Domain: aol.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to aol.com.
Comments · 2,591
-
Re:You love to whine, don't you?
Says you. Somewhere you have to start off with the assumption that this god exists and the bible is his word. Exactly as you point out, your saying that it is the case does not make it so.
Now we are getting somewhere! Not me, says the Bible. And this is exactly what I am trying to point out about evolution -- same situation exists there. You have to start out with the assumption that this God DOESN'T EXIST in order to move forward with any evolutionary conclusion! I'll gladly admit the belief in God and the Bible as His Word. And I'll also agree 100% that my saying it is the case does not make it so, neither does your saying it is NOT the case doesn't make it not so. Truth is immutable. It is not more true because people believe it, and it is not less true because people don't believe it.
Ok, so you're saying that god says god exists? But why do you actually believe anything about god in the first place? Personally, I am not arguing that god does not exist. I do not know that, because I do not even know for sure what you mean by the word "god." Rather, I am arguing that your argument doesn't make any sense without starting with your core mystical beliefs as axioms. Moreover, I don't see why one couldn't have a framework in which a god creates a world containing creatures that evolve. Nor do I think that truth is necessarily a knowable quantity—we live by approximations.
By the way, are you at all familiar with formal logic? It can't answer every question, but it does give useful insight into human reasoning. For example, let's say my assumptions are X = {all of my observations of the natural/physical world}, and let's say your assumptions are Y = {X and "god exists and the bible is correct"}. Now, it follows that any proposition I can verify is true under my assumptions, you can verify as true under your assumptions; and similarly, any proposition I can prove false under my assumptions, you can prove false under your assumptions. But moreover, there are additional propositions which you can prove true or false, but I cannot. This is because you're making a stronger assumption than I am. This is why I contend that my arguments and conclusions are simpler and more universal than yours.
Now, if some of your additional assumptions are contradictionry with real-world observations, you'll be able to prove both a proposition and its negation—this is troublesome, because it makes it easier for someone to persuade you into believing contradictory statements. You might think that's a bunch of nonsense, and that's because in practice, the human mind operates on a precedence system, where certain assumptions are deemed more valid than others. Thus if you arise at a conscious contradiction, you work to resolve it by deciding which side—or which side's assumptions and reasoning process—is "more right." This is why people who don't believe in god say you're illogical. But that is not entirely correct; you actually are reasoning under essentially the same system of logic as they are. The key difference is that your assumptions of the existence of god and correctness of the bible are gratuitous, and, for you, override the arguments offered by people who make fewer ontological commitments.
As for logical errors and discrepancies, I know of none, and since you are the one making the claim, go ahead and cite one.
Here's a couple of lists of them:
Your request doesn't really ask for anything specific -- and as for "predictable behaviors" there's so many prophecies in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, which fall outside of this category I'd be quoting large po
-
Re:*Free* XP images?
i'd like to find this out as well.
there are some sites that REQUIRE XP like http://video.aol.com/
still running xp on a 2k box will be slow... xp is such a hog. -
Re:Neat
It looks like you didn't watch the whole video. I hope the way to use it, does not involve in any way that "dance".
-
education is designed to fail us
reject the entire system and stop relying on government to raise your kids!
http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm -
Do you pay strictly cash at Callahan's?
You must, because apparently you are a time traveller. As for an experience more typical for the rest of us, I read the first collection, "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" not long after it came out in 1977. I awaited a sequel, and special ordered "Time Travelers Strictly Cash" when it came out in 1981. You will see the order (for those of us without time machines) here.
-
Hg, S, Fe, NOx & CO
To name a few of the really, really serious biproducts of Coal usage. Hg precipitates out from exhaust at an alarming rate (*those states with coal-fired power plants all have massive Hg and CH2-Hg contamination: see, http://www.dnr.mo.gov/pubs/pub2100.pdf/ and, http://www.moenviron.org/airqualitymercury.asp/ for one central US state's Hg warnings). Sulphur fom coal burning is the primary source of H2SO4 in acid rain that has decimated the lakes in the Northeast US and etched limestone (Cleopatra's Needle http://members.aol.com/Sokamoto31/ny.htm/ has been in NYC since 1881 and the two sides facing the prevailing wind have been etched free of inscription (perfect on all four sides when it was put it into place) due to acid rain) building materials. Nitrates (NOx) are the secondary sources of acid (HNO3 Nitric Acid being the most common) and a product of incomplete combustion of coal. About 75% of the coal-fired power plants scrub NOx out of the exhaust - but there appear to be no small-scale scrubbers consistent with vehicle use.
