It takes me less than two months to amass that much.:) And my spam rate's gone up from about 150 or 200 a day in June 2004 to 1000-1100 a day nowadays - so I definitely can't confirm this journalist's conclusions.
It's not really about what Apple actually does, though. I'm inclined to believe them when they say that they discard the personal information that is transmitted them and only ever use aggregate, statistical data, but... who's to say that that'll always be true? The problem is not that Apple is making use of your data; the problem is that Apple is transmitting it without your knowledge or informed, explicit consent.
And burying a provision in an EULA somewhere, full well knowing that 99% of all people don't actually read these, does not count as "informed consent". Whoever came up with the idea that "opt-out" is a valid consent obtainment model, anyway? Suppose I added a note to this comment that said, in effect, "I'll rob your house next week, and by not opting out, you agree to let me do that and waive any rights to sue me for it", would you expect any court to uphold that? Of course not. Why are these things different? You cannot obtain consent "by default"; if it's not explicitely given (as in "opt-in"), it's not there. Period.
And saying (as another commenter did) that if it was disabled by default, most users would not enable it... that's positively ridiculous. If people aren't gonna enable it, then maybe, just maybe, that might be a sign that they *do* care after all and that what I said above is not just an intellectual exercise, but that "opt-out" really *is* not obtaining consent. If the two systems were equivalent, there'd be no need to go for "opt-out" at all, as those who consent to having their data collected and used would opt in, anyway.
Considering that most US-Americans seem to consider it their (or, at least, their government's) god-given right to spy on anyone who's not from the USA without any oversight, warrant or second thoughts whatsoever, I fail to see why that's so bad.
Surely if you expect someone else to swallow these things, you should be willing to swallow them, too? If you (and I'm referring to the general Slashdot public here, not the parent poster specifically find it outrageous that other countries spy on US-Americans, why don't you find it outrageous that the USA do the same to others, too?
They can wiretap everyone else in the world but I don't want our government wiretapping us without the usual requisite warrants.
...because the rest of the world is just foreign pigs, right? I mean, most of them don't even talk English! Can't be anything wrong with spying on those pesky guys; they're probably all terrorists, anyway.
Seriously, you should really reconsider your personal ethics - as soon as you start looking down on people just because they're foreigners/black/Jews/not Germans/whatever, you have a big problem.
It's not the 20 services the GP promised, of course, but it might help, although experience shows that those who complain the most about spam are also the ones who aren't willing to actually try anything to make it stop, so I'm not sure your cousin will find this useful (your description of a "12-year old airhead" certainly doesn't inspire confidence).
No, it's not. You don't get to see the actual list; rather, you send a list of email addresses you want to spam^H^H^H^Hsend interesting offers to to these guys, and they'll filter out what's in their registry and return the filtered list to you.
So... sure, you still get *some* information about what email addresses on your original list are actually valid, but it's not as if you can just grab the entire list and start spamming.
That's like saying that you shouldn't be disappointed when your car's taken away because you can always walk. Sure, you can, but it's rather inconvenient, especially when you *know* that everyone else has access to a fantastic tool - just not you.
I think there's an underlying problem to 1), too, though, and that is that Taco himself does not have the same level of integrity that many Slashdot readers have and that every self-respecting journalist *should* have. He has made it clear in the past that he considers Slashdot to be of a personal blog than anything else (see the "Blizzard froze my account" "editorial" he posted a while ago), and while it of course is NOT his personal blog anymore (at the very latest, it stopped being that when Slashdot sold out to OSTG), it does illustrate a certain mindset - namely, that it's perfectly OK for him (and, by corollary, for any Slashdot editor) to violate basic journalistic principles. So that's what he does (and what the other editors do).
I'm not sure if this can be changed anymore, either; the only "stuff that matters" that Slashdot is still about is money, and since Slashdot sold out, it's not even Taco's money anymore, either - at least not directly (I assume he still gets a nice salary for maintaining ad revenue, though).
Pretty much all of Slashdot's problems can be explained in this light - if you wonder why things are the way they are (dupes, slashvertisement, troll stories etc.), just consider ad revenue; everything that generates lots of page views (for example, by stirring up controversy) is good for ad revenue, so it'll happen. In other words, Slashdot is really a tabloid of the worst kind - the only one difference is that it's one that caters to a technical audience rather than the general unwashed masses.
