You mean, slashdot's mod system? It has no bias whatsoever. All users have the same power to post, and the same ability to earn the right to mod and meta-mod. That is a system of communication and moderation, not a system of censorship. Where is your central authority? Since you seem to like M-W, here is their complete (rather than your deliberate misrepresentation of the) description of a censor:
"A person who supervises conduct and morals: as a : an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter b : an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered sensitive or harmful"
In which supervisory or official capacity do you see your peer users exercising their power, exactly? How is your material being deleted? In what way is the same power (of peer moderation) not available to you? Are you saying that there are people with access to the slashdot system that you do not have, and they are acting in concert to silence you? Who has provided that special access? You'd think that any of a few tens of thousands of users of the system might have noticed something like that, and demonstrated it.
So, nice way to cite part of the definition that you're trotting out to support your contention. The entire definition, since it suits you to quote it, makes you exactly incorrect, and supports my point. You are not using that word correctly. You might as well scream "fascist" while you're at it, since that's just as poorly cited by people that can't believe they'd be disagreed with.
Paid posters negatively moderating content in order to reduce its visibility IS censorship.
Thank you, again, for demonstrating that you still don't actually know what that word means. Leaving aside for the moment your tin-foil-lined take on the mod system (it's a vast Microsoft conspiracy!), at least try to use the word correctly. Censorship involves a central authority with the ability to back up attempts to counter it with force. A censor is an agent of an authority, such as a government, or in the case of a private entity like Slashdot, an agent of the people running the system. If I mod you down because I think something you've said is a flame or a troll, that's not censorship. If I meta-mod an insightful mod as incorrect because I find that it is NOT in fact, appropriately rating a comment as insightful, that's not censorship. If you think it is, then we might as well also say that modding up a bunch of nonsense, to better obscure some other comment that doesn't appeal to you is also censorship. Which is utter crap.
Even in your dark fantasy land of paid surfers watching for discussions that trash their products, the actions you imagine them to be taking with their imaginary keyboards would NOT be censorship. If the operators of this web site were to slip in and mod down comments bitching about something they support - that would be at least a flavor of censorship because they control the system. Mods and meta-mods do NOT control the system, any more than people who hate Microsoft control ME when I happen to comment positively on, say, Excel or.Net as a tool, and they mod the comment down.
It doesn't matter how many times you try to reword it. There is nothing mature and economically aware about believing proprietary software has a place. In turn, there is nothing immature or ignorant about believing proprietary software does not have a valid place.
Which is STILL beside the point. We're talking about a change from reflexive, universal modding-up of any and all sentiments that mention - however constructively or kharma-whoring - over to an atmosphere where some F/OSS-pep-rally comments that are modded as insightful (for example) are modded back down or meta-modded down because, in fact, they aren't always insightful or interesting. I see that as a sign of a more sober perspective among the wider audience here, and a sign that F/OSS crowd is becoming correctly more thoughtful about how it talks about itself. Some of the people flaming me right now for saying so are demonstrating that it's still a work in progress.
That remark seems unnecessarily insulting to Open Source developers and advocates and appears to be an attempt to foster an untrue stereotype for people who do make their living from open source.
No, you'd have to manufacture that interpretation, given the context, out of sense of over-defensiveness. In keeping with the actual thread, here, my point is that now not EVERY post that however tangentally mentions F/OSS is reflexively modded up or supportively meta-modded. Some posts on that subject coming FROM the Linux or 'free' crowd ARE inane, mis-informed, or years out of date, conceptually. And when other people from that same community cease to blindly mod up every such most out of some distorted sense of team spirit, they're exhibiting a much more mature, and economically aware posture. It's not insulting to Open Source developers to point that out, it's insulting to them to pretend it's not true.
But that doesn't explain the blatant censorship of those who have not sold out.
I've pretty much decided to adopt a Godwin-like approach to anyone who uses the word "censorship" without actually knowing what it means, and especially to anyone who DOES know what it means, and is shrilly using it wildly out of context to score points with the rhetorically challenged, critical-thinking-impaired bots of the world. Responses to your post by other users are not censorship. But you know that, and you're pretty much just whining. Have a nice day!
Either a bunch of Microsoft and proprietary software fanboys have started to camp on Slashdot (an awefully strange place for an MS fanboy to hang out) or the industry has recognized that Slashdot is a critical front in the development of Tech trends and prevailing attitudes and there are now paid PR shills monitoring Slashdot.