Releasing more Carbon from the carbon sink is just one more addition to the ever-increasing load of greenhouse gasses on the planet.
Iron - in its various forms will "poison" any catalytic converter small enough to fit on a vehicle.
The cost of scrubbing or converting Coal into a cleaner-burning fuel is problematic and the energy used to scrub may well exceed the energy realized from the converted coal. -
Re:Bitrace
No, seriously, I don't know why you are arguing.
Please re-read my post.
The bitrates you specify do not come close to the bitrates currently being acheived via modern video compression (H.264). AT&T's Project Lightspeed is a drop-in cable replacement service, and is currently operating IPTV over Fiber-To-The-Node, with VDSL providing the last leg, at a total of 25 Mbit/sec per residence.
The quality is supposedly pretty good; though I doubt it is as good as a conventional cable provider.
And the "QXGA" I wrote there is simply a typo. If you notice, in the same paragraph I use the word QVGA. Either way, QXGA is a vastly greater resolution than QVGA. Here's a handy chart for you.
I'm starting to think you are a troll, and I guess I shouldn't be feeding you. There are no online, commercial music providers which ship 384 kbit/s MP3s; and I'm 100% certain that a 128 kbit/sec AAC would satisify 99.5% of the population. I've never heard of anyone encoding anything at 500 kbit/sec ; either switch to a better lossy codec, or switch to a lossless codec. It's pretty much indisputable that 192 kbit/sec AAC is "good enough"; that's iTunes's highest quality bitrate, and Apple does plenty of business through iTunes.
In today's world, it is simply factually true that major companies are currently distribution HiDef Video, way beyond anything you would want on a mobile device, and at a higher resolution that XGA, in 6 Mbit/sec including audio. QVGA at a very high level of quality does not require more than 500-800 kbit/sec; and that's simply fact.
Endgadget currently encodes it's QVGA podcasts at 300 kbit/sec. Take a look at a sample here: http://weblogs.podcast.aol.com/engadget/videos/Zun e/Zune_walkthrough_QVGA.mov
It looks great.
There's a more indepth discussion here, but let it suffice to say that your compression projections are way off. With MPEG-2, think 40:1 to 60:1 compression. With MPEG-4 (or better yet, h.264) think 80:1 to 130:1 .
It's safe to say that your estimates are way off. Do some research, and do automatically assume I don't know what I'm talking about. I do a fair amount of video compression for my job, so I know that this stuff is for real. -
Re:you'll get answers
actually there were three settlements that they found, check the link here http://members.aol.com/bakken1/viking/vikgrn.htm
I certainly agree that they didn't plant vines. There were there for over a centery, and they would probably still be there if it wasn't for Christdom. -
Re:Jó szerencse pölö Charles = ?
There's an importer in CA who does mail-order worldwide: http://members.aol.com/HungImprts/ Recipes can be found online; just Google. If you're in the US, you'll have to convert units from metric... HTH!
-
Re:The biggest surprise?
The little-known fact that he signed his name as "Chuck D."
Seems only fair, as he's often portrayed as Public Enemy Number One -
Re:Bogus...
Oh man this is such a lie..... Did they perform metabolic chamber analysis?
yes, actually they did... ;D http://articles.news.aol.com/business/_a/cokes-env iga-it-may-burn-calories-but-it/200610130754099900 01 -
Re:Bogus...No, after looking at the study as described in the Wall Street Journal article I think I see how they pulled off this con. They put subjects in a metabolic chamber, gave some this overpriced garbage and some a placebo. But here is the kicker: they had both groups also engage in moderate exercise too. Why is this significant? Because I will bet you dollars to donuts that the placebo was not caffeinated!
