A free market exists wherever people are buying and selling voluntarily without coercion. They work remarkably well as long as you accept that 'work' in this context simply means facilitating exchanges that leave both parties better off.
If by a historical example of a free market you mean a time and place where every market, without exception, was completely and utterly free of coercion then yes, that's difficult to point to. But you are rather missing the point.
The free-er the market is, the better it functions, and *major screwups* (as opposed to small and constant corrections) always turn out to trace back to an intervention. This is a truism that can be observed in action day in and day out.
You are missing the entire point of the web. To be able to open arbitrary data files from arbitrary, untrusted sources is a big part of it - and it's absolutely ridiculous that we have browsers that miss the point so badly that we have 'drive-by' infections where the victim never even has to be tricked to allow the infection, it just happens automatically. You say "dont visit the website" but that's stupid on many levels - you dont know what is on the website until you go! A browser that will not allow me to view arbitrary websites without being infected is broken.
Text, with semantic markup, will never enable that. Autoplay of arbitrary files does.
I think we do, I would say either technology is horrible in the wrong application.
If you have an old house on a very poor power line with all or most of your light sockets set to project a bulb downward, CFL technology is pretty horrible. I have been flamed to death for saying so, told to move or die, etc. but it remains true. And that's simply on cost/performance basis, with no consideration for aesthetics at all.
"Nice, the situation is completely black-and-white, isn't it? Anyone disagreeing with you is a violent fanboy, are they?"
No. You said that, not me.
"Both technologies have many strengths and weaknesses: there's no reason to pretend otherwise."
That's some truth. Both technologies have strengths and weaknesses and neither is going to be satisfactory in every circumstance. It's important to be able to evaluate your own application, your own circumstance, and choose accordingly. Which you cannnot do if one of the technologies is forced from the market.
On the other side the fanboys (and there are plenty of them here) do not acknowledge that truth. They are convinced the newer tech is simply *better* in any circumstance and anyone who wants to continue using the old tech in any situation is simply stupid/evil.
You dont get to be a fanboy by simply questioning or disagreeing with anything in particular, you get to be a fanboy in my book by demonstrating that behavior repeatedly. As poster after poster has done in article after article which touched on this subject.
If I go to a page with a song or video on it, the browser should ideally give me a visible control that indicates the media file and gives me an *option* to start playing it, or to save it. It should under no circumstances whatsoever simply start playing the file.
They are horrible and yet their fanboys will mob you and rip you limb from limb in a heartbeat if you question their absolute superiority for any and all applications.
Shocked? Authoritarianism is deeply engrained in human psychology. This is sad but it's not shocking.
"I do agree that it is slightly annoying they don't have a check box to not create the G+ profile but it isn't like they automatically fill it out and push everything into it. "
That does not appear to be correct. Since google+ came out a pic that I used for a brief time on google talk (and I made sure it was set to only ever display to people on my chat list) is now showing up on youtube.
"You have to manually go to G+ and finish the process if you want it, delete it if you don't."
And to do that you have to retroactively agree to what they did. Not reasonable, not acceptable.
I have a better idea. Google should go back and delete all the accounts that have not consented, which they should never have created in the first place, and issue a public apology.
"The poster's stalker premise is also pretty silly. If I'm being stalked am I really going to be dumb enough to create accounts with my actual name on them?"
The TOS demands your real name, which would be reasonable if they were not misusing it. Besides which, what usually happens is the stalker comes first, and only afterwards do people learn to be more careful what information they let out.
"Wait a minute. You have to use Google+ to set a Gmail account setting? I would never find that link because I deliberately do not use Google+. Yes, this is very easy to opt out of, sure."
Ding ding ding. This is how screwed up google has gotten. They sign us up for a new service without our consent, then demand we log into it to opt out of stuff we never opted into. And to do that... you have to consent to the TOS.
It's a neat little trap they have constructed. Do no evil? Hah.
"Not only is G+ not forced upon you, at all, but it's one of the easiest social services to delete your account from, removing ALL your history (every post, every reply, every picture, every single trace of your existence). And to top it off, it allows you, before you delete your account, to download a.zip file of all your posts, if you want."
Says the AC with no link.
