I never said that personal sovereignty ought to be absolute, only that privacy is fundamentally about that. Just like national sovereignty, there need to be limits, sure.
And yeah, lots of things should not be secret. A criminal record, sure. But there are definitely grey areas, too. What about a history of mental illness... which is now being successfully treated? It may not be justified to hide the mental illness, but a person ought to have the right to make sure that others don't *only* learn the first part without also learning the second part. I shouldn't be able to hide my past (or at least, the relevent portions) but I ought to be able to make sure it's put in the proper context when others are using that information to make decisions about me.
My favorite example is credit reports. Other people collect information about my borrowing habits and put that out there as if it's the whole truth. I have to pay the reporting agencies just to make sure that the information is even correct -- I don't have any opportunity to, say, attach a rider saying, "Yes, I was in debt during this period: I was out of a job / seriously ill / putting a kid through college." I can only hope that the people reading it are considerate enough to come to me and ask about it.
I generally remind them that privacy is not just from the government, but is a matter of having some control over who knows what about your life. You may not be ashamed about your partying, for example, but that doesn't mean that you want employers or parents to know too much about it -- definitely not to find out about it without you having the excuse to explain that you're careful and responsible. Political beliefs are also important, whether to avoid arguments with family members who disagree, or to avoid reprisals from a boss whose political persuasions are opposite yours ("If he has enough money to donate to that campaign, clearly he doesn't need a raise!"), or even from a government whose views you oppose.
And there are lots of personal details we're not ashamed of that we nevertheless would like to not be public. Vacation plans ought to be private from stalkers, ex-girlfriends, that really annoying friend from college who lives one town over from the hotel, etc. My sex life is nothing to be ashamed of, but nobody but my partner has any right to know about it.
Ultimately, privacy is not about secrecy, it's about personal sovereignty: who gets to say what people have what information about my life?
Oh, I didn't say it was a foolproof method (or even a good idea). I just have the strong feeling that people posting Vista screenshots with black desktops are going to be suspected by Microsoft.
I don't think it's a problem, per se: I think the idea is to set it to something unobtrusive that would show up in screenshots. Wait a month or so, then post Vista screenshots with a black desktop, and I bet you'll get email from Microsoft "encouraging" you to pay them for a "genuine" copy.
It sounds to me that the complaints all come down to a few things:
* The TSA's employees generally don't know and don't understand the TSA's published rules and guidelines. In addition (in consequence?) rules and procedures are applied haphazardly and inconsistently, and are misrepresented by TSA employees -- sometimes resulting in Federal employees misrepresenting Federal law.
* There is a perception among passengers that the security procedures are arbitrary and/or ineffective.
* There is no recourse for passengers who either feel wronged or identify misapplications of the rules. Almost by definition, everyone in the line is in a rush. Passengers are routinely presented with the decision to either give up their rights or property, or miss their flight (or worse).
* No effort is being made to secure passengers in the security line itself, which is an increasingly attractive target: lots of people in close quarters, many shuffling belongings around to prepare for the security screening, and not well-monitored by security personnel.
When's the last time you signed an agreement to hold a car manufacturer or builder harmless in case their product broke down or fell apart? Amateur software authors produce some of the most important and well-tested code used today, while the professionals at, say, Microsoft, have a proven record of producing insecure crap. How would licensing change this?
While there may be a professionalism problem, it seems to me that there is a rigor problem as well.
The point though that must be driven home is that the Catholic Church (as an entity) did not put people to death, secular institutions did.
So they declared that was guilty of a crime for which they advocated the punishment of death, and then handed him over to people who would put him to death. I recall a certain Nazarean who died under similar circumstances.
The problem lies in the separation of the conjugal act from procreation, which is something that John Paul II harped on to no end... people just didn't get it.
It's not that we don't get it. It's that we don't agree.
A while back, PayPal made a rather drastic change to its policies -- so drastic, that they made all their customers go to a page with the new policy. Underneath were two checkboxes, "I read and understand the new policy." and "I accept all of the changes above." If you checked the first box but not the second box, it threw an error. That reminds me a lot of the way Catholic doctrine has been handled: the assumption is always that if you don't agree, you can't possibly have understood. There's never any serious consideration of people who understand perfectly, but disagree on the basis of the rationale presented.
Oh, please. He was charged because he said the earth moved -- the "Copernican Heresy." That was the problem, period. That he wussed out of calling the Bible wrong and said, "Hey, St. Augustine said we shouldn't interpret everything literally" is and was beside the point. This is evident in the fact that he was ordered explicitly not to defend the Copernican heresy, though he was permitted to discuss it hypothetically. Why would they tell him not to say the earth moved around the sun if they were only concerned with interpretation and not science.