And as such, the only things that really could make a difference are those that lead to a decrease in ad revenue, too. As long as that doesn't happen, we can complain all we want - we'll be ignored. So the only options seem to be writing to Slashdot's advertisers and asking them to demand a higher quality of the site - or to leave Slashdot. The only thing that Slashdot has going for itself, in my eyes, is the sheer amount of comments it generates, many of which actually *are* interesting/insightful/informative, but that's about it.
Incidentally, BTW, this also explains why you lose your mod powers for good when you moderate people down: the Slashdot owners *want* as many highly-moderated comments as possible, because those will either be well-received (in which case it's obvious why they're considered a good thing) or badly-received, in which case they'll stir up controversy, spawn more comments, and - ultimately - lead to more page hits and thus more ad revenue. Negative moderation, even that of genuine troll/flamebait posts, is a threat to ad revenue - that's why you get punished for doing it.
(Interestingly enough, BTW, I myself already seem to have been forced to post at +1 again since a few months ago, despite still having Excellent karma and having posted at +2 for a long time. Considering that this isn't the first Slashdot-critical comment I've posted, I kinda wonder whether someone slapped an extra -1 on me there - maybe I'm just paranoid, but I certainly wouldn't put it above Taco to do that.)
Indeed - especially considering that WINE and Mono are two very different beasts. WINE aims at binary compatibility with existing applications; Mono (from what *I* know, anyway) aims at source compatibility, which is a very different thing, and much easier to accomplish.
Re:Für Elise / For Elise
on
Scanjet Music
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· Score: 1
Yeah... someone should give the submitter a ¨ . But then, Slashdot doesn't seem to be able/willing to take that, either...
Oh, yeah, good idea! Your son's doing drugs, so shut down a website he uses for communication and that's also used by 40 million others. What's next - has he ever used a car to meet someone who sold drugs to him? We'd better shut down the entire road network!
That's stupid. Why should everyone suffer for the handful of idiots who will freak out even when presented with a default option along the lines of "I'll make sane choices for you and you won't have to worry it, everything will work just fine"?
That's rubbish. If I break into your house, steal a thousand bucks and then proceed to donate twenty of them to charity, will you praise me for my philanthrophism? Probably not - you'd be pointing out that I was a thief, that it was *your* money I gave to the charity, and - for that matter - that I kept most of it for myself, anyway.
The same can be said about Bill Gates, only a much bigger scale. He's been ripping everyone off using illegal business tactics etc.; the fact that he donates a comparatively small part of his ill-gotten wealth now is irrelevant. He's still a thief, and the fact that he stole so much more than the guy who broke into your house only makes it all the worse.
I'm amazed that so many people even on Slashdot are blinded by his actions. What are we all - sheep? It often seems we are, unfortunately.
Or, for that matter, "the fifth element". Seriously, this was one of the worst mass-produced pieces of hollywood crap ever, and I really expected more from Luc Besson. Something like this from the man who brought us movies like "Subway" - I was shocked.
Actually, that just makes the explanation given even more likely - someone probably put both "Planet of the apes" and "Martin Luther King" into a "social politics" category (or something similar).
It's the case of fully automated system where the GP's comment doesn't make sense - a computer will not "know" what either movie is about, it will merely spew out recommendations based on what people who bought/looked at one movie also bought/looked at. A system like that will uncover some semantic connections in an empiric sort of way, of course, but to think that every fully automated recommendation (or even most of them) can be explained in terms of content etc. shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how these systems work.
Hmm. Anybody remember the "phone home without telling the user" functionality in Acrobat Reader? It also always insists on enabling Javascript when I disable it, claiming that documents contain it and won't properly display when it's disabled, even with documents that I created myself and that I know FOR A FACT don't contain any Javascript.
Thanks, but no. I'll keep on using GSview for PDFs.
Slashdot Mirror
It takes me less than two months to amass that much. :) And my spam rate's gone up from about 150 or 200 a day in June 2004 to 1000-1100 a day nowadays - so I definitely can't confirm this journalist's conclusions.
It's not really about what Apple actually does, though. I'm inclined to believe them when they say that they discard the personal information that is transmitted them and only ever use aggregate, statistical data, but... who's to say that that'll always be true? The problem is not that Apple is making use of your data; the problem is that Apple is transmitting it without your knowledge or informed, explicit consent.
