Slashdot Mirror

See the case. Specifically, the plaintiffs alleged that Google's use of photos uploaded by others to the public Internet is prohibited. It's PUBLICLY AVAILABLE data, put up by a 3rd, party, and used by Google. There is no privacy here, nor any expectation of privacy from people who put their pictures on the Internet.

Backpage.com has already been pressured into eliminating their escort/massage section. "Escorts" just moved their ads to the "Women seeking Men" dating section. All websites need is positive deniability and you can't touch them. "What, you expected us to READ everything that anybody posts? Even slashdot doesn't do that!"

FWIW, you can read the proposed change here... Basically the bill is proposing to remove the CDA's safe harbor provisions for specifically enforcing sex trafficking laws. I suppose the theory is simply to allow the state (and the victim) to hit the websites in the pocketbook to modify their behaviour. But as you speculate, their behaviour is likely modified in a direction to promote more elaborate deniability, not elimination...

OK, it seems that the LoC might be partly at fault for the misinformation by using one of their standard text templates - at least according to the evidence presented on the case:
http://digitalcommons.law.scu....

Unfortunately, there seems to be no digital copy online of their Exhibit B - the text of the oriignal "Instrument of Gift" that gave the public access to her photos in the first place. At the very least, her intent was to make the photos freely available to use/copy but not public domain.

Of course if you read the "Assessing the Risk of Using a P&P Image" section of the web site you quoted, you'll see that they aren't claiming those records to be without fault.

First, the health care industry now has to hold massive amounts of data on you, and has to make it available to the Government. This is the price of government mandated and controlled insurance.

They've always done this. And it's always been available to the government. They might have needed a warrant, but it's available.

Your reading comprehension leaves something to be desired, or there's something worse afoot with you. To make this absolutely clear, I stated the following:

They've always done this.

to clearly and, yes, pedantically state what that means, since your comprehension of said quotes above seems severely lacking this can be transformed into a plain fully qualified self-standing sentence:

The health care industry has always held massive amounts of data on a patient

I do not believe there's any question that they've done this for most of the past century (as in 100 years). This is not a current thing. Have you not visited a health care provider over the past several decades?

Since this data exists, and has existed, are you arguing that somehow it was not available to the government? If so, please make your case. I'd love to read in what bizarre universe documents held by a non legal third party are not subject to a warrant in the US. In fact:

Until 1996 there was no federal protection of privacy in medical records; and state laws varied widely. That changed with HIPAA.

Which granted isn't an authoritative source but certainly lends some credence to the fact that you need to support your assertions as the implication is that HIPAA is the exact opposite of your stance. You can also see that earlier, the Federal Rules of Evidence, which became law in 1975, do not have any provision for privacy of medical records nor Physician Patient privileges. I have no idea what this imaginary Patient Client law is.... Perhaps you could cite it?

So, are you wrong, an idiot, a troll, or something worse?

> This case may actually be in Federal Court under the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005

Indeed the plaintiff claims federal jurisdiction under Class Action Fairness Act.
http://digitalcommons.law.scu....

Sometimes you're an asshole, sometimes you're clueless. Try not to be an asshole when you're clueless.

The case (
http://digitalcommons.law.scu.... ) accuses Shutterfly of violating Illinois state law. There is no federal legislation on the subject. It's being heard in the US District Court for Illinois because the Class Action Fairness Act allows a federal court to hear an interstate claim - Shutterfly is a Delaware corporation.

Yale professor:
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/...

From the Rutgers Dean of Students:
"There is no such thing as Free Speech"
http://deanofstudents.rutgers....

Santa Clara University is telling students to call 911 over "bias incidents".
http://www.scu.edu/provost/div...

Idiot progressive says that computers can be racist as well:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...

Idiot progressive accuses people of being racist when in fact the stupid bitch confuses her own search history for racist topics suggested by twitter. The cow was LOOKING for racist stuff about herself... didn't find it apparently... then saw her search history and said "oh there's the racism I was trying to find"... Morons.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

You think this is hard, shithead? Easiest thing in the world. All I'm doing is walking outside and pointing at the Sun. Its right there. See it?

