Is it really? The fact that you will be advertised to is mentioned in the terms of service, so I don't think that's external to the relationship at all.
Do the terms prohibit ad-blocking? If facebook suddenly stopped advertising would that change the user's obligation? It seems to me that facebook's TOS is nothing more than a list of rules imposed on the users of a privately owned public space. If the mall rules say that you can't run, you can be kicked out for running, but there is no contract involved. The mall could require your name and phone number to enter, but that wouldn't mean you were joining a contract by providing it. -- JimFive
then Facebook automatically reverts back to having the minimum authority to disclose your private information to others, which means that pretty much everything they do is probably illegal.
I think this may not be true. If you give me your unlisted telephone number I have no duty to not tell anyone else. Note: I do understand that there may be a difference between information that a person picks up in their day to day life and information that a company gathers in the course of doing business, so it may be that facebook's default position is more restrictive than a private person's.
The consideration is that you get to use their service. That's a pretty significant consideration on their part in exchange for you providing A. information of value to them and B. ad revenue.
Ad revenue is irrelevant as that is external to to the facebook/user relationship. As for (A), there is no agreement that you will provide information to facebook in return for the use of their service. In fact, one can use facebook without providing any information about yourself. The agreement as perceived by the user is: I can use facebook to meet and communicate with friends/acquaintances as long as I follow the rules laid out in the TOS. There is no sense that the user owes anything to facebook. -- JimFive
What should have happened: Boss: Give me the password for the router. SysAdmin: No. Boss: What do you mean, "No"? SysAdim:You're not on the list, I can't give it you. Boss: Who is on the list? SysAdmin: *gives list to Boss* Boss: *leaves* Boss: *returns with someone who is on the list* Listee: Give me the password for the router. Sysadmin: *writes on paper* Here you go.
That this didn't happen tells me that there is something else going on. I understand that Childs had been fired by this point, and that there was a crisis going on because someone else had tried to reset the router. However, a little bit of civility (and following the rules) before calling in the goons with guns would have averted the entire mess. Or, it would have shown that Childs was willfully holding the network hostage. -- JimFive
He was given the option to hand over the passwords and walk away or face jail time. He could have handed everything over (even though it violated a contract) and it would all be forgotten.
Except that, as he worked for the city, violating the policy is probably also a jailable offense. -- JimFive
I think you'll find that the terms of service for a free website is not a contract. There was no "meeting of the minds" and there was no "consideration".
The TOS is just a statement of the conditions under which facebook will let you use their stuff. If you violate the conditions, they don't let you use their stuff any longer. Any statement in the TOS or privacy policy is just a statement of corporate policy that can, and will, change.
It's entirely possible that the above is wrong and the TOS will be viewed by the courts as a contract, but I doubt it. I think a better attack against facebook would be that it defrauded its users into giving away valuable information under false pretenses. -- JimFive
Where do you get that from? Assuming that you're going to say "The Bible", I'd like to know where in the Bible. While looking, keep in mind that I reject out of hand anything from the Psalms and anything in the New Testament after the Gospels.
If you are going to use God as your moral guide, remember that jealousy must be good because "I am a Jealous God".
Also, This:
all lies - of whatever level or motivation - are evil
implies that there can be no neutral actions. Either something is God-approved and therefore good, or God-disapproved and therefore evil. There are many situations that are neutral (e.g. What color shirt should you wear tomorrow?). Appropriate actions in many social settings are among these morally neutral situations. To put it bluntly, God Doesn't Care if you lie about your opinion of someone's hairstyle.
I'm sure most of us went through a stage where we tried very hard not to lie. It's that annoying stage that when someone, being social, says "Hi, How ya doing?" and you feel compelled to actually tell them instead of going with the socially acceptable "Fine, and you?" Assuming that you have grown past this stage, you say "Fine", which may be a lie, and you realize that it doesn't matter.
Of course, if He doesn't exist, then truth and lies and hurting or not hurting people doesn't matter.
