Slashdot Mirror
Vermont Goes Opt-In, Corps Unhappy
jeffy124 writes: "Beginning Feb 15, a new Vermont consumer protection law takes effect requiring companies doing business with people in VT to require opt-in before they can sell/share that customer's personal information. Naturally, companies aren't happy, and trade groups are suing the state, claiming the law will raise costs of doing business and hurt consumers."
Ridgewood Queens represent!
1st Official Slashdot to English Translator-matic
- "There's a sourceforge project creating just what you're looking
for..."
- "That's the beauty of UNIX - Lots of little tools which can be used
together. Far more flexible!"
- "Linux is far more secure than Windows. My box has never been
hacked."
- "You might want to try going to college and learning about this
stuff!"
- "Microsoft products are soooo insecure!"
- "We should file an antitrust lawsuit against Sony"
- "Have you considered using Linux?"
- "Don't you find that parsing this bitset through the compliation alogirithm that is piped out through GCC on a command line echo really works well for logarithmically sound sine wave matcher?"
- "If they join all the state drivers licence databases together, they'll be able to track me! How do I change my identity?"
(Another quality troll coming soon...)"Me and a bunch of people got drunk, thought we could code, submitted the idea and produced a fancy web page. It's now two years later and the project has no files to download and is STILL on Stage 1, Planning."
"I've been reading UNIX in a Nutshell for SVR4 and fuck knows what any of this flags stuff is about"
"I can install Red Hat from a bootable CD. The machine is not connected to a network and all I do all day is type ps, pwd and ls. I'm so l33t."
"My folks are rich enough to send me off for further education. I am now in an uber-elite crowd of know-it-alls and I am here to belittle you. Fear me."
"I've spent the last two years being subjected to biased slashdot propaganda. I couldn't hack into a properly configured windows system if my life depended on it."
"I've spent far too much time absorbing bullshit ideals from anarchists. The truth of the matter is, I just don't want to pay for anything whatsoever. Britney CDs should be free because I think that somehow the constitution protects my illegal copying and distribution under some freedom of speech law or fair use act. Even though I don't have to go out and buy luxury items, I'm gonna whinge and bitch anyway"
"I've only been using it for a week, and now my hardcore wannabe techno friends think I'm a guru. I now recommend it to everybody based upon what I've read at slashdot."
"Somebody please shoot me several times in the head. I am fucking clueless."
"I'm too fucking dense to realise that this has been going on for over 15 years already, and I've just finished reading 1984. Go figure."
Don't forget to mod me down!
http://english.pravda.ru
SHOCKWAVES FROM BUSH SPEECH RIPPLE AROUND WORLD
The amateurish, jingoistic, arrogant and ludicrous State of the Union speech has sent shockwaves reverberating around the world.
The position of the British Foreign Office, regarding the speech, was made clear by a spokesperson, who declared that "we do not believe about everything (the US says)". He added that "We believe that in a long term, we can overcome disagreement by talking to each other".
"President Bush's comments about Iran do not change British policy, which remains to engage with the Iranian government and to improve relations with a view to building a better understanding between our countries", he continued.
Another Foreign Office spokesperson declared to the Iranian news agency, IRNA, that "Britain certainly has no wish to engage in any kind of confrontation".
These comments come in the wake of the "axis of evil" speech in which George W. Bush appears to have got his geography wrong, naming Baghdad (predictably), Pyongyang (of course) and Teheran as the three countries which supposedly had their weapons of mass destruction pointing at the USA.
Exactly why George Bush was allowed to include Teheran in his speech, after all the co-operation that the government of Iran has given to the USA in recent months, is the cause of a huge question mark among practically all the governments, and population, of the European Union.
Iran's president Sayed Mohammad Khatami denounced Bush's outburst as "intervening, warmongering, insulting, a repetition of his past propagation, and worse than all, truly insulting towards the Iranian nation".
He continued: "What is of top importance is that adopting such aggressive moods merely leads to further unity and solidarity among the Iranian nation in their confrontation with those governments whose appetite will never be saturated and are always intending to intervene in others' affairs".
Furthermore, he declared that "Iran is both a victim of terrorism and a victim of chemical weapons, which were generously donated to our enemies by those who intended to uproot the Islamic Revolution...Today, America insists on supporting the racist Zionist regime that resorts to all sorts of crimes against the Palestinians that are the most oppressed, most innocent nation in the world".
Praising the USA as a "great nation", the Iranian President declared that this country has an important role as a peace broker, while only too often its policies bring tyranny and injustice, cloaked in a disguise of freedom and individual liberty.
The State of the Union speech was a monumental blunder, a gross miscalculation and a massive display of arrogance, which basically served to take away any degree of sympathy, to counter all feelings of commiseration and at a stroke, annul the outrage felt by the international community for the United States in the aftermath of September 11th.
One wonders whether the President of the United States of America had been eating pretzels again...they pack a mighty punch, after all.
Some of us also take some pride in living in the only state that doesn't have a McDonalds in its capital city.
Or living in the last state to get a Wal Mart. Though we've got three of them now, IIRC. Plus Burlington got a Starbucks sometime in the last year, or so.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.