Posted:
Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:49 amby Charl
Haha always good to wind up a little flightsim controversy, no matter the topic eh?
Actually...I have a tiny little warning bell pinging in the subconscience here.
If you were ever disturbed by the Microsoft juggernaut and it's monopolistic business model...
Under the mountains in the Sierra Nevada, in Silicone Valley, in Bermuda, and other far flung locations, there lurk vast server farms under the Google mantle, quietly sucking in the entire reservoir of human knowledge and experience.
Operating as huge networked "cloud-computers" they are able to feed you all the knowledge you would ever need, ranked by ...who knows what critera?
Now there is a browser, that can mesh perfectly with the cloud, and gently steer your online experience even further along the path of ...who knows?
It's a potentially chilling prospect - you would never know exactly how much Big Brother is guiding your total online experience, in our Brave New World.
I hope Firefox stays independent, and meets the challenge.
Posted:
Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:22 pmby Timmo
Indeed- That has always been the counter argument to using Google stuff (or more like the counter oxymoron?)- The 'alternative' is becoming the mainstream and so negating the very reason for using it.
baby steps though.....at least it is open source? Googles 'beta' releases aren't usually what one usually considers 'beta' (i.e. buggy, unstable, not worth the hassle)......they are, in my experience, always stable and fully featured...they just need a bit of feedback to tidy things up
It reminds me of two things: The bit on Star Wars episode 3 (?) where they go to the library to look for a star system. They cant find it in the library so the reasoning of the library droid/system is 'If it doesn't exist in the Library, It doesn't exist'
This, of course, is similar to the ideas raised in Orwells novel:1984- The state had complete control over the media, including the ability to re-write books, news papers etc to fit their current version of events. The main characters job, at the Ministry of Truth, was to ensure that any differences between 'reality' and the media were resolved: not in the usual way of fitting the newspaper around reality (i.e. what actually happened) but by creating a new 'reality' by changing the newspaper. Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present, controls the past.
There are similar situations, although perhaps not as 'doomsday' as the book, in life today: Media organisations will of course not focus on stories that are not in their clients interest (i.e. advertising dollars)...there is a conflict of interest there.