Of course hurting people matters regardless of whether God exists. For people to live in a society there must be conventions and most of those do involve the maxim "don't harm others". The question regarding lying then is whether it is more harmful to lie than to tell the truth in a given situation. In many social situations it is inapproprate to tell the truth at the moment because it would cause more harm (social harm: embarrassment, loss of status/respect). In a different setting it is more important to tell the truth. To use the canonical: "Does this make me look fat?" example. If your wife asks you this while getting ready to go out, it is approprate to give her the fashion advice she is really asking for: e.g. it is ok to say "Yes, you should wear the other one." If she asks you that question while you are at an event and she is being self-conscious about her looks the only moral answer is "No, you look great." And if you say anything else and it causes her to go crying into the ladies' room then you have been evil toward her. -- JimFive
Delaying the innocent is annoying, but not a sign of failure.
Not preventing an known suspect who then does cause harm, that would be a failure.
Yeah, I know I'm late to this, but a false positive is just as much a sign of failure as a false negative. And, when every "hit" turns out to be a false positive the entire system suffers, because the screeners KNOW that they've never pulled a guilty person out of line. -- JimFive
Pretend it would take about two months [...] to crack your 16 character length password [...]. Now imagine that if your password were to be changed every month that the two month duration attempt to crack the password is useless
This is, of course, wrong. Assuming a random password, the password reset just means that the attacker will only be able to crack 1/2 of your passwords within a usable timespan. The new random password has just as much chance of being in the remaining password space as in the already checked password space so you don't even need to start over.
If the password is non-random then cracking the old password is still useful. -- JimFive
It seems to me more like they are using the iPhone's market dominance to increase the costs of producing applications for the iPhone. Which may be stupid, but probably isn't illegal.
-- JimFive
I agree. Although if you take out all of the chapters about whaling, and all of the chapters about whale anatomy, and all the chapters about the history of whaling, and the travelogues--you get a nice short story about an insane sea-captain chasing death.
My copy of Moby Dick has some of the reviews printed at the end and my favorite says something like: "Melville wants to show the world the extent of his talent, and he does so." -- JimFive
I just finished Madame Bovary last week, and college was more than 15 years ago. While it isn't an exciting book and it isn't supposed to be, it is a sensual book. Emma Bovary is like Don Quixote. She has a world view that has been so twisted by reading books (romantic fiction) that she doesn't recognize the love and happiness that is in her life. Her attempts to live out her fantasies lead her into a descending spiral of immorality, madness and death. What is boring about that?
Note, however, that Don Quixote was a defense of secular literature disguised as an attack on secular literature, while Madame Bovary was an attack on the over-education of women (Or at least, that's what Flaubert argued at his trial).
--
JimFive
Why do I want to yell "Fallacy of Ambiguity" at you?
In the post I initially responded to you were arguing that there can't be a soul as a repository for karma because, since it can be influenced magnetically, it wouldn't be fair. Which is equivalent to saying "I don't like it, therefore it can't be true". I responded, flippantly to be sure, that there is no Law of Physics that says the universe has to treat you in a way that you consider fair.
Now, you are arguing that fairness is an evolved emotion that enables people to create social groups. This is certainly not the sense in which you used "fair" in your original post. I would probably consider this usage of "fair" to be equivalent to empathy.
As for: "Fairness is NOT just a euphemism for 'I didn't get my way.'" Listen to how people use the word and it most certainly is. The fact that you don't like how the word is used is neither here nor there. -- JimFive
"Fairness" is just a euphemism for "I didn't get my way".
In your previous argument, you are claiming that your soul cannot be judged because the deck is stacked against you. So what? If the flying spaghetti monster wants to judge you based on actions outside of your control, it will do so, and the fact that you consider it "unfair" is irrelevant. (N.B. it would actually be quite "fair" as long as everyone is being judged by the same criteria. What it would not be is "just".)
