Well, when I studied Ethics, I understood the term to mean the study of the rational underpinnings of morals, i.e. study of Utilitarianism. Morals tell us what you should do, ethics tells us why we have those rules in the first place (or tries to). A significant distinction, I think.
Oh, apparently it's worse than that. I heard a story on the radio (long drive) about The Daily, and that news will be provided on a time schedule similar to print media, with new news coming out once a day and rare updates through the day. Now assuming this is true (I'm not signing up to find out), why would anyone go online to get stale news when they can go to a news aggregator, or twitter, or any number of online dailies around the world, and get updates by the minute, free or otherwise?
Actually, you can look up cell phone numbers online, in most areas. Depends on your phone company. I used cell phone lookup sites as part of my job, before I went back to school. There is no legal reason why your cell company can't publish your name and phone number (and address if they want).
For most of us there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in your phone number or your street address. It's publicly available information.
My impression from people I've spoken to about Facebook privacy issues is that they have a pretty good general idea of what they're giving away, and feel that it's a fair exchange. When FB does something underhanded, they raise a stink (often by joining a FB Group, natch) and FB backs down or they go modify their privacy settings.
I agree that trading info for stuff is a perfectly valid market transaction. However, the user's information was being shared without the user's explicit consent and with no value to the user. I recognize that the USER isn't the OWNER of that information, facebook is, but I suspect most people don't realize that.
While I agree with you generally that Facebook should give adequate warning before sharing your personal information, my point was that the specific kind of information at issue is not really personal. Phone numbers and even street addresses are by definition meant to be accessible by other people, and at least where I live, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in your phone number or your street address. Which is why I don't list either on my Facebook account.
Most people have already given permission to the phone companies to disseminate their phone numbers, and your street address is similarly available to the wide world (as you noted in your post). Should this be changed? Maybe it should, but as of now, I don't think Facebook (in this instance) did anything particularly outside their rights.
Sure. You can find my phone number and address (well not right now, I don't have a landline) at canada411.com.
I'm not sure what everyone is getting into a snit about. Landline numbers (and increasingly cell numbers) and street addresses are available online to anyone who can point a browser at a phone directory. Unless you go out of your way to get your phone provider to exclude this info from the directory, it's publicly available information.
Isn't that how the market is supposed to work? Trade one thing (home phone number and address) for another (free crap on Farmville)? After all, it's not like they can't get your phone number and address in the phone directory.
No, I think bad governance is bad for freedom. Whether that governance is global or not is beside the point. Though I will concede that governance by the UN wouldn't qualify as "good" (but still better than global governance by the US).
So why pray tell, would being ruled from Washington be better for me, a citizen of a country other than the US? Surely you don't think that anyone in the US, anyone at all, gives a flying fuck about my freedoms, do you?
But at least you caught my somewhat obscure reference.
The Republicans who claim to be for small government, but when they have the reins of power, make the government bigger, and more oppressive? Sorry, I think you just proved my point. Try harder next time.
It's so hilarious, because this attitude is exactly what the Tea Party/Republicans/Blue Dogs/Obama are using to increase authoritarianism in the US. If people believed that government can be used to provide greater benefits to its citizens, they would participate more in governance, and their government would do things for them, instead of to them. Instead, they've been scared into thinking that all government is bad, and they either stop voting or vote for "small government" Republicans who in turn make the government bigger and scarier than ever, to "prove" to people how bad big government is. And the cycle continues.
I've heard of a Crown attorney in Toronto (and rather a good one, apparently) whose jury selection method is to empanel the first twelve people to hit the witness box, so at least one lawyer is trying out part of your suggestion.
Personally, I'd like to see a return to the time when jurors could ask the witnesses questions directly. I think that would go a long way toward improving the truth-seeking function of the trial.
The OJ trial was before a jury, and it was the jury who returned the verdict. I suppose you could argue that the jury was bought, but I don't think I believe it. Don't you remember "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit!"? Johnnie Cochrane's excellent Chewabacca defense is what carried the day for OJ, along with careful play of the race card. I admit I don't have proof either way. Do you?
Wikileaks' Swiss accounts were certainly frozen. Also, Paypal's usual practice when they halt services is also to suspend the accounts. I don't know if they did so in this case, but again, I wouldn't be surprised.
You caught the news about all Wikileaks' accounts being frozen, didn't you? My bet is, if they haven't passed it along, it's because they don't have it themselves. But that's just speculation on my part. Much like your own post, I guess.
The point of the article that GP quoted from is that solitary confinement of the kind he's being kept under is torture, according to most of the civilized world (and a few US court decisions, to boot).
I use it constantly in creating legal documents. Of course, one uses a lot of pre-made precedents in creating documents, but the stuff that's always capitalized is usually the stuff that needs to be written fresh for new documents, i.e. names of parties, place names, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Yo dawg, I heard you don't like Facebook, so I put a Facebook article in yo slashdot so you can bitch about Facebook on slashdot.
Note that I meant Utilitarianism to be only one example of an ethical theory. There are others (and I think utilitarianism has gone out of fashion).
Well, when I studied Ethics, I understood the term to mean the study of the rational underpinnings of morals, i.e. study of Utilitarianism. Morals tell us what you should do, ethics tells us why we have those rules in the first place (or tries to). A significant distinction, I think.
