Right on! and then, those numbers might be quite difficult to get, I mean, numbers we could accept as accurate. The recording industry, just like the film industry, is addicted to creative accounting (thus the name "Hollywood accounting", and for the same reasons.
You have been rated 'interesting' but your post is most insightful. He is indeed looking in the wrong place, and you point out the reason why: this is a social problem, society is the problem; so there are only slow fixes, and the quick-fixers are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
They are an emotional and over-reaction group of people. But the US made them that way.... the US did it to Germany as well. When we 'pacified' them over the decades, we shifted their thinking and their sense of reason. So instead of saying "okay, here are the causes of the problem, let's fix them!" they are more concerned about who is to blame and are focusing on the fact that nuclear energy is an awesome and powerful source of energy which is also very dangerous. Well, yes... yes it is. But they forget that it's also controllable and containable with vigilant regulation and oversight.
Vigilance of regulation and oversight are expensive... and annoying... and definitely slow things down and make things cost more. But without it...?
Not commenting on how reeking of paternalism and colonialism this is, you are just here contradicting what you asserted at the beginning of your post, that the cause of this is corporations dictating their own regulations to the government, except that you then try to localize the problem by linking it to Shoguns and Daimios and cultural traits.
From TFA:
“March 11 has shaken Japan to the root of its postwar identity,” said Takeo Kikkawa, an economist who specializes in energy issues at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. “We were the country that suffered Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but then we showed we had the superior technology and technocratic expertise to safely tame this awesome power for peaceful economic progress. Nuclear accidents were things that happened in other countries.”
Is that what you call an emotional statement? From TFA again:
In many respects, Japan is already on the road to recovery from the huge earthquake and tsunami, which killed as many as 19,000 people, and to a lesser degree from the nuclear accident. The northeastern coastal towns that were flattened by the waves have cleaned up millions of tons of debris and are beginning to rebuild. But it is the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi that looks likely to have a more lasting impact, even though it has yet to claim a single life. Japan is just beginning what promises to be a radiation cleanup that will last decades of the evacuated areas around the plant, where nearly 90,000 residents lost their homes. The nation is also groping to find effective ways to monitor health and protect its food supply from contamination by the accident.
... From TFA still:
Japan has so far succeeded in avoiding shortages, thanks in part to a drastic conservation program that has involved turning off air-conditioning in the summer and office lights during the day.
With a third of their electricity cut off, they manage! That is remarkable and unexpected. The Japanese are showing great courage in keeping shut plants that cannot demonstrate that they are safe. The Japanese population is disciplined enough to follow drastic measures to save electricity, and it is working!
We have been joking here on Slashdot about a famous outburst of chair throwing, and about Steve Ballmer yelling that he was fucking going to kill Google. He, however, was not joking.
Microsoft has been beaten up over anti-competitive / anti-trust practices many times in many jurisdictions.
And when he uttered that famous sentence, in what way do you think Ballmer was dreaming of killing a company having earned respect among web users and having as a motto "Don't be evil", if not in pulling Google down in the dirty pool of consumer hate Microsoft was drowning itself? Has anyone not noticed the intense PR campaign-war that has been waged against Google since then, even on Slashdot, and the intense sock-puppeting and shilling each time a Google story comes up?
Hiroshima was hit with an atomic explosion. Fukishima did not have this. Completely different event. Chernobyl didn't even kill nearly this many, and they actually had their reactor explode. There have been ZERO deaths so far. The only certainty is that the CHANCE of cancer in many of the workers will increase. CHANCE is a big word. This isn't a guarantee that they will all get it.
Epidemiology 101: Hiroshima and Nagasaki data can be used to calculate how much radiation cause how many deaths in a population and this data is used by everyone, industry, regulators and who you call activists, to do just that. You write "CHANCE" as if what is meant is that there is a chance than mortality increases. No, we use probability because we cannot prove that a given death is caused by the added exposure or the natural occurring one, but over large numbers, we can OBSERVE a definite number of death, that we can definitely ATTRIBUTE to the increased exposure, in a linear relation (there is no safe exposure). There is no CHANCE of increased cancer mortality caused by Fukushima: this is a certainty and it is measurable, thanks in part to the data collected from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Why has my post above been modded Flamebait? I merely stated facts, that are recognized by anyone knowledgeable in this field.