And burying a provision in an EULA somewhere, full well knowing that 99% of all people don't actually read these, does not count as "informed consent". Whoever came up with the idea that "opt-out" is a valid consent obtainment model, anyway? Suppose I added a note to this comment that said, in effect, "I'll rob your house next week, and by not opting out, you agree to let me do that and waive any rights to sue me for it", would you expect any court to uphold that? Of course not. Why are these things different? You cannot obtain consent "by default"; if it's not explicitely given (as in "opt-in"), it's not there. Period.
And saying (as another commenter did) that if it was disabled by default, most users would not enable it... that's positively ridiculous. If people aren't gonna enable it, then maybe, just maybe, that might be a sign that they *do* care after all and that what I said above is not just an intellectual exercise, but that "opt-out" really *is* not obtaining consent. If the two systems were equivalent, there'd be no need to go for "opt-out" at all, as those who consent to having their data collected and used would opt in, anyway.
Considering that most US-Americans seem to consider it their (or, at least, their government's) god-given right to spy on anyone who's not from the USA without any oversight, warrant or second thoughts whatsoever, I fail to see why that's so bad.
Surely if you expect someone else to swallow these things, you should be willing to swallow them, too? If you (and I'm referring to the general Slashdot public here, not the parent poster specifically find it outrageous that other countries spy on US-Americans, why don't you find it outrageous that the USA do the same to others, too?
You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
...because the rest of the world is just foreign pigs, right? I mean, most of them don't even talk English! Can't be anything wrong with spying on those pesky guys; they're probably all terrorists, anyway.
Seriously, you should really reconsider your personal ethics - as soon as you start looking down on people just because they're foreigners/black/Jews/not Germans/whatever, you have a big problem.
Here are a few things that might help:
http://gmail.google.com/ (webmail with a reasonably good spam filter)
http://spamassassin.apache.org/ (good spam filter for non-web email)
http://bogofilter.sf.net/ (another good spam filter for non-web email)
http://spamcop.net/ (free anti-spam service)
http://spambob.net/ (free receive-only/forwarding/black hole email addresses)
It's not the 20 services the GP promised, of course, but it might help, although experience shows that those who complain the most about spam are also the ones who aren't willing to actually try anything to make it stop, so I'm not sure your cousin will find this useful (your description of a "12-year old airhead" certainly doesn't inspire confidence).
No, it's not. You don't get to see the actual list; rather, you send a list of email addresses you want to spam^H^H^H^Hsend interesting offers to to these guys, and they'll filter out what's in their registry and return the filtered list to you.
So... sure, you still get *some* information about what email addresses on your original list are actually valid, but it's not as if you can just grab the entire list and start spamming.
The same thing that makes Pluto a planet, I'd say. (think about it.)
100 bucks? That's about 55 pounds - hey, I'd actually be glad to lose those! :)
That's like saying that you shouldn't be disappointed when your car's taken away because you can always walk. Sure, you can, but it's rather inconvenient, especially when you *know* that everyone else has access to a fantastic tool - just not you.
Wow, you broke Taco - he just posted a rant^H^H^H^Heditorial about this. :)
I think there's an underlying problem to 1), too, though, and that is that Taco himself does not have the same level of integrity that many Slashdot readers have and that every self-respecting journalist *should* have. He has made it clear in the past that he considers Slashdot to be of a personal blog than anything else (see the "Blizzard froze my account" "editorial" he posted a while ago), and while it of course is NOT his personal blog anymore (at the very latest, it stopped being that when Slashdot sold out to OSTG), it does illustrate a certain mindset - namely, that it's perfectly OK for him (and, by corollary, for any Slashdot editor) to violate basic journalistic principles. So that's what he does (and what the other editors do).
I'm not sure if this can be changed anymore, either; the only "stuff that matters" that Slashdot is still about is money, and since Slashdot sold out, it's not even Taco's money anymore, either - at least not directly (I assume he still gets a nice salary for maintaining ad revenue, though).
Pretty much all of Slashdot's problems can be explained in this light - if you wonder why things are the way they are (dupes, slashvertisement, troll stories etc.), just consider ad revenue; everything that generates lots of page views (for example, by stirring up controversy) is good for ad revenue, so it'll happen. In other words, Slashdot is really a tabloid of the worst kind - the only one difference is that it's one that caters to a technical audience rather than the general unwashed masses.
