My guess is he has no interest in running Facebook as a going concern, or he would have come forward sooner. He probably just wants to dump it for a quick profit. I expect, if he does win, the usual suspects (Google, MS, etc) will fight it out over this one.
I think he was suggesting the "evil" was not being totally transparent about the motives of the service and how you plan to treat people's "privacy", rather than the service itself. Of course, that's just marketing - arguably evil but something we all live with every day. Is Facebook selling user data really any different to Lynx suggesting their deodorant will have armies of women chasing you down the street?
Or, equally, let's all miss the point and throw up some strawman suggesting that GP hates technology when he's said nothing of the kind. All he's suggesting is that Facebook, while it might be good at what it does, isn't the be-all-end-all of communication. Honestly, the best way ultimately to communicate with another person is face to face. You miss so many nuances of communication just by removing the ability to read body language, take away voice inflection and you miss even more. Of course, face to face communication has been around since the dawn of time but that doesn't mean that my suggestion that it's the best way to communicate also means I hate technology and wish we could go back to stone-age times. What Facebook is good at is letting people dip in and out of your life when they have time, essentially a bulletin board, but if you want a meaningful conversation with someone it's still almost always better to do it in person of, failing that, by telephone.
That works so long as your friends all intersect, but if you're friends with someone who also has two other circles of friends you're not part of, and all of them are on Facebook, you're asking them to learn and deal with a totally different system specifically for you as well as removing the possibility of introducing people from your shared circle to those people in the other circles. I don't use FB (I created an account to do some testing for work but I've never used it or added anyone to it) but even I can see the benefit of a universal system for this. It just needs to be one that has more respect for the privacy of their users.
I remember being chastised at school for hacking the code behind the games to produce... amusing results (to a young teenage boy, anyway). Even at the time I remember thinking, yes we're being childish - we're children, duh - but perhaps you should be rewarding our interest in how the technology works or diverting it down constructive paths by introducing some slightly more advanced computer classes (we did some very elementary BASIC, essentially typing from a script, nice way to prepare us for a life of data entry) rather than expecting us to follow your set teaching patterns. Schools just don't understand technology and have no idea how to even begin to use it to get kids interested in learning, and more often than not they punish curiosity when they should be nurturing it.
So we either accept that poor families will do (on average) poorly, or we accept that poor parents aren't necessarily ever going to do as good a job (likely they're from the same kind of background and had the same educational experiences so they're no more to blame than the kids are for being born into those circumstances), or we realise that schools have to bear the brunt of bringing these kids up to speed and stop playing the "blame the parents" card. And they need to do it in a way that doesn't hold back the brighter kids.
It depends on the exact nature of the question. If it's asking does the mere presence of a computer encourage kids to perform better, then you can probably reasonably extrapolate that the answer is no, regardless of the reason the computer was purchased. I would be interested in seeing the results of just those families who said the computer was purchased for education, I'd suspect they might perform slightly better overall regardless of the rich/poor divide because the intention to learn (or enable learning in your children) is probably more of a key here than the availability of technology.
But we already acknowledge that parents aren't the best teachers. That's why we have schools. I agree parents should take an active interest, but you can't rely on that, or on parents being intelligent enough to help the kids with projects, etc. if you want a system where everyone has a chance to succeed. The onus has to be on the schools instilling a desire to learn and providing the tools to enable learning, and that should certainly extend to leveraging technology in the home (have some kind of interaction with the school website, forums to discuss projects, etc). If you get that right and the kid happens to have smart, interested parents, well that's just gravy.
... even though the information on how to be a good parent is easy to COME BY USING COMPUTERS (not to mention lots of literature in bookstores).
A small point, but the OPINION on how to be a good parent is easy to come by, lots of them in fact, quite often at odds with each other. The information is a little harder to dig out (we still don't know how much nature vs. nurture comes into this for instance, maybe parenting makes no difference). Of course, the parents who are actively trying to find this information are likely doing their best already because they're obviously taking an interest, as opposed to the many who just stick the kids in front of a digital baby-sitter.