Um... that, or a lot of Linux fanboys are growing up, and some of the more aggressive "information wants to be free" hippy-types are realizing that sometimes a viable business model and a paycheck is actually HELPFUL as you get older.
Well, if for no other reason, it's interesting because the ol' "Microsoft Tax" canard is one of those foundation building blocks of MS hatred. How many times have you read, right here, that even if a major direct-to-consumer dealer/manufacturer WERE to ship boxes with Linux onboard, that Teh Evil Micro$oft would still be making sure that machine sold for MORE than an OEM-Windows-equipped box would. This is interesting because it lets some of the hot air out of that particular troll.
I was a little doubtful about the people who released this information. I mean, what do THEY know? But, they used the phrase "tipping point," so I guess they know what they're talking about.
Bush still has a 25%+ approval rating which goes to show... 25% of the US is insane
Which bothers you more? The statistic you cite, or the fact that Congress, now being run by his opposition (and, from your tone, the group that you presumably prefer), only 30-some-percent of the US approves of their agenda and (in)actions? Polls, in the context that you're using them, are nonsense.
There is an enormous difference. Follow a few successful artists' business careers. They work (in starving artist mode), and some of them produce something with enough critical and commercial draw that they make some real money. MANY of them form their own production and publishing companies specifically so that they can help out or promote other "starving" artists with contracts that are favorable to the artists. And guess what: many of those company-forming artists immediately see the wisdom in joining a trade association. Just like plumbers do, auto mechanics do, authors do, and scientists do. Without the artists, there IS NO trade association. The artists, and the publishing companies they hire DECIDE TO JOIN or not. Many do not, many form their own coalitions, and many go with the bigger association because they can get more done in protecting their rights to their own work.
Thats irrelevant. The number of people who witness an offense does not change the severity of the offense.
If I decide to vandalize a school wall, the difference between one person happening by and ten people happening by to see me do it does not, indeed, make a bit of difference. On the other hand, if I seek to manufacture that much more of a spectacle by planning out how, using technology and a giant public venue, that I can maximize the reach and self-aggrandizement of my vandalizing - you ARE dealing with a difference in intent and very reasonable basis for a different set of consequences.
As for my point about the idiot being a "model" student: I'm guessing you were suspended during that week in English Lit when they covered sarcasm. Having his lawyers trot out the phrase "model student" in some lame effort to mitigate the fact that the student was being a total jackass with a plan to air his jackassery to millions is the height of slimy disengenuousness.
I was suspended for 1 week for sexual harassment of all things. 1 week. And 40 days for this?
But... did you plan, in advance, to make that slur on camera in the classroom, specifically so that you could put it up on video in front of millions of people? You got moderately smacked for being a spur-of-the-moment ass, while the kid in question here is getting MORE smacked for doing something far more premeditated, deliberate, and with a much larger scale in mind.
If he IS the "model student" that his lawyers say he is, just think how incredibly productive he'll be during those 40 days. He'll no doubt be WAY ahead of his fellow students (for which he obviously has considerable disdain), and can probably just test his way through graduation because he'll have - model that he is - focused so intensely on studying the curriculum from home. Right? Oh.
There are no restrictions on man on the street photos in the US.
But that's simply not true. If you can recognize someone, then the only way you can use the image is in an "editorial" capacity. If you're putting it up on your web site to promote your work, or using it in any commercial way, you DO have to have a release (which is, actually, a document signed by the subject that says they are waiving any claims against the photographer/videographer and his/her 'assigns' for the loss of privacy as the image/footage is used - in either a specific, or unlimited capacity, depending on how the release is worded).
Just because you don't have the expectation of privacy in public doesn't meant that someone else gets to profit from your likeness. Hence, editorial use only without a signed release by anyone recognizeable in the image.
To me, "The music industry" seems to have become the bane of civil and modern life.
Really? Musicians, and the people they pay/hire/work with to handle the business end of what they do (so they can concentrate on making music) are the 'bane of civil and modern life?' But some company that wants to rip those musicians off by not paying for their work, and then turn around and sell what they've ripped off... you consider that to be... what? a good example of civility? If civilization is marked by its ability to support people who specialize in things (like, making the music that untold millions of people seem to want, as opposed to having to go out every morning and tend to your crops before you come home at night exhausted and THEN see about making some music), then civilization is also marked by the ability for people to offer their work up for sale - and not be ripped off.
