She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
1. TSA officer tries to fondle/irradiate children 2. Parent refuses 3. TSA officer insists on fondling/irradiating children 4. Parent gets upset 5. Parent charged for being "belligerent"
Offences like "resisting arrest", being "belligerent", "abusing officer" and so on are generally total b.s. - one in a thousand arrests for these things would be legit, the other 999 being tools for wannabe fascist bully boys to prevent people from asserting their otherwise legitimate rights.
I think a good law would be that unless the person arrested had actually committed a real crime (one that doesn't involve any of these 'police' crimes) then there should be no power to charge them with offending the sensibilities of the authorities. Dealing with hostile people is your job if you're a member of the police, TSA etc.
I grew up in a heavily conservative environment. Each new piece of technology was seen as a new way for the devil to attack, signaling the arrival of the anti-christ. This included... Credit cards: Banks want you to use credit cards because it assigns you a number, and numbering the people was something that the anti-christ did. ATM Machines: Something about not carrying cash was evil. Not sure what that was about. RFID: They want to implant them into your body. The resulting scar was the mark of the beast.
If they couldn't find a rational reason to explain their fear of a new technology, they blamed it on the anti-christ.
Stripping away the religious layer, those fears are pretty accurate IMHO:
1. Credit cards: they DO number you and provide a convenient central repository for tracking everything you buy
2. ATM cards: conveniently track your physical location
Surely the point is that exercising freedom of expression in a democracy (UK) resulted in people being placed on a terrorism watch-list with the cooperation of western companies (airlines)?
Assuming that the story is accurate in that respect...
Israel hasn't stopped anyone in the UK exercising their freedom of expression in the UK. Israel is not obliged to let potentially troublesome people enter their country.
Wow, are you a government spokesperson - "potentially troublesome".
That as it may be, in what possible universe should these people be on a terror watch list?
If General Motors and Ford participated in the same fashion as the schmuck lawyers they would have sold the person the car with a tougher bumper after he explained his intent to run me down.
Are you aware that being a lawyer doesn't give you the power to arbitrarily invent the law? Society, via government, creates the law. Lawyers simply apply it. If you don't like IP laws, your beef is with those who created those laws.
Surely the point is that exercising freedom of expression in a democracy (UK) resulted in people being placed on a terrorism watch-list with the cooperation of western companies (airlines)?
Assuming that the story is accurate in that respect...
Hardly. You seem to be making the same mistakes as a whole bunch of important people - the problem isn't Islam, or even the teachings of Mullahs, but of the persecution of Islam perceived by Muslims. It's not hard to figure out why so many perceive such issues, what with the support of Israel, wars on Muslim soil, the foreign military bases across Muslim holy land, and so on. Just read the Al Qaeda manifesto, and you'll see what they're on about. Pretending they don't have legitimate grievances and just labelling them "whackos" is never going to solve the actual problems. Hatred is taught in some mosques, as there is legitimate reason for many Muslims to really, really, really not appreciate all that the western world has done "for" them. Unfortunately for the US, the western world's doctrine of simply not owning up to selfish behaviour encourages dislike to turn to hatred as each generation passes.
There will be no peace until people are stopped being fucked with. It doesn't matter what religion said people hold (be it Islam in the middle east, or Catholicism in Northern Ireland), as long as they perceive themselves as being brutally fucked, they will act that way. Peace in Northern Ireland wasn't attained by wiping out Catholicism, but by simply talking to those with grievances, realising that everyone's shit stinks to various degrees, highlighting actual grievances, and also highlighting bullshit grievances that are simply not true. Refusing to even admit the possibility of being wrong is clearly not going to help that.
While I agree with you that western intervention in the domestic affairs of middle eastern nations is a factor in terrorism, your rant does not explain why people in many muslim countries behave in such an utterly appalling manner to one another.
Pray tell, how has western intervention led to:
- stonings
- honour killings and executions for 'adultery'
- canings for minor offences
- severe punishment for 'blasphemy'
- the widespread suppression of free speech on the basis of religious dogma
- most of what the Taliban did
- women being treated as second class citizens
- non-muslims being treated as second class citizens
You can draw a parallel with religion in the west - 1000 years ago. And if anyone was practising that type of stuff as a Christian they would deserve condemnation too.