The lies of the nuclear industry, which are spread here on Slashdot as well, are that Fukushima will cause very few deaths.
But the data, collected by the army in Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ie. how many deaths a given exposure to radiation will cause, shows that it will be in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.
I have just seen a documentary (in French, sorry), directed by Kenichi Watanabe, which shows how the propaganda spread by the nuclear industry started with Hiroshima, and never stopped from there.
For example, the nuclear industry never properly researched thorium fuel cycle reactors, which would be much less risky since they don't risk a run-away reaction, because that option ruled out use on submarines and other vessels. With Chernobyl and Fukushima, we have the results of those policies.
Infiltrated by Google employees and well-wishers, Slashdot consistently offers justifications for every bad behavior and terrible decision coming from Google.
This will get modded down because trolls have taken over the moderation system and openly subvert it. That's fine. It just proves my point about how Slashdot reacts to anything outside the partyline. This site's news reporting is old, antiquated, and slow...
I was going to mod your trollish, vaguely conspirational, over-the-top comment down indeed, but I will reply instead. You regurgitate all the worn-out memes about the Slashdot community, who is actually anything but of one's mind. Yes, geeks and people who make the effort to think over issues have some stable opinions. This scandalizes you? Tough luck. Yes Google enjoys a favorable opinion here, and why not since their interests and ours coincide in many ways, plus they have shown courage and judgment in their actions (China, SOPA-PIPA). We also happen to know that some well-known PR houses are leading an anti-Google campaign, I understand that the way Steve Ballmer is treated around here may cultivate in him some murderous ideas, which he has actually expressed quite vocally not too long ago, but well, he deserves it.
Google is not above criticism, but you will surely not convince anyone around here that the bogy stories we read from people like you and the language you use can lead to a well thought, well articulated conversation.
Even if all current members of Anonymous stopped all action upon realizing that what they do is a public relation dream for governments intent on passing censoring legislation, you can rest assured that would continue to see actions done in the name of Anonymous. It is that much of good PR stunt.
So, in the media, instead of reading that 5 millions people signed a petition against SOPA-PIPA, you read that punk hackers have defaced a site or two, and are threatening to wreak havoc. So, the conflict is no longer represented as between a corrupted government and the people, but between authorities in need of maintaining order in front of an assault by teenage vandals wanting to steal things without consequences.
Particularly, observe the way Anonymous played in the media in the last round about SOPA-PIPA. There is no other word to describe them, but as tools. Conscious of what they do or not, they were well on their way to derail the whole public effort with their stunts.
They will not stop by themselves, as I wrote. Collectively, those who wish to see the passing of sane Internet and copyright legislation, or at least stop the legislative push (putsch?) of corporations to take control of it, need to think about the way to stop this. Journalists need to educate themselves about the nonsense of accepting at face value claims that an action has been committed by a group called "Anonymous". Can you verify it? If you can't, then it is done anonymously, perhaps, but simply by vandals, punks, or by whoever's agents for that matter.
Is it? My grandparents were subsistence farmers living in China who never had more than $25 USD, now they live in an apartment. My grandfather says he was much happier living of the land. Now he is just waiting to die.
Im a dual citizen USA & China living in the USA.
I hope I had mod points for you. I just saw 'Last Train Home' last night, by Lixin Fan. It shows exactly what you describe: a subsistence level in the countryside, but an independent life for people living in small communities, rather isolated but often in beautiful surroundings. Then the brutish city life of the factory worker, which is indeed a form of indented servitude, and widespread desperation among those who have hoped to better their life in that way.
Now you raise a good point which is that there are many misinformed folks who don't realize the above and think that Google can do no harm while Microsoft is pure evil, and that therefore the political fallout here can be bad. Some education would be in order, perhaps.
