"Recall the Wikipedia 'Virgin Killer' incident? That only came to light because wikipedia is a major site with competent management to notice it and enough brand recognition for people to care."
That's not really true, some ISPs recognised it in the block list and didn't filter it despite being part of the list. Some however did, so it became a public problem full of loud vocal people around the same time a few ISPs who did notice it were also pointing out the problem.
Which is really the point, if it had been a much lesser known site then the ISPs would've still made a noise but because it would be lesser known they would be heard over the masses who also noticed it which they barely were in the Wikipedia case.
Trust me, the list isn't that big a state secret, if it reached a point where it was being abused or used incorrectly then someone at an ISP could easily and would leak it.
People just wont do it generally because there's no real public interest in leaking a list of child porn sites, and if you did get caught you wouldn't have a public interest defence and would also likely get labelled as a supporter of paedophiles. If that list does start getting used for other things maliciously or not then some of the many people with access will gladly leak it.
As I say I don't like the IWF either but I don't think it's particularly worth worrying about as a secretive censorship mechanism, the infrastructure just isn't there to support that kind of thing - you don't sign the official secrets act or any such thing - and too many average joes who are just like you, me and many other Slashdot users work at ISPs have access to the list. Historically it's always just been e-mailed to the relevant people at an ISP because most ISPs don't trust to give the IWF direct access to their systems to update it directly. If there's ever reason to make a noise about it, noise will be made. Again this doesn't mean I'd rather see the IWF removed and the money spent on people who actually stop real physical abuse, but again, I don't think it's worth worrying about as a mechanism for censorship until we start to hear noise to the contrary. If all is quiet when it comes to the IWF, it's because it's just doing it's job and there's nothing worth making noise about.
Are people dumb enough not to be using Apple for their OS? Even then what actually ties you to buying an OS from Microsoft? Hell what ties you to using Microsoft to get an OS on your laptop? I'm doing quite well without it on my Apple machine.
Hopefully this will give you a big hint as to the fact you don't understand that it's marketshare that determines monopoly, not amount of competition. There's always been many many competitors to Windows, yet Microsoft had a monopoly because of the marketshare, not the lack of competition.
"I never thought the porn was a moral judgment (is it? I might be totally wrong in that assumption). I thought it was about: give your kids one of these, download him whatever he wants, and we promise to do our best not to show him something non kid friendly."
Even if you ignore the fact that the measures prevent adults seeing it too, it's still a moral judgement as to whether kids should be prevented from seeing it or not. Some people would argue that it's harmless whoever sees it, some would argue it's not right to block adults from seeing it just for some possibly irrational fear it's harmful to kids, others would argue it's right to protect children to the detriment of adults freedoms and others would argue it's harmful to everyone. It's a moral judgement either way.
"But a gay cure app...I'm imagining parents in shock realizing that the son they planned to be gay has sneaked a download of that and oh are they mad with apple! I"
Well no, a more realistic scenario is the complete opposite- a son who is gay and the parents don't want to be gay is told he needs to be cured and should use the app will be made so miserable because it's not something that can be cured he ends up killing himself. This isn't just a fictitious scenario, it's a real scenario that has happened all too many times. People are told they can be cured, that they need to be cured, and even though they can't they may mistakenly believe they can and that mental turmoil where what they've been told conflicts with how they really feel, and always will really feel is enough to make anyone depressed or send them crazy.
"I feel censoring images one might find objectionable for your child to see makes sense, given that apple has always marketed itself towards the young crowd, but getting into the realm of censoring unpopular ideas crosses the line on what I think is acceptable use of their policies."
They're the same thing, you're just letting your predefined prejudice cloud recognition of that fact. Censoring porn based on the idea that it's harmful to children, and that by extension adults shouldn't be able to see it for the sake of the children is no different to censoring anything else based on any other idea. You still have something being censored and an arbitrary idea as to why it should be censored behind that decision to censor either way.
Being gay is not an obsession any more than being straight is, it's merely a natural trait as to who you're attracted to.
Free choice is not inherent, which is why we have things such as the concept of diminished responsibility in court. There's an understanding that just because people do certain things, does not mean they're doing them because they believe deep down it's right, but often because they are vulnerable and have been manipulated into doing such things.
Your argument could similarly be used to say a woman or child that has been trafficked for use as a prostitute is doing so out of choice because she could just run away - but the fact is she doesn't because of other pressures, such as the fear of being killed and such. In the scenario we have here, it's about people facing social pressures such as their family possibly never speaking to them if they're religious. This phenomenon is very real and has led to many people killing themselves.
Eventually people who are gay will realise it's not something you can just make go away even if that's what they've been preached to all their lives and so it's inherently impossible to make the rational choice of wanting to use this app if you're gay- the only reason you would is either for comedy value (fair argument) or if you've been bullied or brainwashed into it. The "gay lobby" has fought against this app because they do not want Apple to be allowing religious zealots to push people into this kind of situation where their mind is clashing with their true feelings to the extent they become high suicide risks. They don't want to see people bullied to death using applications like this simply because certain ignorant bigoted people mistakenly think homosexuality can be cured.
