Comment Re:Where do I opt out? (Score 3, Insightful) 209
In an Amish colony, everyone will know everything about you.
In an Amish colony, everyone will know everything about you.
It's still you who create your "virtual existence" (whatever that means), so it does define (part of) who you are.
If the worst thing you ever did in your life was to shit your pants in grade 5, then the vast majority of people will look worse than you.
Everyone grows and everyone knows people grow. Everyone also make mistakes. Stop thinking you're a special snowflake. You're not.
Think of it this way : if a photo of you taking a dump was made public, you'll be the laughing stock of everyone. But if everyone had photos of themselves taking a dump, no one would care.
A future where there is no privacy is a future where everyone will be judge according to the truth, not judge according to how good they are at pretending to be someone else. You call that a "hellish future"? I call that a utopia.
People who are paranoid enough to lie to a simple poll, won't openly go outside and riot.
1) How many times have you already been out there protesting for Snowden?
2) How many times have you seen your government change its policies because someone, somewhere is protesting about something?
3) Who do you think will gather the biggest crowd : people who want this hero to be given a full pardon or people who want this traitor to be executed?
4) People don't even protest for their own constitutional rights. What makes you think they'll protest for Snowden's constitutional rights?
Sorry to be blunt, but you're kind of ignorant yourself.
Suppose today is the 2015-02-13 and suppose someone is calling you to ask you when will be your next meeting. Suppose it's 10 days from now. How will you say the date? Will you simply say "it will on the 23rd" or will you say "it will be in the year 2015, the month of February, on the 23rd day for that month"?
The "logic" behind European dates is based on the way we truncate dates in our day to day conversation.
You need to realize that even if many times scientists funded by governments do not produce something useful to you in your day to day life, they do create knowledge which is essentials to scientists who work in the private sector. Without government funded scientists, you'd still live like an Amish.
But then again, maybe that's what you wish for...
I do agree anonymity is useful against tyranny, whether that tyranny comes from governments, employers, coworkers, friends or family, but I think it's better to fight tyranny openly than trying to hide. People who are not able to fight for their ideas, whatever the reason, can still find others who will agree to carry the flag for them if those ideas are worth fighting for.
I believe very few babies with be thrown out with the bathwater.
Let me just automatically block anyone who doesn't use his real name. Also, as I'm 45 years old, let me also automatically block anyone who's under 18. Sorry kids, but I'm not interested in what you're saying.
I was there in the 80's. One of the first program I wrote with the school computers was a light cycle kind of game (actually, my inspiration was Snafu for the Intellivision). And you know what? Out of all student in my school, you'd had to hit ME with your stone, because I was the only one who made something more than tic-tac-toe.
As for anyone being able to program... I'll take running as an analogy : although almost everyone can run a 4 km race, it just takes interest and a bit of training, very few people could do an Ironman, even with years of training.
You're right and that's pretty much why computer programs are now so ridiculously buggy and require bug fix releases every two weeks. But then again, as long as customers still buy without complaining, why bother with quality? Worse, a lot of people now think a bug fix release every two weeks is a sign of quality!
Ada doesn't normally allow that error either. There are things like "unchecked_conversion" which allows the programmer to break language safety, but they are always explicit.
For example, and maybe I'm wrong, the language doesn't force the programmer to declare variables outside of the code (in fact it looks like the language allows the declaration of a variable anywhere in the code) and it doesn't force the programmer to specify the type of a variable when declaring it (a quote from the documentation : "Variables can be type annotated when declared. However, in most cases, the compiler will be able to infer the type of the variable from the context, heavily reducing the annotation burden"). That kind of thing is an open door for sloppy programming.
What irks me the most is the "heavily reducing the annotation burden". For me, that should never be a goal with a language whose objective is safety.
According to most (credible) sources, Aisha was married when she was 6 or 7. And she was 9 when Muhammad raped her.
An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms.