>I can't seem to understand the danger in this. I for one really want marketers to know what I'm interested in; We have a real chance to change the role of advertising from a broadbased attack on our senses to facilitate brand reconition for products and services we don't need or want
(current) to a tool that educates us to the availibility of products and services we genuinanly would like to know about.
I don't want to know about ANY products or services via email, phone or misleading snail mail. When I want to know about a product, I will look for the info - I don't want it provided to me. When I have needed information about products or services for my job, I've had a damned difficult time getting it out of the sales and marketing folks any damned way (they have LOTS of glitzy brochures, but no white papers), all I want from marketers is for them to leave me the fuck alone.
I have refused to buy things that I wanted due to intrusive marketing. If you call me, or spam me, or mail me misleading envelopes, or insist on speaking to me in market-speak instead of plain English, I will not buy your product even if it's exactly what I'm looking for at half the price I've seen elsewhere - because I do not want to be bothered and will not reward any business that makes it part of their business plan to bother me.
In a cashless society where marketers had that level of information about me and the ability to annoy me more regularly, I'd end up growing my own vegetables out back, patching my clothes and using this same computer until I died.
If you want marketers to know your preferences, opt-in to all their lists to your hearts' content, but that it doesn't bother you doesn't mean all MY transactions should be available for their perusal.
>I don't see any reason why providers shouldn't block port 80 incoming. The only reason to have that open is to >run a webserver -- something most broadband providers explicitely disallow for residential customers. That's >one of the reasons why a "business" account usually costs a lot more, even for the same speeds.
You seem to assume there is no non-business use for a web server.
Or are all of us supposed to get Geocity sites and let Yahoo copyright our work?
>I really don't have the least bit of sympathy >for anyone who has been hit with this. You agree >to a contract that describes the terms of your >service. That contract almost certainly says >that running servers is prohibited, but up until >now most ISPs were happy to look the other way >for the occasional server that didn't waste >their bandwidth.
*I* agreed to a TOS that said I could use their SMTP server. And I also agreed to keep the service for one year or pay them for their crappy DSL modem.
*They* chose to change the TOS after I joined.
They shut their own servers down, to prevent us from using it except with one of their addresses, but we set up an SMTP server on one of our own boxes and it works fine.
I haven't tried to set up a web server yet, so can't comment on port 80 blocking.
I voted Democrat every election - until 1992 when I quit voting in disgust. In 1996, I re-registered to vote as a Libertarian and have voted such since.
The 2, 3 or 4% who voted for Nader didn't take votes from Gore - you have no idea that they'd have voted for Gore! Rather, they might instead have voted with the 50% of the populaiton who didn't bother at all.
The third parties have brought many voices BACK to the political process - voices that preferred not voting to the choice of the two main bozos.
My 17-year-old daughter and I went to see Harry Browne speak in Philadelphia last night.
I was seriously impressed. I was not so much impressed with the ideals; they are my ideals after all. Rather I was impressed by Harry's ability to express those ideas, to answer questions. He patiently explained why a constitutional amendment wasn't necessary to end the war on drugs to a teenager unaware that alcohol prohibition had to be repealed, to a kid who isn't old enough to vote anyway, I had a very moving realization. Harry is not stumping for votes because of a personal desire for political power, he doesn't expect to win anyway. Rather, Harry is working fulltime to give voice to my ideals, to market freedom, to teach and explain the importance of liberty to people.
These are not *my* ideals in the sense of original thoughts I had that I want to share. Rather they are along the lines of thoughts I've had while reading the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams, wondering why our country isn't really like that, wondering why people don't seem to be aware of what the founding fathers intended. These thoughts have deeply effected my values and ethics, and profoundly matter to me.
Do I do much about this? Not really. I'm a single mom, I work, clean my house, tend my garden, take care of my child. I rarely get enough sleep, let alone have much time to involve myself in politics. But these values effect my life nonetheless, I believe strongly in both individual freedom and personal responsibility and make every decision I can based on those beliefs. As my liberty is gradually eroded by "my" government, I don't do much more than bitch and maybe write off another check to the Libertarian Party.
One of the things that bugs me - while I rarely initiate conversations about politics in the work force, in the past weeks due to the election, lots of people have been having these conversations. And when asked who I am voting for, interesting conversations result. When I begin explaining ending the war on drugs, disbanding the IRS, eliminating social security - every single person I have spoken to about this stuff agrees with me. People AGREE with these ideas, they just don't know that they have a choice beyond the two mainstream parties, other than the real looneytoon third parties.
I have heard these comments from people I work with:
"I went to that Harry guy's web site. Is this really for real?"
"So what exactly are libertarians for besides liberty? Come to think of it, that'd solve a lot of problems right there."