"Nonsense. Do you think Penguin Classics condones the word "nigger," (as in Huck Finn), or that Random House approves of pedophilia (Lolita)?"
Not at all but I'd argue it's because they fall into the category I said is preferable- they don't make moral judgements, they publish anything of a quality worth publishing regardless of content.
As I say, it's the fact they got into the business of deciding what is moral in the first place that puts them into a position where that implication arises.
"I have to agree with whomever stated that it's disappointing to see Apple fold by mere virtue of a petition. This is especially troubling when lawmakers are pressuring Apple to remove apps as well. Will they bow to that pressure too? Where does it end?"
I think it's dissapointing they folded and removed apps at all based on the topic and content of the app (rather than quality, or security risk). As I say, it'd be much nicer if like Penguin Classics et al. they published anything.
As I say, I simply don't think it was wrong to fold when they're already in the business of making moral judgements and practicing censorship. I just think it's wrong for them to have got into that business in the first place. At worst their filtering of applications should be based on quality and security of applications IMO, and even then quality is a somewhat arbitrary measure- one mans trash is another mans gem.
Apple invited this position by getting into the business of censorship in the first place, yet this position - that of siding against bigotry - is the right one for a company who has (stupidly) put themselves in that position. That's really all I'm saying, certainly not that I support censorship in general.
No it's not, as someone previously involved with a regional schools broadband ISP I can assure you plenty of people at the ISPs see that list. If it was so controversal and had more than child porn on it, someone would leak it.
The list is neither particularly big at anyone time nor is it subversive. It is what it is, a list of sites hosting child porn.
I know it's nice to create conspiracy theories, but thus far, when it comes to the IWF, they prove entirely unsubstantiated and have yet to bear any resemblance to reality.
Ignoring the issue of censorship for now, and simply talking about choice, it's defining choice that's the problem.
For example, is someone who has been brainwashed to be a suicide bomber really making the choice to be a suicide bomber?
Sometimes people do not make choices that in their heart they really want to make, but simply that they have been told, or perhaps even forced to make. It is about protecting vulnerable people.
Even if you're a man and you go and have sex with a man now it doesn't make you gay, it just makes you someone straight who had sex with a man to try and prove a point.
Your comment is like a white guy saying "I choose not to be black, so being black is a choice", or a man saying "I choose not to be a woman, so being a woman is a choice". In other words, your comment is utterly nonsensical.
In fact, imagine the most ugly person of the opposite sex you've seen. Do you choose not to be attracted to them, or are you simply just not attracted to them? I'll help you- it's the latter, no matter how hard you try if you don't find someone attractive you can't make yourself find them attractive. This is precisely the same with being gay- if you're gay you're just inherently attracted to the same sex. You do not choose it.
In contrast, people really do change religions, or really do sincerely become atheists and stop believing in god, which demonstrates that it is a choice.
Personally I'm anti-censorship and mostly dislike Apple.
But I actually applaud them for this move. Whilst I would much rather Apple ran a completely uncensored store and allowed this app and everything else to go, they don't. As they don't run an uncensored store, and have, in the past, censored applications based on their arbitrary moral judgements, then it implies anything they allow through their filter is, by that same moral judgement, deemed acceptable by them.
This means that by allowing the app to remain Apple would be claiming that for example, whilst porn is morally unacceptable (as they have banned porn apps in the past) then applications such as this are morally acceptable. The perception being that Apple think this sort of thing is okay, but for example, porn is not.
As I said in a previous post in the other article, I think the best position for a company to be in is to not censor at all and hence not have to make moral judgements. Apple has done the right thing here - they've accepted that if they're going to enforce some morals such as banning porn, then they must enforce other morals such as banning the views of right wing bigoted fascist religious nutjobs.
Note that I'm not saying Apple shouldn't have an approval process not censoring doesn't preclude filtering out malware as that's a judgement based on security rather than arbiitrarily defined morales for example, but simply that once they got into the censorship game, they have to stand by their decisions, and in this case they've made the progressive, forward thinking decision.
So perhaps this left wing you are talking of simply recognises that the company has already made the decision to censor and hence that's really not what's in question here. Perhaps they simply recognise that the debate came down to what Apple feels is morally right or not based on that prior decision to censor. Perhaps they're simply happy that in a situation where censorship is already a given, it's better to accept that's the case and focus on the new battle- that of ensuring any censorship that does happen equally squeezes right wing religious bigotry and ignorance out of the equation. This doesn't stop protesting against censorship in general too, merely it's the case that that's just not what the battle was here.
So congratulations, they won, they got Apple to do the right thing under it's own rules. Now they can go back to trying to convince Apple to change those rules, and yes, if that means removing censorship, it means allowing this app back out too. One might even argue that forcing Apple to make decisions publicly like this which aren't the best thing to have publicised PR wise is in itself a good tool in fighting against such censorship in the first place as again, the only reason Apple had to have this battle is because they had chosen the censorship route.