Well, after that he discussed it hypothetically, in a book that came a little too close to claiming the Copernican heresy as fact, not to mention kind of making fun of the Pope. This resulted in a requirement that he officially declare that the earth does not revolve around the sun, that copies of his book be burned, and that he be placed under house arrest. Again, no reference in his punishment to repudiating any scriptural interpretation.
None of that has *anything at all* to do with him telling people how to interpret scripture. The church really didn't give a damn about him quoting Augustine or reinterpreting Psalms, and that is borne out by the nature of the warnings and the punishments he received. Nor was it even that his results (not really his results, most of them) contradicted the Bible. It's very simple: He publicly disputed powerful authority and got the smack down. Hardly a surprise, and very little to do with theology one way or the other. Why else would his Dialogues (which mildly mocked a Pope, but had nothing to do with scriptural interpretation) remained banned long after all of his other works? Has there been an authority figure yet who hasn't suppressed some aspect of the truth to avoid looking stupid?
Now knock off the ALL-CAPS yelling at other posters before you look stupid too.
This is the case with any trade sanctions -- steel tariffs technically only hurt steel producers, not the US government. The point is that they are intended to cause problems for a group with strong lobbying powers, who will then in turn pressure the government to change its ways. If Antigua were to raise steel tariffs, however, they would suffer from higher steel prices, and could then be forced by the US to back down (particularly since they are a small country whose steel input is minimal). By allowing IP exemptions instead, Antigua does not risk being forced by the US to back down.
I agree -- on the internet, it's just for fun. Nobody's exploiting his image for profit, they're just poking good-natured fun at him. When some publisher publishes a book of "Chuck Norris Facts", some of whom really do make him look bad, all the context goes away. The publisher is simply exploiting Norris and his fans at this point, trying to make a quick buck on someone else's name and other peoples' work.
This is also true. But the lesson I take away from that is that Microsoft's core business does not actually need that R&D, and that they're not good at leveraging it anyway. It strongly suggests that Microsoft should focus on those incremental improvements of successful products.
You should mention the interesting research being done by them in robotics. Yeah, lots of fascinating research...
And yet their PRODUCTS are the Zune, Xbox360 and Vista: All uninspired copies of other products or marginal improvements on their previous products (which were themselves either copies or marginal improvements).
High school was never about learning to think. It's about keeping a whole lot of untrained kids out of the work force where they would drive down wages and push out older folks. For the brighter kids, it's also a holding pen until you're old enough for college.
You may not think so now, but you'll be glad later that school was like that in terms of authority. Yes, schools try to indoctrinate kids that way, but thankfully they do it BADLY. You've been blessed with a healthy skepticism and disrespect for authority that will hopefully serve you well through the rest of your life. It's one thing to get it from a cultural perspective, it's another to see first hand that many adults really don't know what they're doing, and can't always muddle through.
I think that's the original poster's point: this sort of article almost never goes beyond what WoW gets right. It may be better or more insightful analysis, but it's not really anything new.
To be fair, I doubt the beancounter is arguing that there are too many of them, or that they don't do anything. Most managers tend to fight to increase the size of their department: more underlings = more influence. By having metrics that can be charted and shown to more senior management, the beancounter is likely to wind up doing some good for the department.
Ah, I see your mistake. You see, children are intoxicated all the time. They can't help it, it's part of their chemistry. That's why they act like drunken midgets: they are! That's also why they can (in theory) watch Sponge Bob without suffering long-term damage (that we know of).
I hope they don't tax odometer readings any time soon -- that would evaporate the drive for fuel economy practically overnight. Sadly, though, that makes a lot of sense, and would be fairly easy to do (particularly in states that require yearly inspections)
There's a much easier countermeasure, though -- the oral defense. It doesn't have to be long, but fifteen minutes of answering questions about your paper for half the grade is a great way to show that you researched and wrote it yourself. The TAs can do it pretty easily, it doesn't have to be the prof. In addition, it imparts some really useful skills to the students.
As for the quotes, mine is, '"Someday your prints will come" -- Kodak'
On the other hand, running on a road lets the air current pull away the cloud of hot air and humidity that surrounds a runner. On a treadmill she'll have her own little bit of hell, with the air warmed up to body temperature and a little raincloud of sweat droplets. So it may not be harder, but I'm betting it's a lot less pleasant. (I pity the other astronauts who want to use that room...)
That works fine for the stovetop, but I'm not keen on trying to do the outside of the wok as well, for use as a parabolic receiver;)
In many stores here the non-stick stuff is also less expensive (for the same reasons), but if you've got a Chinatown nearby you can frequently find a good cast-iron wok for dirt cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Not everyone on slashdot thinks that pirating music is OK. Some of us are quite strongly against the practice.
I wonder what kind of Business Law class covers wrongful death lawsuits...
The family ought to sue for wrongful death. I can't imagine any jury seeing what these assholes wrote and then ruling that they had no part in it.