Good to know the facebook+MS paid-for PR smear campaign against Google is working pretty well. The funny part? None of that bullshit you just said contains any evidence, you just call something "creepy" or an "out."
Good to know that expressing an opinion which differs from the./ groupthink on this subject results in ridiculous allegations about astroturfing. In your eyes presumably the dichotomy is "Google is great" on the one hand and "Paid shill for Facebook and Microsoft" on the other. It must be nice to live in such a simple world.
In my view Google is an amazing company with some slightly concerning habits and a disturbing amount of power. Is that such a controversial opinion?
So you're concerned about the data they collect from search and web browsing? Chrome and Android dont actually give them anything other than a few bits of browsing history (if you have search suggestions turned on) and location data (if you have that turned on).
Dashboard tells you nothing. Are you suggesting that Google does not have the ability to match IP addresses versus searches done? And then to link that to gmail account logins to match it to particular people?
In any case, all of this data is and has only ever been used to produce ads that they think you're likely to click on. oh, how sinister of them!!
1. Where is your evidence for this claim? 2. Even if that's right it still creates a convenient database for anyone else who might get at it, lawfully or otherwise. 3. The use to which private data is put is irrelevant.
Google also tell us that they cant identify an individual from this data because it has been anonymized. Whether that is true, we may never find out - but the fact is that until now there has been no reports of Google misusing that data. Not that I'm aware of anyway.
Glad to hear you like to live your life on the basis of blind trust. Many of us do not.
Of course, there are people who consider targetted advertising a misuse of their data...I'm not sure what they'd prefer...either they buy the products they like (because Google and others found out what they like and connected buyer with seller) OR the companies who produce products they like go out of business because they cant get enough sales. How else do companies get the word out?
So your argument is that looking at targeted advertising should be compulsory and is somehow the only logical way to live?
In what possible universe is Google transparent about privacy?? Can you go somewhere to see what data they have collected about you? I think not.
You have literally no idea what data they have in the no doubt comprehensive profile they have built about you based on search and gmail. If you read their privacy terms there are an alarming number of "outs" for them to basically use that information however the hell they want. Add to that their creepy wifi data collection, creepy streetview cars, etc etc. Hell, a Google search is a pretty good record of your thoughts.
I consider Google one of the biggest threats to privacy going around. By comparison Facebook is child's play.
Is the North Atlantic supposed to get half a whale before it gets a full one?
No, don't be ridiculous.
One whale is supposed to get right to the northern edge of the South Atlantic and verrrrrrrrrry slowly put first a fluke, then a bit of its tail, and eventually its whole body across the line, as though it's getting into a hot bath. Which, effectively, it is.
Al Gore predicted all of this in An Inconvenient Truth:
As the planet warms, the ancient machines of the gray whalean master race will begin to stir. Their instruments of death powered by minute rises in sea temperature, they will begin to send their agents of terror out on increasingly bold missions of destruction. At first the human population will be oblivious. The occasional ship sinking or swimmer mauled with characteristic baleen bite marks will be reported locally, but the dots of this sinister global movement will not be connected until it's far too late. Their algal slime will gradually colonise the land, allowing them to slither across huge distances by night. By the time the 2012 Republican presidential candidate is revealed to be a pygmy sperm whale wearing a top hat and monocle, the gray whales will have assumed total dominion over the affairs of humans, or "mega-plankton" as we are known to the grays.
In 1995 I proposed a bill to impose a 0.2% of surcharge on the use of high fructose corn syrup in candy. The money raised was to be appropriated to fund a crack team of scuba specialists to wage humanity's covert war against whalean infiltrators. The bill was defeated. Now, alas, it may be too late.
Why won't people listen to this guy? It's like everyone fell asleep or left after the first half of the movie or something.
Move out of the flood zones or buy flood insurance. Its no different than the people that blamed the Army Corps when New Orleans flooded. Wake up people, you're living below sea level (New Orleans) or living in the 100 year flood plain (Midwest). What did you really think was going to happen?
Actually the real problems in New Orleans were the clearing of a large area of natural vegetation which would once have absorbed much of the force of Katrina together with the construction Gulf River Outlet which formed a convenient channel for accelerating the storm surge and the generally poor design of the levy system, which failed despite not being exposed to conditions beyond its design parameters.
So all three factors were human errors, and were nothing to do with the people who chose to live below sea level, as they have for 300 years.