Well done Apple on doing the right thing under your current rules, and well done arbitrarily defined left wing (whoever you are) that Archangel Michael seems to think has done something wrong.
I think most people would prefer to be called balanced, it is after all, far better than being unbalanced.
But that would explain your obscure comment which extends to reach a nonsensical conclusion from the information given followed by an insult straight out of the 1980s.
Still, have fun being "unbalanced"- they have places for people like you.
There seems to be a lot of gaps in your understanding of the IWF:
"You're over two years - possibly much more - too late."
Yes, much, much more. It's been around since the mid 90s so more like 15 years, rather than two. You may think this is irrelevant but I'm not sure it is. Whilst there has been noise over the years, the IWF has never really been extended outside it's remit, and whilst it's stepped outside it's bounds and screwed up a few times it has quickly backtracked. I think it's important to note that the IWF has generally not strayed outside these bounds because there's recognition by politicians and the like that by extending the IWF's remit you also risk increasing the amount of anti-IWF sentiment meaning the IWF as a whole might end up being a target of criticism putting at risk it's existence even for censoring child porn. There hasn't historically been a lot of serious political will to change the IWF's remit for this reason. That may well change of course, but it's a point worth keeping in mind.
"The UK ISP industry already has the technology in place to block more-or-less any site they like and to administer that blocking from a single, central location which then gets pushed out to most of the big providers."
The key term here being of course "most". The IWF block list is optional, to change that would require legislative changes, and even if there was backing in parliament for this to go ahead it would take years to get legislation through and enact it by which time either attitudes will have changed and it'll be scrapped, or the technology community will have long worked around it anyway- just as they have with the Digital Economy Act and it's focus on P2P when most sharing is done via less public methods now (encrypted VPN, physical trading, direct downloads, IM transfers).
It's also worth noting that there was a lot of noise from ISPs about dropping out of the scheme even when it fucked up with the whole Wikipedia debacle.
"1. It wasn't widely publicised."
If you haven't heard of the IWF in the UK then you're obviously not an IT professional. I find it hard to believe anyone in the IT world in the UK can not really have heard of the IWF.
"2. It was mostly centred around blocking of child porn."
Where mostly = only.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the IWF, largely because it costs public money to run and I'm not convinced it solves anything because it does nothing to stop sharing of child porn through encrypted private channels, VPN, or on physical media and so forth, and certainly does nothing to actually stop real world physical child abuse. I'd certainy much rather see the money spent on a couple more specialist officers who have the power to go and deal with that, than I would a bunch of overpaid people who sit adding and removing a few URLs to and from a list each day.
But let's stick to the facts, you make the IWF out to be some secret stealthy organisation that's come onto the scene recently and that blocks arbitrary content. That simply isn't true, it's a well known organisation that has a predefined remit which it has for most of it's existence stuck to with only a few fuckups. I don't like the orgnisation, but I'm not sure complete and utter misinformation about it will allow for helpful and rational debate about the threat of unwarranted censorship.
There's nothing secret or subversive about the IWF in it's 15 year history thus far, and it's blocking methods are neither high tech or particularly centralised or mandatory. It's implementation relies on distributing a list of child porn sites to ISPs who then choose whether or not to implement that blacklist, and how they implement it. Some simply just remove the given domains from their DNS servers and leave it at that.
Again though, the IWF is a pointless waste of space regardless and I agree it has the potential to go to far is stupid politicians get involved, I'll give you that. I don't expect it to be anything to worry about however because it's methods are so primitive and pathetic as to be irrelevant to anyone with an ounce of technical ability anyway.
No need to bet, it's true, Microsoft had all but killed off the IE development team.
IE6 came out around 2001 and Firefox first released in 2004, and took some time to become popular.
Because of the lack of competition or need to move much in the browser market, Microsoft saw little reason to invest in IE.
But then Firefox started to become a credible threat, by 1.5 it had gained a noticable amount of ground and was showing no sign of slowing.
Microsoft in 2006 released their first new browser release for 5 years, in the same month as Firefox 2.
I'd agree this is probably why the IE team are so decent towards the Firefox team- because they realise that without the competition they brought, their jobs really would not be there.
I think it's the former rather than the latter. I have an old XP PC in my spare room I only ever use for web browsing now and then. The only thing that's changed over the years is that I've updated Firefox each time a new update has come out, and pre-FF4, it has slowly become completely unusuable to the point around 3.5 I just gave up and stuck Chrome on which works fine. No extensions were even installed.
I've been critical of FF for becoming less stable, slower and more of a memory hog getting worse with each release since FF1.5 / FF2.0.
Whilst I can't talk of stability because, well, I've only just installed it, and can't talk of memory usage yet for the same reason, it is certainly noticably faster.
Maybe it's the hardware accelleration, I'm not sure, but my god, at least it's fast now and not the painful slow piece of crap it's become in recent years.
The default UI was horrendous to look at, but you can de-bastardise it thank god, now I've found the options for that it gets a big thumbs up from me so far. They finally seem to have improved the browser noticably, rather than continued it's decline.
