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The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#281

Post by mozumder »

richforrester wrote: post #270
mozumder wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when you vote Republicans. Republicans will do anything for profit. This is their core driving force. For them, money determines value for everything. "Who gives a shit about anything else? We should reinstate slavery because it would increase profits! Also, poor people are terrible people!" Democrats believe profits are nice and all, but isn't the final metric on value. There are a lot of other…

I realise this is a total straw man, but whenever I read Republicans vs Democrats I can't help but think about how utterly insane it is to have the opinions of 300 million Americans represented by TWO parties. Two. So Americans choose to agree with either EVERYTHING person A says, or EVERYTHING person B says. That's what it boils down to. And it freaks me out that in a day and age where we're so educated and "free",…

Government is just one, and it represents 300 million people.

And what's the problem? Everyone wants to be a king. Government's job is to make sure no one is, with a social contract.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#282

Post by gwu78 »

openasocket wrote: post #276
gwu78 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand why I do not like SNI? It has nothing to do with getting these stupid hostnames. It is a modification that needs to be made to software to accomodate the spread of the use of the SNI extension. As a user, I have no need for SNI. Are you saying that doing reverse lookups on every IP address, where some of these IPs will have many virtual hostnames, is easier than extractng the plaintext hostname from…

> Are you saying that doing reverse lookups on every IP address, where some of these IPs will have many virtual hostnames, is easier than extractng the plaintext hostname from a certain offset in a Client Hello packet? If the SNI info was at a fixed offset in a packet, it would be easy. But, per the RFC, it goes at the end of the client hello, after the list of supported cipher suites and compression methods. Not onl…

Are you saying that programs that extract hostnames like "sniproxy" cannot scale?

And you are saying that all hosts have set up reverse DNS and the data is complete and accurate?

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#283

Post by defined »

3131s wrote: post #258
AlexB138 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't seem to like this comment, but that is a great link. Browsing around the site, I found this list of common English language errors: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html Really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Most of those are made up prescriptive guidelines, mixed in with some common misspellings. One grumpy person does not get to decide how the rest of us choose to use and evolve language. The "forceful" / "forcible" example is particularly inane and pedantic but hardly the worst on that page. I'll continue to say "being that", "ice tea", "center around", etc. as I please. In linguistics the illustrative analogy is that…

> I'll continue to say... as I please.

By that argument, we should all just be able to say and write whatever we want however we want to, even if it's technically or factually incorrect, like Humpty Dumpty or Donald Trump.

Why bother hewing to "elitist" rules of grammar and accepted spellings, being that it's just prescriptivism?

How does one decide objectively if something is just plain wrong, or merely prescriptive?

Case in point: "premises". So many people treat this singular noun as a plural and use horrors like "on-premise", which is so utterly wrong that it is painful for me to look at. What's worse is that "premise" is a real word and an entirely different thing and is most definitely not the singular of "premises".

This word came about (as many English words do) as a corruption of the Latin "praemissus", meaning something like "the aforementioned", and was used often in legal agreements for properties, and so became a word in itself that meant "the property".

Now we are corrupting it yet again, this time without the excuse of it being a different language, on the basis that "I'll say it however I please." People I have mentioned this to have told me that it is so difficult to get people to use the right word that they've just gone with "on-prem".

Now readers can take this comment as the rant of a "grammar nazi" or a pedant, but it wasn't meant that way, and I'll respond in advance with this: why is it not ok to identify something that is wrong? Because it's mere nitpicking?

Maybe so - but that's how matters devolve, over the decades, back to widespread ignorance and intolerance: one little oversight at a time.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get on the soapbox - sometimes it's just frustrating for those of us who are perhaps overly detail-oriented. But the world needs "pedantic" people like us more than it likes to admit.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#284

Post by state_less »

mattnewton wrote: post #273
richforrester wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realise this is a total straw man, but whenever I read Republicans vs Democrats I can't help but think about how utterly insane it is to have the opinions of 300 million Americans represented by TWO parties. Two. So Americans choose to agree with either EVERYTHING person A says, or EVERYTHING person B says. That's what it boils down to. And it freaks me out that in a day and age where we're so educated and "free",…

It's not that anyone is defending this system, it's that it is the only stable equilibrium of the winner-takes all parts of our elections.

Right, I think you have to change the dynamics. Voting ought to better capture citizens preferences, it like we vote with one hand tied behind our backs. Why can't we at least rank the candidates?

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#285

Post by defined »

nebabyte wrote: post #253
0xa wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is more nuanced--the time to stop this legislation was by preventing it coming to vote in the senate. Typically the senate needs 60 votes to forcefully end debate[0], then merely majority to pass it. Once can disguise support for a bill by approving to end debate, then voting "Nay" given it will get the necessary 50 to be approved. For JS 34 [1] Mitch McConnell (R, KY) limited debate to 10 minutes--I'm un…

> requested the role be called roll

Thank you, fellow detail-oriented person.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#286

Post by Chathamization »

matt_morgan wrote: post #251
misnome wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's the fault of people who vote third party that you have a two-party state?

It's sensible to ask whether a specific 3rd-party vote had a chance of affecting the outcome in a positive way. E.g., one of the more effective arguments against the current Green party in the US is they don't seem to try very hard in local elections, where they might stand a chance; but they always run someone for president who stands no chance. If we have a hope of getting out of this, it's going to start on school…

Very much this. There are many de facto one party districts in the U.S. where a third party wouldn't run into the issue of being a spoiler. The Vermont Progressive Party only runs candidates like this. The result is that thought they're only active in Vermont, they have 11 seats in the Vermont state legislature. In contrast, the Libertarian Party and the Green Party are across in the entire U.S., and out of all 50 state legislatures they have a combined total of 2 seats (2 for the Libertarians, 0 for the Greens).

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#288

Post by mattnewton »

mozumder wrote: post #261
ComradeTaco wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The votes in both the house and the senate were almost entirely along party lines. Every republican in the senate that voted, voted for this act and every democrat in the senate that voted, voted against this act.

This is what happens when you vote Republicans. Republicans will do anything for profit. This is their core driving force. For them, money determines value for everything. "Who gives a shit about anything else? We should reinstate slavery because it would increase profits! Also, poor people are terrible people!" Democrats believe profits are nice and all, but isn't the final metric on value. There are a lot of other…

It's about the person, not the party. Plenty of profit motivated democrats and republicans who care about their districts. This kind of tribalism prevents us from finding middle ground; we should be against ideas and practices, and be principled instead of loyal to a party.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#289

Post by defined »

mozumder wrote: post #281
richforrester wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realise this is a total straw man, but whenever I read Republicans vs Democrats I can't help but think about how utterly insane it is to have the opinions of 300 million Americans represented by TWO parties. Two. So Americans choose to agree with either EVERYTHING person A says, or EVERYTHING person B says. That's what it boils down to. And it freaks me out that in a day and age where we're so educated and "free",…

Government is just one, and it represents 300 million people. And what's the problem? Everyone wants to be a king. Government's job is to make sure no one is, with a social contract.

Except when the government effectively becomes, collectively, the king, and represents nothing more than their royal self-interest. Which is how I see things going in the USA, for all intents and purposes.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#290

Post by aanm1988 »

dang wrote: post #278
aanm1988 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last time I posted something like this it turned into a bit of a flame war Gee I wonder why.

You've been posting quite a few unsubstantive and borderline uncivil comments to HN. Would you please stop?

So posting comments with misleading information and media bashing is substantive and civil?

I'll stick to that then.

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