Well it's certainly implied. If citizen's vote on every single piece of legislation, then it's majority rules. Having lived in many places and now residing in California, where 'the people' are given a chance to vote directly for all kinds of weird legislative proposals, I can tell you that the majority here make plenty of bad decisions.
Yup, which is why a parliamentary democracy (which the US sort of has) is based around the idea that the people vote for a responsible government, who then governs as they think best. Accountability comes in the form of tossing out bad governments, not by the public having a right of veto over every piece of legislation. A central idea is that the government is able to make short term decisions which are unpopular but in the medium or long term best interests of the nation.
The type of "democracy" which would result from the masses voting on every piece of legislation would be horrendous. With non-compulsory voting you'd get enraged special interest groups making laws left right and centre to suit their agendas. No-one would pay taxes. Difficult problems would be ignored, and anything which could be subjected to FUD tactics would be defeated instantly. Most significantly, minorities and fringe groups would be brutally repressed.
As for the suggestion that China is democratically superior to the US, or any country outside of North Korea - don't make me laugh. Yes, 'the West' has problems. But China is about as close as we've got to Orwell's nightmare state in the modern world.
Exactly. On top of which, if there was even an 0.001% chance of a mobile phone causing a plane crash, do you think they'd be allowed to fly in the cabin of the plane at all? Of course not. They'd be on the list with fireworks, ammunition and so on.
Yeah. There's an emergency and a relative is dying. Those few minutes between the school getting the call and the kid actually being able to get to the phone to respond to the call could mean the difference between the relative seeing the kid before he/she dies.
Screw you, stop thinking of yourself and "the rules."
And of course, everyone before 1997 had their lives ruined by the absence of instant notification of every significant event in their lives... sigh.
I note that your school didn't include atheism (nor did mine).
Any serious study of "religion" must surely include the phenomenon of humans reasoning that there is no god. Again, this could be studied in a social and historical context, although one could argue that the questions of atheism and agnosticism are the ultimate study of religion.
So, in summary, your argument is that because some things which display altruistic behaviour are pre-programmed, ALL things which display altruistic behaviour are pre-programmed?
...which is that if you do actually take an interest and make enough noise, you CAN scare politicians enough to actually do their jobs, which is representing you rather than representing large corporations.
This information should galvanize further actions against DMCA style laws (and all bad laws, for that matter).
Anyone who thinks they need a firearm to "defend their home" living in a modern western country is a dangerous idiot.
Interesting perspective in the context of a story about a mob of armed government thugs breaking into an innocent persons house and assaulting him with guns.
A perfectly sane feature has now been curtailed effectively by public outcry against perceived violation of privacy. While I agree that it is a good thing the stuff now gets encrypted locally (yay, more encryption of sensitive information!) the grand result is nearly nothing. The way this thing worked was by having a cache of locations stored locally and for those who worry about invasion of privacy this turn of events doesn't change anything - if Big Brother wants to know where you are and where you've been, he need do nothing more than to store where you connect from on his side - something he has always been able to do.
Yes, but there is now less risk of Apple or app developers knowing where an iPhone user has been.
On the plus side, I can't see any reason why you couldn't write an app which records, say, your GPS location at all times and feeds that back to any mega corporation you want. So really, you've lost very little, and people who (sensibly IMHO) care about privacy have gained the ability to opt-out of Apple's dubious system.
If this was such a non-issue, Apple should have been up front about it and have always given users a way to opt-out. I'm sure the reason they did not do that is because they were well aware that many people don't like this kind of thing. Which just reinforces why it's a good thing that it's being changed now.
Slashdot Mirror
She wasn't arrested for a refusing a patdown. She was arrested for being belligerent.
1. TSA officer tries to fondle/irradiate children
2. Parent refuses
3. TSA officer insists on fondling/irradiating children
4. Parent gets upset
5. Parent charged for being "belligerent"
Offences like "resisting arrest", being "belligerent", "abusing officer" and so on are generally total b.s. - one in a thousand arrests for these things would be legit, the other 999 being tools for wannabe fascist bully boys to prevent people from asserting their otherwise legitimate rights.
I think a good law would be that unless the person arrested had actually committed a real crime (one that doesn't involve any of these 'police' crimes) then there should be no power to charge them with offending the sensibilities of the authorities. Dealing with hostile people is your job if you're a member of the police, TSA etc.
