Because it's their damn store, and they don't want to. They don't like it, they don't want to see it, and they don't want to deal with the people who supply it.
And what happens when they're the only store in town, or when all the stores adopt the same policy?
Freedom includes the freedom to sell what you want, not just buy what you want.
In that case, the only thing standing between freedom and tyranny is a handful of managers personal opinions. And that is exactly what has happened here. These "cougars" have offended the sensibilities of one or more people in powerful positions at Google and guess what; 65% of searchers will not be exposed to the concept of "cougars" anymore, exactly what minority intended. "Cougars" are being ostracised and pushed underground because they offend the one of the great "powers that be" of today; Google.
"Cougars" are not the start of this either. Google recently forced dozens of manga sites to remove their adult content or else Google would stop supplying them with AdSense revenue. Google were not advertising these sites--the sites were financing themselves using Google AdSense and were forced to purge their "adult" content in order to retain it. In short, this "cougar" purge is part of a wider change in attitude at Google, which is finally beginning to use its muscle to mould the web in its preferred image. That preferred image is probably something more akin to 1950s America. Google's next target after "Cougars" will probably be something like "interracial" dating sites, or whatever else the current AdSense execs disapprove of.
Power corrupts. Google is run by human beings and they will attempt to use their power to force their opinions on others. Expect this corruption to spread across the entire company, if it hasn't already.
This wasn't some secret plot by the United States government... "OK, you guys go live in the Texas territories for 20 years, then rebel, then form your own republic for 10 years, then join the Union. Our plan is foolproof!".
Actually, if you examine history closely, you'll find that most settlements and colonisations(by Anglo-Saxons at least) follow this exact model. Settlement is ostensibly a completely private enterprise, but usually has the tacit approval of government and the explicit backing of powerful elements within or around government. The settlement of Texas was always supported and sold as part of the American manifest destiny franchise, and everyone knew it--especially the Texan settlers.
Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like saying "But mom! All the cool kids ARE jumping off the bridge!"
This is going to come off as a troll, and I don't mean to say that European societies are perfect in any way; but frankly on the whole, Europeans run their countries, societies and economies a lot better than Americans do. I realise patriotism, Ryandianism and past performance may lead many Americans to believe otherwise, but you need only look at objective metrics in any of a number of fields to see just how far modern America has fallen behind its contemporaries. All these newspapers columns about "a crumbling superpower" didn't just spring out of thin air you know.
Now, so intertwined have western societies become, it's hard to cleanly separate the problems and declines of America from those same contemporary effects in Europe. But one thing is certain; as a self governing society America is more dysfunctional than any of its peers. This didn't happen overnight, but is rather the result of decades of mismanagement, short-sighted policies and misguided ideologies which by and large (UK accepted) did not take hold in Europe.
Again, this post is going to come off as a troll, but really its a response to what is effectively a troll. Yes there are many problems across the European continent, but the notion that American society and government is superior to European version is incredibly outdated. America is a country in need of deep and comprehensive reform of almost all of its institutions, and the first step in that reform will be to realise just how badly it is needed.
College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.
But most people expect to get a job out of their degree. What has gone wrong here is that the traditional purpose of university was to provide higher education to those who either a) did not need to get jobs (e.g. aristocrats/family businessmen) or b) who would get jobs in the civil service(about the only place where humanities degrees are useful). In both instances, you could say that a "well rounded education" was better than the alternative for these people.
However the modern world has different requirements. Young people who finish their high school degrees are all but useless to most (non manufacturing) industries nowadays. Something needs to be done to at least allow them to attempt to seek employment. Unfortunately somewhere along the line, someone decided that the old civil servant/aristocrat "well rounded education" would provide this(it never has nor will), and so universities were expected to provide something--technical training--that they never historically provided. Unfortunately, rather than pass the job down to appropriate technical and trade institutions universities actually took on this bogus task.
That depends. The existence of the transporter in Star Trek shows that the platonic ideal, the very concept of a transporter, is not original. However, many patents are so absurdly vague that they indeed give the holder rights over such abstract platonic concepts. A good example of this is the Amazon shopping basket--the one-click patent. It doesn't matter what programming language or technology you use to make your one-click shopping possible. Amazon own the very idea of one-click.