IT certainly has been forced on me and if there is an option to delete it short of deleting my accounts on gmail and youtube (which seem to have been merged without my consent) in the process it's far from obvious.
The only major point here that you missed is COINTELPRO, which along with the related "drug war" is a big part of how we got to the point where it's 'normal' in parts of america not to have a father.
These are problems created by the government and exploited by the government to increase government power. The government is never going to solve these problems because it is not in their interest to do so.
And the people who are arguing to cut a few million in food stamps while refusing to take even a tiny cut in the untold billions being spent on global offense are just the shameful icing on the cake.
But in this world the link leads to nothing but a teaser blurb and an invitation to blindly execute whatever arbitrary code another server might decide to hand me. No thanks.
Convenience. You can do it all yourself (and maintain it) or you can pay someone that does it in bulk a small fee to do it for you, and since they have economy of scale they can keep costs low enough to make it attractive as a convenience.
If you have one application that requires 3.0, and everything else is happy with 2.5, I would just link/usr/bin/python back to 2.5, and change the one program that doesnt work that way to call 3.0 explicitly, rather than changing ALL the other programs to call 2.5 explicitly. I assume that is what the GP meant.
More likely they erroneously assumed they did not need a translator. The languages are just different enough to get you into trouble. The Swede said 'Domstolen sade inte skyldig" but the Dane heard "sagde han e skylder" and the Danes thought he he had already been convicted.
Lots of these people actually think their email account is tied to their computer. They think they would have to get a new computer to change email accounts.
They are and this is the one thing he is clearly doing wrong here.
He has an official website provided by the tax payers and accessible to all. That's where this should be posted. Not on a pseudo-random private web site that is going to try to 'monetize' anyone that shows up looking for the information.
Even up to the 1940s and 1950s it was common here, it was part of the daily routine at the elementary schools to store the students weapons during the school day and return them at the end of the day, so that students were able to bag some supper on their way home. To the best of my knowledge this was common basically from coast to coast, in every rural district in the country.
So I was never ever stupid enough to have anything to do with facebook. I feel bad for the people they are screwing, a little, and I do really hope they have success in court and take a big chunk out just on general principles, but I am really not affected here.
However, I was stupid enough to sign up for gmail once upon a time. And I even uploaded a little picture that was supposedly ONLY to display to people that I have approved on that chat list.
Fast forward a little, google buys youtube, and gets this G+ itch. So I have a youtube account and the email address given to youtube for recovery was my gmail account. Without a by-your-leave I suddenly find the two accounts have been merged, and this picture is being displayed on youtube, as well as G+ (where I have NEVER created any account or given any permission for the use of my name, likeness, or personal information in any way shape or form!)
If these suits against facebook are getting traction why not a suit against google? I am sure I am not the only person they have done this too, in fact it seems certain that some of them even live in Europe, where privacy protection laws are a bit stronger.
This is truly scummy behavior and while it would certainly be great to see either of these corporations hit with a fine big enough to change their behavior, that does not seem very likely. The real solution would be good old fashioned shunning - turn your back on these companies and any others that do this. Too bad our population has been so thoroughly conditioned at this point to feel helpless and bitch about it on facebook instead of closing your account and blocking the bastards at the router.
Gun laws vary quite a bit in Europe, and they also have a tradition of applying common sense and simply ignoring technical infractions where no one is hurt (again, this varies widely, but is correct in many areas.)
Gun laws do not make Europe safer, cultures which do not approve of violence make Europe safer. The US was once just as safe (and that was back before 'gun control' was an issue, when children routinely carried their rifle with them to school.) What has changed has nothing to do with weapons, it has to do with our attitudes towards violence.
They will be released, and their convictions should be expunged. Although in practice this isnt quite automatic, they will still have to get a lawyer to file a motion for it.
Actually, when politicians attempt to regulate technology they do not understand, that's news for nerds. Whether it's firearms or encryption or pen-test software or whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
A free market exists wherever people are buying and selling voluntarily without coercion. They work remarkably well as long as you accept that 'work' in this context simply means facilitating exchanges that leave both parties better off.
If by a historical example of a free market you mean a time and place where every market, without exception, was completely and utterly free of coercion then yes, that's difficult to point to. But you are rather missing the point.
