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Comment: Re:who's over-inflated idea of his own importance? (Score 1) 425

by Rotworm (#37437876) Attached to: Why Star Wars Should be Left o the Fans
Artist's have _always_ been willing to take credit for their own work. We know of plenty of authors prior to the last few hundred years: Livy, Homer, Aquinas, you name it. The fact that some authors opened their work by honouring their muse, or inspiration, has nothing to do with them taking credit for their own work. Some of them, certainly not all, worked in the tradition of honouring the inspiration, but they still took credit for their work. Otherwise, how would we know who wrote what.

The only exception is author's who wrote in culture's that pre-date writing, or did not have reasonable access to writing, such as the Beowulf poet, or the Green Knight poet. Even then, I'm sure the only reason authorship wasn't recorded was because those that orally passed on the story, excluded the original author's credits.

Comment: Re:Slower Work, Less Risk (Score 1) 835

by Rotworm (#37334568) Attached to: Why the Fax Machine Refuses To Die
None of the above. Receiving email with potentially malicious content would be so devastating for some organizations that it's not worth the security risk. While it's unlikely their security would be breached by an unknown vulnerability, if they were breached, the data loss would be devastating. Thus, when they can receive documents through a secure fax which could not breach their database, they will sometimes opt to receive transmissions through fax.

Comment: Re:Derhythmed (Score 5, Interesting) 408

by Rotworm (#36137300) Attached to: The Rise of Filter Bubbles
True, but if Bing will produce customized searches equivalent to holding a mirror up to someone's face, people might opt for Bing instead of Google's "high road." I agree with you that it's better for society to have an opt-in system, I just imagine it might be too risky for a company to implement such a system.
These two systems revolve around how badly people want their mirrors.

Comment: Derhythmed (Score 3) 408

by Rotworm (#36137256) Attached to: The Rise of Filter Bubbles

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, [Eric Schmidt] elaborates. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Google has mentioned a number of times that customization is a major feature of their searches. While this summary isn't without cause to be nervous about such a thing, instead of algorithms to correct algorithms, it's no major feat to allow users to disable some of the non-spam related algorithms. In fact, it's no major feat to disable algorithms by subcategory: geographical location, operating system, language, search history, etc.

Comment: Re:Why is this a problem? (Score 1, Insightful) 376

by Rotworm (#35119766) Attached to: Wikipedia Works To Close Gender Gap
Wikipedia thinks having diverse contributors helps develop well-written, unbiased comprehensive treatments on various subjects. In this case, the argument goes, topics of typically male interest tend to receive more attention from the larger male contributor base, whereas topics of typical female interest receive less.

Comment: 3 Suspects (Score 2) 376

by Rotworm (#35119664) Attached to: Wikipedia Works To Close Gender Gap
Seems a statement of suspicious sketch. As long as I've been paying attention to Wikipedia there've been rules and guidelines to promote particular behaviours and dissuade others, from writing styles to definitions of what counts as evidence. Is the author saying the hackerish Wikipedia base will co-operate with other guidelines, but not ones promoting diversity? Suspect.
Futher, "adopting openness means being 'open to very difficult, high-conflict people, even misogynists,'" also seems to be non-intuitive. I wonder what evidence drew those conclusions. If it was a Wikipedia article, at least I could follow the citation.

A bonus disagree comes from

"According to the OpEd Project, an organization based in New York that monitors the gender breakdown of contributors to “public thought-leadership forums,” a participation rate of roughly 85-to-15 percent, men to women, is common — whether members of Congress, or writers on The New York Times and Washington Post Op-Ed pages.

It would seem to be an irony that Wikipedia, where the amateur contributor is celebrated, is experiencing the same problem as forums that require expertise."

I don't think that's ironic at all. 85% of experts wear black socks, ironically 85% of the population also wears black socks.

Comment: Re:It has always been true (Score 1) 794

by Rotworm (#34445418) Attached to: PayPal Withdraws WikiLeaks Donation Service
While I appreciate all who fight the good fight for a better breasted television of tomorrow, I think the disjunction is between a freedom and a right.
We have freedom of publication, which means the government can't stop you from making a publication, but we don't have a right, which means the government is not obligated to cover costs related to publication. The same goes for your example of the freedom to gather, it's not a right, and the government isn't required to pick up travel costs of anyone who wants to gather anywhere.
And I'm glad, I don't want to fund a government that makes all those examples rights.

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