throwaway328

And the Snowden revelations happened, which programmers and sysadmins and etc saw, and then... continued as before, in the large majority of cases. It'd be baffling, if it wasn't so easily explained by the usual mixture of self-interest and moral cowardice.

I worked with a fellow who didn't believe me that the shift key upper-cased letters. The slippery slope continues sliding ever downwards.

Hmm. Are you aware that I was responding to this comment?

> Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists?

So, even though the poster was referring to ByteDance when they said "obvious spyware", I was feigning incomprehension in order to ask the question, how do we differentiate ByteDance from what Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon (and the rest) do.

It's a real question - why do technical people, who arguably should know better, and can do something about it - continue to use these data-harvesting and user-selling platforms? The answer is obvious when it's the case of an employee of those companies, I grant you that.

My apologies if you feel your response did address that, and I missed it. If so, please help me see what I missed.

> I read what you wrote

I never said you didn't. I said that you were misreading me. We could speculate as to what could have caused such a poor reading of such a simple point, but there are so many juicy possibilities, it's hard to pick.

> you immediately start to lash out

This is upside down - you immediately got snotty when I explained that the point you first made was in no way relevant to what I was saying.

I, on the other hand, accorded you far more patience than your low-effort misreading warranted. I attempted repeatedly to explain where you were confused, only indulging fully in riling you up (with great success, apparently) at the very end there.

And to be frank I didn't feel like I was "lashing out", as I didn't feel sincerely emotionally involved to begin with. Your original argument was laughable, and the way you immediately switched to sniping then came as no surprise.

What has happened is you jumped in with some irrelevant anecdotes, and then refused to back down when it was pointed out, and instead chose to invent a fantasy scenario where I'm making a point that I at no stage make. I've asked you to quote the moment where I say anything more than what I've now repeatedly explained to you - and you won't do it.

So no, as much as it would please you to imagine it to be true, this:

> it was pointed out how stupid what you wrote was

Has not occurred, except in the fantasy argument in your head. I don't mean that something has been pointed out and I disagree, I mean that precisely nothing has been pointed out, you've made no response, instead maintaining I'm making a point I never did.

Outside of your fantasy, then, on the off-chance that you want to step back into reality, I've made the following point, which I invite you to actually respond to instead of getting so terribly worked up: The word "cunt" is used very differently in the US than in various other parts of the Anglosphere, including but not limited to Ireland, England, Scotland, and Australia.

None of that means Matt Trout was using the word in a friendly fashion, and none of that means that the OP in this case wasn't being poorly treated by Mr. Trout.

It doesn't mean that there can't be nuance and variation in those regions of the Anglosphere I mentioned, either. For example, if you personally don't use it much, that would be - for the purposes of this point - of no relevance. Your previous monarch Queen Elizabeth probably didn't use it much either, and that, also, is of no relevance.

> No wonder you’re on a throwaway account tbh.

The real wonder is how someone on a non-throwaway account can utter such inanities and remain so unabashedly foolhardy about it.

> act like a gigantic cunt

You must have really had a hard time in the O-levels to have taken my comment so badly, lashing out with profanities and everything. My oh my. Where's that British decency and propriety the world knows so well?

And what would Matt Trout say, I wonder!

Yes, why do people use products from Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, ...

Or you could say they are "tilting at windmills".

I'd be a very interested admirer, if not user, of such a project. I'm playing with J this past week, and otherwise have a couple of CL books under my belt. No other real experience programming, but I certainly think that sounds like a cool idea.

I wonder where April would fit in, with your idea? Joining forces with the fellow who made April might be a possibility. Strength in numbers, and all that.

I suspect you might be observing two correlates and picking one as the cause of the other in a way that is ahistorical.

Specifically, it seems to me that colleges becoming more vocational and colleges becoming more expensive are both natural outcomes of the neoliberalisation of all things. I am aware that some students now rationalise their educational investments with the logic you describe above, but I think it's a post-hoc rationalisation.

You can get a good job without going to college, and you can get a good education without paying a gazillion bucks.

A side point, but calling it "vocational" seems a bit euphemistic too. Learning carpentry is a vocation. Getting a business degree is not equivalent to learning carpentry. I might say colleges have become commercialised, rather.

See my reply in the other thread, where I dutifully elaborate.

I agree, the deporting of citizens is much worse in real terms.

They're both fundamentally anti-democratic, is what I meant. In both cases, the political / business class controlling the state is utilising private and public institutions to further their aims, with little to no care for law, morality, or even common decency.

If "centrist liberal" means being critical of all authoritarianism, from Obama to Trump, where would the democrats lie in this political balance?

I ask sincerely here. That would be a centre which would be ten miles left of where the centre seems to be, from where I'm sitting. Curious to know how you view the political spectrum to arrive at this framework.

For example, Macron might be a good example. How would you classify his politics, based on the above framing?