I grew up in a heavily conservative environment. Each new piece of technology was seen as a new way for the devil to attack, signaling the arrival of the anti-christ. This included...
Credit cards: Banks want you to use credit cards because it assigns you a number, and numbering the people was something that the anti-christ did.
ATM Machines: Something about not carrying cash was evil. Not sure what that was about.
RFID: They want to implant them into your body. The resulting scar was the mark of the beast.
If they couldn't find a rational reason to explain their fear of a new technology, they blamed it on the anti-christ.
Stripping away the religious layer, those fears are pretty accurate IMHO:
1. Credit cards: they DO number you and provide a convenient central repository for tracking everything you buy
2. ATM cards: conveniently track your physical location
3. RFID: see #2
Surely the point is that exercising freedom of expression in a democracy (UK) resulted in people being placed on a terrorism watch-list with the cooperation of western companies (airlines)?
Assuming that the story is accurate in that respect...
Israel hasn't stopped anyone in the UK exercising their freedom of expression in the UK. Israel is not obliged to let potentially troublesome people enter their country.
Wow, are you a government spokesperson - "potentially troublesome".
That as it may be, in what possible universe should these people be on a terror watch list?
If General Motors and Ford participated in the same fashion as the schmuck lawyers they would have sold the person the car with a tougher bumper after he explained his intent to run me down.
Are you aware that being a lawyer doesn't give you the power to arbitrarily invent the law? Society, via government, creates the law. Lawyers simply apply it. If you don't like IP laws, your beef is with those who created those laws.
Surely the point is that exercising freedom of expression in a democracy (UK) resulted in people being placed on a terrorism watch-list with the cooperation of western companies (airlines)?
Assuming that the story is accurate in that respect...
Hardly. You seem to be making the same mistakes as a whole bunch of important people - the problem isn't Islam, or even the teachings of Mullahs, but of the persecution of Islam perceived by Muslims. It's not hard to figure out why so many perceive such issues, what with the support of Israel, wars on Muslim soil, the foreign military bases across Muslim holy land, and so on. Just read the Al Qaeda manifesto, and you'll see what they're on about. Pretending they don't have legitimate grievances and just labelling them "whackos" is never going to solve the actual problems. Hatred is taught in some mosques, as there is legitimate reason for many Muslims to really, really, really not appreciate all that the western world has done "for" them. Unfortunately for the US, the western world's doctrine of simply not owning up to selfish behaviour encourages dislike to turn to hatred as each generation passes.
There will be no peace until people are stopped being fucked with. It doesn't matter what religion said people hold (be it Islam in the middle east, or Catholicism in Northern Ireland), as long as they perceive themselves as being brutally fucked, they will act that way. Peace in Northern Ireland wasn't attained by wiping out Catholicism, but by simply talking to those with grievances, realising that everyone's shit stinks to various degrees, highlighting actual grievances, and also highlighting bullshit grievances that are simply not true. Refusing to even admit the possibility of being wrong is clearly not going to help that.
While I agree with you that western intervention in the domestic affairs of middle eastern nations is a factor in terrorism, your rant does not explain why people in many muslim countries behave in such an utterly appalling manner to one another.
Pray tell, how has western intervention led to:
- stonings
- honour killings and executions for 'adultery'
- canings for minor offences
- severe punishment for 'blasphemy'
- the widespread suppression of free speech on the basis of religious dogma
- most of what the Taliban did
- women being treated as second class citizens
- non-muslims being treated as second class citizens
You can draw a parallel with religion in the west - 1000 years ago. And if anyone was practising that type of stuff as a Christian they would deserve condemnation too.
Yay for lawyers
I assume you also blame General Motors or Ford when someone intentionally runs you down with their car?
Good to know the facebook+MS paid-for PR smear campaign against Google is working pretty well. The funny part? None of that bullshit you just said contains any evidence, you just call something "creepy" or an "out."
Good to know that expressing an opinion which differs from the ./ groupthink on this subject results in ridiculous allegations about astroturfing. In your eyes presumably the dichotomy is "Google is great" on the one hand and "Paid shill for Facebook and Microsoft" on the other. It must be nice to live in such a simple world.
In my view Google is an amazing company with some slightly concerning habits and a disturbing amount of power. Is that such a controversial opinion?