Hence, the group with the caffeine in their system from the Enviga shit likely worked out just a little harder when they exercised (as anyone on a stimulant would), explaining the 60-100 calorie discrepancy at the end of the day.
-Eric
-
Re:Bogus...
Well, there's this WSJ article.
They do claim that they've used a metabolic chamber, but of course the study is unpublished, as you noted. The article also points out that the claimed 60 to 100 calorie burn from three cans is not a very significant amount of calorie loss, and that three cans per day times $1.29 is going to be a lot of money, to boot. -
What did that poor penny ever do to you?
But that's only the beginning of why pennies ought to be eliminated.
Oh, how I long for the day that a penny could buy something meaningful...
Rather than focusing on waging war against the poor humble penny, why not focus your attention on the federal policies that have made it nearly worthless? I'm talking about perpetual deficits and the federal reserve printing 'dollars' like there's no tomorrow.
If we had a rational monetary system in the U.S., there couldn't have been a housing bubble, nor a tech bubble... Take a look at this graph of the (m3) money supply - there is an inflection point is right around 1/1995, when the federal reserve started 'printing' money. The tech bubble followed soon thereafter. After that bubble popped, all that money started flowing into housing. Now a lot of people are getting screwed because they can't afford their two investment houses and the condo in the mountains, and can't sell because they're now upside down. Sure, it's their own fault for overextending themselves, but it's mainly the bank's fault for lending them the money to make it possible. -
desktop twister
quite simple, but does the job. i've been rummaging through various multiple desktop environments for windows for years, and have come back to desktop twister regularly.
download:
http://members.aol.com/SuperFlago/files/dsktw150.z ip -
Re:real food lover here
Yea but for example-- efficiently farm raised salmon basically have none of the nutritional value that we eat salmon for in the first place.
Efficiency involves a lot of simplification and cutting out less important things like good omega 3 fatty oils and the real red color that comes from eating thousands of shellfish and replacing them with red dye.
From here: http://money.aol.com/bw/general/canvas3/_a/whats-i n-my-food/20060808141909990001
The fresh, farm-raised salmon that shoppers buy also get their orange-red hue from eating the chemicals astaxanthin and canthaxanthin. Wild salmon are pink because they eat shrimp-like creatures called krill. But to achieve the same pink color, farmed salmon need chemicals, which are mixed with their feed. In the past couple of years, the European Union significantly reduced the level of such dyes that can be fed to salmon because of concerns that the dyes, at high levels, can affect people's eyesight.
Two years ago, in the U.S., Seattle law firm Smith & Lowney filed two class actions against grocers Kroger and Safeway in Washington and California, contending that they should disclose that their salmon are dyed pink. Both lawsuits got thrown out of court. However, Knoll Lowney, a partner at the law firm, says that the lawsuits raised enough public awareness that many grocers voluntarily use "color added" labels to their salmon.
interesting side note from the same article:
Betty Crocker icing gets its bright white color not from natural cream and egg whites but from *titanium dioxide*, a mineral that is also used in house paints.
Also of note: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=hea lth&res=9802E7DA1F38F93AA35755C0A964948260
Miss Silbergeld, who was formerly a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Diseases, discovered that Red No. 3 (which is being used in place of Red No, 2, a known carcinogen, and Red No. 40, a suspected carcinogen) interferes with certain forms of metabolism.
Miss Silbergeld said that just a small proportion of children may react adversely to the dye. ''However,'' she added, ''the reaction is genetically linked and appears to confirm the neurotoxicity of Red No. 3.'' On 'Natural' Cheese
And of course: http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/healthy/self/fea tures/natural
If it looks natural but isn't, don't eat it: Like some good-looking guys before you get to know...
and the point of what I'm saying is also in the same article:
If it's edible but has no nutrients, it's entertainment. -
Re:How the heck ...Well... first Saddam shipped them to Syria
[Insert "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" theme song]
...[Insert "Family Circus" map]
...
And that's how they got to North Korea
-
Re:Quiz
Correct answer is AOL:
http://television.aol.com/in2tv/babylon_5_tv -
Re:Suddenly it matters
Start here.