And as such, the only things that really could make a difference are those that lead to a decrease in ad revenue, too. As long as that doesn't happen, we can complain all we want - we'll be ignored. So the only options seem to be writing to Slashdot's advertisers and asking them to demand a higher quality of the site - or to leave Slashdot. The only thing that Slashdot has going for itself, in my eyes, is the sheer amount of comments it generates, many of which actually *are* interesting/insightful/informative, but that's about it.
Incidentally, BTW, this also explains why you lose your mod powers for good when you moderate people down: the Slashdot owners *want* as many highly-moderated comments as possible, because those will either be well-received (in which case it's obvious why they're considered a good thing) or badly-received, in which case they'll stir up controversy, spawn more comments, and - ultimately - lead to more page hits and thus more ad revenue. Negative moderation, even that of genuine troll/flamebait posts, is a threat to ad revenue - that's why you get punished for doing it.
(Interestingly enough, BTW, I myself already seem to have been forced to post at +1 again since a few months ago, despite still having Excellent karma and having posted at +2 for a long time. Considering that this isn't the first Slashdot-critical comment I've posted, I kinda wonder whether someone slapped an extra -1 on me there - maybe I'm just paranoid, but I certainly wouldn't put it above Taco to do that.)
Indeed - especially considering that WINE and Mono are two very different beasts. WINE aims at binary compatibility with existing applications; Mono (from what *I* know, anyway) aims at source compatibility, which is a very different thing, and much easier to accomplish.
Yeah... someone should give the submitter a ¨ . But then, Slashdot doesn't seem to be able/willing to take that, either...
I don't know the average distance between twin stars, but considering that they're *stars*, not planets, that does seem pretty close to me.
Oh, yeah, good idea! Your son's doing drugs, so shut down a website he uses for communication and that's also used by 40 million others. What's next - has he ever used a car to meet someone who sold drugs to him? We'd better shut down the entire road network!
That's stupid. Why should everyone suffer for the handful of idiots who will freak out even when presented with a default option along the lines of "I'll make sane choices for you and you won't have to worry it, everything will work just fine"?
Err, that's twelve.
That's rubbish. If I break into your house, steal a thousand bucks and then proceed to donate twenty of them to charity, will you praise me for my philanthrophism? Probably not - you'd be pointing out that I was a thief, that it was *your* money I gave to the charity, and - for that matter - that I kept most of it for myself, anyway.
The same can be said about Bill Gates, only a much bigger scale. He's been ripping everyone off using illegal business tactics etc.; the fact that he donates a comparatively small part of his ill-gotten wealth now is irrelevant. He's still a thief, and the fact that he stole so much more than the guy who broke into your house only makes it all the worse.
I'm amazed that so many people even on Slashdot are blinded by his actions. What are we all - sheep? It often seems we are, unfortunately.
Yes, back in our days...
Or, for that matter, "the fifth element". Seriously, this was one of the worst mass-produced pieces of hollywood crap ever, and I really expected more from Luc Besson. Something like this from the man who brought us movies like "Subway" - I was shocked.
Europe had slavery, too. We just got rid of it a long, long time ago, so it simply isn't an issue anymore.
Well, they *did* have an episode about Susan B. Anthony. (yes, seriously! check it out.)
Actually, that just makes the explanation given even more likely - someone probably put both "Planet of the apes" and "Martin Luther King" into a "social politics" category (or something similar).
It's the case of fully automated system where the GP's comment doesn't make sense - a computer will not "know" what either movie is about, it will merely spew out recommendations based on what people who bought/looked at one movie also bought/looked at. A system like that will uncover some semantic connections in an empiric sort of way, of course, but to think that every fully automated recommendation (or even most of them) can be explained in terms of content etc. shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how these systems work.
Hmm. Anybody remember the "phone home without telling the user" functionality in Acrobat Reader? It also always insists on enabling Javascript when I disable it, claiming that documents contain it and won't properly display when it's disabled, even with documents that I created myself and that I know FOR A FACT don't contain any Javascript.
Thanks, but no. I'll keep on using GSview for PDFs.
Welcome to the world of closed-source software, vendor interests and monopolies...