You're wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

...and no one knows what to do to fix it.

In 2010 the new Web was all about "user generated content". Today, the modern mantra is: "Don't read the comments"

Reviews and review sites have almost exactly the same problems as comment sections: there is no way to filter the ignorant and/or malicious from the informed and sincere. Case in point: there are currently exactly two reviews of my book on Amazon. One from a reasonably thoughtful reader (3 stars) and one from a troll who apparently has given Charles Dickens the same rating as me (2 stars).

There was a five-star review which was from someone who had read the book and genuinely liked it, but Amazon determined it was from someone I knew (likely because I bought her a book on the site a few years ago) and removed the review. This is a ridiculous practice--it would invalidate a huge number of reviews in traditional publications--but is made necessary by authors who try to game the review system in the stupidest possible way.

What do you think about something like Angie's List? As I understand it, you have to be a paying member to rate service providers which is supposed to make the reviews more trustworthy. I don't subscribe to the site though so I don't know exactly what it's like.

...and no one knows what to do to fix it.

In 2010 the new Web was all about "user generated content". Today, the modern mantra is: "Don't read the comments"

Reviews and review sites have almost exactly the same problems as comment sections: there is no way to filter the ignorant and/or malicious from the informed and sincere. Case in point: there are currently exactly two reviews of my book on Amazon. One from a reasonably thoughtful reader (3 stars) and one from a troll who apparently has given Charles Dickens the same rating as me (2 stars).

There was a five-star review which was from someone who had read the book and genuinely liked it, but Amazon determined it was from someone I knew (likely because I bought her a book on the site a few years ago) and removed the review. This is a ridiculous practice--it would invalidate a huge number of reviews in traditional publications--but is made necessary by authors who try to game the review system in the stupidest possible way.

If there is a solution to these problems it's likely some kind of reputation system, but as near as I can tell no one--not Amazon, not GoodReads, not TripAdvisor, not Yelp, not anyone--is even thinking along those lines, which suggests there is no money in building a site that provides honest peer-to-peer feedback. This is a shame, because the Web should be enabling us to help each other, not increasing our distrust of each other (we're plenty good enough at that already).

/. has had a basically functional reputation system for well over a decade, so it's not like there's any real mystery as to how to do this. I wonder if there might be some b2b model where users sign up with a third party reputation system that then sells reputation information (which would exist across all sites that use it, like discus does for comments) to review sites. Without something like that there seems to be very little hope of getting much long-term value from online reviews of any kind.

I have no problem with laws *limiting* campaign donations

I have - they should be e-liminated, not limited. There will always be backdoors and workarounds.

Think the US Supreme Court with it's corporate-tinted philosophy would support that or the politicians cutting off their funding?

The system is purely money-driven, doubtful if the idea behind MAYDAY-PAC can change that, but worth a try.

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publ...

That's exactly the crux of the matter - Ron Paul is acting, and I believe he is confused into thinking that he is justified in pursing a trademark claim because last time he pursued a claim over his name he was justified

He isn't confused. He's going after the domain on the same ground as many others before him:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/ericjsinrod/2005-04-20-hillary-clinton_x.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2000/jun/02/news.juliaroberts
http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1291&context=chtlj

Here is the statement of claim. http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1221&context=historical

"10. When an individual computer user types "Guy Hin ... ", into the Google search engine as a search, the words "Guy Hingston Bankrupt" appears. When the link(s) is clicked on, the article{s) to which the user is directed has absolutely nothing to do with a bankruptcy associated with Dr. Hingston. Dr. Hingston is not bankrupt. Any association with Dr. Hingston and a bankruptcy is in false light and/or defamatory. Dr. Hingston has directed numerous inquiries and made numerous requests, both oral and written, to Google for immediate action to resolve the foregoing issue to no avail."

My compliments to his lawyer who resisted padding this out to 30 pages.