Before the Internet became interesting to the general public (i.e., before it had pictures), the USA had several "online services", including AOL, Compuserve, now also owned by AOL, and Prodigy. These used proprietary, graphical client software to enable users to reach central servers via dial-up; the users paid $x per month for a certain number of available minutes of usage. In some ways, they provided the same sort of things that the Internet does now, like chat rooms, narrow-topic bulletin boards (the first "online communities,") and opportunities to shop. Since these were proprietary services, they had fairly restrictive terms of service, and were more sanitized than the unrestricted Internet (look at the AOL Safety and Security Center, particularly the "parental controls," for an idea of how they promote this idea. Being a single service, they could also make deals with particular content providers for exclusive goodies.
Eventually, these services started to allow users access to the Internet, first to Usenet, then to the WWW as that became popular. Typically, all Internet access went through the company's servers, since the communication protocol between client and service was usually not TCP-IP.
When Windows 95 shipped, one of the things that had people worried (and AOL suing Microsoft) was that it would include MSN built in, which the competing services contended would give MSN an unfair advantage when users would actually have to make the effort to install their software. This was resolved when Microsoft agreed to include the AOL and Prodigy software in the Win95 install image.
To my mind, the beginning of the end for the online services, and the end of the beginning for the mass-consumption Internet, was the day (in 1996?) that AT&T announced WorldNet, their dialup Internet service available virtually nationwide at $19.95 a month. Before that, standalone ISPs were largely small businesses, like Software Tool & Die; AT&T's announcement was what pushed it out of the early adopter stage. Once the masses became comfortable on the Internet, content providers had a direct pipe to them and didn't need to work with the online services anymore.
Incidentally, does anyone else think it's ironic that AOL is freeing up most of the AOL content, but CompuServe (which always had a technical bent to it) is still behind the locked doors? -
Re:Suddenly it matters
Start here.
Before the Internet became interesting to the general public (i.e., before it had pictures), the USA had several "online services", including AOL, Compuserve, now also owned by AOL, and Prodigy. These used proprietary, graphical client software to enable users to reach central servers via dial-up; the users paid $x per month for a certain number of available minutes of usage. In some ways, they provided the same sort of things that the Internet does now, like chat rooms, narrow-topic bulletin boards (the first "online communities,") and opportunities to shop. Since these were proprietary services, they had fairly restrictive terms of service, and were more sanitized than the unrestricted Internet (look at the AOL Safety and Security Center, particularly the "parental controls," for an idea of how they promote this idea. Being a single service, they could also make deals with particular content providers for exclusive goodies.
Eventually, these services started to allow users access to the Internet, first to Usenet, then to the WWW as that became popular. Typically, all Internet access went through the company's servers, since the communication protocol between client and service was usually not TCP-IP.
When Windows 95 shipped, one of the things that had people worried (and AOL suing Microsoft) was that it would include MSN built in, which the competing services contended would give MSN an unfair advantage when users would actually have to make the effort to install their software. This was resolved when Microsoft agreed to include the AOL and Prodigy software in the Win95 install image.
To my mind, the beginning of the end for the online services, and the end of the beginning for the mass-consumption Internet, was the day (in 1996?) that AT&T announced WorldNet, their dialup Internet service available virtually nationwide at $19.95 a month. Before that, standalone ISPs were largely small businesses, like Software Tool & Die; AT&T's announcement was what pushed it out of the early adopter stage. Once the masses became comfortable on the Internet, content providers had a direct pipe to them and didn't need to work with the online services anymore.
Incidentally, does anyone else think it's ironic that AOL is freeing up most of the AOL content, but CompuServe (which always had a technical bent to it) is still behind the locked doors? -
Don't forget the raven and 740 digits!
Don't forget the famous poem Near a Raven, which is my favorite encoding 740 digits of pi.
-
Re:That...that doesn't make any sense.
