If there's value in it being a "private road", the Google van wouldn't have been able to drive straight down there and take photos, would it?
It strikes me they wanted the benefits of it being a private road (increased security and privacy) without doing any of the stuff you have to do to actually attain that, save for erecting a sign. If Google can do it in a van full of cameras, then any nefarious (or otherwise) individual can too.
The record companies are basically acting as banks, only without the rules and regulations about being upfront and clear about payment plans and (if you think about it) bizarre exclusivity contracts.
I'm actually surprised there isn't a financial market in existence already dedicated to the trading of "music industry bonds" (as they would no doubt be termed). Maybe it needs some VC firm to kickstart the whole thing, I don't know.
you missed "and because they used strong-arm tactics to squash any attempt by their customers to go to their competitors" in there where you said "because customers choose to do business with them". As much as your free-market ideal claptrap is wonderful, it fails to take into account the negative effects of vendor lock-in in relation to past abuses.
No, more like how people shouldn't leave their wallets and phones on a bar while they go to the toilet if they don't want them stolen. Any theft wouldn't be the victim's _fault_, but they could have easily prevented it with few in the way of downsides.
However, when the question is hysterically posed pertaining to what we should do to prevent such things from happening, it's pretty simple. With many crimes, the victim doesn't have a lot of choice: with this one, it was trivial to prevent, like locking your doors and windows before you go away for the weekend.
Web browser authors aren't trying to "make it safe" for anybody or anything; it's an impossible and unreasonable goal. There is no way to build "an attack-proof system" AT ALL, and there are a distinctly limited number of "physical attacks" which can be carried out remotely. In fact, I can think of only two possible vectors: visual and audio, and so long as people are wont to have animated avatars, run adverts on their sites, or look at videos of skateboarding cats, you're shit out of luck if you think they're reasonably preventable.
The Web contains lots of stuff. Browsers let you look at that stuff. What you happen to look at (or be persuaded to look at) is none of the browser's concern. If you run a forum and can't keep trolls off it (whatever their intentions), stop running a goddamned forum.
How the utter fuck is a browser supposed to determine what's "good" and what's "bad"? Where do you draw the line? Why not just disable animated GIFs and Flash across the board?
Seriously, the world needs a "switch off port 80" day. We can all go back to Gopher and/etc/hosts. It was easy then.
Er, how about this: people who run websites need to be competent at it.
Many forum software packages have the ability to selectively or globally disable the upload animated GIFs. Given that they're forums for suffers of epilepsy, you'd think it'd be fairly high up on the list given that photosensitivity is a well-known symptom.
Similarly, a sticky forum post on "How to avoid a seizure when browsing the web" would be helpful. Links to Firefox plug-ins, and the like.
Ignorance isn't a problem here: the point of the SDK is for developers to create applications. If people want to run the applications, they will need to buy the phone (or some other phone which has similar/alternative applications).
If the iPhone SDK doesn't support the applications the developers want to create, they won't get created for the iPhone, and consumers won't be buying them for those applications. If they see a friend with an application they think is killer and it doesn't exist in a comparable form on the iPhone, they won't buy an iPhone.
So, in fact, "let the market decide"will work just fine in this particular instance. It doesn't always, that much is true, but it does more often than it doesn't.
What a lot of Slashdot commenters fail to recognise is that everybody has different requirements: products and services are repeatedly slated as being terrible or worthless because they lack X or Y feature, even though a cursory glance beyond the monitor indicates that a lot of people out there don't actually care all that much about X and Y feature. It's little more than idealism, really: product A looks nice, product B does the things I want; therefore I'll bitch and moan about the vendor of product A being "bad"because, hypothetically, if I were to buy it, it wouldn't satisfy my needs--even though I wouldn't buy it in the first place for precisely those reasons. Somehow a wishlist always seems to get turned into a negative campaign.
1. This is just a nice UI to sticking "site:example.com"in the search terms (something many consumers don't know how to do)
2. Most sites' internal search engines suck balls, don't work at all, or even don't exist.
3. The consumer is already using Google, and these companies go out of their way to get the pages and products listed and ranked well in the SERPs; suddenly they complain when Google makes it even easier for people to find things on their sites?
Mozilla's "update service" is entirely per-product (Thunderbird's, for example, operates entirely independently from Firefox's).
Microsoft and Apple's respective services are system-wide, and both offer you software beyond that which you have installed currently.
I'm not saying it's good practice, incidentally: I actually use Macs predominantly and my Windows machines already have Safari installed, so it's pretty much irrelevant to me personally, but I don't think the system's exactly ideal.