First, three blogs down, here's the actual court order. It's worth reading. A key point in this decision is what it has to say about agreements which allow one party to change the terms of the agreement. Such agreements were held to be "illusory" and non-binding:

Here, the Terms of Use gives Zappos the right to change the Terms of Use, including the Arbitration Clause, at any time without notice to the consumer. On one side, the Terms of Use purportedly binds any user of the Zappos.com website to mandatory arbitration. However, if a consumer sought to invoke arbitration pursuant to the Terms of Use, nothing would prevent Zappos from unilaterally changing the Terms and making those changes applicable to that pending dispute if it determined that arbitration was no longer in its interest. In effect, the agreement allows Zappos to hold its customers and users to the promise to arbitrate while reserving its own escape hatch. By the terms of the Terms of Use, Zappos is free at any time to require a consumer to arbitrate and/or litigate anywhere it sees fit, while consumers are required to submit to arbitration in Las Vegas, Nevada. Because the Terms of Use binds consumers to arbitration while leaving Zappos free to litigate or arbitrate wherever it sees fit, there exists no mutuality of obligation. We join those other federal courts that find such arbitration agreements illusory and therefore unenforceable.

This is an example of the classic "an agreement to agree is not an agreement".

An example of a site that's now in trouble is WePay. See Paragraph 50 of the contract.

Maybe this one, not sure though - http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/facpubs/473/ The author is from Santa Clara and not Stanford

Really? Do you think they're biased because they got a free $2 pack of erasers to review?

Yes.

If free stuff didn't result in better reviews, businesses wouldn't be giving away free stuff to reviewers.

Medical doctors are highly paid, non-anonymous, well-educated, and government-licensed, but their prescribing habits are still influenced by pharmaceutical company reps giving out logo-covered pens. If an elite group of highly-trained, thoroughly-tested individuals making life-or-death decisions can be influenced by crappy gifts, do you really think some anonymous, unpaid, unregulated, and unsupervised reviewer is going to be more resistant to that sort of influence?

Santa Clara has professor Sharath Sury as Dean's Executive Professor of Finance:

http://www.scu.edu/business/finance/faculty/sury-profile.cfm

What's his specialty? Risk management behavioral finance. *irony alert*

This is the SEC barring him from trading for 2 years, due to not properly disclosing risky investments (he was using 95% of the fund to trade Google stock on the earnings bounces and telling his investors that it was a conservative fund...of course no one would have cared but he lost all their money):

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2010/33-9111.pdf

He then shut down the company called S4 Capital (the one the SEC did an action against), and looks like he started it back up as Chicago Analytic Trading Company. Any idiot can see they are the same company (both in Chicago and Santa Clara, even the Santa Clara office address is the same):

http://www.catcbd.com/contact.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=S4+Capital

The kicker is his "Santa Clara Initiative for Financial Innovation and Risk Management (SCIFIRM)" was supposed to be the "Sury Initiative for Financial Innovation and Risk Management" but Santa Clara found out about the SEC action...rather than kick him out they just changed the name! The webpage still has the old name: http://sifirm.org/Home_Page.php

How can they keep this guy on the faculty, let alone PAY him to teach? It boggles the mind. If I was an alumni I would be contacting the dean.

You won't be too surprised to learn this hypocrite worked at Goldman Sachs...

I would imagine stupid stuff like this happens all the time in academia, as the schools would rather save face then address improprieties...oops, will I get sued now?

Um. No. Nanosail-D is several years old and has been waiting for its launch.

In fact, this is the second try at launching it. The first try was lost in the failure of the Falcon-1 vehicle, August 2 2008.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats/nanosaild.html

Not only that, but scientific thinking is arguably the best way to think about morals. What makes us and others around us happy? What decreases suffering both ours and that of others?

But those aren't the primary moral questions. The primary moral question is, "why should I give a fsck what makes others around me happy, or what decreases the suffering of others?"

Science doesn't give us "shoulds". It tells us "do A and B will probably be the result, while if you do X you'll get Y," but it can't tell us whether B or Y is "better". You could conclude that if we do A, we'll destroy the biosphere and the human race will be extinct in 200 years, while if we do X, taxes would have to go up 1%, but science can't tell you whether the extinction of all life on the planet more complicated than a bacterium is "better" than a higher tax bill. The question is outside its domain.