Reggie is more than just a businessman, he's a gamer as well. He has done interviews where he tells personal stories about his experiences with videogames. This is what fans could sense from him from the very beginning. He may not be "hardcore" per se, but he does relate to gamers. In the following interview, Reggie tells a story about how he played Zelda: A Link to the Past with his son. It's pretty entertaining. http://videogames.aol.com/canvases/articles/_a/re
g gie-fils-aime-interview/20060927165609990001 -
Re:He's using memory technique
Poe, E.: Near a Raven encodes the first 740 digits of pi using word lengths as digits, while preserving the structure, story, and tone of the poem it is based on.
-
Re:"despicable instant messages"?
-
blame the self-appointed ruling class, not 'us'
We only have ourselves to blame for that.
I don't agree. IMHO, the government was used to rig the economic playing field. See 1970's, redux. Summary: federal reserve has been inflating the money supply since 1995. First came the dot com bubble, then the dot com crash. Recession! Then there came a "terrorist" attack, and Alan Greenspan and his merry band of fools cut interest rates to next-to-nothing. Because production had already been moving offshore (fleeing teh inflation), this new injection of money flowed into ... housing. If teh government hadn't already screwed the economy up, stimulus would've fincanced new production lines & the like. Now the media is finally picking up on the fact that there is a problem with housing bubbles, but they're a little late to realize such, and they still don't realize that the inflation in prices was directly caused by
I agree but it isn't just about cost. 30+ years ago "Made in the USA" meant quality. Does anyone see it that way today? Often people are willing to pay more for things produced overseas because of higher quality.
It's not that they have higher quality in Japan/China/Germany/etc, but that they've been getting all the investment for new equipment. New equipment and production processes result in higher quality.
As an interesting aside, note those three countries' position on the CIA's ranked order of Current account balance. Then read the list until you find the United States. Is it any wonder that companies try to move as much as possible offshore? (Link courtesy of the latest What We Now Know). -
Re:walking the line
There is a history of pinball gambling laws at http://members.aol.com/rusjensen/gambling.htm
-
Re:Total cost of ownership
Good point, and on top of that, I wonder HOW AOL will actually suppot Linux? A quick search of their website for "Linux" (anyone notice the bad coding?) only turns up AIM for Linux. Even Google has nothing to do with broadband connectitivity, only connecting via dialup...
-
First Tom Cruise, now the Tomcat
-
canary in the coal mine
Newsflash: U.S. economy is in BIG trouble.
Short history lesson: Federal reserve started to inflate the money supply in early 1995 (blue line in the graph). The 'tech bubble' followed a couple years later. That trend wasn't sustainable, and the dot-coms bombed sometime in 2000/2001. The economy was well on its way to a recession by late-summer/fall 2001. The Federal Reserve responded to "9/11" by cutting interest rates to 1% (over several months), supposedly for the purpose of 'stimulating' the economy.
Newsflash: Mismanagement of the U.S. currency has caused half of the economic equation, production, to move to Asia and Mexico, either in search of lower wages or to flee rising U.S. costs. This is not a new phenomena, and has been ongoing since the 1970's, though it is only recently (circa-2001) that that trend has accelerated to a completely unsustainable level. Cisco assembled their wireless access points in the U.S., and Intel made motherboards in Silicon Valley up until 1999/2000 or so. What happened to the Americans who used to be employed assembling motherboards and other electronics? Perhaps some of them moved to finance, and some to auto sales. But I digress...
Thus, when the Fed slashed interest rates starting in 2001, instead of entrepreneurs borrowing money to set up new production lines, individuals borrowed money to buy a bigger house. And an investment house. And a condo in the mountains. The widely-proclaimed 'housing bubble' started to take off ... circa 2002/2003, and reached its peak summer 2005. Crashes always follow bubbles, and the current real estate market is no exception.
Low interest rates also facilitated GM's 0% financing "keep america rolling" sales campaign. (don't remember what Ford & Chrysler called their corresponding 0% programs). But now Ford and General Motors are in trouble, because they can't sell new cars to customers whose credit line is maxed out.
Gonna get ugly, folks. The good news is that this coming transition marks the end of corporate wage-slavery. The economic system that will arise from the ashes will be founded with something along the lines of worker cooperatives. This is the worker benefiting from their own labor. No more slaving away to pay the "shareholders" dividends (mostly rich dudes who sit on their lazy asses and parasitically live off the working class).