Syria has also seen protests, this Wikipedia link suggestst he largest since the 80s, but I'll take that with a pinch of salt.
But you can certainly take Jordan and Palestine off your list- the only reason you didn't hear about them is because the leadership conceded the protesters demands before it got out of hand which is in stark contrast to say Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and so forth where there was/is prolonged stand off.
For what it's worth I'm not convinced it's simply price of food and living standards either, whilst that's obviously a factor I think there's more to it. Take Iran for example, it is actually the poor there that support Ahmadinejad and keep him in power, whilst it is the educated class that do not live in poverty that have been long protesting against his rule. I think people have to be ready for revolution and democracy, and I think part of that is education too. It's quite possible the internet is at least a partial factor in that.
These things tend to be self correcting when you're talking about shifts over a period of years. As foreign imports become more expensive, local produce becomes more competitive and so the market for local produce grows.
Just a few years back in the UK you could go to a supermarket like ASDA and all the chicken would be flown from Thailand, with the events of recent years there has been a massive increase in transport already and so now it's pretty much all produced in the UK again.
It's only when an economy tanks overnight and government and law and order falls that you really see things like "mass food riots", but that takes a pretty major event- even Japan despite having it's world shaken (not meant as a pun, sorry!) on top of it's already extremely fragile and struggling economy doesn't seem in danger of this.
The US uses around 4 times as much oil per day as China, yet has 1/4th the population. There's still plenty of scope for America to bring down it's oil usage anyway.
For what it's worth the UK has seen fuel increase in price by 65% - 70% over the last three years due to a number of factors from rising oil prices, to increasing tax yet I don't see us even being close to an end of the world scenario yet though.
I have to wonder, have you just started playing Homefront or something? I got it yesterday and your theory sounds like it's straight out of it's storyline.
"I'm not really sure what to make of China these days. It's definitely authoritarian. It doesn't seem to be communist (in the Marx sense, nor the Mao/Stalin sense). I don't really know wtf you would call it. Bad, I suppose."
China is more capitalist than even the US nowadays, this is why there is so many reports of employee abuse and so forth- it's capitalism without the restraints that historically stem from unions (which are generally socialist).
It's also why small Chinese villages are being bulldozed to make way for new cities, why rivers are being polluted without a care and so forth - companies have a free reign to lower their margins and compete in any way they want.
It's very much an example of unrestricted capitalism for the most part.
No need to do the whole condescending "old timers" thing particularly when you have no idea how long I've been in the field myself.
Historically, a platform has been a much more abstract concept than you're making out, in the academic world phones, consoles, computers have always been called separate platforms because, well, they are - fundamentally the hardware is different, and so is the software, and whilst some components are shared many aren't.
It's not a re-definition by Microsoft by any measure, it's merely the classic computer science definition of the term. I agree that in some circles that term has been muddied, specifically in that cross platform means different OS, and possibly different architecture but that's a fundamentally narrow and nonsensical definition of cross platform and again, even then with the differences in software between Windows Phone 7, the Xbox, and Windows on the desktop it's not as if it's particularly the same OS anyway. Really, you're just using a bastardised form of the term, when actually all you want to say is that XNA doesn't really work on non-Microsoft platforms, rather than that it's not cross platform, because clearly it is. Personally I prefer to stick to the more rigorous and logically sound terms of academia than misused often illogical slang usually bred from the hobbyist world.
I'm not switching tools for each target anyway, HLSL/Cg are just fine for the platforms I deal with, it's only really when I focus on Android but as I say that's been very little of my development work thus far. Besides, it's not as if shaders are massive lumps of code that are difficult to port for the most part. It would be really silly to cripple sales to a massive portion of the market over something as trivial as porting shaders.
Groklaw is something I've never bothered to read and it became quite apparent to me very quickly that he was in fact a troll.
You can blame Groklaw if you want, but there's plenty of us independently minded folk who have similarly come to the same conclusion based simply on the fact that much of what he does post really is actually provably false.
You can't blame people for not wanting to swallow FUD, and whether the Groklaw community has similarly found distaste for him is neither here nor there. Whatever he is perceived to have done that's good, he has ruined with outright the outright FUD and attention whoring he persists in.
Slashdot Mirror
"Recall the Wikipedia 'Virgin Killer' incident? That only came to light because wikipedia is a major site with competent management to notice it and enough brand recognition for people to care."
That's not really true, some ISPs recognised it in the block list and didn't filter it despite being part of the list. Some however did, so it became a public problem full of loud vocal people around the same time a few ISPs who did notice it were also pointing out the problem.
Which is really the point, if it had been a much lesser known site then the ISPs would've still made a noise but because it would be lesser known they would be heard over the masses who also noticed it which they barely were in the Wikipedia case.
Trust me, the list isn't that big a state secret, if it reached a point where it was being abused or used incorrectly then someone at an ISP could easily and would leak it.