If you want to make the world (by which you seem to mean human society) more just and equitable, you are certainly free to try, but it is probably best to start from the way the world actually is, not from some ideal world that is "fair". -- JimFive
I'm thinking what Phoebe did to her bullies is infinitely worse than what they did to her.
Are you fucking serious? Phoebe did nothing to her bullies. If they are punished for their actions prior to her death it is because they committed those actions. If they hadn't harrassed her, they would not have guilt about her death.
Whatever she went thru really doesn't seem to be that big of a thing.. but what do I know.
It's pretty clear that you've never been systematically bullied -- or contemplated suicide -- but, criticizing the victim for her lack of consideration is fucking retarded.
I stood up and punched him in his face. The bullying ended that day..
How lucky for you. I hate this kind of trite "it worked for me" anecdote. For every one who had it work out, there's someone who was punished even worse. Aside from that it isn't relevant. How do you punch the person in the car that throws stuff at you. How do you respond to the stuff in your email box, text messages, and voice mail. Being bullied by one person with no social support is completely different than being bullied by a group of people who work to keep each other out of trouble. The single bully usually gives up if you fight back, the group jumps you in the locker room, gives you a concussion, and drops you down a flight of stairs.
Eh... this isn't real rape. If it was, they'd go for that.
They're only using the 'statutory' version because the sex was so clearly consensual that it's the only thing that'll stick.
Alternatively, they're using the 'statutory' version because it is easier to prove. They may know that the sex happened, and suspect that it was forced. But, they may not be able to prove that it was non-consensual. By going the 'statutory' route it is de jure non-consensual, because she was legally incapable of consent. -- JimFive
Given that cars cause more fatalities per mile travelled than planes, why don't we have more redundancy in drive-by-wire systems? One would think we would try to have something really well proven.
Maybe because cars don't cause more fatalities per mile. Very rarely is the car(or plane) at fault in an accident. When a car fails it gets steered of the road and the driver gets out and swears at the smoking husk. When a plane fails it begins to fall out the sky at an accelerating rate. -- JimFive
But is a stack of printed paper really any better than just emailing every email to a gmail account with a bcc?
Well, the stack of paper is neither illegal nor against company policy. Forwarding email to a third party account could be both of those things. -- JimFive
Especially, if YOU are the admin. Imagine having say, two bosses of equal rank, legally able to represent the company and fire you if need be. One of the bosses orders you to disable all accounts of the other boss immediately and secretly, via phone of course. If the order is legit and you ignore it, you're fired. If the order is a hostile takeover and you comply, you're fired. You must make your move within 5 minutes. Any ideas?:)
Account deletions must come from Human Resources on the "Computer Account Change Form (#367)" and must be approved by the account holder's supervisor. -- JimFive
If you get "shitty" service at a hospital, you can (drumroll please) GO TO A DIFFERENT HOSPITAL! Wotta concept.
I just wanted to point out that it isn't quite that easy. A hospital is not a hotel. You can't just pick out a hospital, show up, and get a room. In order to get admitted to a hospital you have to find a doctor that has admitting privileges at that hospital and then convince em to admit you.
If you are already in a hospital, getting transferred to a different hospital is usually not covered by your insurance policy and requires a huge amount of effort to get the current hospital to initiate a transfer (unless it is their idea). You have to do it as a transfer because of the whole finding someone to admit you problem (and if you self-discharge, you won't).
--
JimFive
Don't confuse Medicare with Medicaid. Medicaid is a nightmare of insufficient payments with coverage determined by the individual states. Medicare is better. -- JimFive
Another anti-constitutional measure appears to be the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which - under certain conditions - can make recommendations that 'would go into effect automatically unless both houses of Congress passed, and the President signed, legislation to modify or overturn them.
This isn't unconstitutional. Unless, of course, you consider the regulatory authority of any executive department to be unconstitutional. -- JimFive
Slashdot Mirror
Is it really? The fact that you will be advertised to is mentioned in the terms of service, so I don't think that's external to the relationship at all.
