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2019-12-09 Cyber
"Don't Be Evil": Last Refuge of a Tech Oligarch Scoundrel = "Because CHINA!"
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Posted by Lex 2019-12-09 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11136 views ]  Top

#1 Lex, a stray gamma ray ate your clever headline, which I did my best to reconstruct from memory. What was it intended to be?
Posted by trailing wife 2019-12-09 00:36||   2019-12-09 00:36|| Front Page Top

#2 "Don't Be Evil": Last Refuge of a Tech Oligarch Scoundrel = "Because CHINA!"
Posted by Lex 2019-12-09 00:39||   2019-12-09 00:39|| Front Page Top

#3 Whew! Fixed. Thank you, kind sir.
Posted by trailing wife 2019-12-09 00:42||   2019-12-09 00:42|| Front Page Top

#4 Danke, Milady
Posted by Lex 2019-12-09 00:54||   2019-12-09 00:54|| Front Page Top

#5 "Power has a tendency to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely"

Grant every citizen perpetual copyright to his/her data. Any and every use of that other than the absolutely necessary data needed by the government to comply with the Constitution and laws (not regulations), must be compensated to the copyright holder.
Posted by Procopius2k 2019-12-09 05:16||   2019-12-09 05:16|| Front Page Top

#6 Does the need for this latest excuse mean they're going to start making stuff here?
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2019-12-09 09:05||   2019-12-09 09:05|| Front Page Top

#7 These guys don't make stuff. They're media companies.

They're in the advertising business. They interpose themselves between you and information, collect info on your behaviors and sell that info to advertisers.

If they really wanted to make themselves useful to this country they would turn their tech skills to something more important than showing relevant ads to people.

Like helping cure illness, or locating and deporting people here illegally.
Posted by Lex 2019-12-09 09:11||   2019-12-09 09:11|| Front Page Top

#8 ^ Imagine how many diseases we'd have cured if, instead of shoveling over a trillion dollars into finding ever more ingenious ways to show ads to people and enable teenagers and morons to share photos with each other we had invested that money into:
medical research,
next-generation military technologies,
desalinization plants,
border security,
biometric and other forms of reliable identification for security purposes...

Ah but we have Da Twitter 'n' Snapchat 'n' Instagram and Da Facebook.

Happy proles, we.
Posted by Lex 2019-12-09 09:17||   2019-12-09 09:17|| Front Page Top

#9 Whew, talk about a punchcard operator!
Posted by Skidmark 2019-12-09 09:21||   2019-12-09 09:21|| Front Page Top

#10 Merchants have been bedazzled by the dreams of the Vast China Market™ for years centuries millennia. Missionaries, too. The Chinese have an entire system of drawing in the "foreign barbarians", corrupting them and turning them into agents.

Ralph D. Sawyer has made a career of translating ancient Chinese military works and The Tao of War(2002) a 9th century Chinese Warlord Wang Chen discusses using trade and diplomacy to turn barbarians into puppet states. Ninth Century...
Posted by magpie 2019-12-09 09:36||   2019-12-09 09:36|| Front Page Top

#11 ^ Where's the Golden Horde when you need them?
Posted by Lex 2019-12-09 09:41||   2019-12-09 09:41|| Front Page Top

#12 Yes, Skidmark. That has always been one of my favorite Rantburg graphics. But it isn't just the legs. At my age I have a certain nostalgia for that 1970s computer room.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2019-12-09 13:58||   2019-12-09 13:58|| Front Page Top

#13 OK AU, you can have the room; as for me......
Posted by USN, Ret. 2019-12-09 14:36||   2019-12-09 14:36|| Front Page Top

#14 The lassie is bonny, but drop a box of Holerith Cards before you got them on tape would pi$$ off even Smiling Jack. I can attest to that.
Posted by Alaska Paul 2019-12-09 17:12||   2019-12-09 17:12|| Front Page Top

#15 Hollerith Cards... Take a straight edge and a magic marker and draw a diagonal line across your deck. Learned that back in the day running Fortran G programs at the University.
Posted by magpie 2019-12-09 23:16||   2019-12-09 23:16|| Front Page Top

#16 Their goal is not advertising, it is data collection. Advertising is just one way to make money off of the collection.

What's the olde saying; if it is free, you are the product.
Posted by swksvolFF 2019-12-09 23:22||   2019-12-09 23:22|| Front Page Top

#17 And, in addition to said diagonal line (lines if the deck was very large), make sure to keep the cards in good shape. The operators tended to be short-tempered with decks with ratty cards that jammed the reader.
Posted by James  2019-12-09 23:29|| https://idontknowbut.blogspot.com  2019-12-09 23:29|| Front Page Top

23:53 News24Ghante.com portal
23:48 trailing wife
23:42 James
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23:29 James
23:22 swksvolFF
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