So you always open your browser for only one site and close it afterwards? And never look at two sites at the same time?
No, but I close my browser regularly enough that using session cookies for tracking is bloody stupid. Which is why nobody does it. The rest of your post is just more ranting about cookies, without addressing the distinction between session cookies and persistent ones. This EU law doesn't appear to distinguish between the two either, and is therefore, just as stupid as you.
Except that this article wasn't talking about informing people; it was talking about restricting their knowledge, because increasing it leads them to conclusions the author doesn't want them to hold. That's why I used the phrase "manipulating information" rather than "education" - education implies increasing the student's knowledge; "manipulating information" means either increasing or restricting their knowledge, based on the goals you're attempting to implement.
You do know what an antitrust complaint is about don't you? It's not about having a monopoly, it's about abusing one. When has Google abused its search monopoly?
1. Session cookies are key in allowing Google to track and store more data than it should.
Err, no, that would be persistent cookies. Session cookies are deleted whenever the browser session ends, so it makes tracking rather pointless. The cookies Google (and every other company) uses to track are set to expire years in the future.
In effect, isn't there a risk that following your idea will simply mean that you will vote according to who buys the most online votes, whether by advertising or direct corruption?
That's a weakness in democracy in general. Witness how the politicians break out the "campaign promises" in election season. At least it'll be novel in that the voting public will receive the bribes, rather than them being concentrated at the candidate level.
Australia, New Zealand and Canada are not independent nations - they're all a part of the British commonwealth, and the head of state for all three is the Queen of England, represented by a Governor General.
The entire Manifesto is riddled with calls to violent revolution against the existing social order, and every communist society since (that I know of) has begun that way: through violence and bloodshed.
Are there any soceties that didn't begin through violence and bloodshed? We don't really know the origins of all societies, but of those that we do, I can only recall stories of invasion or rebellion.
No, it's called education. I teach complex material to first and second years who are in a field not generally amenable or known to be deeply interested in complex thinking (cough)media production(cough) and throwing Shannon's entropy equations at them doesn't work. They revolt and stop participating. So, I have to figure out ways of explaining information entropy to them in way that they find interesting and amusing and valuable to their world. It's kind of like the opposite of explaining the northern romantic tradition to physicists, or industrial music composition techniques to midwifery students...
Not a parallel example. A parallel example would be that you knew that Media Production students, if taught Shannon's entropy equations, would kill a kitten. You like kittens, so you modify your syllabus to exclude entropy equations. You're creating desired behaviour by manipulating the information presented, not changing the form or manner in which information is presented to make it more interesting to your audience. The latter is prompted by a desire for the target to gain access to new information; the former for a desire to control the target.
In other words, sometimes people disagree with you. These people are wrong. So you should manipulate what information they're exposed to, so they come to conclusions you want them to about "what is good for society".
Your post just respun the GPs post positively, while not actually contradicting what he said was going on.
If so, then shouldn't we make sure the talent pool is as wide as possible?
What, you mean by introducing quotas to enable people who wouldn't ordinarily be competent enough to get a job to get one solely based on their gender instead? I don't think that'll have the effect you're looking for.
If a company wants better quality people, they should do one thing: raise wages. Maybe also increase annual leave, flex time, and other perks. They'll attract better people, male and female.
I remember reading a book (fiction) that covered some pseudo-Celtic laws. I don't know whether the form was authentically Celtic, or just an invention of the author, but they ran the same sort of way you describe. One I vaguely remember ran something like:
"Poisons are to be outlawed? Why? Because unlike other weapons, poison cannot be used in self-defence."
All the laws they enumerated had that "Why?" fragment indicating intent.
Somewhere in this discussion there is a link to an interview with Scott Turow, author and head of some writer's guild, who claims that's exactly what Amazon is doing
Obviously, I don't know the ins-and-outs of Amazon's accounting, but didn't they have these prices set when they were already effectively a monopoly - before Apple joined the party? I mean, I can imagine this being the case if, when Apple joined, Amazon's prices dropped, or if, after everyone else left the market due to Amazon's low pricing, they jacked the price up, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Amazon's prices were low when they were a monopoly, and they stayed low when Apple joined. IIRC, Amazon's strategy was to leverage cheap books to sell a lot of Kindles.
"(C)ommunication" isn't the issue, it's having demonstrable ratings that appeal to advertisers
You're right that it's not communication - but wrong about it necessarily being ratings. Kickstarter isn't about direct communication, it's about direct funding. If something can be made entirely from fan contributions, then having good ratings is unnecessary - you don't need advertisers, because you don't need to earn back the investors money, because you have no investors. You have backers, whose only form of compensation is the product you produce yourself.