If you consider artists to be uncivil for deciding that being paid for their work, when someone wants to be entertained or informed by it, then you have SUCH a simple solution: don't pretend you like those artists. Walk away. Turn to people who ARE willing to let a Russian company sell their work without in turn getting paid for it be your source of entertainment. If you're right, that someone like Sting, or Amy Winehouse or the Dixie Chicks, or Elvis Costello, or Andrea Bocelli - whatever your tastes - or others that choose to charge for their work are the bane of civilization, then (if your point is valid, and you're at all persuasive) surely you've got a nice healthy list of complementary writers, performers, filmakers, and all of the other creative people who produce what you like without charging. And since you DO have such a list, why do you care about the artists who choose to work with traditional publishers? Just walk away, and into the loving embrace of artists who WANT a Russian dot-com to earn a living off of their unpaid work, and be happy, since you're saving (your) civilization.
The goals aren't the point. The fact that they feel comfortable even TALKING in those terms, because they will have that breadth and depth of data - that's the point. Whether those are real goals or just meant to illustrate a point doesn't matter - the point is that despite obviously knowing that many people will be creeped out, they are comfortable citing that much user tracking as a benefit, and as a key part of their business model. They're CROWING about it, about the very thing that's the creepiest about it - and of course, it's Microsoft that the local groupthink gets fired up about.
Well, if you want to know what Google's up to, just see what its two founders are currently talking about. They want to tell you the sort of job you'd be best suited to, and what they think you should do tomorrow. No sir, can't do THAT without Google. Point is, they're actually saying something far creepier than anything MS is saying, if you ask me.
I can read books in the library without ID. And depending on which library I visit, I can use the computer without displaying ID, too.
But reading books in the library doesn't really lend itself to launching DoD attacks, maintaining your Russianm kiddie pr0n site, following up on your phising project, etc. And most any library that allows anonymous computer use runs filters, proxies, and logs. Regardless of how appropriate the comparison is to other utilities, the GP's notion that municipal WiFi isn't taking off because The Man is teh Eeevil for wanting user accounts in place before you can use the network is: ridiculous.
...a private company who uses it as a tool to gather demographic information, annd is overly paranoid about the right kind of information... If somene crosses the line, deal with them.
Um... if you don't have accurate information about your users, how are you supposed to deal with them when they abuse the system? Fleets of roving, packet-sniffing vans with directional antennas trying to track down the mac address of the kiddie pr0n guy that keeps popping up all over town... or? Or, how about: if you want to spend all day using a facility that someone else is paying for, maybe it's not so bad to have to actually say who you are. You can't take books from the library without ID, can't hang out at the county gym or swimming pool without ID, can't use the dog park without proof of vaccinations, and so on. "Not coming over wires into your house" isn't the same as "guaranteed anonymity at someone else's expense."
And frankly, your comment about "snotty IT types" is just as condescending as TFA's comment about "short attention spans".
You're missing the point. There ARE snotty IT types out there, though not all IT people are of the snotty kind. I'm responding to the notion that ALL sales and management people are bereft of a useful attention span. They aren't. But you have to know, as I do, that when normal business people have run-ins with particularly toxic IT guys, that it can poison their notion of IT as a culture. Why? Because it happens WAY too often, and it's a small subset of the world in the first place. I'd guess that the percentage of socially crippled, business-issues-unaware IT people is MUCH higher than the percentage of cognitively non-functional sales people that need a video-game interface on their customer and inventory reports and forecasting tools in order to pay attention to it long enough to conduct the business and transactions that actually earn them a paycheck.
It isn't just that it's condescending to say that sales and management people have no attention span... it's rather disengenuous, actually. In fact, I've worked with plenty of IT people who can't keep their employer's business objectives (you know, the things that actually allow the paychecks to be cashed?) in mind for more than one minute after they leave a meeting or delete an e-mail. Sales people stay focused on what they need to stay focused on (usually, cultivating a relationship with the person who has money to spend). That can take YEARS to cement. And one IT guy who's more interested in finding a machine to burn down so he can install some new distro than he is in making sure that the sales guy's CRM database doesn't puke while he's on the road and needs it the most... that can kill the cash cow that allows IT to exist at all. Basically: snotty IT types that describe all sales/management people in such patronizing terms are just illustrating exactly why sales/management types so often roll their eyes whenever they have to deal with IT.