People just wont do it generally because there's no real public interest in leaking a list of child porn sites, and if you did get caught you wouldn't have a public interest defence and would also likely get labelled as a supporter of paedophiles. If that list does start getting used for other things maliciously or not then some of the many people with access will gladly leak it.
As I say I don't like the IWF either but I don't think it's particularly worth worrying about as a secretive censorship mechanism, the infrastructure just isn't there to support that kind of thing - you don't sign the official secrets act or any such thing - and too many average joes who are just like you, me and many other Slashdot users work at ISPs have access to the list. Historically it's always just been e-mailed to the relevant people at an ISP because most ISPs don't trust to give the IWF direct access to their systems to update it directly. If there's ever reason to make a noise about it, noise will be made. Again this doesn't mean I'd rather see the IWF removed and the money spent on people who actually stop real physical abuse, but again, I don't think it's worth worrying about as a mechanism for censorship until we start to hear noise to the contrary. If all is quiet when it comes to the IWF, it's because it's just doing it's job and there's nothing worth making noise about.
Yes but the context "Go out on a bender" quite clearly defines his intended meaning.
How is Microsoft a monopoly?
Are people dumb enough not to be using Apple for their OS? Even then what actually ties you to buying an OS from Microsoft? Hell what ties you to using Microsoft to get an OS on your laptop? I'm doing quite well without it on my Apple machine.
Hopefully this will give you a big hint as to the fact you don't understand that it's marketshare that determines monopoly, not amount of competition. There's always been many many competitors to Windows, yet Microsoft had a monopoly because of the marketshare, not the lack of competition.
"I never thought the porn was a moral judgment (is it? I might be totally wrong in that assumption). I thought it was about: give your kids one of these, download him whatever he wants, and we promise to do our best not to show him something non kid friendly."
Even if you ignore the fact that the measures prevent adults seeing it too, it's still a moral judgement as to whether kids should be prevented from seeing it or not. Some people would argue that it's harmless whoever sees it, some would argue it's not right to block adults from seeing it just for some possibly irrational fear it's harmful to kids, others would argue it's right to protect children to the detriment of adults freedoms and others would argue it's harmful to everyone. It's a moral judgement either way.
"But a gay cure app...I'm imagining parents in shock realizing that the son they planned to be gay has sneaked a download of that and oh are they mad with apple! I"
Well no, a more realistic scenario is the complete opposite- a son who is gay and the parents don't want to be gay is told he needs to be cured and should use the app will be made so miserable because it's not something that can be cured he ends up killing himself. This isn't just a fictitious scenario, it's a real scenario that has happened all too many times. People are told they can be cured, that they need to be cured, and even though they can't they may mistakenly believe they can and that mental turmoil where what they've been told conflicts with how they really feel, and always will really feel is enough to make anyone depressed or send them crazy.
"I feel censoring images one might find objectionable for your child to see makes sense, given that apple has always marketed itself towards the young crowd, but getting into the realm of censoring unpopular ideas crosses the line on what I think is acceptable use of their policies."
They're the same thing, you're just letting your predefined prejudice cloud recognition of that fact. Censoring porn based on the idea that it's harmful to children, and that by extension adults shouldn't be able to see it for the sake of the children is no different to censoring anything else based on any other idea. You still have something being censored and an arbitrary idea as to why it should be censored behind that decision to censor either way.
Being gay is not an obsession any more than being straight is, it's merely a natural trait as to who you're attracted to.
Free choice is not inherent, which is why we have things such as the concept of diminished responsibility in court. There's an understanding that just because people do certain things, does not mean they're doing them because they believe deep down it's right, but often because they are vulnerable and have been manipulated into doing such things.
Your argument could similarly be used to say a woman or child that has been trafficked for use as a prostitute is doing so out of choice because she could just run away - but the fact is she doesn't because of other pressures, such as the fear of being killed and such. In the scenario we have here, it's about people facing social pressures such as their family possibly never speaking to them if they're religious. This phenomenon is very real and has led to many people killing themselves.
Eventually people who are gay will realise it's not something you can just make go away even if that's what they've been preached to all their lives and so it's inherently impossible to make the rational choice of wanting to use this app if you're gay- the only reason you would is either for comedy value (fair argument) or if you've been bullied or brainwashed into it. The "gay lobby" has fought against this app because they do not want Apple to be allowing religious zealots to push people into this kind of situation where their mind is clashing with their true feelings to the extent they become high suicide risks. They don't want to see people bullied to death using applications like this simply because certain ignorant bigoted people mistakenly think homosexuality can be cured.
"Nonsense. Do you think Penguin Classics condones the word "nigger," (as in Huck Finn), or that Random House approves of pedophilia (Lolita)?"
Not at all but I'd argue it's because they fall into the category I said is preferable- they don't make moral judgements, they publish anything of a quality worth publishing regardless of content.
As I say, it's the fact they got into the business of deciding what is moral in the first place that puts them into a position where that implication arises.
"I have to agree with whomever stated that it's disappointing to see Apple fold by mere virtue of a petition. This is especially troubling when lawmakers are pressuring Apple to remove apps as well. Will they bow to that pressure too? Where does it end?"
