At the rate most IT people wear/wash their clothes, I think you mean "4 weeks of the month".

Well, the MIT terms and conditions suggest that the data will be anonymized for MIT's purposes, so MIT will not use the data in a personally identifiable way. But, the terms and conditions also state:

"You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully-paid, worldwide, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, translate, create derivative works from, communicate to the public and display the Tracking Data."

So, while they limit their own use, they grant themselves the right to provide the raw data, with personally identifiable information in tact, to some other entity.

So, which one of us RTFA?

That concerns me. What does the Department of Defense need from understanding the intimate social structures of the nation? So, for free, you're going to voluntarily tell the Department of Defense--those who were once involved in the search for Communists during McCarthy's heyday--everybody you have contact with, or influence over?

Sure, the auspices of the data, in an abstract, non-personally identifying manner, are relevant. But there's another purpose entirely by adding incentive to participate.

First and foremost, it breaks the scientific mold and corrupts the data. All of their data must be taken in the context of the incentive. It can only be applied to other situations that have a similar context. That severely limits the usefulness of the data, and negatively impacts the value of the data.

So what is the true value of this data, and how will it be used in the long run. Also: how long do they plan to keep it? (Until another McCarthy comes along on a witch-hunt? Who then, do you know, that would damn you to interrogation and thorough, disruptive inspection by the DoD?) They say it all with: "Is your blog effective at spreading information?"

I say, "Fuck red-balloons." Find me 10 people willing to die for the sins of everybody that ever lived. Hell, find me 10 Taco Bell dishes that don't make me shit my pants every time I sneeze.

How do you calculate the theft of value from a website's internal commenting and user contribution functions by services such as these? What about the violation of Fair Use by adjoining or abridging copyrighted content with such a service? How about damages evident by the content of unmitigated and unmoderated user submissions?

Whether Google or ReframeIt does it, it's stealing, and it's wrong. Sites like DIGG and Fark implement this kind of thing the right way, by centralizing the user submissions away from the site, and into a representation that does not adjoin the linked content. This is not stealing. This is an acceptable, legally-protected, alternate forum for contextual discussion which does not impede, supplant, or otherwise illicit participation from users navigating directly to websites in question.

Google and ReframeIt should be held liable for infringing on the copyrights of every site they encapsulate or otherwise co-opt with their software.

Aside from the science, language, and math classes I took until the end of high school, I'd say the it was pretty effective "unschooling". I've learned more about British aristocracy from Wikipedia than I ever learned in school--and far more interesting things than were present in any of the text books that we were tested on. History, Psychology, Social Studies... all of it was filled with crap I ultimately replaced with real education in the real world.

For example (and this may be only my experience), I never got exposed to the *whole* "states rights" argument about the Civil War in school, so for the most part I ended up thinking Lincoln was Jesus' second coming. 9 times out of 10, (especially if you come from the North) you leave school thinking that the whole point of the Civil War was about freeing the slaves, when it really had to do with a lot more things like taxes. Hell, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't come until well into the War. Then some of the things you learn about Lincoln outside of the heavily-doctored, high school textbooks makes him look like a generally nice guy that could be a real dick--which sounds a lot like a recent president I'm familiar with. In fact, in certain lights, he seems like being an agent of Empire than of Democracy. Either way, we can thank him for the world we live in today, as Americans, for better or worse.

My point is that I don't necessarily believe the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, had been imparted in school--making the substance worthless. And while I personally had some great teachers, there were far more "from the book" automatons which made the whole process uninteresting, and useless. But this is a perspective I didn't have until after I exposed myself to information outside of the classroom. Until then, I thought I had been fairly well schooled. Now, I'm certain I had been "unschooled".

What I think is important about the schooling process are those subjects which require a structured environment to really learn: namely science, language, and math. I would not hesitate for a moment to assume that those would be the weakest elements of a wholly "unschooled" individual. Which is a shame, as they are more important than anything else and serve as the best foundation for assimilating the world.

Blizzard,

I've dropped more money into Blizzard than I care to admit. Year after year, you boast record profits from your largest titles. Each expansion for WoW costs as much as the original game itself, and with your adjustments to the original game content and the accelerated leveling mechanics the value of the original WoW, and the Burning Crusade, has all but been obliterated. Yet, the prices barely reflect this. On top of this, you are projecting SC2 to be an incomplete game, deliverable in 3 bite-size episodes at (probably more than) $50 a piece.

I'm personally sick and tired of having my wallet emptied by your new corporate strategies and board of directors for incomplete games. There was a time when Blizzard would not release an incomplete game--when years after the initial delivery dates would pass without event while the team worked tirelessly to perfect it and deliver a whole product, with a whole story, self-contained, and independent from any further expansion or episode.

It seems obvious that WoW was the changing point for Blizzard. Was it the lure of money-money-money that made Blizzard change how it treats is loyal fan-base? Why do you repeatedly rake your customers over the coals of investment, while actively depreciating their previous infusions of capital?

That "USENIX EVT" is an anagram for "UNISEX VET"?