Wait a second, surely the way that the other person expresses interest is by flirting? Right?

I don't tick that box, and I added an exception to AdBlock for *.slashdot.org. I still don't see any adverts here, because I won't add a known malware distributor to my NoScript whitelist. I'm not strictly against advertising, but I'm not going to just run any crap coming from anywhere to give away a few pennies a month. I try to subscribe but I won't use PayPal and nothing else comes up on the subscription page. I told them about this, but got no response. So, since they don't seem to want my money, I haven't yet flown a few thousand miles just to shove a wad of cash through the letter box.

One major difference between Google and facebook is that Google sells your eyeballs to advertisers, facebook sells your information.

Whether you think that makes a large ethical difference is up to you, but the practical implications are significant -- essentially, Google acts as a black box in between advertisers and users, which is a system I massively prefer. Facebook will literally sell your name and address. I think that this is a significant improvement.

Of course, the other point is the question of trust. Can people trust Google? Maybe. I do, but I'm very careful about it, and I believe a lot of other people are too. The moment they start locking down services or locking in users, or the moment I actually find them doing something 'evil' (and no, accidentally leaving Kismet on a default setting does not count) I'm leaving them completely. Facebook, however, I don't trust at all with anything. That's trickier, since I live in a different city from where I grew up and a lot of my friends still live, and frankly facebook is in common usage, but then it's a trade off. I definitely don't put anything on facebook that I wouldn't say on national TV.

Another reason Google is in my good books, at least, is because they look at the long term. They want more people browsing the web as a general business goal, so they develop an awesome browser -- not necessarily to win the browser wars, but to make all browsers better. Then they also make it open source. Then they build driverless cars. Then they provide the best free mapping system in the world. Then they add satellite / overhead imagery to it.

Google might not be perfect, but they're by far the best multinational corporation I've ever come across.

Okay, so you think you should support the system of them getting paid nothing? As I understand it - and please do correct me if I'm wrong - the reason that they get paid below minimum wage is because they get tips, and in order to make it legal to pay below minimum wage their employer has to check the tips they get against their wages. In other words, a restaurant can't say, "We're paying you $1/hour because you get tips." But they can say, "Minimum wage for the shift you just worked comes to $50. Minus $30 tips, here's your $20."

That means that tipping is the same as paying their employer specifically for treating their staff like crap - the staff get no benefit whatsoever. Of course, I may be wrong, in which case you're just supporting a system in which people arbitrarily get paid less than minimum wage because they can rely on handouts.

Then again I live in England where a minimum wage job is enough to live on, and everyone has to be paid it regardless of whether they also get given stuff. Really, I don't see the difference between your system and a system where your boss says, "Hey, I see you got a new shirt for Christmas. How much do you reckon it's worth? OK then, that's coming out of your next paycheck." Or, alternatively, "So, I hear you celebrate Christmas. You get gifts for that? OK then, your wages go down."

...which I cannot use, since I won't update to remove the OtherOS functionality I was sold.

...which I can't use.

...which I can't access.

...except for me.

Oh, I didn't realise that they'd used cheaper generic parts instead of fabricating much more expensive proprietary hardware. And then they didn't go to excessive lengths to block the use of that hardware that was easier and cheaper for them to use. Good God, they are lovely after all. Such lovely, lovely thieves.

Fuck Sony, and fuck anyone who doesn't think they're all a bunch of douchebags.

I know you aren't the first person to say this, and you won't be the last, but why, exactly? Why should they be paid?

I mean, if I go down a coal mine for a day and mine coal for the guy who owns the coal mine, he has agreed to pay me for my time and so I deserve to be paid. If someone agrees to pay me money if I give them this here desk and take it to their house, when I take it to their house and give it to them I deserve to be paid.

When I spend a large quantity of time and money recording an album or producing a film, I am essentially gambling that people will want to give me money for it. They don't have to. They never have had to. There has always been more art around than there has been demand. I am gambling that people will think that I am so much better than other people at making stuff they will pay me for making what I have made, with the implication that I will make more. That's it.

Anyway, voluntary donations seem to work fine - I mean, there was a torrent of DVD quality up before the release of Transformers 2. Cost of film: $200 million. Revenue before it was even released in my country: $600 million. Boo fucking hoo for the poor content creators who got ripped off on that deal, only becoming fabulously wealthy. This future where no one has to pay for media we keep getting warned about? It's here. Films are being made. Albums are being recorded. You or I could get them for free trivially. Next argument please.

No, the more accurate sentiment would be:

Civil suit vs individual pirates = Punatives are unfair

Civil suit vs BP = Compensate people for the damage you caused

Criminal suit against BP = This should happen

The flaw in your logic is conflating the ideas of civil and criminal court. If someone steals my wallet and gets caught, odds are that they'll never pay me back. They'll get community service, maybe jail, maybe a warning, but they will not have to pay me back. This is punishment, rather than compensation. If I sue the same guy in civil court, that is for compensation, not punishment - thus I can't just ask for 1000000% of what was in my wallet as punishment.

I beg to differ, but no - we have no guaranteed freedom of speech whatsoever. We are assumed to have freedom of speech unless that freedom is explicitly taken away (libel, slander, encouraging terrorism, etc), just as we are assumed to be able to swing our fists as long as that swinging isn't specified as being illegal - for example, if I swing my fist into your face, that would not be allowed.

a) It's viruses, not virii.

b) In what way are pacemakers, or even, say, cybernetic prosthetics, going to be networked to mission-critical systems?*

c) This is so frickin' cyberpunk.

*This one is actually a real question - see, I did the 'functional communication sandwich' thing there.

Wait, what? Where can I get this information? Where is it being distributed? IIRC, they just used some old bit of wireless network scanning software and happened to pick up more than they meant to. I don't exactly like Google having all my personal information, but thinking that Google gives some kind of massive shit about a few people's unsecured information is is definitely in the tinfoil hat zone.

If I had to, what I would class this as is the same as if you were walking down the street with a digital recorder, coming up with ideas for some sort of article you were writing about the area. While walking along talking into this digital recorder, creating files that will be sanitized and refactored before ever seeing the light of day, someone shouts some personal information. Then the German government gets all pissy about it and demands you hand over the tapes, and the FTC start an investigation.

Seriously guys, there are problems with Google. There are. This is not one of them, though.

So this implies that listening is ok? since that's all Google is doing, I fail to see the problem.

Right, I've had enough of this. Why do people simply allow this fallacy to continue? Apple's UIs are terrible!

The iPod is far more complex than it needs to be, the single good thing about the iPhone's interface is just a huge patent troll, the iPad I have never used so I will avoid comment, and the OS! Oh, the OS! A recording studio I practically lived in for a few months used a Mac, and on several occasions we spent hours just trying to move data onto an external drive - I believe the hardware on the year old box was failing, and when it wasn't we had to inexplicably use iTunes to move data files. Ok, so that was probably set up by some "security conscious" moron.

In general, though, the OS is terrible. One button mice were ok, they were a novelty. Fifteen years ago. Now I feel constrained by a 3 button, plus the extra four for scrolling. The only reason they've stuck with them is stubbornness - not because it makes sense, or because of the simplicity of it, but simply because The Mighty Steve refuses to admit that he might have been wrong. And dragging a drive to the trash - does that eject it or format it? I keep forgetting, since it is apparently random.

WTF is it that allows some of the most argumentative assholes on the web just overlook the one simple fact that Apple is really shitty at putting together a UI?