Supernatural ethical systems tell us that some divine judge is going to spank us if we do A and give us candy if we do X, so we'd better do X. Given the lack of evidence for the existence of such a divine judge, much less evidence of what its desires are, rational, intelligent, educated people reject supernaturalist ethical systems.

There are many ethical systems that are not supernaturalist: utilitarianism, contractualism, or rights theories, to name a couple. But each of these ultimately rests on some set of intuitions or assumption -- ethical axioms, if you will.

I don't buy the "competent users" argument.

It is definitely the case that incompetence users can cause system compromises. "Ooh, free smilies!"(though, IT should ideally have blocked most of their most common avenues of idiocy.

However, in a world where you can get compromised just by going to a perfectly legitimate website that happens to be running a flash ad with an embedded zero-day of some flavor, the idea that "competence" is going to save you is an unpleasant mixture of naiveté and adherence to the just-world hypothesis.

Competence doesn't hurt, and is always a desirable quality; but it is a near-worthless foundation for a security system. First and foremost, there are many attacks from which competence will not save you. Second, and also pretty important, is that any organization of reasonable size is going to contain people hired for their competence in something other than computer security. The pool of people competent in skill X and computer security is always smaller than the pool of people competent in skill X. Even if the former pool is large enough to fulfil your needs, recruiting from it will cost more than recruiting from the entire skill X pool. Competent users are a nice perk, when they happen; but depending on them is folly.

... After RTFA, I was a little concerned;

- The presumption is that the stuff they actually can't see doesn't 'seem' like anything else, except it does 'seem' like water. So they think it's water. I'm a little concerned they went out on a limb here, but nothing that couldn't be settled by sending up a rover and tasting it. Right?

- All the ideas that colonizing the Moon if for no other reason than to launch from there seem to think the Moon has, among other things, minimal problems with waste, pollution, and climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. We've sent precious little there, and already thre are concerns about potential pollution and abuse .

By all means, let's get up there and mine out all the water, uranium, and silica before someone else does! Sure!

ps- I think there have been complaints about how we have treated the Moon and other objects.

You have shit for brains and probably live in your mother's basement. Judicial liens are, in fact, discharged by bankruptcy exactly to the extent that they would allow a creditor to take a debtor's exempt property: http://law.scu.edu/FacWebPage/Neustadter/article9/main/commentary/36.html

Even if they were not, on what would the RIAA obtain a lien? Her house? For all we know, Ms. Thomas might not even own a house. If she does, its value is likely covered by her state's residential exemption for the purposes of bankruptcy, so any judicial liens will be discharged. And, if Ms. Thomas files a bankruptcy petition after the final judgment but before the RIAA obtains an Abstract of Judgment on the target of the lien, the automatic stay created by bankruptcy will prevent the RIAA from pursuing any lien against Ms. Thomas. Considering that the RIAA will be Ms. Thomas's major creditor in bankruptcy anyway, the RIAA would obtain no advantage from pursuing a lien against Ms. Thomas before she has a chance to file for bankruptcy.

---linuxrocks123

http://law.scu.edu/FacWebPage/Neustadter/e-books/abridged/main/cases/Williams.html

Unconscionability has generally been recognized to include an absence of meaningful choice on the part of one of the parties together with contract terms which are unreasonably favorable to the other party. --J. Skelly Wright, Circuit Judge

Luxury items cannot meet the meaningful choice test since you can choose not to purchase the item.

The actual complain text can be found here. It is surprisingly free of legalease and you can skim over it fairly quick.

PS: I love the fact that this story shows a big Rosetta Stone ad being served by google!

You only have to go to a third-world company where oil is extracted to see how these companies act with the lack of government regulations to control them (or a government that can stand up to the companies).

