Comment Failure to research before blogging (Score 1) 152
Four words: Fediverse e.g. Mastodon.
Four words: Fediverse e.g. Mastodon.
The reason is simple: most users of Web browsers are illiterate, not just technically but sociopolitically and otherwise. They don't recognize the value in choosing Firefox for the same reasons they failed to see the value in not voting for Donald Trump. There's no use trying to educate them, either, because they are immensely short-sighted and will always take the shortest apparently easiest route to their objective even if it's not the wisest one.
Think space elevator....
The very fact that giant multinational corporations - who routinely do evil against citizens until they're caught - are supporting this new Foundation is proof enough that in fact it won't "fix the Web" at all, and will instead make it worse. That other corporate-backed entity in which Berners-Lee has had a hand, the W3C, has for decades now been responsible for reshaping HTML and the Web to be profoundly more friendly to corporate motives and agendas than those of citizens. Before 2000, it was easily possible to experience Web content in a fashion of personal preference; in 2019, most blogs and information sites are now constrained to formats over which citizens have very little control. The difference is entirely due to how the language of the Web has evolved to benefit corporations more than citizens.
Tim Berners-Lee has had a hand in all of that evolution. Berners-Lee is a hypocrite who is only just now worried about how this perversion of the Web will affect his legacy and how he is perceived in the future. He's trying to retcon his actions and participation of the past two decades to benefit his posthumous image.
By extension, the court also ruled against Naruto himself (herself?). The court had the leeway to ignore the humans' role in initiating the defense of Naruto's rights (as a person), as is commonly done for humans defending other humans incapable of defending themselves for whatever reason. The court failed to do so here because the ruling was just as much a determination that Naruto was not a person as it was a decision against the humans involved. Had the court actually deemed Naruto to BE a person, the ruling would have been in his favor.
Since the USPTO has no authority to judge personhood and issue rulings about it, the decision ultimately rests with courts and not the USPTO. The USPTO is overstepping its authority by implying that they have such authority.
This issue rests entirely upon how we define personhood: any entity that we recognize as a "person" is allowed all the rights associated with it. Centuries ago, dark-skinned peoples were not considered persons, and would not have been allowed copyrights.
Fast forward to this new millennium, and dark-skinned people can now establish copyrights, but Naruto the macaque couldn't establish his personhood and an associated right to own copyright; Naruto is still not a person. Courts have also ruled against those trying to establish personhood for other primates. Most recently great apes were demonstrated to pass a false-belief test, indicating they possess at least a rudimentary theory of mind, but I doubt even that will sway our hard-hearted xenophobic courts.
I'm not hopeful that a court will be willing to grant any AI the rights of personhood, including the right to establish copyrights, when even our closest genetic cousins with obvious rudimentary sentience can't pass muster.
I once got so sick of replacing the non-replaceable battery in my Norelco razor that I took the Black and Decker flashlight that I never used (from one of those "kits" that I described) and made it the basis of modding the razor to give it a replaceable battery. I grafted the razor head and motor assembly into the body of the flashlight (JB Weld is awesome), and was then able to power it with a 3.6V NiMH Versapak battery. It actually made the razor more effective as a bonus from the higher RPMs. I enjoyed that for several years until I dismantled it for reasons I can't recall. I'm tempted to try something like that again with my electric toothbrush, but B&D has turned its back on the entire Versapak ecosystem, so I'll have to choose a different host for the body snatch.
It wasn't all of Apple's staff that was responsible for this bias, you cunt. However few it was, they don't benefit (much) from it now... it's just a bias they haven't unlearned and their algorithm reflected it, however unintentionally. I doubt there was any conscious intent behind it so no, they're not benefiting from it, especially not now, you bleeding yeast infection and useless eater.
You missed my point: mass producers are, at this point, selling the batteries first. What devices they drive are almost immaterial to the extra profit they drive. Outside of the power tools market, which includes more independent-minded and self-sufficient people than most markets, the favorite strategy is to embed the batteries inside devices and encourage the ignorant to simply dispose of the entire device when the batteries limit its function. We can perhaps thank Philips Norelco and Black and Decker for starting this trend; now everybody emulates their success.
(Of course the very best tools won't be found in any one-size-fits-all kit, no moreso than buying an all-in-one stereo or printer-scanner-FAX machine would get you the very best components. Those are, however, what most people buy, whether out of ignorance or desperation or lack of funds. That was not the point.)
Why do bigots behave like bigots, is that what you're asking? There was SOME ancestral benefit to it, apparently, but like so many other anachronisms it has long since outlived its beneficial purpose, but bigots are slow to grasp the new reality. Anachronisms are stubborn persistent beasts, however, more resistant to change than any low-functioning autistic, even moreso when there's a residual cultural impetus to them.
Where was this argument when the Cordless Revolution began in earnest in the Seventies?
Oh, right: being ignored by virtually everyone, just as it is now. Humans are selfish to the point of being foolishly short-sighted.
Here's an experiment for you: try to find a "kit" of commonly used CORDED power tools offered by a manufacturer, similar to the kits of cordless tools that have been offered for the last decade. I can predict the result: you won't find one. The batteries benefit the mass producers MUCH more than they benefit you, so they don't sell what benefits them less. We should be lucky they still sell corded tools at all, since so many stupid people have bought into the Cordless Revolution.
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." -- Bertrand Russell