This is not at all what I wrote, and pretending so is disingenuous. You are again equating Microsoft and Google in evilness, while I argue that you have no ground to put those two on the same plane in terms of ethics. Microsoft has a history of abuse, while you are only weary of the domination of Google. Google has an inherent interest in the development of a free Internet while Microsoft does not. I cited specific examples to defend my case, you declined to respond to those, but you now offer one in favor of yours: developing standards. How would anyone be fooled by standardization efforts just after the Open Document Format saga? They were bribing everyone in plain view and brought down the reputation of ISO/IEC in the process.
If you think that you are going to educate all the people who worked tirelessly to popularize Firefox, you are in for a serious disappointment and you have not presented to me any serious argument to your point that people are misinformed. Collectively, people are very well informed. Let me tell you this bluntly: if Firefox deals with Microsoft, it is the end of Firefox. And a tragedy.
The strategy of _Mozilla_ hinges on developing an alternative to the monopolistic behavior of whoever has such behavior. In 2000 that was Microsoft. If Google or Apple becomes a bigger problem in this sense than Microsoft (arguably already happened with Apple), then Mozilla would presumably want to counter them.
And how is dealing with Microsoft, who is still a very real threat to freedoms on the Internet, and spurning Google, a defender of Internet neutrality, supposed to advance a program of collective progress? Again, the ethics of those two companies are very different. Witness their respective behaviour in China. Microsoft has sworn to "f..ing kill Google", in those very words in the mouth of Ballmer, and open source, Linux (have you forgotten the SCO saga) and Firefox are their targets. Any dealing with them is suicidal. Firefox must work a bit harder and find a different solution to their uncomfortableness with Google, or they will loose all the goodwill they have enjoyed until now.
You may be uncomfortable with the dominance of Google search, but this does not make it a monopoly. Microsoft, on the other hand, is a convicted monopolist, who has used its monopoly on the OS to destroy Netscape and push its own browser. Microsoft and Google are two different beasts altogether, with ethical acumen at opposite ends, and trying to present them as equivalent with as weak an argument as "big is bad" (your words) is simplistic and negates everything we know about those two companies.
People have adopted Firefox with that in mind and going to Bing is simply a betrayal of trust on the part of Firefox, a suicidal betrayal of trust, I should add, make no mistake about it. I find it abject, after the support that Google has shown to the Firefox team, that they should turn around and threaten to use Bing. This is why I am saying that the board should wake up before the irreparable happens and let Dotzler offer his head over a mistake of such a magnitude, BEFORE the end of the negotiation of the Google deal. I mean, WTF is going on on the Firefox board!!!
Agreed. However, my point is: irrespective of the validity or not of the Google privacy issue, there is nothing that justifies Firefox betraying the trust of its users going the Bing way. This is suicidal. This is such a serious misjudgment on the part of Dotzler that he should go, sorry.
It may help to learn the facts surrounding an incident than basing your hate on just one line news items. Asa gave a fairly decent explanation of why he was supporting Bing. It was mainly because he was getting pissed off with Google's privacy and/or data retention policies and he believed that Bing had a better privacy policy. Learn some facts before judging people
Where in my post do you read the slightest hint of hate? This is dishonest of you to imply so and it discredits anything you might say in defense of Dotzler. I know full well the justification he has advanced in defense of his proposal. Nevertheless, however right he might be in relation to the point of privacy (and I will not discuss the issue here), nothing justifies a response on the scale of the idea to promote, or default to Bing. The whole strategy of Firefox, and therefore Firefox's reputation, hinges on developing an alternative to the monopolistic behaviour of Microsoft. To event hint of using Bing is a betrayal of trust, pure and simple, and this is a simple statement of fact, stated in so many words in my previous post, not emotively. If you want to argue with me, please next time try not to misrepresent my position in such a blatant way. It just makes you sound like a troll.
Thanks, this article does contribute to the conversation. Here is an excerpt:
Back in 2010, one of Mozilla’s noisiest bigwigs, Asa Dotzler, famously renounced Google because of its poor privacy policy, and started using Bing instead. At the time this wasn’t a big deal, but Dotzler is now the Director of Firefox Desktop — and when November rolls around, it’s safe to assume that he might vote for Bing to replace Google as the default search engine.
