Posts by Turtle

@Gene Cash

"'parents proudly holding vaccination cards showing that their children were protected from deadly diseases'. Sure won't find *that* in America... home of the wacko uneducated anti-science Christian fundies."

The anti-vaxxers and the Christian fundamentalists are two different groups of people (with of course some overlap) and the viewpoints these groups espouse are not related and grow from different roots. And neither group is representative of the 300+ million people who live here. So really, you can apply your term "wacko uneducated" to yourself first of all.

Jenny McCarthy: Christian Fundamentalist. You don't see anything wrong with that picture? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_McCarthy )

I'd also like to know where you got statistics showing that vaccine-refusal is more prevalent in the US than in the UK and how much more prevalent it actually is - because it is far from unknown there. How prevalent does vaccine-refusal have to be in the UK before we can label the whole population "wacko uneducated anti-science chavs"?

I understand that it might feel good to bash the US and Christian fundamentalists, but it makes you look like an ignorant propagandist with no concern for - or acquaintance with - facts.

Additional Side Effect - Re: @JDX

"That's exactly the problem. If Google shows you the content you want without having to "manually load" the page from which the content originated, then Google gets to show you to show you their ads, but the owners of the original page get nothing for their content - not only do they not get views for any advertising on which they might rely to keep their heads above water, but you might not even take notice of their existence."

And another side effect of this. If the site originating the content is a Google Affiliate or uses Google Ad-Sense then Google does not have to pay the originating site for the content being viewed.

But if the originating site does not use Google but instead uses some other ad network, then not merely does Google not have to pay for the content being viewed on the Google Search Results Page or Knowledge Graph, but the ad network servicing the originating site does make any money either, thereby making it harder for that, or any other, ad network to compete with Google.

@heyrick Re: if Google can show me what I need without me having to ...

"Could say the same for a lot of Wikipedia..."

That's exactly why the Wikipedia discussion page is at least as important as the main article.

@JDX

" if I search for something and Google can show me what I need without me having to manually load another page..."

That's exactly the problem. If Google shows you the content you want without having to "manually load" the page from which the content originated, then Google gets to show you to show you their ads, but the owners of the original page get nothing for their content - not only do they not get views for any advertising on which they might rely to keep their heads above water, but you might not even take notice of their existence.

This is not a symbiotic relationship, this is the usual Google parasitism: just another way that Google extracts free labor from the rest of the world.

@ratfox Re: Is it a real problem for Wikipedia?

"Until there is a drop in contributors, I would say they have no reason to worry..."

I don't have a citation handy (see what I did there?) but, as far as I know, the number of contributors (called "editors" in wikispeak as I am sure you know) has in fact been dropping. But I don't think that it has anything to do with Google's Knowledge Graph.

@ Destroy All Monsters

"People have no taste."

But most people have their own demonology and a partiality to anything that tends to confirm it.

@Khaptain

"Mein Kempff is an insight into who the man was, whether he was a devil or an angel is irrelevant, it is, and should remain an important part of history. ( Those who ignore the past are more likely to repeat it). The question that should arise is "WHY" have people become interested."

I think that that's an insightful opinion and I actually share it - though truth to tell I have not read my copy of that, or of Tischgespräche (which is a more problematic book).

However, I find it difficult to think that mot of the people reading Mein Kampf are amateur historians. I would not be surprised if they compose the same market for "Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion" and I wouldn't be surprised if they also studied Henry Ford's "The International Jew". (The Protocols is a big seller in the Arab world, and although the Ford book is also published there, I do not how popular it is in comparison.)

@ ukgnome

"However, for every person that is sceptical about climate change there is a scientist that believes that the change is due to humans. Now, I'm not a sceptic by any means, and I do believe that we haven't helped the climates situation. But if we have the sceptics and the scientists doesn't that make for a more varied and interesting future for technology?"

So, you're under the impression that "sceptics" and "scientists" are two separate groups of people?

Well, according to a well-known proverb by someone who had enough experience to know, there's someone like you born every minute.