Do the terms prohibit ad-blocking? If facebook suddenly stopped advertising would that change the user's obligation? It seems to me that facebook's TOS is nothing more than a list of rules imposed on the users of a privately owned public space. If the mall rules say that you can't run, you can be kicked out for running, but there is no contract involved. The mall could require your name and phone number to enter, but that wouldn't mean you were joining a contract by providing it.
--
JimFive
then Facebook automatically reverts back to having the minimum authority to disclose your private information to others, which means that pretty much everything they do is probably illegal.
I think this may not be true. If you give me your unlisted telephone number I have no duty to not tell anyone else. Note: I do understand that there may be a difference between information that a person picks up in their day to day life and information that a company gathers in the course of doing business, so it may be that facebook's default position is more restrictive than a private person's.
The consideration is that you get to use their service. That's a pretty significant consideration on their part in exchange for you providing A. information of value to them and B. ad revenue.
Ad revenue is irrelevant as that is external to to the facebook/user relationship. As for (A), there is no agreement that you will provide information to facebook in return for the use of their service. In fact, one can use facebook without providing any information about yourself. The agreement as perceived by the user is: I can use facebook to meet and communicate with friends/acquaintances as long as I follow the rules laid out in the TOS. There is no sense that the user owes anything to facebook.
--
JimFive
What should have happened:
Boss: Give me the password for the router.
SysAdmin: No.
Boss: What do you mean, "No"?
SysAdim:You're not on the list, I can't give it you.
Boss: Who is on the list?
SysAdmin: *gives list to Boss*
Boss: *leaves*
Boss: *returns with someone who is on the list*
Listee: Give me the password for the router.
Sysadmin: *writes on paper* Here you go.
That this didn't happen tells me that there is something else going on. I understand that Childs had been fired by this point, and that there was a crisis going on because someone else had tried to reset the router. However, a little bit of civility (and following the rules) before calling in the goons with guns would have averted the entire mess. Or, it would have shown that Childs was willfully holding the network hostage.
--
JimFive
He was given the option to hand over the passwords and walk away or face jail time. He could have handed everything over (even though it violated a contract) and it would all be forgotten.
Except that, as he worked for the city, violating the policy is probably also a jailable offense.
--
JimFive
Let me ask you this: what's stopping your friends from not doing a "copy & paste" your photos and share them with another sites on the Net
Copyright Law?
I think you'll find that the terms of service for a free website is not a contract. There was no "meeting of the minds" and there was no "consideration".
The TOS is just a statement of the conditions under which facebook will let you use their stuff. If you violate the conditions, they don't let you use their stuff any longer. Any statement in the TOS or privacy policy is just a statement of corporate policy that can, and will, change.
It's entirely possible that the above is wrong and the TOS will be viewed by the courts as a contract, but I doubt it. I think a better attack against facebook would be that it defrauded its users into giving away valuable information under false pretenses.
--
JimFive
God, being Truth inherent
Where do you get that from? Assuming that you're going to say "The Bible", I'd like to know where in the Bible. While looking, keep in mind that I reject out of hand anything from the Psalms and anything in the New Testament after the Gospels.
If you are going to use God as your moral guide, remember that jealousy must be good because "I am a Jealous God".
Also, This:
all lies - of whatever level or motivation - are evil
implies that there can be no neutral actions. Either something is God-approved and therefore good, or God-disapproved and therefore evil. There are many situations that are neutral (e.g. What color shirt should you wear tomorrow?). Appropriate actions in many social settings are among these morally neutral situations. To put it bluntly, God Doesn't Care if you lie about your opinion of someone's hairstyle.
I'm sure most of us went through a stage where we tried very hard not to lie. It's that annoying stage that when someone, being social, says "Hi, How ya doing?" and you feel compelled to actually tell them instead of going with the socially acceptable "Fine, and you?" Assuming that you have grown past this stage, you say "Fine", which may be a lie, and you realize that it doesn't matter.
