Re: The increasing disempowerment of the computer user

2013-12-13 Thread David Hutto
Three word response...Conglomerate business intelligence. On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 5:59 AM, Steven D'Aprano < steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Thu, 12 Dec 2013 13:35:37 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: > > > Hmm, interesting Freudian slip there. I meant “cloud computing”, of > > course.

Re: The increasing disempowerment of the computer user

2013-12-12 Thread Steven D'Aprano
On Thu, 12 Dec 2013 13:35:37 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: > Hmm, interesting Freudian slip there. I meant “cloud computing”, of > course. That's where the computer owner pretends their service is always > available and easy to access, while having terms of service that give > them unilateral power to

Re: The increasing disempowerment of the computer user

2013-12-11 Thread Mark Lawrence
On 12/12/2013 02:21, Ben Finney wrote: Only, now we get worldwide unaccountable surveillance as part of the deal. Whereas the 1920 UK Official Secrets Act required all international cable companies operating on British terrority to submit copies of all their traffic (both dispatched and rec

Re: The increasing disempowerment of the computer user

2013-12-11 Thread Ben Finney
Ben Finney writes: > Larry Martell writes: > > > On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Roy Smith wrote: > > > rusi wrote: > > > > > >> Many assumptions need to be verified/truthified/dovetailed > > >> starting from switching on the machine onwards for this to work. > > > > > > At the time that [Ker

The increasing disempowerment of the computer user (was: Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language)

2013-12-11 Thread Ben Finney
Larry Martell writes: > On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Roy Smith wrote: > > rusi wrote: > > > >> Many assumptions need to be verified/truthified/dovetailed > >> starting from switching on the machine onwards for this to work. > > > > At the time that [Kerningham & Ritchie] wrote [the C progra