@ tetchmagikos

"Personally I'd like to see more funding for research into potential ways to address the climate before committing to anything of huge scale, but the discourse has been reduced to something of an almost religious ferver. "

The issue has been one of increased government control and direction of the economy and huge investments to mitigate it since the very day that climate change was invented; i.e. it was a political issue from the day of its birth and was intended to be so.

The religious fervor you mention is the fervor of those who think that government control of the economy and control of the government by ideologues are a good thing. Global Warming Alarmism is designed to achieve both. Hence the constant procession of "tipping points" - telling us that we have to act now and that there is no time to wait - which are easily recognizable to anyone as a very typical example of high-pressure sales tactics.

@DaveyG

"Its time humans stopped being such wingers and get their asses into space, there is plenty of good technology out there to stop radiation."

And when they go, you'll be there, cheering 'em on!

@Lapun Mankimasta And His Exercise In Dishonesty.

"Considering that the charge that was laid against the Assad administration - that it had used chemical weapons against its own people - was never held up to any scrutiny except from the UN, and that the charge was endlessly repeated in the mass media as if proved beyond reasonable doubt, can there be any doubt that the accusation, like a similar one brought against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, emanates from a Star Chamber? And so I am compelled to disregard any repetition of it as drivel."

Then the proper attitude would be no judgement at all on the truth or falsity of the accusations. Because your judgement that the accusation is false is also based on nothing other than the stupid and dishonest premise that if the accusation has not been proven in a court of law it is therefore false - with extra added hypocrisy in light of your condemnation of the "bombing" of the hotel in Baghdad (as Bumpy Cat noted above) and similar incidents where you purposefully ignore the facts of the matter in favor of a more lurid and propagandistic - and dishonest - narrative.

@ Dewix

"Nobody knows better than the Wiki-leaks party that everything we hear isn't always the full truth."

And since Wikileaks makes it members/employees sign NDA's in which they agree to make restitution (up to $12million) for any "unauthorized disclosures" of material that Wikileaks "owns" (i.e. which Wikileaks was given by actual leakers) so that Wikileaks' owners can control the disclosures and thereby maximize their selling price from publications willing to pay for the privilege of printing them, it's obvious that Wikileaks is not in the business of making the "full truth" known.

(This ignores the question of whether Wikileaks ever uses the material to blackmail the organization from which the material was leaked, or offer it for sale to that organization's competitors or adversaries.)

@ TrishaD

"Peter is in fact a human rights activist - he's involved in a lot more than LGBT affairs. I believe that he's probably jumped the shark on this one."

I would not be surprised if, having looked at the newspapers and seeing that both Alan Turing and the NSA have been in the headlines recently, he thought that he could combine and take advantage of the public interest that these two stories have, and use them to launch his own attack on MI5.

@ eulampios: Re: @Turtle

"MS and Apple have plenty of other bogus patents like rounded corners, rubber band and exFat long file names."

You know what? If the courts find a patent valid, then it's valid. You can call it "bogus" but you'll have some trouble getting any legal authority to care. And you might not realize this, but courts throughout the world have been delivering decisions in favor of Microsoft and Apple against Google and their minions on a pretty regular basis, while Google's et al suits have an extremely high failure rate.

And did you know that when Samsung showed their Android devices to Google, Google said that they looked too much like Apple's devices. So in fact, Google's opinion, Apple's opinion, and the verdicts of two juries in the Apple vs Samsung matter, all coincide! Samsung's devices look too fucking much like Apple's!

"Did it ever occur to you that the real reason for Google to not chip in with MS and Apple was inability to use those patents to counter-sue against other patent suits MS and Apple bullying Google directly and through their partners?"

Yes, it did "occur" to me and I said so in my post. Read my post again: [Google] explicitly stated that the reason for their refusal was that being only part owners of the Nortel patents would prevent them from asserting those patents against others - including [...] the other parties who joined the consortium.

In fact, I said it twice: they're getting sued over these patents by other parties because they wanted to use these patents to... to sue those other parties!.

So Google had a choice to make: either join the consortium and lose the right to assert those patents against the other members of the consortium, or refuse to join the consortium and risk getting sued for patent infringement.

When faced with a choice, Google as usual opted for the "more lawsuits" choice. So if you don't like these lawsuits, complain to Google.