I'm not so sure. Kids will just get their parents to buy it, and that 18 certificate will make it even more tempting. Only those with parents who object will have a problem.
Or maybe people wouldn't act like children in the first place if they thought there might be repercussions. Not that I agree with displaying people's names, but it would be an interesting experiment.
Totally. I worked for a big FTSE100 company a few years back that was incredibly poorly managed, constant company re-organisations, people regularly being put on "consideration" (i.e. just to let you know, we're considering whether you'll have a job in three months), usually over christmas just to add to the fun, closing sites and moving people around the country, etc. A friend who still works there told me recently one of the developers who decided to leave in the last bout of restructuring wrote a long, not particularly complimentary email slating all the reasons why the company was a mess, citing lack of training and review, lack of skills, incompetent management, poor communication, etc. He sent this email to everyone in the department, his bosses, their bosses, high level management in other departments, everyone, I mean serious bridge burning. That was bad enough if not totally unexpected (I had pretty much the same sentiments when I left but I was wise enough to keep them to myself, knowing it's a small world in development), but then one of the other developers who was staying replied to him along the lines of "well said, couldn't have put it better myself", not realising he'd hit "reply to all"...
What is good for the farmer is certainly NOT good for the hen...
Unless the farmer makes a good living selling organic, free range eggs. I'm... erm... I'm not sure how to tie that back into ESRB. Maybe support indie developers?
We already have the technology to do that. The gas station charges the batteries, you rent one from them and go swap it when it's low. We don't always have to rely on technology replicating the way we already do things if there is a way to do them smarter. All we need is for this practice to become widespread for the technology to take off.
Exactly. It also means all the emissions happen in one place so it's easier to deal with them, and it eventually means as more "green" fuel is produced and introduced into the grid, the switch would be transparent to the car driver (he only cares that he needs electicity, not where or how it's produced), whereas with traditionally fuelled cars it would be anything but.
I think manufacturers are working towards exactly this - easily replaceable battery packs. Then gas stations will become exchange stations where you can just swap out your battery, and the whole issue of long journeys or emergency trips will be at least partially solved.
These days he's more likely to have bought it via eBay (or some similar service), probably from a perfectly legit account that's been stolen via social engineering. I know cynically you could say anything you buy on eBay you should expect to be stolen, but realistically if the auction appears genuine and you pay what you consider a fair price then how are you to know?
That's generally only the case if they are aware (or at least, if they should have reasonably suspected) that the goods are stolen. An innocent purchaser who buys wholly in good faith is usually not guilty of any crime. However, it's also true that ownership usually does not transfer with that purchase, so the laptop still belongs to the original owner and the innocent purchaser is out of luck.
And if the guy using the laptop isn't the thief but some innocent ebay dupe, you'll be the one facing cops and lawyers, the victim will get compensation and the thief has already long gone.
I agree it's not always possible to carry all your belongings around all the time, but seriously, if it's a $1,000 laptop you'd at the very least want to stick it in the boot or a lockable glove box and if you have neither then it's probably not asking a lot to take it with you. When it comes to cars, security through obscurity has been proven to work, opportunist thieves don't tend to break into every car they see on the off chance there might be something in the boot - if you give them no reason to suspect you're hiding valuables, they'll generally move onto the next person so putting things out of view is the bare minimum of security you should aim for. Of course, in OP's case it's kind of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted to suggest what he should have done (and we have no reason to know that he didn't, for instance, put the laptop in the boot but that the thief saw him do so). Mind you, his assertion that the IP address belongs to the thief is probably similarly wrong - most thieves will sell on stolen goods immediately, they don't tend to go "shopping" for their own personal devices in other people's vehicles, keeping and using stolen property is just asking for trouble when you can just sell it on to some other sucker.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is he has no interest in running Facebook as a going concern, or he would have come forward sooner. He probably just wants to dump it for a quick profit. I expect, if he does win, the usual suspects (Google, MS, etc) will fight it out over this one.