Of course, if He doesn't exist, then truth and lies and hurting or not hurting people doesn't matter.
Of course hurting people matters regardless of whether God exists. For people to live in a society there must be conventions and most of those do involve the maxim "don't harm others". The question regarding lying then is whether it is more harmful to lie than to tell the truth in a given situation. In many social situations it is inapproprate to tell the truth at the moment because it would cause more harm (social harm: embarrassment, loss of status/respect). In a different setting it is more important to tell the truth. To use the canonical: "Does this make me look fat?" example. If your wife asks you this while getting ready to go out, it is approprate to give her the fashion advice she is really asking for: e.g. it is ok to say "Yes, you should wear the other one." If she asks you that question while you are at an event and she is being self-conscious about her looks the only moral answer is "No, you look great." And if you say anything else and it causes her to go crying into the ladies' room then you have been evil toward her.
--
JimFive
I presume that they are going to assess the tax on the revenue of the casino, not as a "sales tax" on the individual wager.
--
JimFive
Delaying the innocent is annoying, but not a sign of failure.
Not preventing an known suspect who then does cause harm, that would be a failure.
Yeah, I know I'm late to this, but a false positive is just as much a sign of failure as a false negative. And, when every "hit" turns out to be a false positive the entire system suffers, because the screeners KNOW that they've never pulled a guilty person out of line.
--
JimFive
Pretend it would take about two months [...] to crack your 16 character length password [...]. Now imagine that if your password were to be changed every month that the two month duration attempt to crack the password is useless
This is, of course, wrong. Assuming a random password, the password reset just means that the attacker will only be able to crack 1/2 of your passwords within a usable timespan. The new random password has just as much chance of being in the remaining password space as in the already checked password space so you don't even need to start over.
If the password is non-random then cracking the old password is still useful.
--
JimFive
It seems to me more like they are using the iPhone's market dominance to increase the costs of producing applications for the iPhone. Which may be stupid, but probably isn't illegal.
--
JimFive
Bah, Moby Dick deserved it.
I agree. Although if you take out all of the chapters about whaling, and all of the chapters about whale anatomy, and all the chapters about the history of whaling, and the travelogues--you get a nice short story about an insane sea-captain chasing death.
My copy of Moby Dick has some of the reviews printed at the end and my favorite says something like: "Melville wants to show the world the extent of his talent, and he does so."
--
JimFive
I just finished Madame Bovary last week, and college was more than 15 years ago. While it isn't an exciting book and it isn't supposed to be, it is a sensual book. Emma Bovary is like Don Quixote. She has a world view that has been so twisted by reading books (romantic fiction) that she doesn't recognize the love and happiness that is in her life. Her attempts to live out her fantasies lead her into a descending spiral of immorality, madness and death. What is boring about that?
Note, however, that Don Quixote was a defense of secular literature disguised as an attack on secular literature, while Madame Bovary was an attack on the over-education of women (Or at least, that's what Flaubert argued at his trial).
--
JimFive
If there is a God [...] then God is a dick,
You won't see me disagreeing with that.
--
JimFive
Why do I want to yell "Fallacy of Ambiguity" at you?
In the post I initially responded to you were arguing that there can't be a soul as a repository for karma because, since it can be influenced magnetically, it wouldn't be fair. Which is equivalent to saying "I don't like it, therefore it can't be true". I responded, flippantly to be sure, that there is no Law of Physics that says the universe has to treat you in a way that you consider fair.
Now, you are arguing that fairness is an evolved emotion that enables people to create social groups. This is certainly not the sense in which you used "fair" in your original post. I would probably consider this usage of "fair" to be equivalent to empathy.
As for: "Fairness is NOT just a euphemism for 'I didn't get my way.'" Listen to how people use the word and it most certainly is. The fact that you don't like how the word is used is neither here nor there.
--
JimFive
"Fairness" is just a euphemism for "I didn't get my way".