As for me, I am very loyal to the idea of open source, and therefore to Firefox. Firefox has changed the web as we know it in proportions that we will become more aware of if it disappears or becomes irrelevant. Mark my words.
On the other hand, I have received the news of Firefox leaning toward Bing as a betrayal of the worst kind. This Asa Dotzler in my view should be invited to quit Firefox in short order. He is damaging the company's goodwill and reputation to an extent that is currently under-appreciated, whatever the tactic is behind this move, pressuring Google or whatever. This is just ugly and if Firefox continues with that line, my loyalty will vanish in an instant.
I just spent my last mod point 30 seconds ago... This guy got modded up telling an anecdote implying that scientists laugh off the idea of alien life? Parents answer is most concise: this is just not the case.... Sigh...
Quebec has a special legal status in Canada because Canada is still, last I checked, a federation.
That being said, Francophones are welcoming, friendly people. Some people live here without ever uttering a French word and Quebecois go out of their way to accommodate them. Those who want to learn French are actually annoyed by it.
Montreal is a truly multicultural city, and every small culture is free to express itself, in all manners, restaurants, soccer team fans, and they are and do feel appreciated.
Look at the crime rates, those don't lie: Montreal is one of the safest and coolest city in North-America. But don't tell, we don't want to get over-crowded.
Don't believe Haper's propaganda. He is out to spend public money on prisons, so his new friends will finance his re-election.
Well said. The idea of 'Anonymous' being counter-productive and merely a pretext for authoritarian moves (think of the fire of the Reichstag being used by Hitler so seize control of the parliament) has been repeated for a few months here on Slashdot.
Now, if there were a group called Anonymous and if they were convinced by such words, odds are that you could very well continue to see more hacks perpetrated in the name of Anonymous. That's the second vicious twist in this terrible idea, which consequences are the same, providing a pretext to convince the masses that Internet controlling legislation is a good thing.
I had mod points, but.... How can you say it won't work when we have not even scratched the surface of what crowd-sourced democracy could look like.
Just to suggest an idea that keeps coming popping up in my mind recently: here on Slashdot, we constantly survey what threatens the Internet as we invented it and we see that much power is exercised covertly through the actual writing of legislation, a process which often find our representatives complaining that they don't have the occasion or actual time to influence. Now, we have invented Wikipedia, why wouldn't we use a similar process, perhaps more carefully moderated, to write laws? Please don't hesitate to post objections, so I can free my mind for a further idea that has better chances of working.
We could enlist the participation of the best, Lawrence Lessig at Harvard, Michael Geist in Canada, and others around the world. We could write our own international treaties to counter ACTA.
Let's be imaginative here. We have barely begun to realize what we can do collectively.
Koch companies believe in the efficient use of all resources and are committed to maintaining a clean and healthy environment. But we also think there should be open and honest debate about climate change and the likely effects of proposed climate policies on the energy that drives the productivity of our society. In recent years, a vocal group of self-declared environmentalists has repeatedly insisted that our planet is in peril because of man-made greenhouse gases. Many take their cues from Al Gore’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,”...
Seems the new tack is to say that it happens after all, but all those who said so before are sensationalists and "so-called environmentalists"...
By the way, about Muller's turnaround: How to make yourself a reference in a field where you have no competence? First deny forcefully and get headlines, then say that after careful verification, you found out the truth. Don't forget to continue to berate the real scientists treating them as sensationalists!
And further by the way, the Koch brothers do fund denialists (not skeptical as they claim) research and are the funders (and true founders) of the Tea party. Who modded the parent up?
Slashdot Mirror
Another confirmation, and a particularly revealing and interesting one at that, that there is no security trough obscurity.
Right on! and then, those numbers might be quite difficult to get, I mean, numbers we could accept as accurate. The recording industry, just like the film industry, is addicted to creative accounting (thus the name "Hollywood accounting", and for the same reasons.
For a moment, I thought someone was trying to copyright fishing...
