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Comment Inexact summary and linked article (Score 1) 147

by openfrog (#42965935) Attached to: Tech Leaders Create Most Lucrative Science Prize In History

The article stated makes it look like this is the initiative of Zuckerberg, and manages to misreport the scale of this prize.

See the foundations website: http://www.breakthroughprizeinlifesciences.org/

Not 11 prizes totalling 33 millions as reported, but 5 prizes of 3 M each.

Also the sponsors are listed, in that order,

                Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki
                Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan
                Yuri Milner

Comment FUD Campaign continuing (Score 5, Informative) 347

by openfrog (#42936957) Attached to: Google Looks To Cut Funds To Illegal Sites

I have mod points, but not finding anyone questioning this source... Have you RTFA? This is The Telegraph! There is no source cited AT ALL. You don't know who said what in which context. Nothing.

Microsoft has hired the CEO of Burton-Marsteller with the official function of spreading FUD on Google.

But frankly, this sounds more like this comes from The Onion... Nobody here questions sources anymore?

Comment Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle (Score 3, Insightful) 267

by openfrog (#42930917) Attached to: Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors?

From the article:

Mr Baylis has been lobbying for the patent system to become more robust and to turn the theft of intellectual property into a white-collar crime that carries a prison sentence... Currently patent infringement is considered to be a civil matter in the UK rather than a criminal matter... ...Students need to be taught about intellectual property in schools...

Mr Baylis is representing himself as the small guy (incorrectly claiming the invention of the crank radio), making the exact case that the big guys are currently lobbying the government for.

If Mr Baylis had been what he pretends he was, with the laws he is advocating for, he would have risked ending up in prison on top of losing his house.

Comment Re:Don't forget the disinformation. (Score 1, Funny) 848

by openfrog (#42927709) Attached to: Billionaires Secretly Fund Vast Climate Denial Network

'We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,' says Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust.

And don't forget the disinformation. We can't have all that freedom with an informed public.

Oh for that, when we achieve the goal of a "limited government", we can spend a bit again to institute a ministry of truth.
Google

Submission + - Microsoft very particular style of "competing" now in the open (nytimes.com)

Submitted by openfrog
openfrog writes: The New York Times has an interesting article about Mark Penn joining Microsoft, in charge of "strategic and special projects".

Penn made a name for himself in Washington by bulldozing opponents through smear campaigns. Now he spends his days trying to do the same to Google, on behalf of its archrival Microsoft.

This a scaling up of the anti-Google campaigns he has been mounting up since 1990 as CEO of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, on behalf of his old Harvard friends Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Presenting this as a defensive posture for past wounds inflicted on Microsoft, the new strategy is described as moving from working in the shadows to one of perpetrating attacks in plain view.

Reading this makes one feel like distant the idea that capitalism works from competing to bring a better product to the consumer.

I propose creating a new category on Slashdot to track down this behaviour, where we would detect and expose distasteful PR strategies in action, for the benefit of journalists, bloggers and reviewers who could otherwise fall in for the lies.
Privacy

Submission + - Students protest biometric scanner move (thenorthernecho.co.uk)

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: "Newcastle University students protest biometric scanner move

UNIVERSITY students may have to scan their fingerprints in future — to prove they are not bunking off lectures. ... ... Newcastle Free Education Network has organised protests against the plans, claiming the scanners would "'turn universities into border checkpoints" and "reduce university to the attendance of lectures alone".

"
Piracy

Submission + - Music Industry Threatens to Bankrupt Pirate Party Members (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Music industry group the BPI has threatened legal action against six members of the UK Pirate Party, after the party refused to take its Pirate Bay proxy offline. BPI seems to want to hold the individual members of the party responsible for copyright infringements that may occurs via the proxy, which puts them at risk of personal bankruptcy.

Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye criticized the latest music industry threats and reiterated that blocking The Pirate Bay is a disproportionate measure.

Comment New features (Score 4, Insightful) 235

by openfrog (#42297069) Attached to: Google Nixes Some Calendar Features and Other Software Offerings

On other news sites, I read that Google today announces 18 new features. http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2012/12/google-communities-and-photos.html etc.
And here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/14/google-gives-google-end-of-year-update-adds-low-bandwidth-hangouts-full-size-mobile-photo-backups-better-event-planning-animated-gifs-and-more/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)&source=email_rt_mc_body&ifp=0

Just Google it...

