... [President Xi Jinping] recently visited the three main newsrooms in the country to convey in unmistakable terms that journalists are expected to behave like apparatchiks. That message, which predictably received fawning coverage, came a few days after the government announced it would further restrict foreign media, too.
Under rules Beijing says it will start enforcing next month, foreign companies will be barred from publishing online content — including text, videos, maps and games — in China without prior approval from the government. The regulations, which could affect major American companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, are intended to “promote core socialist values.”...
While I fully realize that some speech can be hateful and/or offensive, too much of the speech I see being called "offensive" on college campuses nowadays is little more than a different opinion.
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Perhaps this is just an extension of the filter bubble that everyone creates for themselves in their view of the internet, i.e., tending to visit sites or "friend" people with opinions similar to yours. Then when these people get to college, they are offended that there are others with differing viewpoints.
College, as a home for new and fresh ideas, is dying.
... It may be true that Microsoft can not survive financially without serving up ads,...
I'd be more than happy to pay Microsoft for an upgrade for my copies of Windows 7, providing the upgrade is really an upgrade and not just a means for Microsoft to begin data harvesting of my family..
...Our belief is that if someone doesn't like them, and they won't click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won't click on them harms campaign performance.... Publishers can't win by forcing ads — especially low-quality ads — in people's faces....
...What sense is there in sending someone to jail for an infringement that causes no harm to the copyright holder, whether they complain about it or not? And why should it matter that the copyright holder complains about something that didn't affect them anyway?...
There is no sense to it.
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But that doesn't matter because the TPP was written by industry interests and rubber-stamped by the governments involved.
... and facebook doesn't do it well. I constantly have to view my friends' pages directly to see what's going on because facebook's algorithm prioritizes the wrong posts onto my page.
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Maybe twitter will be able to do better at reading my mind to determine what I want to read, maybe not.
So long as I can disable it, I'm fine with it for now.
I've had to block the IP addresses used by both yandex's search bot and mail.ru because they seem to completely ignore the robots.txt that I have on the server. The only other search engine bot that I've had to block for that same reason was bing's search bot.
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Other search bots do not seem to have any problems following the instructions I placed in the robots.txt. For some reason, yandex, mail.ru and bing think they're entitled to special treatment.
...Our belief is that if someone doesn't like them, and they won't click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won't click on them harms campaign performance.... Publishers can't win by forcing ads — especially low-quality ads — in people's faces....
...I see this type of comment fairly frequently, and I understand the sentiment, but what exactly do you propose that they do instead? Just go bankrupt?...
According to Wired, only 20% of the visitors to the site block ads. Hardly a reason for a site to go bankrupt.
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But I would suggest that one of the first things that is done is get rid of the ad networks that track people around the Internet and also serve up malware. I see absolutely no reason for Wired ads to track me as I visit other websites. If Wired wants to serve ads, then wired.com should serve the ads.
Second, make the ads a whole lot less intrusive. When there's an ad on the page, I see it. There is no reason whatsoever to make the ad obnoxiously prominent to gain more of my attention, as that added attention will not result in a positive opinion about the product the ad is trying to sell.
There's more, but those two would be a good start....
The current trend towards very low contrast, low weight fonts by many websites and devices is most disturbing. One has to wonder why webmasters are so ashamed of their content that they want to make it so difficult for people to read it.
Slashdot Mirror
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www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/opinion/chinasincreasingly-muffled-press.html
China’s Increasingly Muffled Press
... [President Xi Jinping] recently visited the three main newsrooms in the country to convey in unmistakable terms that journalists are expected to behave like apparatchiks. That message, which predictably received fawning coverage, came a few days after the government announced it would further restrict foreign media, too.
Under rules Beijing says it will start enforcing next month, foreign companies will be barred from publishing online content — including text, videos, maps and games — in China without prior approval from the government. The regulations, which could affect major American companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, are intended to “promote core socialist values.” ...
Simple as that.
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Perhaps this is just an extension of the filter bubble that everyone creates for themselves in their view of the internet, i.e., tending to visit sites or "friend" people with opinions similar to yours. Then when these people get to college, they are offended that there are others with differing viewpoints.
College, as a home for new and fresh ideas, is dying.
So it resorts to the courtroom to try to stop its competitors.
... It may be true that Microsoft can not survive financially without serving up ads,...
I'd be more than happy to pay Microsoft for an upgrade for my copies of Windows 7, providing the upgrade is really an upgrade and not just a means for Microsoft to begin data harvesting of my family..
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It appears that is the only way the car manufacturers will sit up and pay attention to the need for security in their vehicles.
...The only relief is to block the IPs that Baidu comes from, but it's a huge range, hundreds of IPs....
I also have been assaulted by the baiduBot relentless search patterns.
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It is one of the very, very few search bots that do not follow robots.txt directives. (bing and yandex being the other two that I've seen)
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http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
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It comes as no surprise that Bill Gates gives privacy so little weight, with less privacy users have less choice and control.
Is this really more secure? Or is it just more convenient?
...What sense is there in sending someone to jail for an infringement that causes no harm to the copyright holder, whether they complain about it or not? And why should it matter that the copyright holder complains about something that didn't affect them anyway?...
There is no sense to it.
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But that doesn't matter because the TPP was written by industry interests and rubber-stamped by the governments involved.
Are you a fucking retard?
Now, there's an intelligent reply.
... Trial by media,...
Isn't McAffee a media whore anyways? So a 'trial by media' would be right up his alley...
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Maybe twitter will be able to do better at reading my mind to determine what I want to read, maybe not.
So long as I can disable it, I'm fine with it for now.
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Other search bots do not seem to have any problems following the instructions I placed in the robots.txt. For some reason, yandex, mail.ru and bing think they're entitled to special treatment.
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Now that you've infected most non-Windows 10 PCs with the upgrade malware, now, NOW you decide to tell people what the updates will do to their PCs?
Sorry, Microsoft, you've already completely lost what little trust you had going into the Windows 10 upgrade cycle.
What's the expression? It takes at least ten times as long to regain trust as it does to lose it.
...Our belief is that if someone doesn't like them, and they won't click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won't click on them harms campaign performance. ... Publishers can't win by forcing ads — especially low-quality ads — in people's faces. ...
...The other problem is that while you may notice plain ads, the vast majority of the public doesn't...
"Vast majority"? That's so funny how you just throw around made-up opinions as fact like that.
...I see this type of comment fairly frequently, and I understand the sentiment, but what exactly do you propose that they do instead? Just go bankrupt?...
According to Wired, only 20% of the visitors to the site block ads. Hardly a reason for a site to go bankrupt.
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But I would suggest that one of the first things that is done is get rid of the ad networks that track people around the Internet and also serve up malware. I see absolutely no reason for Wired ads to track me as I visit other websites. If Wired wants to serve ads, then wired.com should serve the ads.
Second, make the ads a whole lot less intrusive. When there's an ad on the page, I see it. There is no reason whatsoever to make the ad obnoxiously prominent to gain more of my attention, as that added attention will not result in a positive opinion about the product the ad is trying to sell.
There's more, but those two would be a good start....
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This is a good thing, how?
And, like most addictions, it is a self-reinforcing feedback loop that ultimately ends in an unhappy place.
I like it when my comments are marked "Troll" on Apple-oriented threads. It means I hit a nerve. :)
The current trend towards very low contrast, low weight fonts by many websites and devices is most disturbing. One has to wonder why webmasters are so ashamed of their content that they want to make it so difficult for people to read it.
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It definitely makes one take a step back and think, who or what are the walls really protecting?
I blog, therefore I demand. When I don't get, I blog even more.