The patent system is not about encouraging innovation. It's about obtaining a wide and far reaching a monopoly as possible, with actually inventing or discovering something being totally beside the point. I wouldn't be surprised if someone already has a patent on the concept of transportation from the USPTO, waiting patiently for someone to actually develop such a device so they can strike and reap in unearned rewards. Because that's what patents are all about.
We're talking about an encyclopaedia that has an entry for Autofellatio (NSFW). I think that's all that really needs to be said about the custodians of quality on the site.
Left to its own devices, Wikipedia would degenerate under the rule of deletionists until finally only one page--Wikipedia--remained on the site. This would then be nominated for deletion.
Actually, that sounds like a rather good outcome. Perhaps you're on to something.
Unfortunately, I only realised this mistake after I posted the submission. This particular story has in fact been copied around an endless list of such spam sites, but I was totally unable to find the original source, so I couldn't make a proper submission update in time. It'd probably be best if the link was taken out of the story altogether as the site linked to is essentially plagarising whoever initially wrote it.
They also need to code audio. Audio on Linux nowadays means audio on Ubuntu. Ausio on Ubuntu means having to use Pulseaudio. Valve are not releasing anything on Linux.
That's already far, far too much. Beyond the beyonds in fact. However I'm sure it seems utterly innocuous to the kind of people already engaged in wholesale data collection. If ever there was an example of entry level drugs leading on to harder and harder types, data is it. They started with name and address, moved on to purchase history, then browsing history, and now they're on what parts of the book you highlight. Pretty soon they'll want to know the times you read(If they don't already) and where you're reading things. Corporations are serious data junkies and they are jonseing bad.
Finally, the service is optional, with the ability to opt-in and opt-out on device. I'm pretty sure this has been stated in the kindle users guide, the legal menu item in settings, and on the website.
Optional, but on by default. Why am I not surprised? This is the same logic used by spammers, telemarketing scammers, credit card fraudsters, and (waxing rhetorical) rapists. "They didn't say 'No', so what I'm doing is OK." People don't want this data shared; doing it under their noses and giving them a hidden switch does not make it OK.
As a (recently) former employee (new gig) of Lab126, the people who make the Kindle,
As far as I'm concerned, if you people aren't already involved in a criminal enterprise, you soon will be. Even if these practices don't become illegal, you'll eventually trespass to the point where they become so.
And this is not only difficult, but also expensive and an entry barrier for new technology movers and inventors.
Anything that makes it more difficult to get a patent has my unequivocal support. Patents are not worth the trouble they cause in any field. Encouraging innovation is not worth the price paid in the form of the litigation and legal costs which are seising up not only our economies, but also out societies and culture.
First of all, am I the only one who hates Chrome's interface?
No. Most people hate it. However most graphics and UI designers, tech reporters and iThing owners love it because it is the latest and most shiniest flashing glitter ball that they must play with. These are the people who make and demand interface changes. These are the people who actually think that menu bars are a "waste of screen space". These are the people who think that putting tabs outside of the program window frame is either a useful or desired change. These are the people think that "minimalism"--giving the user less and less controls or options--constitutes a step forward at all costs.
Firefox's UI is fine. But because of these people, resources at Mozilla are being wasted on needless keeping up with the Jones at Google. Meanwhile actually needed features like speed, process separation and support for self signed certs are being sidelined while the team focuses on making the browser shiny.
Google is a steamroller, and is aiming to squash the other browsers flat. Firefox included. Lack of realistic leadership, as manifested in these proposals, will only ensure that Google succeeds where Microsoft has failed.
They aren't suing someone who makes them lose money or even a use that does nothing for the bottom line, they are suing people that are helping them make money by giving out free positive promotion and rallying their customer base.
Modern copyright and trademark laws are not designed or capable of dealing with fansites or any other such internet based phenomena. If you asked an IP lawyer about fansites, he probably wouldn't even know what they were. People, publishing things, but they're not companies, and they're not making a profit out of it? Does not compute. If his vapid brain did somehow manage to wrap its head around the concept, he'd probably give a spiel about the need to protect and recognise copyrights and IP rights andvigilance and respect mah awthouritae!! That's how backward the legal industry is when it comes to the net.
The more these cases come up, the more it becomes obvious that the real problem with the net, in fact virtually the only problems, come from the legal industry. There is nothing wrong with the internet. It's out laws which are at fault.