Of course, such an unprecedented discovery such as fishing should instead be worthy of a patent!
You have been rated 'interesting' but your post is most insightful. He is indeed looking in the wrong place, and you point out the reason why: this is a social problem, society is the problem; so there are only slow fixes, and the quick-fixers are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
They are an emotional and over-reaction group of people. But the US made them that way.... the US did it to Germany as well. When we 'pacified' them over the decades, we shifted their thinking and their sense of reason. So instead of saying "okay, here are the causes of the problem, let's fix them!" they are more concerned about who is to blame and are focusing on the fact that nuclear energy is an awesome and powerful source of energy which is also very dangerous. Well, yes... yes it is. But they forget that it's also controllable and containable with vigilant regulation and oversight.
Vigilance of regulation and oversight are expensive... and annoying... and definitely slow things down and make things cost more. But without it...?
Not commenting on how reeking of paternalism and colonialism this is, you are just here contradicting what you asserted at the beginning of your post, that the cause of this is corporations dictating their own regulations to the government, except that you then try to localize the problem by linking it to Shoguns and Daimios and cultural traits.
From TFA:
“March 11 has shaken Japan to the root of its postwar identity,” said Takeo Kikkawa, an economist who specializes in energy issues at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. “We were the country that suffered Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but then we showed we had the superior technology and technocratic expertise to safely tame this awesome power for peaceful economic progress. Nuclear accidents were things that happened in other countries.”
Is that what you call an emotional statement? From TFA again:
In many respects, Japan is already on the road to recovery from the huge earthquake and tsunami, which killed as many as 19,000 people, and to a lesser degree from the nuclear accident. The northeastern coastal towns that were flattened by the waves have cleaned up millions of tons of debris and are beginning to rebuild.
But it is the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi that looks likely to have a more lasting impact, even though it has yet to claim a single life. Japan is just beginning what promises to be a radiation cleanup that will last decades of the evacuated areas around the plant, where nearly 90,000 residents lost their homes. The nation is also groping to find effective ways to monitor health and protect its food supply from contamination by the accident.
...
From TFA still:
Japan has so far succeeded in avoiding shortages, thanks in part to a drastic conservation program that has involved turning off air-conditioning in the summer and office lights during the day.
With a third of their electricity cut off, they manage! That is remarkable and unexpected. The Japanese are showing great courage in keeping shut plants that cannot demonstrate that they are safe. The Japanese population is disciplined enough to follow drastic measures to save electricity, and it is working!
A great lesson to us all. I raise my hat to them.
Little mystery indeed,
We have been joking here on Slashdot about a famous outburst of chair throwing, and about Steve Ballmer yelling that he was fucking going to kill Google. He, however, was not joking.
Microsoft has been beaten up over anti-competitive / anti-trust practices many times in many jurisdictions.
And when he uttered that famous sentence, in what way do you think Ballmer was dreaming of killing a company having earned respect among web users and having as a motto "Don't be evil", if not in pulling Google down in the dirty pool of consumer hate Microsoft was drowning itself? Has anyone not noticed the intense PR campaign-war that has been waged against Google since then, even on Slashdot, and the intense sock-puppeting and shilling each time a Google story comes up?
Hiroshima was hit with an atomic explosion. Fukishima did not have this. Completely different event. Chernobyl didn't even kill nearly this many, and they actually had their reactor explode. There have been ZERO deaths so far. The only certainty is that the CHANCE of cancer in many of the workers will increase. CHANCE is a big word. This isn't a guarantee that they will all get it.
Epidemiology 101: Hiroshima and Nagasaki data can be used to calculate how much radiation cause how many deaths in a population and this data is used by everyone, industry, regulators and who you call activists, to do just that. You write "CHANCE" as if what is meant is that there is a chance than mortality increases. No, we use probability because we cannot prove that a given death is caused by the added exposure or the natural occurring one, but over large numbers, we can OBSERVE a definite number of death, that we can definitely ATTRIBUTE to the increased exposure, in a linear relation (there is no safe exposure). There is no CHANCE of increased cancer mortality caused by Fukushima: this is a certainty and it is measurable, thanks in part to the data collected from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Why has my post above been modded Flamebait? I merely stated facts, that are recognized by anyone knowledgeable in this field.