However, to hold up both Mozilla and Microsoft's update systems as shining examples of the de facto behaviour when Mozilla's seems to be in the minority doesn't sit right with me either.
You obviously missed the last eight-ten years of British political history, then.
When it comes to oppressive ideas in the name of preventing crime (or even better, use the word "terrorism"), two of the three main political parties in the UK are happy to lap up whatever crazy idea ACPO will come up with.
Fortunately, we also have the Lords: it seems bizarre to many people, but many of those in the Lords have no real political agenda, because they're there not as a career choice, but as a product of circumstance; as a result, they're the most unbiased political instrument in the machine, and have turned over many a ridiculous idea that's successfully passed muster in the Commons.
Ha, like MI5 don't have access to this information already. They just don't have access officially.
To be honest, though, it'll be the Metropolitan Police that are really hankering for it. And HRMC. Actually, probably more HMRC than the Police. Benefit Fraud is the new Al Qaeda.
Um, yeah--that's exactly what I said--unsourced statements should be preserved, but should be tagged as such so that it's obvious to the reader that there's no way to verify the information presented as-is, which also serves as an encouragement for others to fill in the blanks as appropriate.
There isn't anything necessarily wrong with unsourced statements, but an end-user needs to be aware of the fact.
For example, you say you know how many FM stations broadcast in Nassau. What if I say I know that too, and we have different numbers? Either one or both of us would be wrong, or lying. Without citations, it would be impossible for an observer (i.e., a reader of Wikipedia) to judge which, if either, of us is correct--without being able to do that, the information is for many purposes useless.
It's not entirely negative, though: if you wrote up the piece on FM stations without referencing any sources, somebody else could come along and update the article to include references later on. Perhaps the CIA decided to add a "number of FM stations broadcasting" section to the World Factbook, or the UN published the results of a study, or something.
In other words, articles with unsourced statements aren't necessarily invalid, but they're not necessarily valid, either. If plenty of sources for the statements exist, then it's an inconvenience to the user; if no credible sources exist, then it means that the information is unverifiable by the user.
Such a huge amount of uninformed claptrap in such a short post.
It's really simple: if companies don't want to be bound by EU laws and regulators, don't do business here. Seriously, you're all more than welcome to boycott the EU if you think that's a preferable option. Mind you, nobody listens when people complain about US companies doing business in China--which has, in real terms, far more black marks against it than the EU--so it's unlikely that US companies will boycott a massively lucrative market any time soon.
Plenty of European companies have fallen afoul of the regulators too, you know, and they somehow manage to do just fine, only generally they stop screwing the consumers (or, more directly, the rest of their respective industries) once they've had their knuckles rapped. Take Siemens for example, who got fined to hell and back and have enacted a new era of corporate governance. Or E.on, who announced a complete U-turn on their previous plans to hold on to their energy-generation monopolies when they realised the regulator might actually be serious.
Of course, it's not like the EU is the only place where regulators and anti-competition laws do their thing. The US used to, before Bush had his way; nowadays the SEC seems to be pretty impotent, the FCC is a laughing stock, the FTC never does anything besides the occasional muttering about spyware, and the DoJ just wants it all to go away so it can sit in the corner and rock slowly in the hope that it'll all get better on its own.
I don't think poorly-written articles should be deleted either--I don't think that serves a particularly useful purpose, especially given the collaborative and disjointed nature of WP.
By "held to the same editorial standards" I more meant "held to the same editorial standards to not risk being tagged as needing (possibly extensive) reworking".
Provided the means exists for tagging/categorising entries as incomplete/poorly-written/lacking in citations, it should only be outright inappropriate material that needs to be completely removed (and even then, the history should be preserved). As far as I'm aware, those mechanisms exist today, and are in widespread use, hence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_articles_with_unsourced_statements
I'd agree with that; just because something's "trivial" doesn't mean it's not credible. The compromise is to allow articles on anything, but to hold all articles to the same editorial standards.
I do think that Wikipedia shouldn't be considered a valid source for reference material in itself, but I don't think any other encyclopaedia should be either; on the upside, the last copy of the EB that I saw didn't have a list of external authoritative sources attached to each article.
Slashdot Mirror
If there's value in it being a "private road", the Google van wouldn't have been able to drive straight down there and take photos, would it?
It strikes me they wanted the benefits of it being a private road (increased security and privacy) without doing any of the stuff you have to do to actually attain that, save for erecting a sign. If Google can do it in a van full of cameras, then any nefarious (or otherwise) individual can too.
The record companies are basically acting as banks, only without the rules and regulations about being upfront and clear about payment plans and (if you think about it) bizarre exclusivity contracts.
