jopt

They sometimes do, even if you don't count shutting down the operations for a week every WWDC. Examples:

* http://www.macworld.com/article/1167247/cook_apple_planning_...

* http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion

Unless by "outside" you mean those they don't reach out to, but that would be true by definition and so fairly moot.

Or rather, to stop pretending we can put ourselves in other's shoes.

Talking to eg. abortion opponents, I usually get the impression that they have done a few thought experiments. They, if you'll allow the straw man, assume/imagine that faced with the same tough decision they would never themselves decide to eg. have an abortion. They're appalled that others (in practice) would choose to do what they (in principle) decide against or vice versa.

As you say, these principles are poor predictors of what people will choose to do in personal, life-or-death reality. Things like the fundamental attribution error make policies based on what-I-would-do-in-a-hypothetical-situation just as impractical as static, by-the-book morality. Perhaps there's a third option.

My sentiment exactly. I cringed at the thought of an argument based entirely on that. The last part, however

> George Bush famously proclaimed: “You’re either with us, or against us”. He asked foreigners the world over to choose. The wholesale spying on “foreigners” says how we chose made little difference at all..

redeemed the views to me.

The second option (MITM through access to the public key server) is not comparable to the first. Targets would have to be singled out and surveilled in advance of the messages, which actually lends itself pretty well to the sort of due process surveillance that law enforcement is generally trusted with.

It's not unthinkable that the NSA could access iCloud backups (with some sort of FISA rubber stamp). Access to everyone's backups is much more conducive to dystopian mass surveillance than the key server's tradeoff of vulnerability to MITM.

The OPs first point is a lot stronger than the second. Distributed backups are probably bad from a privacy/security perspective. That seems like the better point to make, provided we understand that iMessage is not a guarantee of complete safety from any surveillance.

Take the lady that wants a fur coat a few sizes too big.

> I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.

In my view, neither the banality nor even the truth of the allegations are particularly important. The key reason I chose to file this as a ad hominem/smear is that it invites judgment of Snowden without pertaining to the contents of the leak or even the act of leaking.

I agree these are interesting details, and I'm happier for knowing more about the people involved. However, I also believe that these facts are smears. They are being published not to inform but as ad hominem attacks on Snowden.

When the war logs leaked, I doubted that anyone would take the initial smears against Julian Assange seriously. I'm Swedish and the sexual misconduct allegations were a big conversation subject here.

After a while, I realised that though I wasn't impressed by the ad hominems, they really did work on the general public. Older relatives and friends who were not in tune with the particular issues of the leak were much more interested in stories about the people behind it. These stories require no expert knowledge; they're relatable. It's daunting for a layperson to try to judge who's right or wrong in issues like war or spying, but it's easy and familiar to judge people over the perceived wholesomeness of girls they're involved with. Thus, to my disappointment, these friends and relatives categorically dismissed anything about the war logs by referring to Assange's personal affairs.

Things like this are published to create negative associations; to cater to personal vanity (better-than-thou) and focus judgement on Snowden's character rather than the faceless institutions he ousted.

"Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs."

I must be a misanthrope, but I disagree wholeheartedly with the latter. Limiting the annoying exposure to other people's problems is a feature, not a bug. People cry every day over ridiculous small-minded problems.

Spam filter. It's disappointing someone seriously believes this is some sort of "objectionable content" censorship. Namely because that's easy enough to test:

"barely legal teens" isn't delivered (edit: now does)

"actually illegal teens" arrives

...along with everything else of the sort (that I've tested).

Surely the phrase was blacklisted by some algorithm after it occurred verbatim in massive amounts of spam.

This isn't selective enforcement, just evaluating each case individually.

Those enforcing a law are typically free to find different answers (punishments) to similar questions (crimes) as long as they can distinguish the case.

The big dangerous problem, rule-of-law-wise, is when a court deviates in its method of judging, not in its judgements.

> However you feel about copyright

Hm. This makes it sound like your point stands regardless of personal ethics; as though

> profitting off of the distribution of other peoples work, without their permission, is not something that should be encouraged or tolerated

is a provable, obvious, non-debatable stance. I don't think it is.

I don't think profiting off it changes the basic ethics; if something is morally okay to do as a hobby, it should generally be morally okay to do as a business until proven otherwise.

I wouldn't agree you always need the permission of someone upstream to share ideas or content. That's something we can discuss. Don't make it sound like you have the answer sheet in front of you.

This just goes to show that the previously known as Metro look can be overdone just as badly as rich leather and linen.

Well said. Furthermore, let's try to root out these beliefs early. It's easy for great power structures to form around them if left unchecked.

It's probably not just a dollar figure; the terms have to be favourable concerning user data etc.

Legally speaking (student, IANAL), product safety and advertising are separate areas of legislation. Advertising doesn't do much to the deal you enter into when you buy something, whereas the papers you sign are usually taken at close to face value.

What's the disclaimer for?

If we keep doing disclaimers wrong like this nobody will ever pay them any attention.

Wild speculation.

More like reimplementing a shell from within a shell and running your program on the latter.

That sounds like a great reason to improve the tools.

Why? Is this how philosophy is or how it ought to be?

Safari renders both sides as rgba(72, 72, 72, 1.0). I have no idea why. Perhaps (ironically) a dithering algorithm gone wrong. In chrome the divide is visible.

I apologise for ever posting this trainwreck of statistical reasoning. I don't know what I was thinking.

If access were all that mattered in a platform, you could make the leap from "less accessible platform" to "stupid". I'd personally probably look at a few more dimensions before concluding.

If you really don't follow, he probably refers to the con hoc ergo propter hoc argument of "this means tablet-native journalism is impossible!" What else could it be?

I get the feeling you're trying to be smug about something, but I don't really see what.

55% is just as close to 50% (coin toss) as 60%.

This almost feels dated, like many recent articles making the same point about web development trends. Unfortunately, a lot of this is still news to a lot of practicing professionals.

When it comes to coding in general, and especially web, I find (I admit anecdotally) that many people who appear in the know are living roughly five years in the past. In a recent discussion, a friend explained that JavaScript is an example of a strictly client-side language.

I suspect many developers are delayed by books and classes, paradoxically, even though all the information on the new sexy things is theoretically a click away.

Right. As broken as the patent system is, this author doesn't really seem to know what he's talking about. Almost as if he/she knows it's cool to hate on patents, but not why or how.

Thanks for bringing this up. The present trend of prefixing everything with "full disclosure" seems to me to misunderstand the whole issue, and dilutes the legitimate cases where disclosure is needed.

And a separate subway, with just the billboards and no travelers!

This isn't /g/