The lies of the nuclear industry, which are spread here on Slashdot as well, are that Fukushima will cause very few deaths.
But the data, collected by the army in Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ie. how many deaths a given exposure to radiation will cause, shows that it will be in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.
I have just seen a documentary (in French, sorry), directed by Kenichi Watanabe, which shows how the propaganda spread by the nuclear industry started with Hiroshima, and never stopped from there.
For example, the nuclear industry never properly researched thorium fuel cycle reactors, which would be much less risky since they don't risk a run-away reaction, because that option ruled out use on submarines and other vessels. With Chernobyl and Fukushima, we have the results of those policies.
And the lies continue.
Infiltrated by Google employees and well-wishers, Slashdot consistently offers justifications for every bad behavior and terrible decision coming from Google.
This will get modded down because trolls have taken over the moderation system and openly subvert it. That's fine. It just proves my point about how Slashdot reacts to anything outside the partyline. This site's news reporting is old, antiquated, and slow...
I was going to mod your trollish, vaguely conspirational, over-the-top comment down indeed, but I will reply instead. You regurgitate all the worn-out memes about the Slashdot community, who is actually anything but of one's mind. Yes, geeks and people who make the effort to think over issues have some stable opinions. This scandalizes you? Tough luck. Yes Google enjoys a favorable opinion here, and why not since their interests and ours coincide in many ways, plus they have shown courage and judgment in their actions (China, SOPA-PIPA). We also happen to know that some well-known PR houses are leading an anti-Google campaign, I understand that the way Steve Ballmer is treated around here may cultivate in him some murderous ideas, which he has actually expressed quite vocally not too long ago, but well, he deserves it.
Google is not above criticism, but you will surely not convince anyone around here that the bogy stories we read from people like you and the language you use can lead to a well thought, well articulated conversation.
Even if all current members of Anonymous stopped all action upon realizing that what they do is a public relation dream for governments intent on passing censoring legislation, you can rest assured that would continue to see actions done in the name of Anonymous. It is that much of good PR stunt.
So, in the media, instead of reading that 5 millions people signed a petition against SOPA-PIPA, you read that punk hackers have defaced a site or two, and are threatening to wreak havoc. So, the conflict is no longer represented as between a corrupted government and the people, but between authorities in need of maintaining order in front of an assault by teenage vandals wanting to steal things without consequences.
Particularly, observe the way Anonymous played in the media in the last round about SOPA-PIPA. There is no other word to describe them, but as tools. Conscious of what they do or not, they were well on their way to derail the whole public effort with their stunts.
They will not stop by themselves, as I wrote. Collectively, those who wish to see the passing of sane Internet and copyright legislation, or at least stop the legislative push (putsch?) of corporations to take control of it, need to think about the way to stop this. Journalists need to educate themselves about the nonsense of accepting at face value claims that an action has been committed by a group called "Anonymous". Can you verify it? If you can't, then it is done anonymously, perhaps, but simply by vandals, punks, or by whoever's agents for that matter.
Is it? My grandparents were subsistence farmers living in China who never had more than $25 USD, now they live in an apartment. My grandfather says he was much happier living of the land. Now he is just waiting to die.
Im a dual citizen USA & China living in the USA.
I hope I had mod points for you. I just saw 'Last Train Home' last night, by Lixin Fan. It shows exactly what you describe: a subsistence level in the countryside, but an independent life for people living in small communities, rather isolated but often in beautiful surroundings. Then the brutish city life of the factory worker, which is indeed a form of indented servitude, and widespread desperation among those who have hoped to better their life in that way.
Now you raise a good point which is that there are many misinformed folks who don't realize the above and think that Google can do no harm while Microsoft is pure evil, and that therefore the political fallout here can be bad. Some education would be in order, perhaps.
