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Comment Re:It is like TPS cover sheets. (Score 1) 290

It's really a shame system.

This is one obvious issue. However, my main issue is that such a system fosters competition between employees. I would argue that competition only works well, if the employees do not need to collaborate. Commissions on sales work well, if the employee has an exclusive territory - I would argue that it does not work well, if one employee can snatch the customer from another employee. Sames with those badges etc.

Comment Re:Seems typical, actually. (Score 1, Insightful) 96

Long story short, she kinda had it coming for failing to do due diligence.

Nobody likes lying, and it's pretty hard to defend someone who gets caught telling a lie, but, do you really believe that Yahoo hired Scott Thompson because they thought he had a CS degree, from 1979, from some tiny college that nobody has heard of?

No, but do you want a CEO (who is also responsible for all employees) who lied in his CV and got caught? Isn't this lie "unethical" behavior and cannot be tolerated in a public company?

Security

Video Viewfinity CEO Says Many Computer Users Are Overprivileged (Video) Screenshot-sm 95

This isn't about your place in society, but about user privileges on your computers and computer networks. The more privileges, the more risk of getting hacked and having Bad People do Bad Things to your company's computers, right? So Leonid Shtilman's company, Viewfinity, offers SaaS that helps you grant system privileges in a more granular manner than just allowing "root" and "user" accounts with nothing in between.

Comment Re:Sanity vs. politically motivated scaremongering (Score 1, Insightful) 267

Risk is damage * incidence. A high damage event with low incidence can be lower risk than a low damage event with high incidence. This is in fact the case when we compare nuclear with coal power.

This is correct. The problem is that apparently we cannot give concrete figures (in dollars) for "damage" nor for the likelihood "incidence" - otherwise it should be possible to get an insurance policy for nuclear power plants, or did I miss something obvious?

Comment "if it comes from these sources, it must be true." (Score 1) 441

I doubt that people think that "if it comes from these sources, it must be true." for everything what Google or Wikipedia says. However, we can be sure that people think "if it comes from these sources, it must be false." for everything the RIAA CEO says about those laws. So, basically, he reinforced with his comment what people understood about SOPA etc.

Comment Re:People continue to underestimate the Internet (Score 1) 469

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.

Comment Re:Ready? (Score 1) 469

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.

Comment Re:If the services had started out integrated (Score 1) 135

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?

Comment Re:Not a bad thing (Score 1) 135

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.

Comment Re:Use another service? (Score 1) 135

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+.

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