John Gatto's book about the 'massification' of America fits in here too. Gatto maintains that the original american ideal was an independent livelihood. Blacksmith, farmer, woodworker, wheelmaker, etc. Mass production / standardization required government schools to produce a populace who would accept working a repetive job where someone else ("shareholder") was the primary beneficiary. Fun while it lasted, right? :)
Also see my recent comment, how the government spins the stats. -
Yellow 45 RPM adaptor inserts are still available
Google is your friend:
http://www.needledoctor.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.440 /.f
http://www.garage-a-records.com/adapters.html
History of 45 RPM adaptor inserts:
http://members.aol.com/clctrmania/cm-adapt.html -
Re:clarification
I notice the Japanese aren't buying Sony MP3 players either, but then you wouldn't want to be bothered by the actual argument, now would you?
Didn't think so. But thanks for playing.
Oh, and by the way, you just made my day (or night, as it were :) It's a little sad that there are people like you in the world but fantastically wonderful that I don't know anyone like you. I'm not normally one to laugh at another person's misfortune, but ha! ha! about your personality!
Most sincere and warm regards,
Ross -
Re:Jamming With the FCC
It would be interesting to see a link on this "phased array tech". Phased arrays have been around for a long time - the first one used in broadcasting was installed in Florida back in 1932. They do allow multiple transmitters to share a frequency, but there are limits.
You still can't have two stations covering the same place on the same frequency. To use a phased array to make two stations possible on the same frequency, each station has to sacrifice some of its coverage area.
The technology has made thousands of additional AM stations and a handful of additional FM and TV outlets possible. It doesn't come anywhere near creating unlimited spectrum though. -
Re:How long was this light travelling?
I'm afraid I've been unable to find a visual example of the thought experiment I mentioned. I know I've seen it on the web before, but there are so many search results that I couldn't find that specific one. There is a similar one where "Bob" flies a ship to another planet and back and "Ann" stays on Earth and watches, but it doesn't show the reasoning behind relativity - ie. the fact that light has the same constant speed regardless of inertial frame. It just shows the application of time dilation. However, I did find this: http://members.aol.com/carmam1534/Hollings1.html - another thought experiment which outlines the same type of asymetrical flaw in relativity.
-
Re:DS = Handheld game console
If you don't know what a DS is, other websites may be more appropriate than Slashdot.
-
Re:does not matter.
Well, of course you might be right, but you're one person on Slashdot claiming that numerous articles on well-established home-theatre sites out there are wrong.
Slashdot isn't a hive mind. Here, you can find and talk with the preeminent experts on any technical subject you could want to. You should really pay attention to usernames, and look into comment histories to see who knows what they are talking about."Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray have all of the progressively scanned 1080-lines per frame of information on the disc, and this information is not lost or compromised in 1080i transmission." etc...
All of which is true. The information is on the disc, and ALL of it is transfered in the interlaced signal. The problem is that it's very difficult to convert that interlaced signal back into progressive form, without any mistakes. Telecine can be very complex.
As I said before... Try to explain the existance of progressive-scan DVD players, since you believe I'm wrong.I don't believe that diplays have to do inverse telecine, as there is no motion between the interlaced frames to compensate for. But please explain more.
3:2 pulldown means your HD-DVD / DVD player takes the 23.976fps material, and uses the flags set in the header to make it into interlaced 29.97fps material.
Duplicating every 4th frame to get 29.97fps out of 23.976 would look HORRIBLE, on interlaced or progressive displays. So what they do is duplicate a top field, then a bottom field to get 5 fields out of 4 frames, hence the 3:2 notation. This looks much smoother, but results in the artifact known as judder. If you want to find articles about 3:2 pulldown from people who know what they are talking about, you should search for "judder".