This is not at all what I wrote, and pretending so is disingenuous. You are again equating Microsoft and Google in evilness, while I argue that you have no ground to put those two on the same plane in terms of ethics. Microsoft has a history of abuse, while you are only weary of the domination of Google. Google has an inherent interest in the development of a free Internet while Microsoft does not. I cited specific examples to defend my case, you declined to respond to those, but you now offer one in favor of yours: developing standards. How would anyone be fooled by standardization efforts just after the Open Document Format saga? They were bribing everyone in plain view and brought down the reputation of ISO/IEC in the process.
If you think that you are going to educate all the people who worked tirelessly to popularize Firefox, you are in for a serious disappointment and you have not presented to me any serious argument to your point that people are misinformed. Collectively, people are very well informed. Let me tell you this bluntly: if Firefox deals with Microsoft, it is the end of Firefox. And a tragedy.
The strategy of _Mozilla_ hinges on developing an alternative to the monopolistic behavior of whoever has such behavior. In 2000 that was Microsoft. If Google or Apple becomes a bigger problem in this sense than Microsoft (arguably already happened with Apple), then Mozilla would presumably want to counter them.
And how is dealing with Microsoft, who is still a very real threat to freedoms on the Internet, and spurning Google, a defender of Internet neutrality, supposed to advance a program of collective progress? Again, the ethics of those two companies are very different. Witness their respective behaviour in China. Microsoft has sworn to "f..ing kill Google", in those very words in the mouth of Ballmer, and open source, Linux (have you forgotten the SCO saga) and Firefox are their targets. Any dealing with them is suicidal. Firefox must work a bit harder and find a different solution to their uncomfortableness with Google, or they will loose all the goodwill they have enjoyed until now.
You may be uncomfortable with the dominance of Google search, but this does not make it a monopoly. Microsoft, on the other hand, is a convicted monopolist, who has used its monopoly on the OS to destroy Netscape and push its own browser. Microsoft and Google are two different beasts altogether, with ethical acumen at opposite ends, and trying to present them as equivalent with as weak an argument as "big is bad" (your words) is simplistic and negates everything we know about those two companies.
People have adopted Firefox with that in mind and going to Bing is simply a betrayal of trust on the part of Firefox, a suicidal betrayal of trust, I should add, make no mistake about it. I find it abject, after the support that Google has shown to the Firefox team, that they should turn around and threaten to use Bing. This is why I am saying that the board should wake up before the irreparable happens and let Dotzler offer his head over a mistake of such a magnitude, BEFORE the end of the negotiation of the Google deal. I mean, WTF is going on on the Firefox board!!!
Agreed. However, my point is: irrespective of the validity or not of the Google privacy issue, there is nothing that justifies Firefox betraying the trust of its users going the Bing way. This is suicidal. This is such a serious misjudgment on the part of Dotzler that he should go, sorry.
It may help to learn the facts surrounding an incident than basing your hate on just one line news items. Asa gave a fairly decent explanation of why he was supporting Bing. It was mainly because he was getting pissed off with Google's privacy and/or data retention policies and he believed that Bing had a better privacy policy. Learn some facts before judging people
Where in my post do you read the slightest hint of hate? This is dishonest of you to imply so and it discredits anything you might say in defense of Dotzler. I know full well the justification he has advanced in defense of his proposal. Nevertheless, however right he might be in relation to the point of privacy (and I will not discuss the issue here), nothing justifies a response on the scale of the idea to promote, or default to Bing. The whole strategy of Firefox, and therefore Firefox's reputation, hinges on developing an alternative to the monopolistic behaviour of Microsoft. To event hint of using Bing is a betrayal of trust, pure and simple, and this is a simple statement of fact, stated in so many words in my previous post, not emotively. If you want to argue with me, please next time try not to misrepresent my position in such a blatant way. It just makes you sound like a troll.
Thanks, this article does contribute to the conversation. Here is an excerpt:
Back in 2010, one of Mozilla’s noisiest bigwigs, Asa Dotzler, famously renounced Google because of its poor privacy policy, and started using Bing instead. At the time this wasn’t a big deal, but Dotzler is now the Director of Firefox Desktop — and when November rolls around, it’s safe to assume that he might vote for Bing to replace Google as the default search engine.