I think he was suggesting the "evil" was not being totally transparent about the motives of the service and how you plan to treat people's "privacy", rather than the service itself. Of course, that's just marketing - arguably evil but something we all live with every day. Is Facebook selling user data really any different to Lynx suggesting their deodorant will have armies of women chasing you down the street?
Or, equally, let's all miss the point and throw up some strawman suggesting that GP hates technology when he's said nothing of the kind. All he's suggesting is that Facebook, while it might be good at what it does, isn't the be-all-end-all of communication. Honestly, the best way ultimately to communicate with another person is face to face. You miss so many nuances of communication just by removing the ability to read body language, take away voice inflection and you miss even more. Of course, face to face communication has been around since the dawn of time but that doesn't mean that my suggestion that it's the best way to communicate also means I hate technology and wish we could go back to stone-age times. What Facebook is good at is letting people dip in and out of your life when they have time, essentially a bulletin board, but if you want a meaningful conversation with someone it's still almost always better to do it in person of, failing that, by telephone.
With a list of contacts, and a status update news page, you can see everything in one foul swoop.
It's one fell swoop, although since the subject is Facebook, maybe foul is equally applicable.
That works so long as your friends all intersect, but if you're friends with someone who also has two other circles of friends you're not part of, and all of them are on Facebook, you're asking them to learn and deal with a totally different system specifically for you as well as removing the possibility of introducing people from your shared circle to those people in the other circles. I don't use FB (I created an account to do some testing for work but I've never used it or added anyone to it) but even I can see the benefit of a universal system for this. It just needs to be one that has more respect for the privacy of their users.
I remember being chastised at school for hacking the code behind the games to produce... amusing results (to a young teenage boy, anyway). Even at the time I remember thinking, yes we're being childish - we're children, duh - but perhaps you should be rewarding our interest in how the technology works or diverting it down constructive paths by introducing some slightly more advanced computer classes (we did some very elementary BASIC, essentially typing from a script, nice way to prepare us for a life of data entry) rather than expecting us to follow your set teaching patterns. Schools just don't understand technology and have no idea how to even begin to use it to get kids interested in learning, and more often than not they punish curiosity when they should be nurturing it.
So we either accept that poor families will do (on average) poorly, or we accept that poor parents aren't necessarily ever going to do as good a job (likely they're from the same kind of background and had the same educational experiences so they're no more to blame than the kids are for being born into those circumstances), or we realise that schools have to bear the brunt of bringing these kids up to speed and stop playing the "blame the parents" card. And they need to do it in a way that doesn't hold back the brighter kids.
It depends on the exact nature of the question. If it's asking does the mere presence of a computer encourage kids to perform better, then you can probably reasonably extrapolate that the answer is no, regardless of the reason the computer was purchased. I would be interested in seeing the results of just those families who said the computer was purchased for education, I'd suspect they might perform slightly better overall regardless of the rich/poor divide because the intention to learn (or enable learning in your children) is probably more of a key here than the availability of technology.
But we already acknowledge that parents aren't the best teachers. That's why we have schools. I agree parents should take an active interest, but you can't rely on that, or on parents being intelligent enough to help the kids with projects, etc. if you want a system where everyone has a chance to succeed. The onus has to be on the schools instilling a desire to learn and providing the tools to enable learning, and that should certainly extend to leveraging technology in the home (have some kind of interaction with the school website, forums to discuss projects, etc). If you get that right and the kid happens to have smart, interested parents, well that's just gravy.
... even though the information on how to be a good parent is easy to COME BY USING COMPUTERS (not to mention lots of literature in bookstores).
A small point, but the OPINION on how to be a good parent is easy to come by, lots of them in fact, quite often at odds with each other. The information is a little harder to dig out (we still don't know how much nature vs. nurture comes into this for instance, maybe parenting makes no difference). Of course, the parents who are actively trying to find this information are likely doing their best already because they're obviously taking an interest, as opposed to the many who just stick the kids in front of a digital baby-sitter.
The bigger question is: why in the future, do all people insist on shipping goods using packing technology from the 1800's..... ?
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...