A quick google search turned up this:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/pulldown.htm
And the Wikipedia article isn't too bad either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#3:2_pulldown _.28technically.2C_2:3_pulldown.29
Of course, both of those are very simple examples, trying to explain the concept, rather than the whole reality of the situation, and all the screwed-up telecine patterns. -
Re:Unique Reg Form
Great ideas, more infos on my sites
xanax online
tramadol -
Re:Buy It On....
Well, you could also watch the old episodes of La Femme Nikita for free
in their entirety, on AOL's broadband TV channel In2TV
-
Poll About Pluto on AOL
There is a poll on aol.com asking if people support the decision to demote Pluto, oppose the decision, or just don't care. So far the results are 61 percent opposed, 26 percent don't care, and 13 percent support the descision. The "mentally inflexible" masses appear to be winning. I bet they're worried they will have to take astronomy class all over again, since they had a hard enough time passing it the first time. I guess the "mentally inflexible" masses think we should halt all scientific progress just so they can keep up with the rest of us.
I should probably go turn in my nerd card now for admitting to using AOL. Shame on me. Well, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery, right?
-
Re:CTO seems to be the wrong person.
If Acme Plubming's requirements for fixing your sink involved taking away ownership from you, you probably wouldn't use their services. It's not an analgous situation, because AOL's stated requirements for using their search involves taking ownership of said information. AOL does provide a link to their privacy policy on their front page. And it states--right up at the top of the second section--that they store personally identifiable information, including user searches.
Don't get me wrong: I don't think this is good in any sense of the word. Legality isn't always good; and I do think this storing of information is legal.
To answer your initial question, "why can't they do with their property what they want to?", I'll cite their terms of service:
Your AOL Network information will not be shared with third parties unless it is necessary to fulfill a transaction you have requested, in other circumstances in which you have consented to the sharing of your AOL Network information, or except as described in this Privacy Policy.
(And No, there aren't explicit exceptions for disclosing search information in their policy). While a company's Privacy Policy may not be legally binding in terms of what they themselves can take or own, it is binding in terms of what they can disclose. If they say, "We don't give away your information" and then in fact do, they're violating a precedent set with the customer and I contend that this is litigable (although, of course, IANAL).
-
Re:CTO seems to be the wrong person.
Are you a moron or can you not read? AOL's own god damn legal department wrote up a friggin privacy policy, available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike, that AOL is storing these logs.
From the privacy policy:
Collection of Your AOL Member Information
Your AOL Member information consists of personally identifiable information collected or received about you when you interact with the AOL Service, including AOL sites and pages, services, and software (collectively AOL Service "offerings"). Depending on how you use the AOL Service, your AOL Member information may include:
...
Information about the searches you perform through the AOL Service and how you use the results of those searches;
Your AOL Member information may also include certain technical and diagnostic information gathered or received when you use the AOL Service. Some of the technical information that may be collected or received includes: the type of browser you are using (e.g., Netscape, AOL Explorer), the type of operating system you are using (e.g., Windows XP or Mac OS), CPU type (e.g. Pentium), the manner in which you connect to the Internet (e.g., connection speed through narrowband or broadband access); Internet protocol address; other information about your geographic location; or data relating to computer malfunctions or problems occurring when you use your computer with the AOL Service. Additionally, we may collect information about other software on your computer for the limited purpose of protecting your security or improving your online experience.
It's not like AOL was exactly hiding the fact that they were keeping these logs, and the "whistleblowers" weren't exactly revealing some evil corporate secret that only the higher-ups at AOL knew. Storing those logs is not breaking the law in any manner whatsoever, so why the hell would the person who approved this "secret" (you know, the secret that AOL publically posted on the internet years ago) be locked away and sued?
Releasing the data was clearly wrong and a stupid thing to do, but I seriously doubt any laws were actually broken (the EFF is figuring that out right now). At the most, the people who released the logs should have serious consequences, but suing the data miners is just downright retarded. -
Goes back further than 1990. Even 1980.Before politicians whined about GTA, they whined about the fatalities in Mortal Kombat.
Before that, they whined about Exidy's Death Race (1975), and Chiller.
And at home, in 1982, there was Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600 console.
And from its very invention up until the 70s, people had to go to court to prove that pinball was a game of skill, not a game of chance, and that pinball machines were therefore not illegal gambling machines.
