This guy sounds like a twentieth century doctor probably sounded as the medical field started to become highly specialized. There are few things in life in which we make progress and make things simpler at the same time. It's the reason that you can't see the ground anymore while looking into the engine compartment of your car and it's the reason that laws are more numerous and more complex than ever before. Sometimes it's nice to look back at the simpler times with nostalgia, but there's no going back, and even if you could, you would probably just come out of it with a greater appreciation for the lifestyle that is provided by these advances, even if it comes at the cost of significant complexity.

I don't think it was the "profanity" that was wrong with the headline and instead it was the grammar. A preposition is not what you're supposed to use to end a sentence with.

The biggest issue I have with Verizon Fios is the TV service. All of the video channels are so compressed that you inevitably get pixelation and tearing

What are you comparing this to? The television signal on FIOS is superior to almost every other cable company since FIOS is one of the only services that sends the original stream and not a recompressed video. If you think the FIOS video signal is bad, you should try Comcast or, even worse, one of the satellite networks.

This is particularly infuriating when it happens during playback for video on demand shows that you are paying extra for.

That is different from the television service and you're right in that there is no excuse for this on a fiber network where the files are hosted by the ISP.

But the 75/35 is pretty flash.

As long as you're not using it for Netflix or YouTube, but who does that?

That sounds like Yogi Berra's quote on why he no longer went to a local restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

it doesn't mean that people shouldn't have a right to be forgotten in the public eye as far as possible.

Who are you to determine what the public has a right to focus their attention on?

You may personally believe free speech is an absolute right (it's not, try committing libel, or professing in public repeatedly that you want to blow up the president or something) that overrides all other rights but it's just not that simple.

Nobody is arguing that free speech is an absolute right, but libel and threats are already covered by different, more reasonable laws.

What Google is receiving requests for is the fact that they're in breach of data protection law, and like every other company on earth, have an obligation to adhere to the law.

I'm not arguing that Google should be given a free pass to violate this law. I'm arguing that the law is foolish and shouldn't even be in place. If you have a problem with the data being broadcasted about you, take it up with the people doing the broadcasting, not a third-party that simply indexes whatever information is publicly available.

By your logic Microsoft never had a monopoly with Internet Explorer because Netscape existed. Monopolies are not determined by amount of competition, but by amount of marketshare held

As swillden said, Microsoft did not have a monopoly in the browser space. They were convicted of using their monopoly of desktop operating systems to exert undue influence in the browser market. Google did not use an existing monopoly to gain marketshare in the search engine, so your analogy is bogus.

So what you're saying then is that it's okay to manipulate results if you don't like the law? Interesting.

They are following the law, just in an exaggerated form to protest the burden this is placing on them.

It's censorship in the exact same way that pulling your curtains closed when you get undressed is censorship.

If that was the case, then I would fully support the law, but it is nothing like that. Google is being forced to take information that is already publicly available out of their search results. This does not work - the cat is already out of the bag and the law makes it Google's problem to try to put the cat back in the bag.

Tell that to every company that's been fined for breaches of data protection law. I'm sure despite being down thousands they'll be happy to here that what they did was impossible to enforce.

When I said it was impossible to enforce, I didn't mean that some companies wouldn't be fined. What I was saying is that there will always be services that fly under the radar that will provide that information. People will inevitably gravitate toward those sources which will eventually garner enough attention to have this law enforced on those new services. When that happens, another small company will take their place and the process repeats. The point is that the information is public and there is a demand for the "forgotten" data, so there will always be someone to provide that service even if it doesn't comply with the law. That's the way the internet works, hence the analogy to piracy on P2P services.

Interesting. You'd rather drive a car at high speed that contains mechanical parts that are sure to fail over time rather than a computer which is much less likely to suffer from mechanical wear. I'm not saying that you're better off getting a first-generation car with a relatively unknown safety record, but a car that is several years old with a proven safety record would be a far safer option. It would also be more fuel-efficient while providing more amenities. But to each their own.

You shouldn't assume that because Google has removed a record that someone has a legal right to be forgotten.

No one has a right to be forgotten. Doing so requires stifling the speech of those who remember you. Although I guess you could fix that by erasing their memories.

Google is intentionally fucking around with removals because it's pissed off at the court ruling, so it's trying to make as much of a mockery as it can without falling foul of the law.

Can you blame them? The "right to be forgotten" is ridiculous in the first place and it is creating hundreds of thousands of requests that Google is required to process at a significant expense.

Which is one of the reasons having market monopolies is bad. Because Google has a search engine monopoly it can fuck around with results to suit it's political agenda. In a truly competitive market this would hurt it because other engines would keep the public interest stuff and only remove the legit stuff.

Oh yeah, Google has such a monopoly! There aren't any other search engines for people to use.

Given this, I would suggest that rather than going to .com instead of .co.uk you just go to a different search engine altogether - one that doesn't manipulate results to suit it's political agenda which is exactly what Google is doing here.