Slashdot Mirror
And what happens when they're the only store in town, or when all the stores adopt the same policy?
In that case, the only thing standing between freedom and tyranny is a handful of managers personal opinions. And that is exactly what has happened here. These "cougars" have offended the sensibilities of one or more people in powerful positions at Google and guess what; 65% of searchers will not be exposed to the concept of "cougars" anymore, exactly what minority intended. "Cougars" are being ostracised and pushed underground because they offend the one of the great "powers that be" of today; Google.
"Cougars" are not the start of this either. Google recently forced dozens of manga sites to remove their adult content or else Google would stop supplying them with AdSense revenue. Google were not advertising these sites--the sites were financing themselves using Google AdSense and were forced to purge their "adult" content in order to retain it. In short, this "cougar" purge is part of a wider change in attitude at Google, which is finally beginning to use its muscle to mould the web in its preferred image. That preferred image is probably something more akin to 1950s America. Google's next target after "Cougars" will probably be something like "interracial" dating sites, or whatever else the current AdSense execs disapprove of.
Power corrupts. Google is run by human beings and they will attempt to use their power to force their opinions on others. Expect this corruption to spread across the entire company, if it hasn't already.
Well, its ad network at least. For now, that is.
Actually, if you examine history closely, you'll find that most settlements and colonisations(by Anglo-Saxons at least) follow this exact model. Settlement is ostensibly a completely private enterprise, but usually has the tacit approval of government and the explicit backing of powerful elements within or around government. The settlement of Texas was always supported and sold as part of the American manifest destiny franchise, and everyone knew it--especially the Texan settlers.
I guess it really is time to switch to Gentoo then.
It's patented. Our generation will never see it in action.
This is going to come off as a troll, and I don't mean to say that European societies are perfect in any way; but frankly on the whole, Europeans run their countries, societies and economies a lot better than Americans do. I realise patriotism, Ryandianism and past performance may lead many Americans to believe otherwise, but you need only look at objective metrics in any of a number of fields to see just how far modern America has fallen behind its contemporaries. All these newspapers columns about "a crumbling superpower" didn't just spring out of thin air you know.
Now, so intertwined have western societies become, it's hard to cleanly separate the problems and declines of America from those same contemporary effects in Europe. But one thing is certain; as a self governing society America is more dysfunctional than any of its peers. This didn't happen overnight, but is rather the result of decades of mismanagement, short-sighted policies and misguided ideologies which by and large (UK accepted) did not take hold in Europe.
Again, this post is going to come off as a troll, but really its a response to what is effectively a troll. Yes there are many problems across the European continent, but the notion that American society and government is superior to European version is incredibly outdated. America is a country in need of deep and comprehensive reform of almost all of its institutions, and the first step in that reform will be to realise just how badly it is needed.
But most people expect to get a job out of their degree. What has gone wrong here is that the traditional purpose of university was to provide higher education to those who either a) did not need to get jobs (e.g. aristocrats/family businessmen) or b) who would get jobs in the civil service(about the only place where humanities degrees are useful). In both instances, you could say that a "well rounded education" was better than the alternative for these people.
However the modern world has different requirements. Young people who finish their high school degrees are all but useless to most (non manufacturing) industries nowadays. Something needs to be done to at least allow them to attempt to seek employment. Unfortunately somewhere along the line, someone decided that the old civil servant/aristocrat "well rounded education" would provide this(it never has nor will), and so universities were expected to provide something--technical training--that they never historically provided. Unfortunately, rather than pass the job down to appropriate technical and trade institutions universities actually took on this bogus task.
That depends. The existence of the transporter in Star Trek shows that the platonic ideal, the very concept of a transporter, is not original. However, many patents are so absurdly vague that they indeed give the holder rights over such abstract platonic concepts. A good example of this is the Amazon shopping basket--the one-click patent. It doesn't matter what programming language or technology you use to make your one-click shopping possible. Amazon own the very idea of one-click.
The patent system is not about encouraging innovation. It's about obtaining a wide and far reaching a monopoly as possible, with actually inventing or discovering something being totally beside the point. I wouldn't be surprised if someone already has a patent on the concept of transportation from the USPTO, waiting patiently for someone to actually develop such a device so they can strike and reap in unearned rewards. Because that's what patents are all about.