Several people have already pointed out https://www.google.com/dashboard/
So you're concerned about the data they collect from search and web browsing? Chrome and Android dont actually give them anything other than a few bits of browsing history (if you have search suggestions turned on) and location data (if you have that turned on).
Dashboard tells you nothing. Are you suggesting that Google does not have the ability to match IP addresses versus searches done? And then to link that to gmail account logins to match it to particular people?
In any case, all of this data is and has only ever been used to produce ads that they think you're likely to click on. oh, how sinister of them!!
1. Where is your evidence for this claim?
2. Even if that's right it still creates a convenient database for anyone else who might get at it, lawfully or otherwise.
3. The use to which private data is put is irrelevant.
Google also tell us that they cant identify an individual from this data because it has been anonymized. Whether that is true, we may never find out - but the fact is that until now there has been no reports of Google misusing that data. Not that I'm aware of anyway.
Glad to hear you like to live your life on the basis of blind trust. Many of us do not.
Of course, there are people who consider targetted advertising a misuse of their data...I'm not sure what they'd prefer...either they buy the products they like (because Google and others found out what they like and connected buyer with seller) OR the companies who produce products they like go out of business because they cant get enough sales. How else do companies get the word out?
So your argument is that looking at targeted advertising should be compulsory and is somehow the only logical way to live?
Where on that page does Google disclose what records it keeps of searches made versus IP address?
Where is the data used to target advertising via Gmail?
Where is the locational data collected about my use of mobile devices?
Do you assert that this information does not exist? Are you really so naive?
Google's transparency with privacy
In what possible universe is Google transparent about privacy?? Can you go somewhere to see what data they have collected about you? I think not.
You have literally no idea what data they have in the no doubt comprehensive profile they have built about you based on search and gmail. If you read their privacy terms there are an alarming number of "outs" for them to basically use that information however the hell they want. Add to that their creepy wifi data collection, creepy streetview cars, etc etc. Hell, a Google search is a pretty good record of your thoughts.
I consider Google one of the biggest threats to privacy going around. By comparison Facebook is child's play.
Exactly. Hence the term is qualified with "computer geek" when referring to such folk.
What people are nerd raging about here is actually the term "nerd". Nerds aren't cool, and have never been cool. "Nerd" is not synonymous with "geek".
Is the North Atlantic supposed to get half a whale before it gets a full one?
No, don't be ridiculous.
One whale is supposed to get right to the northern edge of the South Atlantic and verrrrrrrrrry slowly put first a fluke, then a bit of its tail, and eventually its whole body across the line, as though it's getting into a hot bath. Which, effectively, it is.
Al Gore predicted all of this in An Inconvenient Truth:
As the planet warms, the ancient machines of the gray whalean master race will begin to stir. Their instruments of death powered by minute rises in sea temperature, they will begin to send their agents of terror out on increasingly bold missions of destruction. At first the human population will be oblivious. The occasional ship sinking or swimmer mauled with characteristic baleen bite marks will be reported locally, but the dots of this sinister global movement will not be connected until it's far too late. Their algal slime will gradually colonise the land, allowing them to slither across huge distances by night. By the time the 2012 Republican presidential candidate is revealed to be a pygmy sperm whale wearing a top hat and monocle, the gray whales will have assumed total dominion over the affairs of humans, or "mega-plankton" as we are known to the grays.
In 1995 I proposed a bill to impose a 0.2% of surcharge on the use of high fructose corn syrup in candy. The money raised was to be appropriated to fund a crack team of scuba specialists to wage humanity's covert war against whalean infiltrators. The bill was defeated. Now, alas, it may be too late.
Why won't people listen to this guy? It's like everyone fell asleep or left after the first half of the movie or something.
Move out of the flood zones or buy flood insurance. Its no different than the people that blamed the Army Corps when New Orleans flooded. Wake up people, you're living below sea level (New Orleans) or living in the 100 year flood plain (Midwest). What did you really think was going to happen?
Actually the real problems in New Orleans were the clearing of a large area of natural vegetation which would once have absorbed much of the force of Katrina together with the construction Gulf River Outlet which formed a convenient channel for accelerating the storm surge and the generally poor design of the levy system, which failed despite not being exposed to conditions beyond its design parameters.
