"The After" was absolutely terrible. I am pretty sure it was a ballot box stuffing / fake user rating bonanza. IT had 15,000 reviews which is 5-10x as many as most classic shows (like X-files, Firefly, Star Trek), and as much as Transparent which won 2 major awards (not my cup of tea but clearly more popular than The After).

It had 2x the reviews as many popular movies such a Hunger Games 2, World War Z, the new Star Treks, etc etc. The whole thing was like the start of a bad joke. "A clown, lawyer, hooker, cop, escaped con, etc etc walk into a garage and the world ends. What do?"

Amazon was right to can it. I hop they toss it off the site entirely. /my 2c

You >:-o bro?

That is the most wonderful and disturbing thing I have heard since .....[BUFFERING]

He said at the end no one is paying him. If this article is something you think should be ignored because he is somehow playing politics as deflected Karmashock, then you're just obtuse.

He is no more a political strategist than you or I. Maybe you should re-read the article.

Political strategist? His "strategy" is to communicate with the public about science. It's not like he is planning out press releases and talking points and media buys. This is not some Karl Rove or David Plouff.

He's advocating scientists not remain silent. He is standing up for the right for scientists to be part of the conversation. And about how to spot disingenuous arguments. So yeah, this is the wrong time for the "oh stop the politics" argument. Trotting out and attacking Al Gore (as the GP poster did) is exactly the kind of bullshit arguments Mann is warning about.

Funny, this article is by a climate scientist.

Karmashock is just trying to misdirect by pointing fingers at unrelated political arguments to create FUD and guilt by association. All of which are decidedly political tactics.

"Advice"...? Not so much.

What are you trollboating?

What you did here, I see it.

Is it? How many people switched back after being switched without being asked?

It might be but TFA is useless as far as details go.

Indeed. I think he was originally on record as wanting to find a solution that didnt involve title II -- but this is what got the FCC into trouble with the Open Internet Order.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/em...

Yet a couple of days ago he is now hinting he will use title II.

http://arstechnica.com/busines...

So I guess we will see.

Very true. I was referring more towards Wheeler's FCC though. He's been full of talk but light on substantive action. They seem to dance around imposing any real burden on telcos or ISPs.

Wheeler was only on the job for a month or two before the Verizon court win (I think).

That's what the "common carrier" part of title 2 protects against.

Pretty sure it was soulskill that added that gem of stupid

It's all PR talk until they actually do anything about it.

I agree MS gave them a good excuse to get out of a system they didn't want to deal with, but it's a reasonable argument that defaulting DNT to on makes it not a user expression of intent. Even one of the Apache devs thought so and submitted a patch to ignore specifically IE10's DNT flag. Although the powers that be eventually rolled that patch back.

In a way, MS poisoned the well, no? Either by (as you state) providing a convenient excuse (possibly intentionally or unintentionally), or by using the flag as a jab at Google. It almost doesn't matter why they did it. The net result was that DNT was ignored by FB, Goog, Apple, Amazon, Adobe and Yahoo -- only Twitter (who use Google Analytics, oddly) went against the grain. MS was warned by a number of marketers this would be the result too, and MS responded with a rather hostile press release.

And yes it's PR... there's PR going around on all sides here -- that's part of what I am saying. Google et. al. are not innocent bystanders here, dont get me wrong, but I am trying to see the whole picture.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one but I am glad that we both seem to want the same end-game: protecting user privacy. As long as there are smart, good people working on this goal, I think it's probably OK that it proceed on several fronts.

Personally I am more concerned about other data aggregators than Google (et. al.) though. If you look at companies like HireRight, Experian (et. al.) -- these companies are truly invading peoples lives. Most of the advertising networks are just selling targeting buckets (e.g. target your ad to males over 45 who make over $150k). But the credit bureaus control people's ability to get a house, to buy a car, to get a job. And there is no way to opt out of that.

Anyways, cheers for the debate.