I think it's dissapointing they folded and removed apps at all based on the topic and content of the app (rather than quality, or security risk). As I say, it'd be much nicer if like Penguin Classics et al. they published anything.
As I say, I simply don't think it was wrong to fold when they're already in the business of making moral judgements and practicing censorship. I just think it's wrong for them to have got into that business in the first place. At worst their filtering of applications should be based on quality and security of applications IMO, and even then quality is a somewhat arbitrary measure- one mans trash is another mans gem.
Apple invited this position by getting into the business of censorship in the first place, yet this position - that of siding against bigotry - is the right one for a company who has (stupidly) put themselves in that position. That's really all I'm saying, certainly not that I support censorship in general.
"By your logic, does the fact that I'm not attracted to non-whites make me a born racist?"
Er no, it just means you're not attracted to non-whites. That doesn't make you racist, it simply defines your sexual preferences.
"and it just so happens that the entire psychology profession agrees with me"
Wrong.
"One can have a genetic predisposition to be attracted to the same sex, but this does not force them to act homosexual."
No it doesn't force them to act homosexually you're right, but it doesn't change the fact they ARE homosexual.
No it's not, as someone previously involved with a regional schools broadband ISP I can assure you plenty of people at the ISPs see that list. If it was so controversal and had more than child porn on it, someone would leak it.
The list is neither particularly big at anyone time nor is it subversive. It is what it is, a list of sites hosting child porn.
I know it's nice to create conspiracy theories, but thus far, when it comes to the IWF, they prove entirely unsubstantiated and have yet to bear any resemblance to reality.
Ignoring the issue of censorship for now, and simply talking about choice, it's defining choice that's the problem.
For example, is someone who has been brainwashed to be a suicide bomber really making the choice to be a suicide bomber?
Sometimes people do not make choices that in their heart they really want to make, but simply that they have been told, or perhaps even forced to make. It is about protecting vulnerable people.
No you didn't, you were born not gay idiot.
Even if you're a man and you go and have sex with a man now it doesn't make you gay, it just makes you someone straight who had sex with a man to try and prove a point.
Your comment is like a white guy saying "I choose not to be black, so being black is a choice", or a man saying "I choose not to be a woman, so being a woman is a choice". In other words, your comment is utterly nonsensical.
In fact, imagine the most ugly person of the opposite sex you've seen. Do you choose not to be attracted to them, or are you simply just not attracted to them? I'll help you- it's the latter, no matter how hard you try if you don't find someone attractive you can't make yourself find them attractive. This is precisely the same with being gay- if you're gay you're just inherently attracted to the same sex. You do not choose it.
In contrast, people really do change religions, or really do sincerely become atheists and stop believing in god, which demonstrates that it is a choice.
Personally I'm anti-censorship and mostly dislike Apple.
But I actually applaud them for this move. Whilst I would much rather Apple ran a completely uncensored store and allowed this app and everything else to go, they don't. As they don't run an uncensored store, and have, in the past, censored applications based on their arbitrary moral judgements, then it implies anything they allow through their filter is, by that same moral judgement, deemed acceptable by them.
This means that by allowing the app to remain Apple would be claiming that for example, whilst porn is morally unacceptable (as they have banned porn apps in the past) then applications such as this are morally acceptable. The perception being that Apple think this sort of thing is okay, but for example, porn is not.
As I said in a previous post in the other article, I think the best position for a company to be in is to not censor at all and hence not have to make moral judgements. Apple has done the right thing here - they've accepted that if they're going to enforce some morals such as banning porn, then they must enforce other morals such as banning the views of right wing bigoted fascist religious nutjobs.
Note that I'm not saying Apple shouldn't have an approval process not censoring doesn't preclude filtering out malware as that's a judgement based on security rather than arbiitrarily defined morales for example, but simply that once they got into the censorship game, they have to stand by their decisions, and in this case they've made the progressive, forward thinking decision.
So perhaps this left wing you are talking of simply recognises that the company has already made the decision to censor and hence that's really not what's in question here. Perhaps they simply recognise that the debate came down to what Apple feels is morally right or not based on that prior decision to censor. Perhaps they're simply happy that in a situation where censorship is already a given, it's better to accept that's the case and focus on the new battle- that of ensuring any censorship that does happen equally squeezes right wing religious bigotry and ignorance out of the equation. This doesn't stop protesting against censorship in general too, merely it's the case that that's just not what the battle was here.
So congratulations, they won, they got Apple to do the right thing under it's own rules. Now they can go back to trying to convince Apple to change those rules, and yes, if that means removing censorship, it means allowing this app back out too. One might even argue that forcing Apple to make decisions publicly like this which aren't the best thing to have publicised PR wise is in itself a good tool in fighting against such censorship in the first place as again, the only reason Apple had to have this battle is because they had chosen the censorship route.
Well done Apple on doing the right thing under your current rules, and well done arbitrarily defined left wing (whoever you are) that Archangel Michael seems to think has done something wrong.