Hell, you don't have to find a third world oil company for an example of this. Unocal, Union Oil Company of California, has been accused of using the military to force Burmese to relocate and work in Burma. In Nigeria Shell Oil "supplied the Nigerian military government with weapons. These weapons were used to put down, with deadly force, opposition to Shell drilling on Ogoni land." Ken Saro-Wiwa, who opposed Shell drilling, was hanged by the military because of his opposition. Some groups in other nations have used the Alien Tort Claim Act of 1789, ATCA, to sue US businesses in US courts for their support of such things. And as president Bush tried to gut the ATCA.

The free market, with the companies always seeking lowest costs and better numbers this quarter, actually encourages these behaviors.

That is not a free market. A free market is one in which there is a voluntary exchange.

And like it or not, Somalia is exactly what we get with the "libertarian paradise". They might claim that they don't actually mean lack of government, but what good is a government that doesn't enforce laws and regulations?

If you're poisoned by some company you can sue them, you don't need byzantine regulations. Actually do you know who the biggest polluter in the US is? The United States Government. It's the biggest polluter and it gets away with it.

Falcon

A long long time ago in a galaxy far away I did social psychological experiment between need to punish and a believe in a just world (hypothesis by Melvin Lerner). We found a significant correlation, it wouldn't surpirse me that the BJW questionaire can be correlated with political orientation. http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n2/justworld.html

Well, that's pretty much exactly the thing - I'm not refuting the GGP at all, but inductive reasoning based on anecdotal evidence is a constant target of attack here on /. I couldn't find any other numbers that looked reliable, so I wanted to get the discussion rolling and hope that someone more knowledgeable would be able to contribute. Somewhere in the middle of all this is a rough idea of how likely one is to be a victim of crime - in this case, racially motivated assault or harrassment.

This probably going to devolve into a racial profiling flamewar, but I'm still curious.

That clause doesn't seem like it alleviates YouTube from any legal situations. You can't give YouTube rights to something you don't have them for. As far as it not being a necessity and a completely voluntary activity, that doesn't mean the contract still can't be unconscionable. See the standard for US case law on unconscionable contracts: http://www.scu.edu/law/FacWebPage/Neustadter/e-books/abridged/main/cases/Williams.html Thats just the first full free copy of it I could find on google. While the case was never finally decided, the fact that it went through at least 3 courts without getting thrown out means that the contract could conceivably be unconscionable. Granted the two issues are seriously different, but again, IANAL.

Actually, look at the rankings for intellectual property law in particular. George Washington is ranked third, and Santa Clara University was ranked fourth last year (not sure about this year since you have to pay to see beyond the top three). I think it's fairly irrelevant because most law students don't live on campus. Also, *insert obligatory comment about how rankings are worthless garbage anyway*

I've attended two of the twenty-three on the list and haven't been sued yet, what do I win?

Ah, the Just World Theory... Yes, indeed.

Still at the 3-inch wafer stage, while the silicon industry has been using 12-inch wafers for some time now.

If you look at his colleagues,

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/people/visiti ng.html

then cross-reference a few of them:

http://www.gf.org/lfellow.html

Douglas N. C. Lin, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz: 1991

If you look him up he is all over about Astrophysics and applied mathematics.

Betty Young, Santa Clara:

Betty Young, Physics, a 1-year award from award from the University of California-Berkeley, on an NSF prime contract, providing $36,406 in continuing support for CDMSII: A Search for Cold Dark Matter with Cryogenic Detectors at the Soudan Mine.

Now if you research Betty you find this:

http://www.scu.edu/cas/physics/facultyandstaff/you ng.cfm

Associate Professor Santa Clara University
Santa Clara, CA 95053

Professor Young received a B.S. degree in Physics from the San Francisco State University in 1982. In 1990, she received a Ph.D. from Stanford University where she worked on the development of cryogenic particle detectors with superconducting sensors. After graduate school, she spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Particle Astrophysics at UC Berkeley. Since coming to Santa Clara in 1994, Professor Young has established a research group at Santa Clara University and continues to work with the multi-institutional Cold Dark Matter Search (CDMS) collaboration.

Now whatever becomes of this Alex Mayer and his credentials are yet to be determined. However, I doubt Stanford would even allow him web space under the Physics department if he didn't have the credentials to back it up.