They're "manipulating results" because there is a ridiculous law on the books that requires significant effort and expense on their part to uphold. Anyone with half of a brain can see how this will play out. Since Google is the primary target of this law, people will begin using a different search engine to find the results that Google is legally required to "forget". The new search engine will become the new primary target of the law, will be forced to adhere to it at significant expense to the company, and the people will move on to the next search engine. We've already seen this a million times with P2P clients as well as torrent sites.

Whether you want to admit it or not, this law is pure censorship. The internet is about making information available and it is highly effective at circumventing censorship. Not only is this law completely ridiculous, it is almost impossible to effectively enforce. But I'm sure that won't stop you from trying.

And yet this menu ends up being a hermaphrodite of the useful menu from Windows 7 and the tiles of the Windows 8 home screen. Seriously, these tiles are about the worst interface I have ever used. The entire interface is inconsistent: tiles are different sizes, different background colors, some have text while others don't, some tile icons are silhouettes while others are full-color, some tiles contain pictures instead of icons, and some tiles are animated. The whole thing reminds me a more professional version of some random schmuck's GeoCities page circa 1998. Microsoft: just stop it with the tiles and provide something consistent and usable!

At this point, I can't even use the speeds that the ISP claims to provide because all of the content sources that I attempt to use can't seem to saturate my existing bandwidth. This is especially noticeable with video streaming services which seem to be unable to keep up despite the fact that the advertised bandwidth of my connection far exceeds the required bandwidth of the video. I get more stuttering videos now than I did in 1998 despite the fact that I have 2,000 times more bandwidth now than I did then. So what difference does it make if I get 10Gbps over my current 30Mbps?

Microsoft,

Nobody asked you to play cyberpolice - you took that upon yourselves in an attempt to make yourselves look better after being the laughingstock of security experts for several decades. Lately you've been overstepping your bounds and now you're looking for other companies to join you so that you don't have to take all of the heat the next time you overstep your bounds. Good luck with that.

Seems to me, barring common carrier or another path to true net neutrality, both sides have more to gain by colluding than by fighting.

No, the ISPs have a lot to gain by blocking video traffic. They make tons of money on their television services and paid video-on-demand services. Every second that you're watching Hulu, YouTube, or Netflix is a second that you're not watching their paid services. They're terrified that their customer might find that they can get most of their entertainment from online sources and cut the cord from the ISP's highly-lucrative television services. Add in the fact that these third-party video services create congestion on the ISP's networks and could require them to upgrade their infrastructure and you can begin to understand why the ISPs are motivated to throttling other provider's content.

In addition to that, the ISPs have more leverage in negotiations with third-party content providers because many of the ISP's customers have little to no choice for an alternative provider. Therefore, the third-party content providers need to pay the extortion fees to the ISPs in order to continue reaching their customers. This situation is not going to change unless serious competition or regulation is introduced.

One of the advantages of a fully-electric car is that it has very few moving parts and requires hardly any maintenance. With a series hybrid such as the Volt, you now have a generator that adds a lot of the maintenance that would be required with an ICE. The Volt may be a nice option at the moment to help some people overcome range anxiety, but the better long-term solution is to ditch the generator and the maintenance it requires and go fully-electric.

Because of the manner in which the NSA conducts upstream collection, and the limits of its current technology, the NSA cannot completely eliminate 'about' communications from its collection without also eliminating a significant portion of the 'to/from' communications that it seeks.

I wonder if that would work for me. "Your honor, I had to rob all of those banks because I could not afford the Lambos and prostitutes that I seek."

Of course the government would have to eliminate such a program that gathers what it seeks... because what it seeks is unconstitutional!!! How the fuck did they write a 191-page report and completely miss that point?! I'm sure there would be a ton of people ready to cite Hanlon's Razor, but nobody is that dumb. If you still don't buy into that, then let me introduce Organgtool's Razor: In a world where everyone buys into Hanlon's Razor, all it takes for evil to triumph is for it to wear a veil of stupidity.

I never have and never will sign one of these contracts. The way I see it, everything I do on company time and/or company resources is property of the company and everything I do on my own time and/or my own resources is my property. Few things in life are so simple. When a company places a contract in front of me that even insinuates anything to the contrary, I do not sign it. If they point out that I did not sign it, I simply declare it unreasonable. The HR person usually frowns and lets me go without signing it or by signing a modified version initialed by us both as you did. Companies only pull this shit because people don't read what they sign or they sign it thinking it will never be enforced. The fact of the matter is that the company probably spent over $10,000 finding a candidate for the position. They're not likely to throw all of that away because an employee doesn't sign one part of the contract that most sane people would find unreasonable as long as you decline politely and offer to sign a modified contract that is reasonable.

I'm all for privacy, but it's your own responsibility to protect your privacy. If you don't want your communications broadcast to the entire neighborhood, then take the steps necessary to set up encryption on your broadcasting device. There was a time when setting up encryption was difficult, but now it is a breeze and there is simply no excuse for not doing it. The instructions on most wireless routers even highly recommend encryption, so not setting it up is willful negligence on the user's part.