I'm under the impression that each episode of Firefly cost about a million USD. The highest grossing Kickstarter project is $10 million (Pebble watches). The next highest is Doublefine Adventures, at $3 million. How much do you Joss Whedon would raise if he put Firefly Season 2 on Kickstarter? Because (excluding the issue of rights to the franchise) $14 million would be enough to entirely fund the first season without recourse to advertisers, and any returns beyond that (from selling DVD sets to non-backers, say) would be a return for the creators not the publishers.
And personally - as someone who's backed a couple of million+ kickstarter projects, and seen the sort of community that build up around them - I'd say $14 million is low-ball.
These guys aren't civilians. These guys aren't naive students, fresh out of college; arrogant, idealistic, and with unrealistic dreams, with no sense of demographics, and no experience of making motion pictures -- i.e. your typical kickstarter client.
They may not fit the demographic of your typical kickstarter client, but they do fit that of the typical kickstarter success story - see Doublefine, Wasteland, Shadowrun, Banner Saga, etc. Kickstarter isn't just for people who can't raise capital the traditional way - it's also for people who don't want to.
Admittedly, I am of the opinion that kickstarter is just another parasite that looks to suck the dreams out of the desperate, idealistic and naive. There's no shortage of similar parasites in the industry.
A large number of whom are the publishers that you seem to consider so essential.
it's only teenagers that go to the cinema in enough numbers to make real money from a movie. If your movie doesn't appeal to teens, kiss your profits and distribution deal goodbye
Who cares? You're under no obligation to earn back profits for your investors, because you have none. If you're kickstarter funding covered your costs, you're golden. If it covered even a significant chunk of your costs, a modest return will be sufficient to break even, you won't need "real money". And unlike traditional means of funding, "breaking even" isn't a bad thing - the people funding care about the quality of your work, not it's monetary return (because kickstarter backers aren't entitled to any of that return).
the Court established that for prices to be predatory, they must be below the seller's cost.
So Amazon is perfectly entitled to do what it's doing. It's just not allowed to operate at a loss (razor-thin margins are ok) in order to drive competitors with a smaller war-chest out of business.
I imagine the old data would probably be grandfathered in by the new agreement, so that everything is consistent. Given how often Facebook changes its security policy, to do otherwise would be a maintenance nightmare.
Monsanto is to blame. The FDA isn't doing its job, true. They should not be letting anyone mess with the live DNA code base like this.
I'd disagree. The FDA's job is to decide whether products are safe, not to support ideological arguments about whether or not DNA is sacrosanct. It may well be they're failing in their duty - but we'll only be able to tell that in retrospect, if health problems arise due to GMO.
The US Patent office isn't doing its job. True.
Yes. This is the problem I have with Monsanto, not the question of whether their product is healthy or not.
The courts are not doing their job. True.
Not so sure on this one. The courts rely on the other parts of the system to work correctly. The fact that politicians are not doing their job (representing corporate interests instead of the interests of the public they're elected to represent) and that the patent office is likewise not often puts the courts in a situation where they have no choice but to rule in a certain way. They're bound by the law, and the law is an ass.
Good citizens should not take advantage of the failures of the system. They do so at their own peril, because it destroys the very environment in which they are trying to "win". That is what is evil about what Monsanto is doing here.
Monsanto isn't a citizen, good or otherwise. It's also not human, although composed of humans. It has various legal obligations on it that humans don't have (not enough, IMO), and certain rights that humans do not have (far too many). It has no morals of its own, no conscience. A corporation is a tool of society. We as a society either need to control our tool, or get rid of it. What is stupid and naieve is expecting our tool to just "be good" or act ethically. Either we need laws (that are actually implemented and enforced) to limit the behaviour of corporations to what we want, or we need to dissolve the corporate charter. Relying on corporations develop morals on their own is a losing game, as they are a fundamentally amoral construct.
Slashdot Mirror
So you always open your browser for only one site and close it afterwards? And never look at two sites at the same time?
No, but I close my browser regularly enough that using session cookies for tracking is bloody stupid. Which is why nobody does it. The rest of your post is just more ranting about cookies, without addressing the distinction between session cookies and persistent ones. This EU law doesn't appear to distinguish between the two either, and is therefore, just as stupid as you.