If you look at his colleagues,

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/people/visiti ng.html

then cross-reference a few of them:

http://www.gf.org/lfellow.html

Douglas N. C. Lin, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz: 1991

If you look him up he is all over about Astrophysics and applied mathematics.

Betty Young, Santa Clara:

Betty Young, Physics, a 1-year award from award from the University of California-Berkeley, on an NSF prime contract, providing $36,406 in continuing support for CDMSII: A Search for Cold Dark Matter with Cryogenic Detectors at the Soudan Mine.

Now if you research Betty you find this:

http://www.scu.edu/cas/physics/facultyandstaff/you ng.cfm

Associate Professor Santa Clara University
Santa Clara, CA 95053

Professor Young received a B.S. degree in Physics from the San Francisco State University in 1982. In 1990, she received a Ph.D. from Stanford University where she worked on the development of cryogenic particle detectors with superconducting sensors. After graduate school, she spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Particle Astrophysics at UC Berkeley. Since coming to Santa Clara in 1994, Professor Young has established a research group at Santa Clara University and continues to work with the multi-institutional Cold Dark Matter Search (CDMS) collaboration.

Now whatever becomes of this Alex Mayer and his credentials are yet to be determined. However, I doubt Stanford would even allow him web space under the Physics department if he didn't have the credentials to back it up.

The Judge is faculty at Santa Clara University. It looks like George "Daddy" Bush appointed him.

"On October 1, 1990, Judge Ware was appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, where he now serves"

http://www.scu.edu/law/faculty/adjunct/fcty_1231.h tml [scu.edu]

Those who want corruption want stupid patents so they can scare others away from working in their area of technology. They don't care if they sometimes lose a few court cases due to stupidly weak patents. In general, taking something to court is so expensive that the corrupters win just because of the threat.

A major way those who want corruption destroy government effectiveness is by starving the agencies of operating funds. That's what happened to the patent office. The corrupters won't allow hiring of enough people to do the job well.

For a discussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.

They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says

They are corrupting the courts. Those who want corruption spend huge amounts to get lazy judges elected, and work for the defeat of judges who do a good job.

Another major way that corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving the courts enough money to operate. A 2003-06-24 op-ed article by Charles Williamson, then president of the Oregon State Bar, in The Oregonian, the Northwest's largest newspaper, said, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."

The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies who reduce the role of those agencies. After they destroy the effectiveness of the agencies, they go back to running their businesses, and the corruption gives them more profit.

The book Other People's Money discusses corporate corruption. It's excellent. Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?, by Dilip Hiro is an excellent book about the corruption that led to the most recent U.S.-Iraq war.

The corruption is extremely widespread. The books mentioned above and the 3 movies and 34 books reviewed in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

In general, most Americans don't want to know how corrupt their government has become. Most don't read books. The TV news they watch is heavily influenced by the corrupters. For example, GE, one of the largest sellers of weapons, owns NBC, one of the major ways Americans get their news.

pi is really irrational...

Obviously, you can approximate any irrational number as p/q, and your approximation gets better as q gets larger. So, if x is the number that you're trying to approximate, then take the absolute value of x - p/q. Then, find the smallest number u (the infimum) for which abs(x - p/q) is less than 1 / (q^u). This value u is the irrationality measure of x. For u=1, x is rational, (mathworld isn't quite clear about u between 1 and 2...) for u greater than 2, x is transcendental.

For pi, u ~= 8.0161. So pi is quite irrational.

We learned about this when studying for the Putnam my freshman year.

Neither would have made a dime without Mike Markkula. Jobs most important accomplishment was bringing Markkula on board as Apple's first President. Markkula was a technical wizard, a marketing guru and an industry insider. And as Johnny Appleseed, he was an innovator in freeware.

Probably not helpful to you, but...
I'm enrolled at Santa Clara University, that's the local Catholic institution in the Silicon Valley (San Jose area). I was in class this morning. All their grad engineering classes are scheduled for working stiffs; most are 7-9AM on weekdays. Tuition is kinda expensive, almost $600/quarter-credit.