I never said that personal sovereignty ought to be absolute, only that privacy is fundamentally about that. Just like national sovereignty, there need to be limits, sure.
And yeah, lots of things should not be secret. A criminal record, sure. But there are definitely grey areas, too. What about a history of mental illness... which is now being successfully treated? It may not be justified to hide the mental illness, but a person ought to have the right to make sure that others don't *only* learn the first part without also learning the second part. I shouldn't be able to hide my past (or at least, the relevent portions) but I ought to be able to make sure it's put in the proper context when others are using that information to make decisions about me.
My favorite example is credit reports. Other people collect information about my borrowing habits and put that out there as if it's the whole truth. I have to pay the reporting agencies just to make sure that the information is even correct -- I don't have any opportunity to, say, attach a rider saying, "Yes, I was in debt during this period: I was out of a job / seriously ill / putting a kid through college." I can only hope that the people reading it are considerate enough to come to me and ask about it.
I generally remind them that privacy is not just from the government, but is a matter of having some control over who knows what about your life. You may not be ashamed about your partying, for example, but that doesn't mean that you want employers or parents to know too much about it -- definitely not to find out about it without you having the excuse to explain that you're careful and responsible. Political beliefs are also important, whether to avoid arguments with family members who disagree, or to avoid reprisals from a boss whose political persuasions are opposite yours ("If he has enough money to donate to that campaign, clearly he doesn't need a raise!"), or even from a government whose views you oppose.
And there are lots of personal details we're not ashamed of that we nevertheless would like to not be public. Vacation plans ought to be private from stalkers, ex-girlfriends, that really annoying friend from college who lives one town over from the hotel, etc. My sex life is nothing to be ashamed of, but nobody but my partner has any right to know about it.
Ultimately, privacy is not about secrecy, it's about personal sovereignty: who gets to say what people have what information about my life?
Oh, I didn't say it was a foolproof method (or even a good idea). I just have the strong feeling that people posting Vista screenshots with black desktops are going to be suspected by Microsoft.
I don't think it's a problem, per se: I think the idea is to set it to something unobtrusive that would show up in screenshots. Wait a month or so, then post Vista screenshots with a black desktop, and I bet you'll get email from Microsoft "encouraging" you to pay them for a "genuine" copy.
It sounds to me that the complaints all come down to a few things:
* The TSA's employees generally don't know and don't understand the TSA's published rules and guidelines. In addition (in consequence?) rules and procedures are applied haphazardly and inconsistently, and are misrepresented by TSA employees -- sometimes resulting in Federal employees misrepresenting Federal law.
* There is a perception among passengers that the security procedures are arbitrary and/or ineffective.
* There is no recourse for passengers who either feel wronged or identify misapplications of the rules. Almost by definition, everyone in the line is in a rush. Passengers are routinely presented with the decision to either give up their rights or property, or miss their flight (or worse).
* No effort is being made to secure passengers in the security line itself, which is an increasingly attractive target: lots of people in close quarters, many shuffling belongings around to prepare for the security screening, and not well-monitored by security personnel.
Have I missed any of the basic complaints here?
When's the last time you signed an agreement to hold a car manufacturer or builder harmless in case their product broke down or fell apart? Amateur software authors produce some of the most important and well-tested code used today, while the professionals at, say, Microsoft, have a proven record of producing insecure crap. How would licensing change this?
While there may be a professionalism problem, it seems to me that there is a rigor problem as well.
Probably: they have ads on the side of the field these days, don't they?
Poor NFL. If too many people skip the halftime show, they'll just have to stop having a Super Bowl altogether.
The point though that must be driven home is that the Catholic Church (as an entity) did not put people to death, secular institutions did.
So they declared that was guilty of a crime for which they advocated the punishment of death, and then handed him over to people who would put him to death. I recall a certain Nazarean who died under similar circumstances.
The problem lies in the separation of the conjugal act from procreation, which is something that John Paul II harped on to no end... people just didn't get it.
It's not that we don't get it. It's that we don't agree.
A while back, PayPal made a rather drastic change to its policies -- so drastic, that they made all their customers go to a page with the new policy. Underneath were two checkboxes, "I read and understand the new policy." and "I accept all of the changes above." If you checked the first box but not the second box, it threw an error. That reminds me a lot of the way Catholic doctrine has been handled: the assumption is always that if you don't agree, you can't possibly have understood. There's never any serious consideration of people who understand perfectly, but disagree on the basis of the rationale presented.
Oh, and it's also why I can't use PayPal anymore.
Oh, please. He was charged because he said the earth moved -- the "Copernican Heresy." That was the problem, period. That he wussed out of calling the Bible wrong and said, "Hey, St. Augustine said we shouldn't interpret everything literally" is and was beside the point. This is evident in the fact that he was ordered explicitly not to defend the Copernican heresy, though he was permitted to discuss it hypothetically. Why would they tell him not to say the earth moved around the sun if they were only concerned with interpretation and not science.