Maybe I'll live to see the day when people realize the difference and that the freedom of OSS doesn't necessarily have anything to do with beer... but I better not hold my breath.
He's probably referring to the seemingly large correlation (or, at least, noisy overlap) between the FOSS crowd and the information-(or, at least the music and movies I want)-wants-to-be-free crowd.
I'm so pleased about this advance warning, giving me a chance to cogitate on the early stages of beginning to anticipate the eventual opening moments of the new dawn of an opportunity to gear up for a period when, soon, there will be a new, imminent development foreshadowing the approaching onset of the start of my chance to, on a first-come, first-served basis, pre-order this thing.
I mean, the evidence seems to indicate that humans are only on the order of 2/3rds responsible
And that, right there, is EXACTLY what we're all talking about, here. There is NO good evidence that could possibly lead you to a meaningful, rational number like that which isn't just as easily pushed around back the other direction by other findings. The percentage is greater than zero, but language that's constantly used (by the UN, no less), saying that it's 100%, is not just wrong, it's propoganda-style wrong.
Hmmm. How about re-reading the summary from this very post?
"...Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences."
This is completely typical. Use of phrases like "due to human activity"... not "due in part to," or "exacerbated by," or "accelerated by..." And you know exactly what I mean, and that I'm right.
From the U.N.'s web site: "Changes in the atmosphere, the oceans and glaciers and ice caps now show unequivocally that the world is warming due to human activities, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in new report released today in Paris."
No mention of whether, or the degree to which, other factors play a role. Nope, the earth is "warming due to human activities." What else is one to take away from a that sentence, which introduces the UN's conclusions on the subject?
From a USA today interview: "The element of surprise here is that the picture is becoming so clear that (climate) changes are due to human activity," said Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences.
That's the president of the freakin' NAS. Maybe his middle name is "strawman," and that's what you're referring to?
No one is saying this. We're saying it wouldn't be changing in this way, or to this degree, without our influence
No! That's NOT what's being said. What's being said is that human activity is THE cause of climate change. THE cause. That absent human activity, there would be no change. This notion is conveyed all the time, but most recently in the summary of the very post we're talking about. How can you not notice that?
Slashdot Mirror
Not applicable.
system
You mean, slashdot's mod system? It has no bias whatsoever. All users have the same power to post, and the same ability to earn the right to mod and meta-mod. That is a system of communication and moderation, not a system of censorship. Where is your central authority? Since you seem to like M-W, here is their complete (rather than your deliberate misrepresentation of the) description of a censor:
In which supervisory or official capacity do you see your peer users exercising their power, exactly? How is your material being deleted? In what way is the same power (of peer moderation) not available to you? Are you saying that there are people with access to the slashdot system that you do not have, and they are acting in concert to silence you? Who has provided that special access? You'd think that any of a few tens of thousands of users of the system might have noticed something like that, and demonstrated it.
So, nice way to cite part of the definition that you're trotting out to support your contention. The entire definition, since it suits you to quote it, makes you exactly incorrect, and supports my point. You are not using that word correctly. You might as well scream "fascist" while you're at it, since that's just as poorly cited by people that can't believe they'd be disagreed with.
Paid posters negatively moderating content in order to reduce its visibility IS censorship.
.Net as a tool, and they mod the comment down.
Thank you, again, for demonstrating that you still don't actually know what that word means. Leaving aside for the moment your tin-foil-lined take on the mod system (it's a vast Microsoft conspiracy!), at least try to use the word correctly. Censorship involves a central authority with the ability to back up attempts to counter it with force. A censor is an agent of an authority, such as a government, or in the case of a private entity like Slashdot, an agent of the people running the system. If I mod you down because I think something you've said is a flame or a troll, that's not censorship. If I meta-mod an insightful mod as incorrect because I find that it is NOT in fact, appropriately rating a comment as insightful, that's not censorship. If you think it is, then we might as well also say that modding up a bunch of nonsense, to better obscure some other comment that doesn't appeal to you is also censorship. Which is utter crap.
Even in your dark fantasy land of paid surfers watching for discussions that trash their products, the actions you imagine them to be taking with their imaginary keyboards would NOT be censorship. If the operators of this web site were to slip in and mod down comments bitching about something they support - that would be at least a flavor of censorship because they control the system. Mods and meta-mods do NOT control the system, any more than people who hate Microsoft control ME when I happen to comment positively on, say, Excel or
It doesn't matter how many times you try to reword it. There is nothing mature and economically aware about believing proprietary software has a place. In turn, there is nothing immature or ignorant about believing proprietary software does not have a valid place.