I think most people would prefer to be called balanced, it is after all, far better than being unbalanced.
But that would explain your obscure comment which extends to reach a nonsensical conclusion from the information given followed by an insult straight out of the 1980s.
Still, have fun being "unbalanced"- they have places for people like you.
There seems to be a lot of gaps in your understanding of the IWF:
"You're over two years - possibly much more - too late."
Yes, much, much more. It's been around since the mid 90s so more like 15 years, rather than two. You may think this is irrelevant but I'm not sure it is. Whilst there has been noise over the years, the IWF has never really been extended outside it's remit, and whilst it's stepped outside it's bounds and screwed up a few times it has quickly backtracked. I think it's important to note that the IWF has generally not strayed outside these bounds because there's recognition by politicians and the like that by extending the IWF's remit you also risk increasing the amount of anti-IWF sentiment meaning the IWF as a whole might end up being a target of criticism putting at risk it's existence even for censoring child porn. There hasn't historically been a lot of serious political will to change the IWF's remit for this reason. That may well change of course, but it's a point worth keeping in mind.
"The UK ISP industry already has the technology in place to block more-or-less any site they like and to administer that blocking from a single, central location which then gets pushed out to most of the big providers."
The key term here being of course "most". The IWF block list is optional, to change that would require legislative changes, and even if there was backing in parliament for this to go ahead it would take years to get legislation through and enact it by which time either attitudes will have changed and it'll be scrapped, or the technology community will have long worked around it anyway- just as they have with the Digital Economy Act and it's focus on P2P when most sharing is done via less public methods now (encrypted VPN, physical trading, direct downloads, IM transfers).
It's also worth noting that there was a lot of noise from ISPs about dropping out of the scheme even when it fucked up with the whole Wikipedia debacle.
"1. It wasn't widely publicised."
If you haven't heard of the IWF in the UK then you're obviously not an IT professional. I find it hard to believe anyone in the IT world in the UK can not really have heard of the IWF.
"2. It was mostly centred around blocking of child porn."
Where mostly = only.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the IWF, largely because it costs public money to run and I'm not convinced it solves anything because it does nothing to stop sharing of child porn through encrypted private channels, VPN, or on physical media and so forth, and certainly does nothing to actually stop real world physical child abuse. I'd certainy much rather see the money spent on a couple more specialist officers who have the power to go and deal with that, than I would a bunch of overpaid people who sit adding and removing a few URLs to and from a list each day.
But let's stick to the facts, you make the IWF out to be some secret stealthy organisation that's come onto the scene recently and that blocks arbitrary content. That simply isn't true, it's a well known organisation that has a predefined remit which it has for most of it's existence stuck to with only a few fuckups. I don't like the orgnisation, but I'm not sure complete and utter misinformation about it will allow for helpful and rational debate about the threat of unwarranted censorship.
There's nothing secret or subversive about the IWF in it's 15 year history thus far, and it's blocking methods are neither high tech or particularly centralised or mandatory. It's implementation relies on distributing a list of child porn sites to ISPs who then choose whether or not to implement that blacklist, and how they implement it. Some simply just remove the given domains from their DNS servers and leave it at that.
Again though, the IWF is a pointless waste of space regardless and I agree it has the potential to go to far is stupid politicians get involved, I'll give you that. I don't expect it to be anything to worry about however because it's methods are so primitive and pathetic as to be irrelevant to anyone with an ounce of technical ability anyway.
No need to bet, it's true, Microsoft had all but killed off the IE development team.
IE6 came out around 2001 and Firefox first released in 2004, and took some time to become popular.
Because of the lack of competition or need to move much in the browser market, Microsoft saw little reason to invest in IE.
But then Firefox started to become a credible threat, by 1.5 it had gained a noticable amount of ground and was showing no sign of slowing.
Microsoft in 2006 released their first new browser release for 5 years, in the same month as Firefox 2.
I'd agree this is probably why the IE team are so decent towards the Firefox team- because they realise that without the competition they brought, their jobs really would not be there.
I think it's the former rather than the latter. I have an old XP PC in my spare room I only ever use for web browsing now and then. The only thing that's changed over the years is that I've updated Firefox each time a new update has come out, and pre-FF4, it has slowly become completely unusuable to the point around 3.5 I just gave up and stuck Chrome on which works fine. No extensions were even installed.
I've been critical of FF for becoming less stable, slower and more of a memory hog getting worse with each release since FF1.5 / FF2.0.
Whilst I can't talk of stability because, well, I've only just installed it, and can't talk of memory usage yet for the same reason, it is certainly noticably faster.
Maybe it's the hardware accelleration, I'm not sure, but my god, at least it's fast now and not the painful slow piece of crap it's become in recent years.
The default UI was horrendous to look at, but you can de-bastardise it thank god, now I've found the options for that it gets a big thumbs up from me so far. They finally seem to have improved the browser noticably, rather than continued it's decline.
Yes, and everything is Microsoft's fault according to FOSS zealots.
What's your point exactly?