Dunno what others think, but I'd characterize SCU as "a tough little Jesuit school."

http://www.scu.edu/

They even offer a part-time PhD.

oooh you've insulted my manhood by suggesting i don't know many women! that was the whole point. yes CLEARY people care which is why there is a thread about this and why you typed a message, right? the point was why should people care? no physical harm or violation happens from a picture of someone's leg or tight t-shirt. modesty is not a reason in itself. it's completely arbitrary.

No, there's no insult intended, it's just clear that you don't really know much about women and how they like to be treated and the way they wish to be respected. If you were around women more, you'd know about all this sort of thing. As for modesty being an arbitary thing, put briefly, Ethical Relativism is a very old argument, that says regardless of whether ethical dilemmas are infact culturally contextual ideas, they are decided by majorities, and these rules are what is deemed right and wrong. You can argue against them all you like, but I happen to agree with the mainstream on this topic. Most philosophers agreed a long time ago, that most if not all things are not arbitary (or relative). Of course, if things are arbitary, you've invalidated your own argument, hence the reason why most people stay well clear of what you're claiming, after all, your idea is just as good as anyone's by your own arguement.

did i ever suggest that i was a proponent of exposing myself in public? there's a difference between not giving a @#$$% if someone takes candids photos, and getting off on it. notice that if everyone wasn't so uptight about this, the problem would solve itself. the only reason "upskirt" photos are popular is because this society is so utterly repressed.

Well, unless you're prepared to walk around bare arse naked, I think it's safe to assume that you're not prepared to practice what you advocate yourself. The fact is that whether you think people are "uptight" or not, that most people, particularily women don't want people invading their privacy and harming their sense of modesty. You may think people are uptight, but I'd say that most people would see a disregard for a woman's modesty as showing an ill mannered lout who has no charm or respect.

I don't know where you come from, and your background, but it really isn't okay to violate people's privacy and modesty, and it's not something that they need to not be uptight about.

The "stock market" is heavily involved in deliberate government corruption.

The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies who reduce the role of those agencies. After they destroy the effectiveness of the agencies, they go back to running their businesses, and the corruption gives them more profit.

Another way they corrupt government is to starve the agencies of operating funds.

For a discussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.

This is all part of extremely widespread corruption in the U.S. government. Even the 3 movies and 34 books linked in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says

They are corrupting the patent office the same way. That's why there are so many crazy patents.

Hmmm... maybe in sheer quantity. But for the size of the crime, I think you'd have to look to the rich and powerful as the perps. Long before Enron, the precedent was set by The S&L Crisis - which was the single biggest theft of taxpayer dollars ever. Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House at the time, was forced to step down from his position as a result of that single crime. Daddy Bush's other kid, Neal was up to his eyeballs in that same deal as I recall. He got off scot-free.

Gee - sure hope they're all still living comfortably while poor inner-city kids are being shot by police almost daily.
</SARCASM>

There *is* a tcp/ip stack for dos.

I have heard of Dos Routers and firewalls

The EFF apparently does not realize that the crazy patents are caused by deliberate corruption. Not allowing enough money for an agency to do its job is a deliberate strategy of those who want corruption in the U.S. government. When corrupters don't want government oversight, they just reduce the operating funds. Those who want corruption don't mind if they destroy a thousand things to get one thing they want.

Those who want corruption will introduce bills that, if passed, would give the EFF what it wants, with the secret understanding that the bills won't get passed.

For a disussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.

They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says

The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies that have agreed to reduce the role of those agencies. When they have destroyed the agencies, they will go back to running their businesses, and the corruption will give them more profit.

This is all part of extremely widespread corruption in the U.S. government. Even the 3 movies and 34 books linked in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

At some institutions, such as Santa Clara University, CA, they have done exactly that. There are distinct degrees for Computer Engineering, part of the Engineering Dept., and Computer Science, part of the Mathematics dept. There is some overlap of classes, but the Comp. Sci. degree is much more mathematical.