So all three factors were human errors, and were nothing to do with the people who chose to live below sea level, as they have for 300 years.
I'm Australian and I know this. Why don't you?
Go find a medical researcher who works with animals and ask him for his death threat collection....
And this is "Turnabout" how, exactly?
Well it's certainly implied. If citizen's vote on every single piece of legislation, then it's majority rules. Having lived in many places and now residing in California, where 'the people' are given a chance to vote directly for all kinds of weird legislative proposals, I can tell you that the majority here make plenty of bad decisions.
Yup, which is why a parliamentary democracy (which the US sort of has) is based around the idea that the people vote for a responsible government, who then governs as they think best. Accountability comes in the form of tossing out bad governments, not by the public having a right of veto over every piece of legislation. A central idea is that the government is able to make short term decisions which are unpopular but in the medium or long term best interests of the nation.
The type of "democracy" which would result from the masses voting on every piece of legislation would be horrendous. With non-compulsory voting you'd get enraged special interest groups making laws left right and centre to suit their agendas. No-one would pay taxes. Difficult problems would be ignored, and anything which could be subjected to FUD tactics would be defeated instantly. Most significantly, minorities and fringe groups would be brutally repressed.
As for the suggestion that China is democratically superior to the US, or any country outside of North Korea - don't make me laugh. Yes, 'the West' has problems. But China is about as close as we've got to Orwell's nightmare state in the modern world.
Exactly. On top of which, if there was even an 0.001% chance of a mobile phone causing a plane crash, do you think they'd be allowed to fly in the cabin of the plane at all? Of course not. They'd be on the list with fireworks, ammunition and so on.
Yeah. There's an emergency and a relative is dying. Those few minutes between the school getting the call and the kid actually being able to get to the phone to respond to the call could mean the difference between the relative seeing the kid before he/she dies.
Screw you, stop thinking of yourself and "the rules."
And of course, everyone before 1997 had their lives ruined by the absence of instant notification of every significant event in their lives... sigh.
I note that your school didn't include atheism (nor did mine).
Any serious study of "religion" must surely include the phenomenon of humans reasoning that there is no god. Again, this could be studied in a social and historical context, although one could argue that the questions of atheism and agnosticism are the ultimate study of religion.
How long have you been waiting for someone to say "6 digit Slashdot account" so you could make that post?
Buster: I wonder where he is.
Tony Wonder: Did somebody say “wonder”?
Buster: He just appeared out of nowhere! In front of that dumbwaiter.
Narrator: Actually, he’d been hiding inside the dumbwaiter for over 20 minutes, waiting for someone to use the word “wonder.”
Buster: You have a piece of lettuce on your shoulder.
Tony Wonder: Ta-da. Part of the trick.
So, in summary, your argument is that because some things which display altruistic behaviour are pre-programmed, ALL things which display altruistic behaviour are pre-programmed?
Please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
...which is that if you do actually take an interest and make enough noise, you CAN scare politicians enough to actually do their jobs, which is representing you rather than representing large corporations.
This information should galvanize further actions against DMCA style laws (and all bad laws, for that matter).
Anyone who thinks they need a firearm to "defend their home" living in a modern western country is a dangerous idiot.
Interesting perspective in the context of a story about a mob of armed government thugs breaking into an innocent persons house and assaulting him with guns.
A perfectly sane feature has now been curtailed effectively by public outcry against perceived violation of privacy. While I agree that it is a good thing the stuff now gets encrypted locally (yay, more encryption of sensitive information!) the grand result is nearly nothing. The way this thing worked was by having a cache of locations stored locally and for those who worry about invasion of privacy this turn of events doesn't change anything - if Big Brother wants to know where you are and where you've been, he need do nothing more than to store where you connect from on his side - something he has always been able to do.
Yes, but there is now less risk of Apple or app developers knowing where an iPhone user has been.
On the plus side, I can't see any reason why you couldn't write an app which records, say, your GPS location at all times and feeds that back to any mega corporation you want. So really, you've lost very little, and people who (sensibly IMHO) care about privacy have gained the ability to opt-out of Apple's dubious system.
If this was such a non-issue, Apple should have been up front about it and have always given users a way to opt-out. I'm sure the reason they did not do that is because they were well aware that many people don't like this kind of thing. Which just reinforces why it's a good thing that it's being changed now.