Exactly. There was a time when the idea of users accepting/rejecting cookies on a per-site basis seemed plausible (though it might be annoying for the user), but those days seem long gone. Cookies are on by default and my guess is few users change those settings. DNT might be viewed as another attempt, however futile it may seem, at giving users some choice.
It's true a good portion of the web still works well without Javascript. This seems like a good thing as Javascript can be a mixed blessing. Enabling it comes with both benefits and risks. Like cookies, a user could selectively choose which scripts to allow, one at a time (remember the embedded Java applet days?), but this can quickly become more trouble than it's worth.
Perhaps a difference of JS from cookies is that with Javascript the user might sometimes see what the actual benefits are and they might be more enticing than those of cookies, e.g., "To see this cool doodad, you need to enable Javascript." It is very clear what the benefit will be: the doodad.
Contrast this with "To use this site you must have cookies enabled." Terms like "provide a better user experience" might be used to describe the need to enable cookies. But the specifics are usually absent.
If all websites were reasonable, and no one abused their ability to manipulate and track end users, things like DNT would probably not be necessary. But we know that's not the case.
Any ethnomusicologist can tell you there is such a thing as music that is not produced for income. What happens when the "instruments" to create music are fully electronic and all output is digital?
Musicians know that music is not just a business. It is a language. Not necessary one every person can speak but certainly one that everyone can understand. Our lives are short and we may never live in a time without a "music industry". But music has a much longer history and a longer future than our short lives. There is more to music than just a "music industry".
What about the idea of peer-to-peer music? Not "file transfer" or "download" but "playback"? (YouTube, while it may seem instantaneous, is progressive download isn't it? Kids may not realize this.) What about decentralized instead of centralized broadcast. If we are doing peer-to-peer VOIP, we can do music as well.
I think you're just upset because DNT might affect your income?
Tracking does not mean looking at server logs (or by analogy, reviewing security camera footage), it means things like cookies, Flash cookies, beacons and KISSmetrics.
Chances are DNT idea will have little effect. People raised issues with cookies back in the 1990's and in rerospect it hasn't impeded websites from tracking. People were forced to opt-in to cookies and everyone became desensitised to them over time. Now people don't even think about not accepting cookies. Tracking has gotten very aggressive though. Some of the behavioral tracking ideas are really pushing the limits.
DNT is hardly a draconian measure. Be glad that the web is still very much unregulated in comparison to meatspace.
No, I meant a panel of VC's that occured some time prior to the date of the lecture, not the panel at the lecture. The speakers at the lecture were not VC. But I can't find the reference to it now. So I guess ignore that comment.
(It's not what I think is innovative. Who cares what I think? I'm just some commenter on Hacker News with a green account. Thiel himself criticized the iPhone and by extension similar Silicon Valley products as not being the type of "innovation" he thinks America is capable of. I'm suggesting he's hardly in a position to make that criticism given that he himself benefits from this meaningless stuff SV churns out.)
This was the most interesting of this series of notes yet.
And the conclusion was the weakest.
Thiel seems like a pretty creepy character. When you have enough FU money, you can indulge a really skewed view of the world (former Intel exec comes to mind). And this series of lectures illustrates Theil's. He thinks someone, a young and naive (pre-university) prodigy, is going to make him a wealtier VC by sharing with him their "secret" idea. He criticizes education and America's lack of meaningful innovation, yet he's made wealthy by vacuous ideas of "innovation" like Facebook. Then look at what he's contributed in the way of innovation. What are his qualifications as an "expert"? An online payments company and a company that analyzes data from the web to try to find "terrorists". This is innovation? We should hope his program participants will aspire to do better.
In his last lecture on biotech where he talks about a panel of VC making predictions about the future. Were any of these VC actually in the biotech sector? As long as they have lots of capital under their direction, does it matter?
When you are wealthy people will listen to you, no matter what you say. Alas, it may encourage the speaker to believe their own hype even more. Thiel is taking full advantage of this privilege.
It's true a good portion of the web still works well without Javascript. This seems like a good thing as Javascript can be a mixed blessing. Enabling it comes with both benefits and risks. Like cookies, a user could selectively choose which scripts to allow, one at a time (remember the embedded Java applet days?), but this can quickly become more trouble than it's worth.
Perhaps a difference of JS from cookies is that with Javascript the user might sometimes see what the actual benefits are and they might be more enticing than those of cookies, e.g., "To see this cool doodad, you need to enable Javascript." It is very clear what the benefit will be: the doodad.
Contrast this with "To use this site you must have cookies enabled." Terms like "provide a better user experience" might be used to describe the need to enable cookies. But the specifics are usually absent.
If all websites were reasonable, and no one abused their ability to manipulate and track end users, things like DNT would probably not be necessary. But we know that's not the case.