I'm actually surprised there isn't a financial market in existence already dedicated to the trading of "music industry bonds" (as they would no doubt be termed). Maybe it needs some VC firm to kickstart the whole thing, I don't know.
No, it isn't like saying that at all. I've previously clarified and explained the already very obvious differences.
you missed "and because they used strong-arm tactics to squash any attempt by their customers to go to their competitors" in there where you said "because customers choose to do business with them". As much as your free-market ideal claptrap is wonderful, it fails to take into account the negative effects of vendor lock-in in relation to past abuses.
No, more like how people shouldn't leave their wallets and phones on a bar while they go to the toilet if they don't want them stolen. Any theft wouldn't be the victim's _fault_, but they could have easily prevented it with few in the way of downsides.
I didn't say the blame rests with the victim.
However, when the question is hysterically posed pertaining to what we should do to prevent such things from happening, it's pretty simple. With many crimes, the victim doesn't have a lot of choice: with this one, it was trivial to prevent, like locking your doors and windows before you go away for the weekend.
Web browser authors aren't trying to "make it safe" for anybody or anything; it's an impossible and unreasonable goal. There is no way to build "an attack-proof system" AT ALL, and there are a distinctly limited number of "physical attacks" which can be carried out remotely. In fact, I can think of only two possible vectors: visual and audio, and so long as people are wont to have animated avatars, run adverts on their sites, or look at videos of skateboarding cats, you're shit out of luck if you think they're reasonably preventable.
/etc/hosts. It was easy then.
The Web contains lots of stuff. Browsers let you look at that stuff. What you happen to look at (or be persuaded to look at) is none of the browser's concern. If you run a forum and can't keep trolls off it (whatever their intentions), stop running a goddamned forum.
How the utter fuck is a browser supposed to determine what's "good" and what's "bad"? Where do you draw the line? Why not just disable animated GIFs and Flash across the board?
Seriously, the world needs a "switch off port 80" day. We can all go back to Gopher and
Er, how about this: people who run websites need to be competent at it.
Many forum software packages have the ability to selectively or globally disable the upload animated GIFs. Given that they're forums for suffers of epilepsy, you'd think it'd be fairly high up on the list given that photosensitivity is a well-known symptom.
Similarly, a sticky forum post on "How to avoid a seizure when browsing the web" would be helpful. Links to Firefox plug-ins, and the like.
Ignorance isn't a problem here: the point of the SDK is for developers to create applications. If people want to run the applications, they will need to buy the phone (or some other phone which has similar/alternative applications).
If the iPhone SDK doesn't support the applications the developers want to create, they won't get created for the iPhone, and consumers won't be buying them for those applications. If they see a friend with an application they think is killer and it doesn't exist in a comparable form on the iPhone, they won't buy an iPhone.
So, in fact, "let the market decide"will work just fine in this particular instance. It doesn't always, that much is true, but it does more often than it doesn't.
What a lot of Slashdot commenters fail to recognise is that everybody has different requirements: products and services are repeatedly slated as being terrible or worthless because they lack X or Y feature, even though a cursory glance beyond the monitor indicates that a lot of people out there don't actually care all that much about X and Y feature. It's little more than idealism, really: product A looks nice, product B does the things I want; therefore I'll bitch and moan about the vendor of product A being "bad"because, hypothetically, if I were to buy it, it wouldn't satisfy my needs--even though I wouldn't buy it in the first place for precisely those reasons. Somehow a wishlist always seems to get turned into a negative campaign.
1. This is just a nice UI to sticking "site:example.com"in the search terms (something many consumers don't know how to do)
2. Most sites' internal search engines suck balls, don't work at all, or even don't exist.
3. The consumer is already using Google, and these companies go out of their way to get the pages and products listed and ranked well in the SERPs; suddenly they complain when Google makes it even easier for people to find things on their sites?
I smell a red herring.
Mozilla's "update service" is entirely per-product (Thunderbird's, for example, operates entirely independently from Firefox's).
Microsoft and Apple's respective services are system-wide, and both offer you software beyond that which you have installed currently.
I'm not saying it's good practice, incidentally: I actually use Macs predominantly and my Windows machines already have Safari installed, so it's pretty much irrelevant to me personally, but I don't think the system's exactly ideal.
However, to hold up both Mozilla and Microsoft's update systems as shining examples of the de facto behaviour when Mozilla's seems to be in the minority doesn't sit right with me either.
Y'wit? You think they'd lug it all the way from Hillhead to Govan?
There's the underground, I suppose, but even then you'd have to cart the bastard thing up and down escalators and that.
You obviously missed the last eight-ten years of British political history, then.