We're talking about an encyclopaedia that has an entry for Autofellatio (NSFW). I think that's all that really needs to be said about the custodians of quality on the site.
At least 4chan knows that the sum of the worlds knowledge is more than can be described in 3 million articles.
http://xkcd.com/195/
http://xkcd.com/249/
http://xkcd.com/426/
http://xkcd.com/681/
These seem reasonably original.
Left to its own devices, Wikipedia would degenerate under the rule of deletionists until finally only one page--Wikipedia--remained on the site. This would then be nominated for deletion.
Actually, that sounds like a rather good outcome. Perhaps you're on to something.
Unfortunately, I only realised this mistake after I posted the submission. This particular story has in fact been copied around an endless list of such spam sites, but I was totally unable to find the original source, so I couldn't make a proper submission update in time. It'd probably be best if the link was taken out of the story altogether as the site linked to is essentially plagarising whoever initially wrote it.
They also need to code audio. Audio on Linux nowadays means audio on Ubuntu. Ausio on Ubuntu means having to use Pulseaudio. Valve are not releasing anything on Linux.
That's already far, far too much. Beyond the beyonds in fact. However I'm sure it seems utterly innocuous to the kind of people already engaged in wholesale data collection. If ever there was an example of entry level drugs leading on to harder and harder types, data is it. They started with name and address, moved on to purchase history, then browsing history, and now they're on what parts of the book you highlight. Pretty soon they'll want to know the times you read(If they don't already) and where you're reading things. Corporations are serious data junkies and they are jonseing bad.
Optional, but on by default. Why am I not surprised? This is the same logic used by spammers, telemarketing scammers, credit card fraudsters, and (waxing rhetorical) rapists. "They didn't say 'No', so what I'm doing is OK." People don't want this data shared; doing it under their noses and giving them a hidden switch does not make it OK.
As far as I'm concerned, if you people aren't already involved in a criminal enterprise, you soon will be. Even if these practices don't become illegal, you'll eventually trespass to the point where they become so.
Anything that makes it more difficult to get a patent has my unequivocal support. Patents are not worth the trouble they cause in any field. Encouraging innovation is not worth the price paid in the form of the litigation and legal costs which are seising up not only our economies, but also out societies and culture.
Patents need to die.
People who have been trained and have practised for years in the field of sophisticated propaganda.
What are you talking about? The Russians won at Stalingrad.
No. Most people hate it. However most graphics and UI designers, tech reporters and iThing owners love it because it is the latest and most shiniest flashing glitter ball that they must play with. These are the people who make and demand interface changes. These are the people who actually think that menu bars are a "waste of screen space". These are the people who think that putting tabs outside of the program window frame is either a useful or desired change. These are the people think that "minimalism"--giving the user less and less controls or options--constitutes a step forward at all costs.
Firefox's UI is fine. But because of these people, resources at Mozilla are being wasted on needless keeping up with the Jones at Google. Meanwhile actually needed features like speed, process separation and support for self signed certs are being sidelined while the team focuses on making the browser shiny.
Google is a steamroller, and is aiming to squash the other browsers flat. Firefox included. Lack of realistic leadership, as manifested in these proposals, will only ensure that Google succeeds where Microsoft has failed.
Not when a judge in East Texas starts blocking sites in other countries because he feels like it.
Modern copyright and trademark laws are not designed or capable of dealing with fansites or any other such internet based phenomena. If you asked an IP lawyer about fansites, he probably wouldn't even know what they were. People, publishing things, but they're not companies, and they're not making a profit out of it? Does not compute. If his vapid brain did somehow manage to wrap its head around the concept, he'd probably give a spiel about the need to protect and recognise copyrights and IP rights andvigilance and respect mah awthouritae!! That's how backward the legal industry is when it comes to the net.
The more these cases come up, the more it becomes obvious that the real problem with the net, in fact virtually the only problems, come from the legal industry. There is nothing wrong with the internet. It's out laws which are at fault.
It'll take a serious investigation to discover the people who are really behind this orchestrated crash.
The whole purpose of the scanners to emasculate and demean the people who pass through them. This should be clear to everyone.
They've already purged Pokemon from Wikipedia, so why not porn?
Unless you're due to retired today and your pension just got blown out of the water.
Put it all under the mattress. Seriously.