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Hive-Mind

Listed below are comments made by Hive-Mind between Tuesday, 20th January 2009 and Tuesday, 22nd December 2009.

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COP15: (No) Hopenhagen? 5:11pm on 22 Dec 2009 This seems to be a massive failure by our world leaders. As you point out we have already had more than enough 'first steps' and each time we take two steps forwards and then two back. With every summit like this the cost and difficulty of combating global warming increases.

Obama's actions seem like a feat of heroism at first glance, but in reality all he has done is snubbed the rest of the world and completely ignored the point of the summit. With the current deal the hundreds of small nations were treated as completely sulfurous, and I can fully understand their anger.

Smaller and developing countries wanted the more powerful or larger to face up to their responsibilities and be able to have a say in the process, that was the whole point! Unfortunatley I fear Copenhagen has done far more damage than good here - with many nations moods transforming from hope to anger - and for many it has confirmed their fears that the more powerful nations will continue to bully the developing world into whatever stance they see fit.

A cynical view could be that perhaps this was the US's thinking - worried by the rising economies of contries such as China and India, or even African contries, they decided to sabotage the collective climate change effort and put themselves in control.

Meaning to or not, that is what they have managed to do. At the current pace it may soon be inevitable that much of the developing world will collapse into war and further into poverty - is it too far a stretch of the imagination to think that this might be what some countries want?
Who will ride Google's Wave? 00:15am on 09 Oct 2009 For the layman to understand the use of google wave is quite difficult, many people seem to focus on the fact that it's just like an IM client or Facebook.

The point is that the 'client' (the site thing he's receiving messages on and they're sending them from) is not 'google wave' in the same way that the facebook site is Facebook. For starters this is a *open standard* for communication in general, in other words it is a system any company or individual can pick up and write systems for, without ever needing to use any of google's systems at all.

A good example is email, 'E-Mail' is not a single company, it is a huge conglomeration of hundreds of thousands of different companies and systems all tied together by standards and protocols. Unfortunately the idea of a 'standard' is rather abstract and difficult to grasp, but they are absolutely vital for almost every part of the internet.

Essentially, this is not 'Google IM' or 'GMail 2.0', this is 'E-Mail 2.0' and it is very possible that soon it will render E-Mail and traditional proprietary IM services obsolete.

That doesn't mean google will monopolise it though, any and all companies can use it and profit from it (or not), that's the beauty of standards.
What is a web browser? 11:56pm on 08 Oct 2009 @13 Knowledge about a system almost every person uses in some way (even if indirectly) every day is not a bad thing. The internet and it's associated technologies have quite literally changed the world just as much as, say, the invention of the internal combustion engine.

The need for learning about this sort of stuff is partly due to respect for the incredible amounts of hard work put into making our lives as nice as possible, and partly due to necessity. Much like how we learn history or science at school - it is because having general knowledge about our world is very important. People should not look at the internet as a kind of magic, but instead look at it and see the incredible machinery behind it, even if it is only a tiny dip into a horribly deep pool of complexity - at the very least it is interesting, but hopefully to some it will be inspirational.

The internet and computational systems in general are the tools that will undoubtedly shape our future in a massive way, to be almost completely ignorant of their operation is not a good thing.

As for browser wars, yes they are non-profit (Firefox, one of the most popular, even being run by a community where anyone can contribute, not a company) but this makes it no more important. It's called competition, if we didn't have browser wars (or format wars or standard wars or...) we would be stuck with a terrible internet, slow and clunky, a decadent browser and standards system and probably a very expensive dial-up bill.
Map of the Week: We are animals 8:07pm on 11 May 2009 Well since we are part of nature, why all the double standards with us apparently being so 'evil' and unnatural.

Even our concrete buildings and steel skyscrapers are natural constructs, they certainly weren't built by gods anyway.

I doubt anyone would complain about all those organisms millions of years ago releasing nasty oxygen and killing everything.

Of course we should preserve 'nature' other than ourselves, but let's not kid ourselves, it is not somehow 'good' while we are bad - we are both just natural, and everything we do, from landing on the moon to restoring fens will always be so.
Immigrant Song Contest 7:56pm on 11 May 2009 Wow, 'Immigrant Song Contest'? Seriously?

Why not 'White British song contest'? My god, these people come to the UK to live here, not to be so separate from the rest of us that they have their own contests.

We say how we want people to integrate, yet we set up events like this apparently just to alienate people, why?
The Power of Less at Web 2.0 1:49pm on 02 Apr 2009 In "simple is usually better" should be hung in every office methinks.
Goodbye "Knock-off Nigel" 1:46pm on 02 Apr 2009 Piracy IS wrong, there is no doubt about it.

Technically speaking it may be copyright infringement - fine - but it is still taking a product or service without paying for it, which amounts to stealing.

There really is no difference between taking a DVD from a store and downloading one illegally online. Think about this: how much do those 'physical goods' - i.e. the DVD disks - which you say differentiate stealing from piracy cost? 5p each? Probably less. The DVD's don't cost the company money, MAKING the film does!

Another thought, would getting in a taxi, getting the guy to drive you to where you want to go, getting out and running away be morally ok? You've not taken any physical goods from him, just a service, so that'd be ok then?

Perhaps taking a movie from a store without paying, copying it and putting it back is ok too?

Get some morals guys! Stop kidding yourselves with your childish 'copyright' or 'it's not stealing mum!' arguments. Pirating a film is taking the hard work of the hundreds of people who took months to produce it without so much as a penny back. I don't think you'd be so forgiving if someone was siphoning money off your paycheck for their own personal fun would you?
Barclays may reject Asset Protection 00:08am on 30 Mar 2009 To be honest, I'm just sick of it all.

Might as well just sell ourselves to big business and get it over with.
Has MySpace lost its cool? 12:50pm on 19 Feb 2009 The main reason - I believe - why people use Facebook is because MySpace was a horrifically designed nightmare of a site.

Not only did it look terrible (no offence, but the amount of money it must have made, they could have designed it a little better) it didn't particularly gear itself towards social networking so much as having neon pink flashing backgrounds with fifteen million images on people's profiles.

Facebook sticks to a different philosophy, connecting you to the people you know - not producing flashy profile pages.

Not to mention that Facebook was made by someone who genuinely wanted to make an excellent social networking app, not some big company looking for easy advertising profit.
Could a vaccine solve the drug problem? 2:42pm on 20 Jan 2009 Mindlessly disobeying 'authority' simply for the sake of it is just as bad as mindlessly following it. Make up your own minds and do what you think is best!

As for the vaccine, well, I'll bet a lot of drug users attempting to quit would take it if they could. Unless we're discussing forced vaccination here... Which seems more than a little bit sinister...

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