In your previous argument, you are claiming that your soul cannot be judged because the deck is stacked against you. So what? If the flying spaghetti monster wants to judge you based on actions outside of your control, it will do so, and the fact that you consider it "unfair" is irrelevant. (N.B. it would actually be quite "fair" as long as everyone is being judged by the same criteria. What it would not be is "just".)
If you want to make the world (by which you seem to mean human society) more just and equitable, you are certainly free to try, but it is probably best to start from the way the world actually is, not from some ideal world that is "fair".
--
JimFive
If our moral choices are influenced even in part by random environmental influences, the soul can not fairly accrue 'karma' [...]
Fairly? How long have you been under this delusion that life is fair?
--
JimFive
I'm thinking what Phoebe did to her bullies is infinitely worse than what they did to her.
Are you fucking serious? Phoebe did nothing to her bullies. If they are punished for their actions prior to her death it is because they committed those actions. If they hadn't harrassed her, they would not have guilt about her death.
Whatever she went thru really doesn't seem to be that big of a thing.. but what do I know.
It's pretty clear that you've never been systematically bullied -- or contemplated suicide -- but, criticizing the victim for her lack of consideration is fucking retarded.
I stood up and punched him in his face. The bullying ended that day..
How lucky for you. I hate this kind of trite "it worked for me" anecdote. For every one who had it work out, there's someone who was punished even worse. Aside from that it isn't relevant. How do you punch the person in the car that throws stuff at you. How do you respond to the stuff in your email box, text messages, and voice mail. Being bullied by one person with no social support is completely different than being bullied by a group of people who work to keep each other out of trouble. The single bully usually gives up if you fight back, the group jumps you in the locker room, gives you a concussion, and drops you down a flight of stairs.
--
JimFive
Eh... this isn't real rape. If it was, they'd go for that.
They're only using the 'statutory' version because the sex was so clearly consensual that it's the only thing that'll stick.
Alternatively, they're using the 'statutory' version because it is easier to prove. They may know that the sex happened, and suspect that it was forced. But, they may not be able to prove that it was non-consensual. By going the 'statutory' route it is de jure non-consensual, because she was legally incapable of consent.
--
JimFive
Given that cars cause more fatalities per mile travelled than planes, why don't we have more redundancy in drive-by-wire systems? One would think we would try to have something really well proven.
Maybe because cars don't cause more fatalities per mile. Very rarely is the car(or plane) at fault in an accident. When a car fails it gets steered of the road and the driver gets out and swears at the smoking husk. When a plane fails it begins to fall out the sky at an accelerating rate.
--
JimFive
But is a stack of printed paper really any better than just emailing every email to a gmail account with a bcc?
Well, the stack of paper is neither illegal nor against company policy. Forwarding email to a third party account could be both of those things.
--
JimFive
Account deletions must come from Human Resources on the "Computer Account Change Form (#367)" and must be approved by the account holder's supervisor.
--
JimFive
If you get "shitty" service at a hospital, you can (drumroll please) GO TO A DIFFERENT HOSPITAL! Wotta concept.
I just wanted to point out that it isn't quite that easy. A hospital is not a hotel. You can't just pick out a hospital, show up, and get a room. In order to get admitted to a hospital you have to find a doctor that has admitting privileges at that hospital and then convince em to admit you.
If you are already in a hospital, getting transferred to a different hospital is usually not covered by your insurance policy and requires a huge amount of effort to get the current hospital to initiate a transfer (unless it is their idea). You have to do it as a transfer because of the whole finding someone to admit you problem (and if you self-discharge, you won't). -- JimFive
Don't confuse Medicare with Medicaid. Medicaid is a nightmare of insufficient payments with coverage determined by the individual states. Medicare is better.
--
JimFive
Another anti-constitutional measure appears to be the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which - under certain conditions - can make recommendations that 'would go into effect automatically unless both houses of Congress passed, and the President signed, legislation to modify or overturn them.
This isn't unconstitutional. Unless, of course, you consider the regulatory authority of any executive department to be unconstitutional.
--
JimFive