When it comes to oppressive ideas in the name of preventing crime (or even better, use the word "terrorism"), two of the three main political parties in the UK are happy to lap up whatever crazy idea ACPO will come up with.
Fortunately, we also have the Lords: it seems bizarre to many people, but many of those in the Lords have no real political agenda, because they're there not as a career choice, but as a product of circumstance; as a result, they're the most unbiased political instrument in the machine, and have turned over many a ridiculous idea that's successfully passed muster in the Commons.
Ha, like MI5 don't have access to this information already. They just don't have access officially.
To be honest, though, it'll be the Metropolitan Police that are really hankering for it. And HRMC. Actually, probably more HMRC than the Police. Benefit Fraud is the new Al Qaeda.
Well, yeah, they are.
People commute into London from all over the place, though.
8 million people _live_in Greater London.
~20 million people _work_ in Greater London.
Oh, for (Score:6, For some reason it's left to Slashdot commenters to state the blindingly obvious to media executives)
For Christ's sake man, don't tell them that!
There must be at least 1,000 Windows users out there!
...as there are only about 400 Linux users in the UK, this hole won't get abused much.
Um, yeah--that's exactly what I said--unsourced statements should be preserved, but should be tagged as such so that it's obvious to the reader that there's no way to verify the information presented as-is, which also serves as an encouragement for others to fill in the blanks as appropriate.
There isn't anything necessarily wrong with unsourced statements, but an end-user needs to be aware of the fact.
For example, you say you know how many FM stations broadcast in Nassau. What if I say I know that too, and we have different numbers? Either one or both of us would be wrong, or lying. Without citations, it would be impossible for an observer (i.e., a reader of Wikipedia) to judge which, if either, of us is correct--without being able to do that, the information is for many purposes useless.
It's not entirely negative, though: if you wrote up the piece on FM stations without referencing any sources, somebody else could come along and update the article to include references later on. Perhaps the CIA decided to add a "number of FM stations broadcasting" section to the World Factbook, or the UN published the results of a study, or something.
In other words, articles with unsourced statements aren't necessarily invalid, but they're not necessarily valid, either. If plenty of sources for the statements exist, then it's an inconvenience to the user; if no credible sources exist, then it means that the information is unverifiable by the user.
Such a huge amount of uninformed claptrap in such a short post.
It's really simple: if companies don't want to be bound by EU laws and regulators, don't do business here. Seriously, you're all more than welcome to boycott the EU if you think that's a preferable option. Mind you, nobody listens when people complain about US companies doing business in China--which has, in real terms, far more black marks against it than the EU--so it's unlikely that US companies will boycott a massively lucrative market any time soon.
Plenty of European companies have fallen afoul of the regulators too, you know, and they somehow manage to do just fine, only generally they stop screwing the consumers (or, more directly, the rest of their respective industries) once they've had their knuckles rapped. Take Siemens for example, who got fined to hell and back and have enacted a new era of corporate governance. Or E.on, who announced a complete U-turn on their previous plans to hold on to their energy-generation monopolies when they realised the regulator might actually be serious.
Of course, it's not like the EU is the only place where regulators and anti-competition laws do their thing. The US used to, before Bush had his way; nowadays the SEC seems to be pretty impotent, the FCC is a laughing stock, the FTC never does anything besides the occasional muttering about spyware, and the DoJ just wants it all to go away so it can sit in the corner and rock slowly in the hope that it'll all get better on its own.
Yes, sorry--I wasn't clear.
I don't think poorly-written articles should be deleted either--I don't think that serves a particularly useful purpose, especially given the collaborative and disjointed nature of WP.
By "held to the same editorial standards" I more meant "held to the same editorial standards to not risk being tagged as needing (possibly extensive) reworking".
Provided the means exists for tagging/categorising entries as incomplete/poorly-written/lacking in citations, it should only be outright inappropriate material that needs to be completely removed (and even then, the history should be preserved). As far as I'm aware, those mechanisms exist today, and are in widespread use, hence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_articles_with_unsourced_statements
I'd agree with that; just because something's "trivial" doesn't mean it's not credible. The compromise is to allow articles on anything, but to hold all articles to the same editorial standards.
I do think that Wikipedia shouldn't be considered a valid source for reference material in itself, but I don't think any other encyclopaedia should be either; on the upside, the last copy of the EB that I saw didn't have a list of external authoritative sources attached to each article.
Hussein isn't that uncommon a name in the UK, and there are a couple of relatively well-known personalities who share it.
It might cause a knee-jerk amongst those people who would unlikely to ever in their lives go near Heathrow Airport, but that's really about it.