I'm not so sure. Kids will just get their parents to buy it, and that 18 certificate will make it even more tempting. Only those with parents who object will have a problem.
You might find that it's a hell of a lot less work to maintain a list of companies that do care about their customers.
Or maybe people wouldn't act like children in the first place if they thought there might be repercussions. Not that I agree with displaying people's names, but it would be an interesting experiment.
Do you think it would have bene a "big shiny button" or do you think, just maybe, they would have buried it away in 15 pages of click through terms?
Totally. I worked for a big FTSE100 company a few years back that was incredibly poorly managed, constant company re-organisations, people regularly being put on "consideration" (i.e. just to let you know, we're considering whether you'll have a job in three months), usually over christmas just to add to the fun, closing sites and moving people around the country, etc. A friend who still works there told me recently one of the developers who decided to leave in the last bout of restructuring wrote a long, not particularly complimentary email slating all the reasons why the company was a mess, citing lack of training and review, lack of skills, incompetent management, poor communication, etc. He sent this email to everyone in the department, his bosses, their bosses, high level management in other departments, everyone, I mean serious bridge burning. That was bad enough if not totally unexpected (I had pretty much the same sentiments when I left but I was wise enough to keep them to myself, knowing it's a small world in development), but then one of the other developers who was staying replied to him along the lines of "well said, couldn't have put it better myself", not realising he'd hit "reply to all"...
What is good for the farmer is certainly NOT good for the hen...
Unless the farmer makes a good living selling organic, free range eggs. I'm... erm... I'm not sure how to tie that back into ESRB. Maybe support indie developers?
We already have the technology to do that. The gas station charges the batteries, you rent one from them and go swap it when it's low. We don't always have to rely on technology replicating the way we already do things if there is a way to do them smarter. All we need is for this practice to become widespread for the technology to take off.
Exactly. It also means all the emissions happen in one place so it's easier to deal with them, and it eventually means as more "green" fuel is produced and introduced into the grid, the switch would be transparent to the car driver (he only cares that he needs electicity, not where or how it's produced), whereas with traditionally fuelled cars it would be anything but.
I think manufacturers are working towards exactly this - easily replaceable battery packs. Then gas stations will become exchange stations where you can just swap out your battery, and the whole issue of long journeys or emergency trips will be at least partially solved.
These days he's more likely to have bought it via eBay (or some similar service), probably from a perfectly legit account that's been stolen via social engineering. I know cynically you could say anything you buy on eBay you should expect to be stolen, but realistically if the auction appears genuine and you pay what you consider a fair price then how are you to know?
That's generally only the case if they are aware (or at least, if they should have reasonably suspected) that the goods are stolen. An innocent purchaser who buys wholly in good faith is usually not guilty of any crime. However, it's also true that ownership usually does not transfer with that purchase, so the laptop still belongs to the original owner and the innocent purchaser is out of luck.
And if the guy using the laptop isn't the thief but some innocent ebay dupe, you'll be the one facing cops and lawyers, the victim will get compensation and the thief has already long gone.
I agree it's not always possible to carry all your belongings around all the time, but seriously, if it's a $1,000 laptop you'd at the very least want to stick it in the boot or a lockable glove box and if you have neither then it's probably not asking a lot to take it with you. When it comes to cars, security through obscurity has been proven to work, opportunist thieves don't tend to break into every car they see on the off chance there might be something in the boot - if you give them no reason to suspect you're hiding valuables, they'll generally move onto the next person so putting things out of view is the bare minimum of security you should aim for. Of course, in OP's case it's kind of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted to suggest what he should have done (and we have no reason to know that he didn't, for instance, put the laptop in the boot but that the thief saw him do so). Mind you, his assertion that the IP address belongs to the thief is probably similarly wrong - most thieves will sell on stolen goods immediately, they don't tend to go "shopping" for their own personal devices in other people's vehicles, keeping and using stolen property is just asking for trouble when you can just sell it on to some other sucker.
I'm just amazed that it has a pocket!
Erm... that's an orifice...do not put your hand in... oh, it seems to like it. Never mind!