As for me, I am very loyal to the idea of open source, and therefore to Firefox. Firefox has changed the web as we know it in proportions that we will become more aware of if it disappears or becomes irrelevant. Mark my words.
On the other hand, I have received the news of Firefox leaning toward Bing as a betrayal of the worst kind. This Asa Dotzler in my view should be invited to quit Firefox in short order. He is damaging the company's goodwill and reputation to an extent that is currently under-appreciated, whatever the tactic is behind this move, pressuring Google or whatever. This is just ugly and if Firefox continues with that line, my loyalty will vanish in an instant.
...capitalists spy on you.
The EFF is a great organisation
Where would we be without them
Donate https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/double-your-impact-take-eff-mission-challenge with dollar for dollar matching by the Brin Wojcicki Foundation until december 31st
I've sent mine in
I just spent my last mod point 30 seconds ago... ...
This guy got modded up telling an anecdote implying that scientists laugh off the idea of alien life?
Parents answer is most concise: this is just not the case.
Sigh...
Quebec has a special legal status in Canada because Canada is still, last I checked, a federation.
That being said, Francophones are welcoming, friendly people. Some people live here without ever uttering a French word and Quebecois go out of their way to accommodate them. Those who want to learn French are actually annoyed by it.
Montreal is a truly multicultural city, and every small culture is free to express itself, in all manners, restaurants, soccer team fans, and they are and do feel appreciated.
Look at the crime rates, those don't lie: Montreal is one of the safest and coolest city in North-America. But don't tell, we don't want to get over-crowded.
Don't believe Haper's propaganda. He is out to spend public money on prisons, so his new friends will finance his re-election.
And come visit us, before talking nonsense.
Well said. The idea of 'Anonymous' being counter-productive and merely a pretext for authoritarian moves (think of the fire of the Reichstag being used by Hitler so seize control of the parliament) has been repeated for a few months here on Slashdot.
Now, if there were a group called Anonymous and if they were convinced by such words, odds are that you could very well continue to see more hacks perpetrated in the name of Anonymous. That's the second vicious twist in this terrible idea, which consequences are the same, providing a pretext to convince the masses that Internet controlling legislation is a good thing.
Stupid stupid stupid.
I had mod points, but....
How can you say it won't work when we have not even scratched the surface of what crowd-sourced democracy could look like.
Just to suggest an idea that keeps coming popping up in my mind recently: here on Slashdot, we constantly survey what threatens the Internet as we invented it and we see that much power is exercised covertly through the actual writing of legislation, a process which often find our representatives complaining that they don't have the occasion or actual time to influence. Now, we have invented Wikipedia, why wouldn't we use a similar process, perhaps more carefully moderated, to write laws? Please don't hesitate to post objections, so I can free my mind for a further idea that has better chances of working.
We could enlist the participation of the best, Lawrence Lessig at Harvard, Michael Geist in Canada, and others around the world. We could write our own international treaties to counter ACTA.
Let's be imaginative here. We have barely begun to realize what we can do collectively.
Seeing the supposedly infringing logo, I understand:
It looks nothing like the Apple Computer logo, but IT LOOKS BETTER!
Apple wants it.
On the said website:
Koch companies believe in the efficient use of all resources and are committed to maintaining a clean and healthy environment. But we also think there should be open and honest debate about climate change and the likely effects of proposed climate policies on the energy that drives the productivity of our society. In recent years, a vocal group of self-declared environmentalists has repeatedly insisted that our planet is in peril because of man-made greenhouse gases. Many take their cues from Al Gore’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,”...
Seems the new tack is to say that it happens after all, but all those who said so before are sensationalists and "so-called environmentalists"...
By the way, about Muller's turnaround: How to make yourself a reference in a field where you have no competence? First deny forcefully and get headlines, then say that after careful verification, you found out the truth. Don't forget to continue to berate the real scientists treating them as sensationalists!
And further by the way, the Koch brothers do fund denialists (not skeptical as they claim) research and are the funders (and true founders) of the Tea party.
Who modded the parent up?