Well, after that he discussed it hypothetically, in a book that came a little too close to claiming the Copernican heresy as fact, not to mention kind of making fun of the Pope. This resulted in a requirement that he officially declare that the earth does not revolve around the sun, that copies of his book be burned, and that he be placed under house arrest. Again, no reference in his punishment to repudiating any scriptural interpretation.
None of that has *anything at all* to do with him telling people how to interpret scripture. The church really didn't give a damn about him quoting Augustine or reinterpreting Psalms, and that is borne out by the nature of the warnings and the punishments he received. Nor was it even that his results (not really his results, most of them) contradicted the Bible. It's very simple: He publicly disputed powerful authority and got the smack down. Hardly a surprise, and very little to do with theology one way or the other. Why else would his Dialogues (which mildly mocked a Pope, but had nothing to do with scriptural interpretation) remained banned long after all of his other works? Has there been an authority figure yet who hasn't suppressed some aspect of the truth to avoid looking stupid?
Now knock off the ALL-CAPS yelling at other posters before you look stupid too.
This is the case with any trade sanctions -- steel tariffs technically only hurt steel producers, not the US government. The point is that they are intended to cause problems for a group with strong lobbying powers, who will then in turn pressure the government to change its ways. If Antigua were to raise steel tariffs, however, they would suffer from higher steel prices, and could then be forced by the US to back down (particularly since they are a small country whose steel input is minimal). By allowing IP exemptions instead, Antigua does not risk being forced by the US to back down.
I agree -- on the internet, it's just for fun. Nobody's exploiting his image for profit, they're just poking good-natured fun at him. When some publisher publishes a book of "Chuck Norris Facts", some of whom really do make him look bad, all the context goes away. The publisher is simply exploiting Norris and his fans at this point, trying to make a quick buck on someone else's name and other peoples' work.
This is also true. But the lesson I take away from that is that Microsoft's core business does not actually need that R&D, and that they're not good at leveraging it anyway. It strongly suggests that Microsoft should focus on those incremental improvements of successful products.
You should mention the interesting research being done by them in robotics. Yeah, lots of fascinating research...
And yet their PRODUCTS are the Zune, Xbox360 and Vista: All uninspired copies of other products or marginal improvements on their previous products (which were themselves either copies or marginal improvements).
High school was never about learning to think. It's about keeping a whole lot of untrained kids out of the work force where they would drive down wages and push out older folks. For the brighter kids, it's also a holding pen until you're old enough for college.
You may not think so now, but you'll be glad later that school was like that in terms of authority. Yes, schools try to indoctrinate kids that way, but thankfully they do it BADLY. You've been blessed with a healthy skepticism and disrespect for authority that will hopefully serve you well through the rest of your life. It's one thing to get it from a cultural perspective, it's another to see first hand that many adults really don't know what they're doing, and can't always muddle through.
I think that's the original poster's point: this sort of article almost never goes beyond what WoW gets right. It may be better or more insightful analysis, but it's not really anything new.
To be fair, I doubt the beancounter is arguing that there are too many of them, or that they don't do anything. Most managers tend to fight to increase the size of their department: more underlings = more influence. By having metrics that can be charted and shown to more senior management, the beancounter is likely to wind up doing some good for the department.
Ah, I see your mistake. You see, children are intoxicated all the time. They can't help it, it's part of their chemistry. That's why they act like drunken midgets: they are! That's also why they can (in theory) watch Sponge Bob without suffering long-term damage (that we know of).
I hope they don't tax odometer readings any time soon -- that would evaporate the drive for fuel economy practically overnight. Sadly, though, that makes a lot of sense, and would be fairly easy to do (particularly in states that require yearly inspections)
There's a much easier countermeasure, though -- the oral defense. It doesn't have to be long, but fifteen minutes of answering questions about your paper for half the grade is a great way to show that you researched and wrote it yourself. The TAs can do it pretty easily, it doesn't have to be the prof. In addition, it imparts some really useful skills to the students.
As for the quotes, mine is, '"Someday your prints will come" -- Kodak'
On the other hand, running on a road lets the air current pull away the cloud of hot air and humidity that surrounds a runner. On a treadmill she'll have her own little bit of hell, with the air warmed up to body temperature and a little raincloud of sweat droplets. So it may not be harder, but I'm betting it's a lot less pleasant. (I pity the other astronauts who want to use that room...)
That works fine for the stovetop, but I'm not keen on trying to do the outside of the wok as well, for use as a parabolic receiver ;)
In many stores here the non-stick stuff is also less expensive (for the same reasons), but if you've got a Chinatown nearby you can frequently find a good cast-iron wok for dirt cheap.