Don't worry, the spray paint lobby will talk to the right persons and make this nonsense stop.

Why would anyone in a first world country want to live in such a place, not safe enough to walk/cycle to the office? This is not a rhetorical question, I've never been to Chicago.

The day a robot can post this comment will be the day we really have artificial intelligence.

Your point was that you can always "not use Google" if you decide to. All I'm saying is that this is not true: when you browse a site that is not affiliated to Google but is using Google Analytics, which is quite common, then your data is gathered by Google. So you cannot simply "not use Google": even if you don't have a Google account and if you never use any service by Google, they still gather data about you, your browsing history, etc. By the way I don't know about the US but here in Europe I do most of my browsing from a few fixed IP addresses, so tracking is very easy.

And yes, I am aware that every website I browse knows my IP address, but Google knows everywhere I go, that's a whole different thing. Even if I'm not logged in. That's actually how they make a profit you know, targeted ads and stuff. In other words what you said is wrong: you cannot easily opt out from being tracked by Google, and it is important for them to track you as much as they can, whether you like it or not. Some people might even argue that being able to opt out is not enough, and that it should be opt-in.

Wrong link in my comment above, here is the correct one.

"Not using Google" is not enough to prevent Google from tracking you. In case you're unaware of how it works, have a look here. If you're already aware of how it works then I guess I'm just wasting my time...

Especially when said corporations are not European and not government. France has no problem amassing ridiculous amounts of data (of questionable quality) to use against their own citizens, here is a list (only available in French unfortunately).

Said differently: when your government does something that has a positive impact for you, it doesn't mean it's doing it for you. A pessimist would argue that there likely is a higher interest at stake.

You're mixing up uncompensated work and waste of time.

Spending time on the web interface to find the correct files for student assignments is uncompensated work (especially when the students are not good at using said web interface and put me in the situation of explaining them how to use said interface).

Spending four hours in a meeting room while someone plays with an expensive (albeit useless) smartboard and telling you how to keep a forum alive because it's so important is a waste of my time. Spending more hours listening to people congratulate themselves because a third of the students are happy is another waste of my time.

By the way it's not about putting course material online, I already do that by myself, both printable and animated versions. It's about using a web interface to communicate and deliver assignments, perform additional interactive tests and a thousand more time-consuming things with no added value.

This. I've been testing web education or whatever it's called this week. I did the same course with and without the "technology" addon.

For the students: I didn't notice a difference. No more or less success. Good students are good, lazy students are lazy, nothing will change that. And holding their hand will just make them take less initiative, which is not a good thing for society as a whole.

For the teacher (me): extra work, plenty. Also some waste of time (e.g. 4 hour meeting to brief us on how to keep a forum alive, wtf). No extra money, thank you. Also no taking this into account when evaluating my research (i.e. publications).

For the people setting the whole thing up: yes, they got paid for doing something absolutely useless and wasting my precious time. They were quite happy with themselves, being convinced that they did something useful. I even heard "35% of the students are happy with the online course, that's very positive". My reaction "wait a minute, doesn't that mean that 65% is either unhappy with it or doesn't care about it?" was met with silence.

My overall conclusion: thanks but next time I'll pass if I have the choice. And please, let the teachers do the teaching, not some guy from the I-have-to-justify-my-salary department who thinks that technology can solve all problems and that whoever doesn't agree just needs to open their eyes.

Because they can. The real problem here is that the browser cannot enforce its own security settings. The fact that Google is evil is beside the point. If I check a "don't track me" option in my browser then end up being tracked, my anger is directed toward the browser, not the tracker. Anything else doesn't make sense and is counter-productive.

Risky analogy: if my partner cheats on me, my anger should be directed toward my partner, not to anyone else (provided my partner cheated on me with someone who doesn't know me).

It seems to me that the US government wants to be able to use software-based attacks on other countries (like Iran with Stuxnet), while being totally protected from software-based attacks from the outside. In my opinion, this will never happen: US, like any other country, is and will be vulnerable to these attacks. No matter how much money they throw at it. In this context one might wonder whether it's in the US government's interest to bring the war to this terrain, like they did with Stuxnet.

After reading TFA I cannot find any convincing experimental validation. I see a lot of "can" and conditional tense (maybe that's the author's style), but nothing on the validation of the approach. Where is the experimental data, including the number of anonymous users correctly and incorrectly identified on forums?

No, being a republican while not being rich just makes you vote for people who don't have your best interest at heart. Whether that makes you someone with principles or just a victim is another question. To be fair, democrats also don't have your best interest a heart.

Of course no mod points - still, thanks for the laugh :)

For some people (including me), surprising someone and showing them that we really tried to find something they like is a very important part of making a present.