Except that this article wasn't talking about informing people; it was talking about restricting their knowledge, because increasing it leads them to conclusions the author doesn't want them to hold. That's why I used the phrase "manipulating information" rather than "education" - education implies increasing the student's knowledge; "manipulating information" means either increasing or restricting their knowledge, based on the goals you're attempting to implement.
So, advertising on your own site is anti-trust. Ok, thanks for playing.
You do know what an antitrust complaint is about don't you? It's not about having a monopoly, it's about abusing one. When has Google abused its search monopoly?
1. Session cookies are key in allowing Google to track and store more data than it should.
Err, no, that would be persistent cookies. Session cookies are deleted whenever the browser session ends, so it makes tracking rather pointless. The cookies Google (and every other company) uses to track are set to expire years in the future.
I'm betting at least one slashdotter will start posting pre-emptive strawman arguments too.
In effect, isn't there a risk that following your idea will simply mean that you will vote according to who buys the most online votes, whether by advertising or direct corruption?
That's a weakness in democracy in general. Witness how the politicians break out the "campaign promises" in election season. At least it'll be novel in that the voting public will receive the bribes, rather than them being concentrated at the candidate level.
Australia, New Zealand and Canada are not independent nations - they're all a part of the British commonwealth, and the head of state for all three is the Queen of England, represented by a Governor General.
The entire Manifesto is riddled with calls to violent revolution against the existing social order, and every communist society since (that I know of) has begun that way: through violence and bloodshed.
Are there any soceties that didn't begin through violence and bloodshed? We don't really know the origins of all societies, but of those that we do, I can only recall stories of invasion or rebellion.
No, it's called education. I teach complex material to first and second years who are in a field not generally amenable or known to be deeply interested in complex thinking (cough)media production(cough) and throwing Shannon's entropy equations at them doesn't work. They revolt and stop participating. So, I have to figure out ways of explaining information entropy to them in way that they find interesting and amusing and valuable to their world. It's kind of like the opposite of explaining the northern romantic tradition to physicists, or industrial music composition techniques to midwifery students...
Not a parallel example. A parallel example would be that you knew that Media Production students, if taught Shannon's entropy equations, would kill a kitten. You like kittens, so you modify your syllabus to exclude entropy equations. You're creating desired behaviour by manipulating the information presented, not changing the form or manner in which information is presented to make it more interesting to your audience. The latter is prompted by a desire for the target to gain access to new information; the former for a desire to control the target.
In other words, sometimes people disagree with you. These people are wrong. So you should manipulate what information they're exposed to, so they come to conclusions you want them to about "what is good for society".
Your post just respun the GPs post positively, while not actually contradicting what he said was going on.
What does HP have to offer though? Google already has all the people who did WebOS. Who should Google work with at HP? The middle management?
So, Labour then. It's getting to be like voting against the Liberals by going National.
I think you are spuriously inserting your own definitions into those terms to meet your own need to feel superior to someone.
That wasn't my post
If so, then shouldn't we make sure the talent pool is as wide as possible?
What, you mean by introducing quotas to enable people who wouldn't ordinarily be competent enough to get a job to get one solely based on their gender instead? I don't think that'll have the effect you're looking for.
If a company wants better quality people, they should do one thing: raise wages. Maybe also increase annual leave, flex time, and other perks. They'll attract better people, male and female.
I remember reading a book (fiction) that covered some pseudo-Celtic laws. I don't know whether the form was authentically Celtic, or just an invention of the author, but they ran the same sort of way you describe. One I vaguely remember ran something like:
"Poisons are to be outlawed? Why? Because unlike other weapons, poison cannot be used in self-defence."
All the laws they enumerated had that "Why?" fragment indicating intent.
why women working the same jobs as men make less money.
Because gender equality hasn't fully been realized yet. Now want to explain how promoting further inequality via affirmative action is likely to help?
Somewhere in this discussion there is a link to an interview with Scott Turow, author and head of some writer's guild, who claims that's exactly what Amazon is doing
Obviously, I don't know the ins-and-outs of Amazon's accounting, but didn't they have these prices set when they were already effectively a monopoly - before Apple joined the party? I mean, I can imagine this being the case if, when Apple joined, Amazon's prices dropped, or if, after everyone else left the market due to Amazon's low pricing, they jacked the price up, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Amazon's prices were low when they were a monopoly, and they stayed low when Apple joined. IIRC, Amazon's strategy was to leverage cheap books to sell a lot of Kindles.