Which is STILL beside the point. We're talking about a change from reflexive, universal modding-up of any and all sentiments that mention - however constructively or kharma-whoring - over to an atmosphere where some F/OSS-pep-rally comments that are modded as insightful (for example) are modded back down or meta-modded down because, in fact, they aren't always insightful or interesting. I see that as a sign of a more sober perspective among the wider audience here, and a sign that F/OSS crowd is becoming correctly more thoughtful about how it talks about itself. Some of the people flaming me right now for saying so are demonstrating that it's still a work in progress.
That remark seems unnecessarily insulting to Open Source developers and advocates and appears to be an attempt to foster an untrue stereotype for people who do make their living from open source.
No, you'd have to manufacture that interpretation, given the context, out of sense of over-defensiveness. In keeping with the actual thread, here, my point is that now not EVERY post that however tangentally mentions F/OSS is reflexively modded up or supportively meta-modded. Some posts on that subject coming FROM the Linux or 'free' crowd ARE inane, mis-informed, or years out of date, conceptually. And when other people from that same community cease to blindly mod up every such most out of some distorted sense of team spirit, they're exhibiting a much more mature, and economically aware posture. It's not insulting to Open Source developers to point that out, it's insulting to them to pretend it's not true.
But that doesn't explain the blatant censorship of those who have not sold out.
I've pretty much decided to adopt a Godwin-like approach to anyone who uses the word "censorship" without actually knowing what it means, and especially to anyone who DOES know what it means, and is shrilly using it wildly out of context to score points with the rhetorically challenged, critical-thinking-impaired bots of the world. Responses to your post by other users are not censorship. But you know that, and you're pretty much just whining. Have a nice day!
Either a bunch of Microsoft and proprietary software fanboys have started to camp on Slashdot (an awefully strange place for an MS fanboy to hang out) or the industry has recognized that Slashdot is a critical front in the development of Tech trends and prevailing attitudes and there are now paid PR shills monitoring Slashdot.
Um... that, or a lot of Linux fanboys are growing up, and some of the more aggressive "information wants to be free" hippy-types are realizing that sometimes a viable business model and a paycheck is actually HELPFUL as you get older.
Why is 50 bucks such a big deal?
Well, if for no other reason, it's interesting because the ol' "Microsoft Tax" canard is one of those foundation building blocks of MS hatred. How many times have you read, right here, that even if a major direct-to-consumer dealer/manufacturer WERE to ship boxes with Linux onboard, that Teh Evil Micro$oft would still be making sure that machine sold for MORE than an OEM-Windows-equipped box would. This is interesting because it lets some of the hot air out of that particular troll.
I was a little doubtful about the people who released this information. I mean, what do THEY know? But, they used the phrase "tipping point," so I guess they know what they're talking about.
Bush still has a 25%+ approval rating which goes to show... 25% of the US is insane
Which bothers you more? The statistic you cite, or the fact that Congress, now being run by his opposition (and, from your tone, the group that you presumably prefer), only 30-some-percent of the US approves of their agenda and (in)actions? Polls, in the context that you're using them, are nonsense.
There is no difference.
There is an enormous difference. Follow a few successful artists' business careers. They work (in starving artist mode), and some of them produce something with enough critical and commercial draw that they make some real money. MANY of them form their own production and publishing companies specifically so that they can help out or promote other "starving" artists with contracts that are favorable to the artists. And guess what: many of those company-forming artists immediately see the wisdom in joining a trade association. Just like plumbers do, auto mechanics do, authors do, and scientists do. Without the artists, there IS NO trade association. The artists, and the publishing companies they hire DECIDE TO JOIN or not. Many do not, many form their own coalitions, and many go with the bigger association because they can get more done in protecting their rights to their own work.
Thats irrelevant. The number of people who witness an offense does not change the severity of the offense.
If I decide to vandalize a school wall, the difference between one person happening by and ten people happening by to see me do it does not, indeed, make a bit of difference. On the other hand, if I seek to manufacture that much more of a spectacle by planning out how, using technology and a giant public venue, that I can maximize the reach and self-aggrandizement of my vandalizing - you ARE dealing with a difference in intent and very reasonable basis for a different set of consequences.