The free-er the market is, the better it functions, and *major screwups* (as opposed to small and constant corrections) always turn out to trace back to an intervention. This is a truism that can be observed in action day in and day out.
Nope. Promiseware is better than a defective deliverable.
You are missing the entire point of the web. To be able to open arbitrary data files from arbitrary, untrusted sources is a big part of it - and it's absolutely ridiculous that we have browsers that miss the point so badly that we have 'drive-by' infections where the victim never even has to be tricked to allow the infection, it just happens automatically. You say "dont visit the website" but that's stupid on many levels - you dont know what is on the website until you go! A browser that will not allow me to view arbitrary websites without being infected is broken.
Text, with semantic markup, will never enable that. Autoplay of arbitrary files does.
I think we do, I would say either technology is horrible in the wrong application.
If you have an old house on a very poor power line with all or most of your light sockets set to project a bulb downward, CFL technology is pretty horrible. I have been flamed to death for saying so, told to move or die, etc. but it remains true. And that's simply on cost/performance basis, with no consideration for aesthetics at all.
"Nice, the situation is completely black-and-white, isn't it? Anyone disagreeing with you is a violent fanboy, are they?"
No. You said that, not me.
"Both technologies have many strengths and weaknesses: there's no reason to pretend otherwise."
That's some truth. Both technologies have strengths and weaknesses and neither is going to be satisfactory in every circumstance. It's important to be able to evaluate your own application, your own circumstance, and choose accordingly. Which you cannnot do if one of the technologies is forced from the market.
On the other side the fanboys (and there are plenty of them here) do not acknowledge that truth. They are convinced the newer tech is simply *better* in any circumstance and anyone who wants to continue using the old tech in any situation is simply stupid/evil.
You dont get to be a fanboy by simply questioning or disagreeing with anything in particular, you get to be a fanboy in my book by demonstrating that behavior repeatedly. As poster after poster has done in article after article which touched on this subject.
No, actually, it does not seem reasonable at all.
If I go to a page with a song or video on it, the browser should ideally give me a visible control that indicates the media file and gives me an *option* to start playing it, or to save it. It should under no circumstances whatsoever simply start playing the file.
They are horrible and yet their fanboys will mob you and rip you limb from limb in a heartbeat if you question their absolute superiority for any and all applications.
Shocked? Authoritarianism is deeply engrained in human psychology. This is sad but it's not shocking.
"I do agree that it is slightly annoying they don't have a check box to not create the G+ profile but it isn't like they automatically fill it out and push everything into it. "
That does not appear to be correct. Since google+ came out a pic that I used for a brief time on google talk (and I made sure it was set to only ever display to people on my chat list) is now showing up on youtube.
"You have to manually go to G+ and finish the process if you want it, delete it if you don't."
And to do that you have to retroactively agree to what they did. Not reasonable, not acceptable.
I have a better idea. Google should go back and delete all the accounts that have not consented, which they should never have created in the first place, and issue a public apology.
"The poster's stalker premise is also pretty silly. If I'm being stalked am I really going to be dumb enough to create accounts with my actual name on them?"
The TOS demands your real name, which would be reasonable if they were not misusing it. Besides which, what usually happens is the stalker comes first, and only afterwards do people learn to be more careful what information they let out.
"Wait a minute. You have to use Google+ to set a Gmail account setting? I would never find that link because I deliberately do not use Google+. Yes, this is very easy to opt out of, sure."
Ding ding ding. This is how screwed up google has gotten. They sign us up for a new service without our consent, then demand we log into it to opt out of stuff we never opted into. And to do that... you have to consent to the TOS.
It's a neat little trap they have constructed. Do no evil? Hah.
"Not only is G+ not forced upon you, at all, but it's one of the easiest social services to delete your account from, removing ALL your history (every post, every reply, every picture, every single trace of your existence). And to top it off, it allows you, before you delete your account, to download a .zip file of all your posts, if you want."
Says the AC with no link.
IT certainly has been forced on me and if there is an option to delete it short of deleting my accounts on gmail and youtube (which seem to have been merged without my consent) in the process it's far from obvious.
The only major point here that you missed is COINTELPRO, which along with the related "drug war" is a big part of how we got to the point where it's 'normal' in parts of america not to have a father.