"(C)ommunication" isn't the issue, it's having demonstrable ratings that appeal to advertisers
You're right that it's not communication - but wrong about it necessarily being ratings. Kickstarter isn't about direct communication, it's about direct funding. If something can be made entirely from fan contributions, then having good ratings is unnecessary - you don't need advertisers, because you don't need to earn back the investors money, because you have no investors. You have backers, whose only form of compensation is the product you produce yourself.
I'm under the impression that each episode of Firefly cost about a million USD. The highest grossing Kickstarter project is $10 million (Pebble watches). The next highest is Doublefine Adventures, at $3 million. How much do you Joss Whedon would raise if he put Firefly Season 2 on Kickstarter? Because (excluding the issue of rights to the franchise) $14 million would be enough to entirely fund the first season without recourse to advertisers, and any returns beyond that (from selling DVD sets to non-backers, say) would be a return for the creators not the publishers.
And personally - as someone who's backed a couple of million+ kickstarter projects, and seen the sort of community that build up around them - I'd say $14 million is low-ball.
These guys aren't civilians. These guys aren't naive students, fresh out of college; arrogant, idealistic, and with unrealistic dreams, with no sense of demographics, and no experience of making motion pictures -- i.e. your typical kickstarter client.
They may not fit the demographic of your typical kickstarter client, but they do fit that of the typical kickstarter success story - see Doublefine, Wasteland, Shadowrun, Banner Saga, etc. Kickstarter isn't just for people who can't raise capital the traditional way - it's also for people who don't want to.
Admittedly, I am of the opinion that kickstarter is just another parasite that looks to suck the dreams out of the desperate, idealistic and naive. There's no shortage of similar parasites in the industry.
A large number of whom are the publishers that you seem to consider so essential.
it's only teenagers that go to the cinema in enough numbers to make real money from a movie. If your movie doesn't appeal to teens, kiss your profits and distribution deal goodbye
Who cares? You're under no obligation to earn back profits for your investors, because you have none. If you're kickstarter funding covered your costs, you're golden. If it covered even a significant chunk of your costs, a modest return will be sufficient to break even, you won't need "real money". And unlike traditional means of funding, "breaking even" isn't a bad thing - the people funding care about the quality of your work, not it's monetary return (because kickstarter backers aren't entitled to any of that return).
the Court established that for prices to be predatory, they must be below the seller's cost.
So Amazon is perfectly entitled to do what it's doing. It's just not allowed to operate at a loss (razor-thin margins are ok) in order to drive competitors with a smaller war-chest out of business.
I imagine the old data would probably be grandfathered in by the new agreement, so that everything is consistent. Given how often Facebook changes its security policy, to do otherwise would be a maintenance nightmare.
Monsanto is to blame. The FDA isn't doing its job, true. They should not be letting anyone mess with the live DNA code base like this.
I'd disagree. The FDA's job is to decide whether products are safe, not to support ideological arguments about whether or not DNA is sacrosanct. It may well be they're failing in their duty - but we'll only be able to tell that in retrospect, if health problems arise due to GMO.
The US Patent office isn't doing its job. True.
Yes. This is the problem I have with Monsanto, not the question of whether their product is healthy or not.
The courts are not doing their job. True.
Not so sure on this one. The courts rely on the other parts of the system to work correctly. The fact that politicians are not doing their job (representing corporate interests instead of the interests of the public they're elected to represent) and that the patent office is likewise not often puts the courts in a situation where they have no choice but to rule in a certain way. They're bound by the law, and the law is an ass.
Good citizens should not take advantage of the failures of the system. They do so at their own peril, because it destroys the very environment in which they are trying to "win". That is what is evil about what Monsanto is doing here.
Monsanto isn't a citizen, good or otherwise. It's also not human, although composed of humans. It has various legal obligations on it that humans don't have (not enough, IMO), and certain rights that humans do not have (far too many). It has no morals of its own, no conscience. A corporation is a tool of society. We as a society either need to control our tool, or get rid of it. What is stupid and naieve is expecting our tool to just "be good" or act ethically. Either we need laws (that are actually implemented and enforced) to limit the behaviour of corporations to what we want, or we need to dissolve the corporate charter. Relying on corporations develop morals on their own is a losing game, as they are a fundamentally amoral construct.
I can go to the farmers market...instead of starting my car (which I definitely do NOT do with a clean conscience), I can walk or bike
Now I want to see your local farmer's market, where the farmer bikes in the 2 tonne of produce he's going to be selling. Damn fit farmers.