As for my point about the idiot being a "model" student: I'm guessing you were suspended during that week in English Lit when they covered sarcasm. Having his lawyers trot out the phrase "model student" in some lame effort to mitigate the fact that the student was being a total jackass with a plan to air his jackassery to millions is the height of slimy disengenuousness.
I was suspended for 1 week for sexual harassment of all things. 1 week. And 40 days for this?
But... did you plan, in advance, to make that slur on camera in the classroom, specifically so that you could put it up on video in front of millions of people? You got moderately smacked for being a spur-of-the-moment ass, while the kid in question here is getting MORE smacked for doing something far more premeditated, deliberate, and with a much larger scale in mind.
If he IS the "model student" that his lawyers say he is, just think how incredibly productive he'll be during those 40 days. He'll no doubt be WAY ahead of his fellow students (for which he obviously has considerable disdain), and can probably just test his way through graduation because he'll have - model that he is - focused so intensely on studying the curriculum from home. Right? Oh.
There are no restrictions on man on the street photos in the US.
But that's simply not true. If you can recognize someone, then the only way you can use the image is in an "editorial" capacity. If you're putting it up on your web site to promote your work, or using it in any commercial way, you DO have to have a release (which is, actually, a document signed by the subject that says they are waiving any claims against the photographer/videographer and his/her 'assigns' for the loss of privacy as the image/footage is used - in either a specific, or unlimited capacity, depending on how the release is worded).
Just because you don't have the expectation of privacy in public doesn't meant that someone else gets to profit from your likeness. Hence, editorial use only without a signed release by anyone recognizeable in the image.
To me, "The music industry" seems to have become the bane of civil and modern life.
Really? Musicians, and the people they pay/hire/work with to handle the business end of what they do (so they can concentrate on making music) are the 'bane of civil and modern life?' But some company that wants to rip those musicians off by not paying for their work, and then turn around and sell what they've ripped off... you consider that to be... what? a good example of civility? If civilization is marked by its ability to support people who specialize in things (like, making the music that untold millions of people seem to want, as opposed to having to go out every morning and tend to your crops before you come home at night exhausted and THEN see about making some music), then civilization is also marked by the ability for people to offer their work up for sale - and not be ripped off.
If you consider artists to be uncivil for deciding that being paid for their work, when someone wants to be entertained or informed by it, then you have SUCH a simple solution: don't pretend you like those artists. Walk away. Turn to people who ARE willing to let a Russian company sell their work without in turn getting paid for it be your source of entertainment. If you're right, that someone like Sting, or Amy Winehouse or the Dixie Chicks, or Elvis Costello, or Andrea Bocelli - whatever your tastes - or others that choose to charge for their work are the bane of civilization, then (if your point is valid, and you're at all persuasive) surely you've got a nice healthy list of complementary writers, performers, filmakers, and all of the other creative people who produce what you like without charging. And since you DO have such a list, why do you care about the artists who choose to work with traditional publishers? Just walk away, and into the loving embrace of artists who WANT a Russian dot-com to earn a living off of their unpaid work, and be happy, since you're saving (your) civilization.
I think you took hypothetical goals as real ones.
The goals aren't the point. The fact that they feel comfortable even TALKING in those terms, because they will have that breadth and depth of data - that's the point. Whether those are real goals or just meant to illustrate a point doesn't matter - the point is that despite obviously knowing that many people will be creeped out, they are comfortable citing that much user tracking as a benefit, and as a key part of their business model. They're CROWING about it, about the very thing that's the creepiest about it - and of course, it's Microsoft that the local groupthink gets fired up about.
Well, if you want to know what Google's up to, just see what its two founders are currently talking about . They want to tell you the sort of job you'd be best suited to, and what they think you should do tomorrow. No sir, can't do THAT without Google. Point is, they're actually saying something far creepier than anything MS is saying, if you ask me.
I can read books in the library without ID. And depending on which library I visit, I can use the computer without displaying ID, too.
But reading books in the library doesn't really lend itself to launching DoD attacks, maintaining your Russianm kiddie pr0n site, following up on your phising project, etc. And most any library that allows anonymous computer use runs filters, proxies, and logs. Regardless of how appropriate the comparison is to other utilities, the GP's notion that municipal WiFi isn't taking off because The Man is teh Eeevil for wanting user accounts in place before you can use the network is: ridiculous.
