nobody had a computer at home
Millions of households had computers at that time: Commodore VC 64.
Millions of companies started to use IBM PC compatible computers.
They were just not connected, except for some geeks providing BBS boxes.
The Internet didn't "take off" in 1983 for reasons that are completely unrelated to why this product failed. Most of it was because in 1983, computers were slow, modems were slow, and communication via the Internet wasn't nearly as practical as sneakernet.
And to make it clear, since this was my original point, the WWW is not the Internet. It is only a small part of it, though it is currently the most visible part of the Internet. But it is not the Internet.
The major reason was that the WWW - or better: HTML and HTTP - had not yet been invented in 1983. These ubiquitous technologies made the browser usable for the masses and replaced protocols like gopher and ftp for content access and rendering. And this was the reason for the Internet to take off - it became simple to use; even with 2400 baud modems.
Minitel succeeded?
In France ? Sure it succeeded considering that its been in use for 30 years, and only in june of this year will the service be taken permanently offline. [...] Minitel was BIG, so BIG that many doubted that Internet could even succeed in France in the ninties and early 2000s. The system was closed and not exceedingly expensive but it worked.
Minitel was a huge success - and a major road block in France for Internet services. Coming from Germany to France in the mid-90s, I was surprised how hard it was to get Internet access. At the end, I got it through a modem bank in my university, but ISPs were rather non existent. Thanks to Minitel, Internet was probably 3-5 years late in France.
If the services had started out integrated this would not be an issue. On Facebook you can do a search, look at someone's photos, post comments etc. and everyone knows they all share data. Should Google be treated differently just because google brought in picassa, added blogging, etc. rather than implementing them all in one go?
Yes. You signed up for different T&C and to switch services now - after you trusted 1000s of emails to Google and created 100s of G+ networks - is very expensive. So, how can you NOT accept the change and still use the service?
To be honest, having different terms and conditions for every service that Google runs must have been quite confusing for a lot of people*, so consolidating them into one package does make sense.
I do not think so. I rather think that is quite confusing to see that Google uses my Gmail login and data to "improve" my search results or stores my search strings persistently. I did not sign up for this feature.
It makes a lot of sense to have different T&C for a serach engine, an email service, a video sharing board, and a social network.
I can however understand the problem with Google now being able to use data collected from one service and now using it in another, but if all they're doing is using it to target us with more specific ads then I don't really care.
The question is not whether you care. The question is whether it is legal to join those databases without explicit user consent. And there is a high probability that this is ruled to be illegal in Europe. And it would be a huge win for the user's ability to control the use of his personal information.
I see nothing wrong with Google doing whatever they want with the information I voluntarily provide them in exchange for their services. If you don't want them to have it, use another service.
There are multiple problems with your post:
1. Obviously Google could do you very wrong with the information that you voluntarily provided, e.g. by making them public.
2. The issue here is that Google consolidates and joins the data over multiple services - so it's email and search and G+ and YouTube services. Before each service had its own privacy clauses that were service specific and - at least legally - Google could not merge and match this information across those services.
3. Changing to a different service is very expensive (at least if you count in the time) for some services. This is particularly true for GMail and G+.
Doubleclick is owned by Google now. Why is that a scumbag company?
I do not know. But I know several Web site owners, who stopped using Google Ads when Google bought Doubleclick - they had that kind of reputation, you know
On Firefox, the "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked" is not enabled by default. I don't understand why this is not the default action.
The option should be "Tell websites I'm okay with being tracked" and should be ticked off by default.
Actually, it is unclear what the "do not track" actually means. Does in include "do not log" - or "wipe my IP address from the logs after x days"?
Anybody, who does want to not support the biggest trackers (facebook, google, twitter), should (a) deactivate sending cookies to third parties and (b) install ghostery in FireFox. That's much more effective than the "do not track" additional information sent to the tracking web sites.
He should be fired, and possibly prosecuted if any crimes were committed.
Yeah. Put him in jail with this Assange guy! What do I say. Burn'em!!!
How does Facebook do it (the Like button)? Does Facebook also circumvent it this way? Either Facebook found a way to do it better, or they are both doing the same thing.
Can we stop the Google/Microsoft bashing and focus on the techniques please?
Firefox with Ghostery is your friend. Forget "do not track" and P3P. They rely on fair play of web sites - which is unreasonable to expect.
Firstly, what's the big deal with the document having these microdots?
I found it interesting that you even might think that this is not a bid deal. For starters: When you buy a printer, are you informed about it printing microdots?
While it is clearly interesting to have an open source format for editing (btw, there are already many), it is far more important to have a standardized and open reader format: The eBook that I buy should be readable on all readers and also convertible to new formats in the future (thus: open and without DRM). When we have this, the writer/editor will have his choice automatically as well.
It only takes enough people to reach 114 years, then you see also people that will get older.
OP is correct, though. Troublesome to see a rather recent publication (2001) giving the wrong advice for such a "standard" disease.
All this bill would do is ensure that Google, Facebook and others completely shutdown all local European presence. That means all those local jobs go away and all legal recourse is gone while at the same time everyone keeps using it. Unless of course you're willing to implement the great firewall of Europe and join China in a world where the powers that be can decide to rewrite history.
If this would be true, Europeans would have a big interest in implementing this law right now. While some local jobs from Facebook and Google might disappear, large European competitors for those sites would appear that implement the technical possibility to delete this information that you have published before, and creating new jobs and tax income for a state within the EU. Win-win for the Europeans I would say.
For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!
