You're missing the point. To paraphrase: "As a hacker, I had the good sense to make sure I had tracking software installed. I take security seriously."
With JS or PHP, learn what they're actually for, and then come up with something useful you can create with it. Doing is learning. Reading alone is useless.
There are many things that one does not have to use, but are big parts of our culture. I think that social networking is becoming such a thing. As such, I think the "you don't have to use it" argument rings false. It means either using it in a way that you are not comfortable with, or not using it and being left out.
I think if the internet has done anything for our society, it's taught us that we don't all have to live in a huge monoculture where everyone watches the same three TV networks.
And if it works for television, it works for social networks? I find that unconvincing. There probably will be niche social networks, but I suspect most people will belong to at least one of the big ones.
The idea that widely used private accommodations aren't abusive in some degree when they're exclusionary was put out of the US with Loving VS Virginia.
You get a lot of jobs and other opportunities through social networks. Additionally, it is widely shown (and known) that non white named people are discriminated against widely when hiring.
Precluding someone from using a name they go by that's not their given name is literally hurting the careers and lives of many people. If Fardool Zarkari wants to go by Frank Zach, that's something that he should be able to do.
The idea that white men of usual middle class or higher background know that they're right when mandating real identities is an exercise in hubris, inadvertent exclusion, accessory to domestic abuse, and accessory to discrimination.
I get this makes your job harder with respect to making people not be tools. Doesn't mean you shouldn't still accommodate it.
> If Fardool Zarkari wants to go by Frank Zach, that's something that he should be able to do.
It's not difficult to change your legal name. My ancestor had a foreign-sounding surname which got Anglicized upon arrival to America. If that's all it took to make his descendants (including me) "privileged", getting your name changed seems like a no brainer!
1> Many families hate you if you do this. My father in law to this day still gets crap for shortening their Polish name to a easy subversion of it. Many people in certain neighborhoods accuse you of acting white to change your name, etc. It's common in Asian households to have an American set of names and an Asian set of names. Legally, sometimes it's one, sometimes it is the other, other times, it's a mix.
2> It's incredibly parent based (i.e. the people who gave you the sometimes crippling name) while you're under 18. By that time, you've been on social networks for years as the "bad" name. You then have to convince everyone to not call you by the old name. As a person who has been plagued by a nickname to my first name that my parents like, that I do not nor have ever used, I can attest changing what people call you is really hard. About 10% of people still call me the nickname, which forwards the nickname to contexts they see me in.
3> I'd like to quote you the state of Washinton's feelings on the common law precedent for name changes:
>Common Law Name Change: Common law name change results by simply using the new name consistently and exclusively for all purposes. This is legal because a person has a common law right to use any name he or she chooses. No legal proceedings or attorneys fees are involved in this type of name change. The common law method has disadvantages because many governmental institutions may require documentation proving that a valid name change has been made. Since you have not gone to court and acquired a court order for your name change, you will need some other document to satisfy this requirement.
I find the complications of #2 above yet the rights implied by #3 mean if a person signs an affidavit that their name is X the social networking site should get the hell over itself and let them be named X on the site, whether they have completed the name change yet or not.
1> The same people will hate you for using a "white" name on Google+. Either you use your "nonwhite" name despite the disadvantage, in the hope that enough people using "nonwhite" names will normalize them and remove said disadvantage. Or you use a "white" name because you don't feel like fighting that battle (which yes, will make you a "collaborator" in some people's eyes). You can't really do both.
(Although we're really talking about "English" sounding names here, since Polish people are hardly "nonwhite".)
2> Parents have a lot of control over our lives - sad but true. For example someone with crazy cult-following parents is more likely to end up in a crazy cult. Or for a more mundane example, someone with rich parents is less likely to be saddled with student loans. (The European approach to this inequality is to make education free, but try do that in the USA!)
I don't think you're forced to use a nickname that isn't your legal name though.
3> Sure, a signed affidavit should be just as valid as a court order - I can't imagine a social networking site would actually bother to check either. The numbers are just too big.
Social networks, especially powerful social networks are a powerful source of jobs. I'm not so concerned about the right to go about as Gte910h, but the right of a person with a non-European name to use a European sounding pseudonym if they want for purposes of getting a job.
Non-European names are shown to face continual discrimination (unconsciously or no).
Yes, you can change your name by a mere notification to everyone that you have, but it pisses off your family, and is pretty hard to do if you're under 18, which is when people join social networks.
Danah Boyd's persistently looping problem is that she's never designed, built, implemented, maintained, marketed, sold, held accountable for nor financed anything, never mind experienced the personal sacrifices and risk associated with the engagement of entrepreneurial activities yet she seems to always be first in line to demand change from the work of others while invoking her rights to benefit from the fruit of their labor.
She's today's critic and tomorrow's cheerleader wrapped in the guise of unaccountable academia, whose success rises and falls with the whims of those who manipulate her data for their own purposes, to include herself.
Truth be told, social networks have existed since the beginning of time, mostly in the meatspace, but also many in print or via other methods of communication. Some of those networks required their membership to provide bona fides while others went to the other extreme and forbade any form of real identification. A person could then choose which network to associated with, or not, depending on their personal preferences and the same could be argued for the network facilitators.
There will always be a contrarian reaction to any established rules, so while some social networks will only allow you to participate using your true credentials, others will be present to allow just the opposite, just like Hacker News.
This argument is used around here to explain away anyone that doesn't agree with your favorite startups's angle...
Its so much more complicated than that.
The clearcut assumption that those who express this particular ideal are immature and inexperienced is ridiculous.
It's not very complicated. A service debuts and within a matter of weeks acquires a user base exceeding 20 million people. Not without complication or frustration on behalf of those who still prefer the use of bardic names, but a success nonetheless. Yet one person still reserves their right to stand over the shoulder of the actual developers and issue directives that they feel would complement their experience, regardless of what 20+ million people think. And when her directives are ignored, she claims abuse.
Having to use your own name while negotiating the tricky waters of social relationships is not abuse, it's the first-world problem of a petulant, spoiled child.
If I was paying a subscription fee to play, I would agree with you. But I spent $15 a year and a half ago for the product /as it was/ and it was absolutely worth it. You are not entitled to updates, they're just nice to have.
And I'm not paying for server support or anything, so I don't necessarily expect rapid bug/exploit fixes.
Notch made specific promises that have been broken. And as far as what I am "entitled to", Mojang are in violation of their own Terms of Service by not providing me with a download of the version as-is when I paid for it. So what am I entitled to for my $15? Look, I understand some people are happy to throw away $15 and have Mojang do whatever they want. I think they have an ethical problem when they make promises but don't deliver upon them (such as SMP being ready before Beta), and furthermore generally treat their users with contempt.
"by not providing me with a download of the version as-is when I paid for it."
... so you don't want automatic updates and game improvements, then?
And he's incrementally delivering on his product. He continues to work on it, adventure mode is on its way out. Rumor: he's also working on new worlds, like that sky mode thing. He does continue to work on it, he's not broken his promise. I don't understand what you're talking about.
I regularly pay my ISP large amounts of money to treat me with contempt. Somebody I'm not paying can treat me however they like. They have /zero obligation/ to be nice to me after I purchase an "as is" product.