...a private company who uses it as a tool to gather demographic information, annd is overly paranoid about the right kind of information ... If somene crosses the line, deal with them.
Um... if you don't have accurate information about your users, how are you supposed to deal with them when they abuse the system? Fleets of roving, packet-sniffing vans with directional antennas trying to track down the mac address of the kiddie pr0n guy that keeps popping up all over town... or? Or, how about: if you want to spend all day using a facility that someone else is paying for, maybe it's not so bad to have to actually say who you are. You can't take books from the library without ID, can't hang out at the county gym or swimming pool without ID, can't use the dog park without proof of vaccinations, and so on. "Not coming over wires into your house" isn't the same as "guaranteed anonymity at someone else's expense."
And frankly, your comment about "snotty IT types" is just as condescending as TFA's comment about "short attention spans".
You're missing the point. There ARE snotty IT types out there, though not all IT people are of the snotty kind. I'm responding to the notion that ALL sales and management people are bereft of a useful attention span. They aren't. But you have to know, as I do, that when normal business people have run-ins with particularly toxic IT guys, that it can poison their notion of IT as a culture. Why? Because it happens WAY too often, and it's a small subset of the world in the first place. I'd guess that the percentage of socially crippled, business-issues-unaware IT people is MUCH higher than the percentage of cognitively non-functional sales people that need a video-game interface on their customer and inventory reports and forecasting tools in order to pay attention to it long enough to conduct the business and transactions that actually earn them a paycheck.
It isn't just that it's condescending to say that sales and management people have no attention span... it's rather disengenuous, actually. In fact, I've worked with plenty of IT people who can't keep their employer's business objectives (you know, the things that actually allow the paychecks to be cashed?) in mind for more than one minute after they leave a meeting or delete an e-mail. Sales people stay focused on what they need to stay focused on (usually, cultivating a relationship with the person who has money to spend). That can take YEARS to cement. And one IT guy who's more interested in finding a machine to burn down so he can install some new distro than he is in making sure that the sales guy's CRM database doesn't puke while he's on the road and needs it the most... that can kill the cash cow that allows IT to exist at all. Basically: snotty IT types that describe all sales/management people in such patronizing terms are just illustrating exactly why sales/management types so often roll their eyes whenever they have to deal with IT.
Maybe I'll live to see the day when people realize the difference and that the freedom of OSS doesn't necessarily have anything to do with beer... but I better not hold my breath.
He's probably referring to the seemingly large correlation (or, at least, noisy overlap) between the FOSS crowd and the information-(or, at least the music and movies I want)-wants-to-be-free crowd.
I'm so pleased about this advance warning, giving me a chance to cogitate on the early stages of beginning to anticipate the eventual opening moments of the new dawn of an opportunity to gear up for a period when, soon, there will be a new, imminent development foreshadowing the approaching onset of the start of my chance to, on a first-come, first-served basis, pre-order this thing.
I mean, the evidence seems to indicate that humans are only on the order of 2/3rds responsible
And that, right there, is EXACTLY what we're all talking about, here. There is NO good evidence that could possibly lead you to a meaningful, rational number like that which isn't just as easily pushed around back the other direction by other findings. The percentage is greater than zero, but language that's constantly used (by the UN, no less), saying that it's 100%, is not just wrong, it's propoganda-style wrong.
Bullshit.
... not "due in part to," or "exacerbated by," or "accelerated by..." And you know exactly what I mean, and that I'm right.
Hmmm. How about re-reading the summary from this very post?
"...Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences."
This is completely typical. Use of phrases like "due to human activity"
From the U.N.'s web site: "Changes in the atmosphere, the oceans and glaciers and ice caps now show unequivocally that the world is warming due to human activities, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in new report released today in Paris."
No mention of whether, or the degree to which, other factors play a role. Nope, the earth is "warming due to human activities." What else is one to take away from a that sentence, which introduces the UN's conclusions on the subject?
From a USA today interview: "The element of surprise here is that the picture is becoming so clear that (climate) changes are due to human activity," said Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences.
That's the president of the freakin' NAS. Maybe his middle name is "strawman," and that's what you're referring to?
No one is saying this. We're saying it wouldn't be changing in this way, or to this degree, without our influence
No! That's NOT what's being said. What's being said is that human activity is THE cause of climate change. THE cause. That absent human activity, there would be no change. This notion is conveyed all the time, but most recently in the summary of the very post we're talking about. How can you not notice that?