For everything fun, there's gonna be some idiot with a (D) or an (R) beside his or her name telling you not to do it. Fuck 'em all.
-
You've got gold
So I posted downthread about how I was going to sit back and wait for
/.ers and treasure hunters to start posting .kmz files of the parent's property, and digging holes in the middle of the night. Then I went and looked at a few of the treasure hunter sites to see if they are ahead of /. in getting to the story first, and what did I find?
AOL has a new contest out called Gold Rush that started a few days ago. http://goldrush.aol.com/ (warning, flash, sound, possibly NSFW, datamining)
Its an advertising gimick to get people to watch AOL-TimeWarner TV shows in order to obtain clues embedded in the shows or commercials. The more confirmed personally identifying information you give them, the more clues they'll email to you. A spamme^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hn online marketer's dream database, also known as a suckers list.
The timing of this announcement strikes me as strange. Coincidence? I think not!
Maybe they need to get this spammer's gold for the prize
the AC -
Re:Guantanamo Boom
I know you didn't read the article, but it does show how many people who reviewed the program know it's worth the money. How do you like that $300B we spent in Iraq?
An 8% false positive rate "isn't so bad"? America doesn't send random people to Guantanamo?
You're a Republican pedophile. Stop pretending your opinion has any value. If you want to spout it, go to Iraq and get a fat job training Iraqis, who will run away to join forces to attack our occupying army. -
There HAVE to be at least TEN ALTERNATIVES...
The Top-10 Alternatives to "I googled it" (note the lower-case 'g'):
- 10 "I AltaVista'd it" (potential ad campaign: "Hasta la vista, Google!")
- 9 "I Yahoo!'d it" (Good luck with that lawsuit; it's been in the official motto of several states for decades!)
- 8 "I Asked it" (AKA "I just axed it", since they "axed" poor Jeeves...)
- 7 "I HotBot'd it" (She's not all that hot these days...)
- 6 "I WebCrawler'd it" (Crawl being the operative word; no speed records broken here!)
- 5 "I Accoona'd it" (Possibly illegal to admit in several states)
- 4 "I Lycos'd it" (Not to be confused with "I Pecos'd it" from the 1950's...)
- 3 "I Netscaped it" (That's netscaped not netscraped)
- 2 "I AOL'd it" (Roughly analogous to "I screwed it up")
and the #1 alternative to "I googled it":
- 1 "I Dogpile'd it" (Imagine Cartman in the "red rocket" scene...)
-
Robot Odyssey
Robot Odyssey is one of the all-time high-brow games, which is essentially a visual programming language (for robots), with encapsulation (chips)!
-Don
-
Robot Odyssey
Robot Odyssey is one of the all-time high-brow games, which is essentially a visual programming language (for robots), with encapsulation (chips)!
-Don
-
Re:Funniest thing so far
Why were you ever under the delusion that aggrigate data about your searches would be kept private.
Maybe because AOL's privacy policy says so? First because it defines Member Information to include:information about the searches you perform through the AOL Service and how you use the results of those searches;
And then it says:AOL will only share your AOL Member information with third parties to provide products and services you have requested, or when we have your consent
-
The basic idea is old news
There's a nice account of this in Ian Stewart's The Magical Maze.
-
Re:Biggest mistakes of AOL
I like your comment but #12 is more than a little bit misleading. Most of the Nullsoft software was integrated into the AOL client software, AIM, and AOL Media Player. It's what AOL Media Player is and what AOL Radio/Radio@AOL became, though nobody would notice that because it's all under the covers. A good example of this is the Ultravox streaming protocol http://ultravox.aol.com/ just to name one.
-
Re:It was predictable
Some people argue that AOL means Time Warner. Time Warmer staff has to eat snakes on a plane and fried worms. Those who think it was funny may stay. Lord of the Rings was a recent Time Warner success. So our Lords of the ringtones think it makes sense to provide AOL's special features for FREEEEEEE. It will end up like this. Citizens will get paid by AOL for testing spyware, watching advertisement and the resurrection of Harry Potter.