take whatever because you could die tomorrow".
Where did I say you shouldn't teach morals? How on earth does the tautology "when you die you're dead" lead to an argument for stealing?
By all means teach morals, that's nothing to do with belief in a supernatural being. The Bible has some pretty messed up "morals" in it too, should we teach those?
You obviously were brought up to believe that a lack of religion leads to immorality - all the more reason that we should teach ethics to children, rather than preaching a religion at them. The latter just leads children to believe that right and wrong is simply whatever their religion tells them.
See, let's start with little Johnny that watches lots of porn. Hard-core stuff. Ends up getting out of high school thinking that (a) wimmen like surprises, like rape, and (b) wimmen don't like him.
Why would he need to watch hardcore porn, when he could get that impression just by reading the Bible...
It sickens me if you are letting your small children roam the Internet unrestricted and unsupervised.
But what that has to do with placing restrictions on websites, I do not know.
He didn't say "highly sexualized and promiscuous modern culture" - whatever that is. He said "watched a porno movie or read a dirty book". If you have evidence of a link between that and STDs or unwanted pregnancies, then please share it with us.
Well, you don't tend to have organisations and schools preaching at children that they must believe in Santa Claus. You don't have "Santa Claus" schools specifically set up for that purpose. I imagine those are the sorts of things he meant.
FWIW, I wouldn't want to criminalise someone for exposing a child to religion. But I do think it's ridiculous that people are obsessed with censoring (or in some cases, criminalising possession of) media "because a child might see it", yet this is not applied to religion. On the contrary, some of the same people who freak out that a 17 year old might see a nipple or hear a swear word seem happy to preach religion at other people's small children.
"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection"
- Senior US District Judge Lowell Reed Jr., commenting on this same law when he struck it down last year ( http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article1554275.ece ).
And I can get Mozilla for my phone where exactly?
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
To add to that, the minimum tube price (even for a single stop) is £1.50 with an Oyster card, and £4 without (so about $3 and $8).
They keep increasing the price of the non-Oyster fare, so they can advertise the Oyster card as getting cheaper!
...and Opera Mini too.
And I think it was Apple that pushed the envelope to the point where people now know that it's possible to have a browser behave very similarly to how it would on the desktop. Before the iPhone, even on smart phones, people were still expecting to have a much different browsing experience on a mobile device than the would on their home computer.
Ah, it's another "Apple invented/popularised it" myth.
Full non-WAP browsers have been included on phones - even cheap ones - for years. The standard cheap ones may not be brilliant, but then awareness for these users is unlikely to be changed by the release of a high end product from one particular company.
I can't believe a smart phone user would not be aware of the capability of viewing webpages, nor would their usage be changed by the Iphone.
Yes, there seem to be people on Slashdot who seem completely unaware that phones could do webpages before the Iphone came along. But the market of "Apple fans who didn't use phones before" is not typical of the market of people who do use phones.
Your post suggests you believe that we have only now, with the release of the Iphone, made the transition from WAP browsers to standard browsers. In fact, this transition happened years ago.
That may be true, but one has to consider that previous browsing experiences, be they through WEP or even through Opera Mini, were at best mediocre and at worst unusable.
Opera Mini is fine, and even if it wasn't - before there were still earlier versions of Opera Mobile.
Even if speed isn't an issue, for those on PAYG, less information means it costs less money when you're paying for how much you download.
(And remember, Mini is a browser than can run on any bog-standard phone - not everyone is on contracts with no limit on downloads. It means that anyone can access a webpage on a cheap phone through a standard browser, without having to by an Iphone as some people would have them believe.)
but do you really want your bank info being pulled up there?
I've been thinking about this - is it any different to your phone company seeing the details (especially as they can also tie it to your name and address, and other details they have on you).
And this task is easier with Internet Explorer or Safari?
(If you mean it is easier with Firefox, then that's off-topic, since you can't get Firefox for mobiles AFAIK.)
Whilst this is an advantage of open source, I'm not sure how practical forking it is just to fix a bug or add a feature you like, as you now how a separate fork to maintain everytime the main version is updated.
Ideally you submit the patch back into the main source, but then you need that to be accepted by the developers, who could potentially ignore you just as much as MS/Apple/Opera.