I prefer to subscribe to the more objective view personally, where the truth is somewhere in between.
The world would also be a better place if you jumped off a cliff and took your ignorance with you.
"Also, I don't think the religious devout would consider the
app hateful."
Yes, that's because they're as ignorant and stupid as you are.
I dunno, the idea of Steve Ballmer running into a hosting facility swinging a chair around kinda has me in stitches.
Please say it's true.
And that there's a video.
That makes no sense whatsoever because:
- China is not communist, because it follows no communist ideals
- Plenty of Chinese are employers, not employees
I don't mean to piss on your parade but Jordan already replaced it's government as a result of these protests:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/09/us-jordan-government-idUSTRE7185AG20110209
The PA has accepted previously cancelled elections now need take place and dissolved it's government:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0214/Palestinian-PM-announces-full-cabinet-overhaul
Syria has also seen protests, this Wikipedia link suggestst he largest since the 80s, but I'll take that with a pinch of salt.
But you can certainly take Jordan and Palestine off your list- the only reason you didn't hear about them is because the leadership conceded the protesters demands before it got out of hand which is in stark contrast to say Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and so forth where there was/is prolonged stand off.
For what it's worth I'm not convinced it's simply price of food and living standards either, whilst that's obviously a factor I think there's more to it. Take Iran for example, it is actually the poor there that support Ahmadinejad and keep him in power, whilst it is the educated class that do not live in poverty that have been long protesting against his rule. I think people have to be ready for revolution and democracy, and I think part of that is education too. It's quite possible the internet is at least a partial factor in that.
Except it doesn't actually work like that.
These things tend to be self correcting when you're talking about shifts over a period of years. As foreign imports become more expensive, local produce becomes more competitive and so the market for local produce grows.
Just a few years back in the UK you could go to a supermarket like ASDA and all the chicken would be flown from Thailand, with the events of recent years there has been a massive increase in transport already and so now it's pretty much all produced in the UK again.
It's only when an economy tanks overnight and government and law and order falls that you really see things like "mass food riots", but that takes a pretty major event- even Japan despite having it's world shaken (not meant as a pun, sorry!) on top of it's already extremely fragile and struggling economy doesn't seem in danger of this.
The US uses around 4 times as much oil per day as China, yet has 1/4th the population. There's still plenty of scope for America to bring down it's oil usage anyway.
For what it's worth the UK has seen fuel increase in price by 65% - 70% over the last three years due to a number of factors from rising oil prices, to increasing tax yet I don't see us even being close to an end of the world scenario yet though.
I have to wonder, have you just started playing Homefront or something? I got it yesterday and your theory sounds like it's straight out of it's storyline.
"I'm not really sure what to make of China these days. It's definitely authoritarian. It doesn't seem to be communist (in the Marx sense, nor the Mao/Stalin sense). I don't really know wtf you would call it. Bad, I suppose."
China is more capitalist than even the US nowadays, this is why there is so many reports of employee abuse and so forth- it's capitalism without the restraints that historically stem from unions (which are generally socialist).
It's also why small Chinese villages are being bulldozed to make way for new cities, why rivers are being polluted without a care and so forth - companies have a free reign to lower their margins and compete in any way they want.
It's very much an example of unrestricted capitalism for the most part.
No need to do the whole condescending "old timers" thing particularly when you have no idea how long I've been in the field myself.
Historically, a platform has been a much more abstract concept than you're making out, in the academic world phones, consoles, computers have always been called separate platforms because, well, they are - fundamentally the hardware is different, and so is the software, and whilst some components are shared many aren't.
It's not a re-definition by Microsoft by any measure, it's merely the classic computer science definition of the term. I agree that in some circles that term has been muddied, specifically in that cross platform means different OS, and possibly different architecture but that's a fundamentally narrow and nonsensical definition of cross platform and again, even then with the differences in software between Windows Phone 7, the Xbox, and Windows on the desktop it's not as if it's particularly the same OS anyway. Really, you're just using a bastardised form of the term, when actually all you want to say is that XNA doesn't really work on non-Microsoft platforms, rather than that it's not cross platform, because clearly it is. Personally I prefer to stick to the more rigorous and logically sound terms of academia than misused often illogical slang usually bred from the hobbyist world.
I'm not switching tools for each target anyway, HLSL/Cg are just fine for the platforms I deal with, it's only really when I focus on Android but as I say that's been very little of my development work thus far. Besides, it's not as if shaders are massive lumps of code that are difficult to port for the most part. It would be really silly to cripple sales to a massive portion of the market over something as trivial as porting shaders.
Groklaw is something I've never bothered to read and it became quite apparent to me very quickly that he was in fact a troll.
You can blame Groklaw if you want, but there's plenty of us independently minded folk who have similarly come to the same conclusion based simply on the fact that much of what he does post really is actually provably false.
You can't blame people for not wanting to swallow FUD, and whether the Groklaw community has similarly found distaste for him is neither here nor there. Whatever he is perceived to have done that's good, he has ruined with outright the outright FUD and attention whoring he persists in.