But on Slashdot, I read that drivel coming right out of Burston-Marsteller, or some other PR drone.

This is supposed to be a technology forum but somehow, some Slashdot editors perhaps seem to think that this is 'provoking' material, in the good sense of being humorous and driving up the number of comments?

But at what price? At what price, just in terms of credibility, for a beginning?

Could someone answer that?

Comment Re:Darwin awards (Score 2) 655

by openfrog (#42229931) Attached to: Strong Climate Change Opinions Are Self-Reinforcing

...that tack is unlikely to get anywhere with the 8 percent or so of highly-engaged Americans who reject the idea of a warming planet, and are highly motivated to disregard anything that says otherwise.

We are pleased to announce that in recognition of their high engagement and their high motivation to disregard facts, those 8% are all eligible to a Darwin award.

I think the Darwin Award would only be appropriate if their actions harmed themselves without having the same negative consequences on the rest of us.

Indeed, I can only agree with you. On the other hand, if an 8% of ignorants is enough to prevent us to act collectively, we are in for the highest Darwin award (or next to the highest as the highest would be the extinction of all life): a Species Darwin Award.

Comment Darwin awards (Score 0) 655

by openfrog (#42229739) Attached to: Strong Climate Change Opinions Are Self-Reinforcing

...that tack is unlikely to get anywhere with the 8 percent or so of highly-engaged Americans who reject the idea of a warming planet, and are highly motivated to disregard anything that says otherwise.

We are pleased to announce that in recognition of their high engagement and their high motivation to disregard facts, those 8% are all eligible to a Darwin award.

Comment Re:Misguided (Score 0) 217

by openfrog (#42093439) Attached to: Finding a Crowdsourced Cure For Brain Cancer

Announcing that you are going to accept the contributions of homeopaths, etc. is like saying you're going to read Slashdot at -1 or accept every edit on Wikipedia.

Hardly. Most of these people want to believe. No amount of rational argument is going to sway them. As they say: you can't reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Either that, or they are con artists.

Captain_Chaos hey? I see that you were not even able to resist the urge to broadcast in your nickname your motivation to post here.

Comment Re:Misguided (Score 1) 217

by openfrog (#42093333) Attached to: Finding a Crowdsourced Cure For Brain Cancer

This is incredibly misguided, and that is the most charitable way of putting it.

There is no way in hell you're going to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff with such a volume of random input

Oh really? So from your own point of view, there is no way in hell such a thing as Slashdot can work, all those random comments from idiots who can't even RTFA! Not mentioning such a ludicrous idea as an open encyclopedia where every other ignorant can edit an article.

Yes, a lot of suggestions are going to come from homeopathy and spiritual healers. And you know, then, maybe these people will learn more in the process than if they were being outlawed and chased by lawyers.

Iaconesi mentions the word 'harmony' in reference to the whole process, where you just see a mess. You know, life itself can be seen as just a mess. Yet...

Comment Re:Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) (Score 1) 274

I can't help thinking that they are being politically correct not to mention the one thing that has already brought great civilisations to barbarism as one of their threats; Islam.

Well, Christianity was well on its way to do the same, but in this case, civilization won. Still, its drive for domination is undaunted, and what about major religions and thousands of smaller sects who could also go rogue?

Actually, there are center of studies in most universities for these kind of threats. These programs are called 'history', 'sociology', 'political science', etc, and are generally regrouped under the term 'humanities'.

Unfortunately, we are busy cutting the funding for those, as they are deemed economically worthless.

Interesting...

Comment Japanese indirectness... (Score 1) 96

by openfrog (#41789105) Attached to: How To Hug a Chicken Via the Internet

It's an important step forward, but only in Japan would hugging a chicken be an intermediate step.

You have to take account of the proverbial Japanese indirectness. What the professor wants to demonstrate becomes clearer when you think of the following distinction: eroticism is when you use a feather; pornography is when you use to whole chicken.

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