These are problems created by the government and exploited by the government to increase government power. The government is never going to solve these problems because it is not in their interest to do so.
And the people who are arguing to cut a few million in food stamps while refusing to take even a tiny cut in the untold billions being spent on global offense are just the shameful icing on the cake.
But in this world the link leads to nothing but a teaser blurb and an invitation to blindly execute whatever arbitrary code another server might decide to hand me. No thanks.
"Tell yourself whatever makes you feel better about stealing content."
OK, first the meme was copyright infringement = theft.
Wrong, but at least it has a certain amount of logic to it.
But this? It's not even copyright infringement, but it's still theft anyway? Just because it is not consistent with big medias whims?
Convenience. You can do it all yourself (and maintain it) or you can pay someone that does it in bulk a small fee to do it for you, and since they have economy of scale they can keep costs low enough to make it attractive as a convenience.
If you have one application that requires 3.0, and everything else is happy with 2.5, I would just link /usr/bin/python back to 2.5, and change the one program that doesnt work that way to call 3.0 explicitly, rather than changing ALL the other programs to call 2.5 explicitly. I assume that is what the GP meant.
More likely they erroneously assumed they did not need a translator. The languages are just different enough to get you into trouble. The Swede said 'Domstolen sade inte skyldig" but the Dane heard "sagde han e skylder" and the Danes thought he he had already been convicted.
"Same is true for France."
That seems doubtful. French 'intelligence' is just as bad as the NSA, but without having to break their law to do it.
Lots of these people actually think their email account is tied to their computer. They think they would have to get a new computer to change email accounts.
Doesnt hurt my eyes at all.
I do wonder about the strange extended characters being used, and why there is no content.
Oh, wait, this is yahoo. So that makes sense too.
They are and this is the one thing he is clearly doing wrong here.
He has an official website provided by the tax payers and accessible to all. That's where this should be posted. Not on a pseudo-random private web site that is going to try to 'monetize' anyone that shows up looking for the information.
All over the country.
Even up to the 1940s and 1950s it was common here, it was part of the daily routine at the elementary schools to store the students weapons during the school day and return them at the end of the day, so that students were able to bag some supper on their way home. To the best of my knowledge this was common basically from coast to coast, in every rural district in the country.
So I was never ever stupid enough to have anything to do with facebook. I feel bad for the people they are screwing, a little, and I do really hope they have success in court and take a big chunk out just on general principles, but I am really not affected here.
However, I was stupid enough to sign up for gmail once upon a time. And I even uploaded a little picture that was supposedly ONLY to display to people that I have approved on that chat list.
Fast forward a little, google buys youtube, and gets this G+ itch. So I have a youtube account and the email address given to youtube for recovery was my gmail account. Without a by-your-leave I suddenly find the two accounts have been merged, and this picture is being displayed on youtube, as well as G+ (where I have NEVER created any account or given any permission for the use of my name, likeness, or personal information in any way shape or form!)
If these suits against facebook are getting traction why not a suit against google? I am sure I am not the only person they have done this too, in fact it seems certain that some of them even live in Europe, where privacy protection laws are a bit stronger.
This is truly scummy behavior and while it would certainly be great to see either of these corporations hit with a fine big enough to change their behavior, that does not seem very likely. The real solution would be good old fashioned shunning - turn your back on these companies and any others that do this. Too bad our population has been so thoroughly conditioned at this point to feel helpless and bitch about it on facebook instead of closing your account and blocking the bastards at the router.
Europe isnt like Europe either.
Gun laws vary quite a bit in Europe, and they also have a tradition of applying common sense and simply ignoring technical infractions where no one is hurt (again, this varies widely, but is correct in many areas.)
Gun laws do not make Europe safer, cultures which do not approve of violence make Europe safer. The US was once just as safe (and that was back before 'gun control' was an issue, when children routinely carried their rifle with them to school.) What has changed has nothing to do with weapons, it has to do with our attitudes towards violence.
They will be released, and their convictions should be expunged. Although in practice this isnt quite automatic, they will still have to get a lawyer to file a motion for it.
Actually, when politicians attempt to regulate technology they do not understand, that's news for nerds. Whether it's firearms or encryption or pen-test software or whatever.