• In a spectacular career spanning nearly six decades, Edgerton and his "magic lamps" stopped bullets mid-flight and revealed the secrets of ocean depths. By photographing the usual in an unusual way, Edgerton brought to the world what James R. Killian, Jr., coined "sudden wonder."
• Some more photos by Harold Edgerton
• bullet thru baloon
• diver entering water
• bullet thru card
• Pigeon Released
• hitting a tennis ball
• cards

• In a spectacular career spanning nearly six decades, Edgerton and his "magic lamps" stopped bullets mid-flight and revealed the secrets of ocean depths. By photographing the usual in an unusual way, Edgerton brought to the world what James R. Killian, Jr., coined "sudden wonder."
• Some more photos by Harold Edgerton
• bullet thru baloon
• diver entering water
• bullet thru card
• Pigeon Released
• hitting a tennis ball
• cards

Ahhh, another company damaged by Ellen Hancock.

• IBM's PRGS ("Programming Systems") Laboratories, of which she was the overall manager
  
• Apple Computer Corp, as the right-hand of Gil Amelio
  
• Exodus Communications, where she was CEO
  
• Global Crossing, the poor sots that ended up with 108 million worthless shares of Exodus
  

• Cable and Wireless, another batch of poor sots that bought parts of Exodus
  

So, what other companies and organizations are on the watch-list?

• Aetna
  
• Colgate-Palmolive
  
• Marist College
  
• Santa Clara University
  

Disclaimer: Well, duh ... of course I am a disgruntled ex-employee of Ms. Hancock back when she was a IBMer. I just did not realize how bad she really was ... even if none of this was her fault, she has still been at the epicenter of many closed office buildings over the years.

You could acquire some marketable skills and earn the money to pay for it yourself. You could work while going to school. You could get scholarships and grants. You could take all your general ed requirements and intro classes at a JC. You could go to a public school, which is much less expensive. You could live off-campus, which is generally much cheaper than living in Dorms. You could go to a school near your hometown so you can avoid housing costs completely by living with your parents.

And before you say you can't get a good education at a cheaper school, in my experience instructors at the JC level are much more involved in their classes, so the education is actually better. You may not get a prestigious education, but you will probably learn more.

Doing any one of these things will dramatically reduce your college debt, and aren't particularly difficult. So, yes, excessive college debt is dumb.

I offer my sister as an example: She got a BS in Combined Sciences with a Medical Focus from Santa Clara University, which is both highly respected and very expensive (around $26k/year, IIRC), and then she went to UCLA for Paramedic school. Her college debt is under $30k, and the $11k loan for paramedic school doesn't have to be paid back as long as she maintains employment in a medical field for a certain number of years. While she was at SCU she took some classes at the local JC to get her EMT license and worked part time as an EMT, and she persued all manner of scholarships (she even competed in a beauty contest for one). She's currently working as a paramedic and taking classes to become an RN. Once she has fulfilled the time requirement for the above loan, she'll go to medical school for her MD, which she will likely have saved enough to pay for herself. The cost to our parents was only a couple thousand a year.

Sure we do. We've done it before, and before this is over I fully expect we will do it again.

The Internet is supposed to be...

• TO EMPOWER K-12 LEARNERS
  
• the promise of our future
  
• to save the American medical system
  
• a global, multipurpose, multimedia communications network
  
• to strengthen Hispanic families and communities
  
• to open the door for competition
  
• for English as a Second Language
  
• for freedom from sysadmin
  
• to transfer the power of the high-speed network effectively to society at large
  
• to compete successfully with Fortune 500 companies
  
• To center learning around the student instead of the classroom
  
• to regain the tails of the normal distribution
  
• to test the founding vision of the framers of the Constitution
  
• to propel the economy forward
  
• a truly democratic means of communication.
  
• to increase mail usage and expand paper consumption
  

Nowadays I'd suggest inflation would require a $100,000 investment - but that really isn't all that much, that is, for many of the small time Taiwanese manufacturers. Heck, if you were lucky, you could probably sell your car and get a mortgage to raise that cash.