Oh, apparently it's worse than that. I heard a story on the radio (long drive) about The Daily, and that news will be provided on a time schedule similar to print media, with new news coming out once a day and rare updates through the day. Now assuming this is true (I'm not signing up to find out), why would anyone go online to get stale news when they can go to a news aggregator, or twitter, or any number of online dailies around the world, and get updates by the minute, free or otherwise?
Google is your friend. Use it.
Actually, you can look up cell phone numbers online, in most areas. Depends on your phone company. I used cell phone lookup sites as part of my job, before I went back to school. There is no legal reason why your cell company can't publish your name and phone number (and address if they want).
For most of us there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in your phone number or your street address. It's publicly available information.
My impression from people I've spoken to about Facebook privacy issues is that they have a pretty good general idea of what they're giving away, and feel that it's a fair exchange. When FB does something underhanded, they raise a stink (often by joining a FB Group, natch) and FB backs down or they go modify their privacy settings.
I agree that trading info for stuff is a perfectly valid market transaction. However, the user's information was being shared without the user's explicit consent and with no value to the user. I recognize that the USER isn't the OWNER of that information, facebook is, but I suspect most people don't realize that.
While I agree with you generally that Facebook should give adequate warning before sharing your personal information, my point was that the specific kind of information at issue is not really personal. Phone numbers and even street addresses are by definition meant to be accessible by other people, and at least where I live, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in your phone number or your street address. Which is why I don't list either on my Facebook account.
Most people have already given permission to the phone companies to disseminate their phone numbers, and your street address is similarly available to the wide world (as you noted in your post). Should this be changed? Maybe it should, but as of now, I don't think Facebook (in this instance) did anything particularly outside their rights.
Sure. You can find my phone number and address (well not right now, I don't have a landline) at canada411.com.
I'm not sure what everyone is getting into a snit about. Landline numbers (and increasingly cell numbers) and street addresses are available online to anyone who can point a browser at a phone directory. Unless you go out of your way to get your phone provider to exclude this info from the directory, it's publicly available information.
Isn't that how the market is supposed to work? Trade one thing (home phone number and address) for another (free crap on Farmville)? After all, it's not like they can't get your phone number and address in the phone directory.
Though the burden is still on the plaintiff, it's just a (much) lower burden.
Actually, it means that the copyright holder is not selling the copyrighted product. They may still be enforcing their copyright aggressively.
Errr, I thought Bronze Age armies in Greece and whatnot had openly gay soldiers.
No, I think bad governance is bad for freedom. Whether that governance is global or not is beside the point. Though I will concede that governance by the UN wouldn't qualify as "good" (but still better than global governance by the US).
So why pray tell, would being ruled from Washington be better for me, a citizen of a country other than the US? Surely you don't think that anyone in the US, anyone at all, gives a flying fuck about my freedoms, do you?
But at least you caught my somewhat obscure reference.
The Republicans who claim to be for small government, but when they have the reins of power, make the government bigger, and more oppressive? Sorry, I think you just proved my point. Try harder next time.
It's so hilarious, because this attitude is exactly what the Tea Party/Republicans/Blue Dogs/Obama are using to increase authoritarianism in the US. If people believed that government can be used to provide greater benefits to its citizens, they would participate more in governance, and their government would do things for them, instead of to them. Instead, they've been scared into thinking that all government is bad, and they either stop voting or vote for "small government" Republicans who in turn make the government bigger and scarier than ever, to "prove" to people how bad big government is. And the cycle continues.
I'd rather my One World Government be run out the Hague than Washington, thank you very much. At least the Hague is farther away.
I've heard of a Crown attorney in Toronto (and rather a good one, apparently) whose jury selection method is to empanel the first twelve people to hit the witness box, so at least one lawyer is trying out part of your suggestion.
Personally, I'd like to see a return to the time when jurors could ask the witnesses questions directly. I think that would go a long way toward improving the truth-seeking function of the trial.
"...after the OJ trial..."
The OJ trial was before a jury, and it was the jury who returned the verdict. I suppose you could argue that the jury was bought, but I don't think I believe it. Don't you remember "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit!"? Johnnie Cochrane's excellent Chewabacca defense is what carried the day for OJ, along with careful play of the race card. I admit I don't have proof either way. Do you?
Wikileaks' Swiss accounts were certainly frozen. Also, Paypal's usual practice when they halt services is also to suspend the accounts. I don't know if they did so in this case, but again, I wouldn't be surprised.
You caught the news about all Wikileaks' accounts being frozen, didn't you? My bet is, if they haven't passed it along, it's because they don't have it themselves. But that's just speculation on my part. Much like your own post, I guess.
The point of the article that GP quoted from is that solitary confinement of the kind he's being kept under is torture, according to most of the civilized world (and a few US court decisions, to boot).
This. I was starting to think nobody on slashdot knew how to type properly.
I use it constantly in creating legal documents. Of course, one uses a lot of pre-made precedents in creating documents, but the stuff that's always capitalized is usually the stuff that needs to be written fresh for new documents, i.e. names of parties, place names, etc.