"Ending the war on drugs? Disbanding the IRS? Where do I sign up for THAT?"
People are hungry for the Libertarian message; it's simply a matter of marketing. People WANT this kind of government in droves! But I'm not really a marketing person, and even if I had the talents, I don't have the time or energy to be really good at this. For one thing, I'm volatile - it's easy for me to go into flamewar mode about anything I feel strongly about. For another, I'm sarcastic, if some kid asked me about needing a constiutional amendment to end the drug war, my response would likely be less patient - and have to do with the federal government decimating the educational system in this country, DARE classes having pre-empted history. And finally, I am entirely too busy earning a living (particularly after paying my "fair share" for government), to really have the time to invest in chagning things significantly.
And what I realized last night was... Harry has worked fulltime through two elections to represent me, to make sure my ideas get heard, to take my message to the voters, to provide the www.harrybrowne.org URL I hand out, to stand against the erosion of freedom and liberty that I experience in my day-to-day life. I was honored to meet him, shake his hand, and thank him for standing up for me.
This is exactly what *I* think--so do I vote for Browne? Unfortunately, I have to still say no. I want Browne to win, but I think a vote for Nader is the only way to get there. Voting for Nader gets across the message I want to get across: Campaign Finance Reform, God Dammit! After that happens, Browne has my vote.
The Green party is gung-ho to get x amount of votes so they can qualify for federal matching funds next time around.
Browne has qualified and turned down the money.
I helped pay for the Libertarian convention - because I'm a member of the party and wrote a check to them specifically. Unfortunately, I also helped pay for the Republican and Democratic conventions, with money those parties extracted from me with the threat of force. Nader's "reform" would involve forcing me to pay for his party, as well as the Republicrats, by threat of force.
This is the second or third post I've seen implying that one of the strengths of Windows is how easy it is to install for end users.
NT is easy to install, server or workstation, takes a few minutes and the prompts are obvious. But your average home user is not going to have NT.
Windows 95/98 is an absolute *bitch* to reinstall. I've never had everything reinstaleld and working again in less than 2 days.
Windows 9x is only easy if you buy it preinstalled, never add any addityional software or hardware to your configuration, and your installation never goes foobar. Otherwise, it's an absolute nightmare...
One of the other arguments I hear often is that these services lower student attendance. Now this I do consider to be a true issue. If someone is taking a class, they should go to class. They shouldn't just buy lecture notes and maybe study the book. Reading lecture notes is no substitute for person to person instruction. The solution to this problem is simple, take attendance and make it part of the grade. Some instructors have already begun doing that here. If a student misses more than so many days of class, then they'll not pass unless they have a very good documented reason why they were not there.
I completly disagree with attendance policies, I disagreed when I was a student, I disagreed when I was an instructor, and I still disagree today out in the corporate world. If you want students to attend your classes, then you need to teach better than they can learn on their own, either make the leanring easier or more enjoyable than what they can accomplish out there. That's it.
I had a Genetics instructor who never did anything except regurgitate what was in the book, and often got confused about it himself. I never attended class after the first exam and I never made less than 100% on his tests (he gave bonus questions). I did not need to attend his classes to learn the material and I didn't find attending them useful.
I had a Calculus instructor who humiliated a student asking a question the first day of class and I simply decided that day that he was a jerk and I refused to learn from him. He had an attendance policy, so I showed up every class period and read pornography in his class as obviously as possible. Again, I scored over 100% on each and every test he gave - I learned the material myself (much more difficult than Genetics was).
I've also had many, many excellent teachers, instructors whom assisted me in understanding the material, whose lectures I enjoyed. I didn't wish to learn the material on my own because it was easier and more enjoyable to learn it with them.
When I taught, in addition to classes, I held regular office hours and 4-hour review sessions a couple days before tests (students could come and go at any time during the review session, no one had to be there for 4 hours except me). I also was rather nuts about working around schedules - I had one student who left school right after lab for a second shift job whom I met at midnight to give extra help to. And while I would not fail someone for not showing up at class, I'd not cut ANY slack on a borderline grade for anyone who missed a lot of classes, skipped all the review sessions and never asked for help at all. But on the other hand, if someone showed up just for the four exams in a lecture course, they got whatever grade they earned on tests (this obviously couldn't apply to lab courses).
I still teach - I teach HTML, JavaScript, VBScript and ASP at work. And one of *my* requirements is that I won't teach a class consisting of people who didn't choose to take it - managers are not allowed to require anyone to take my classes. And the notes are available on the intranet for those who wish to learn without my assistance. My classes remain popular though.
But I don't believe that someone should be able to make a derivitive work (which a set of lecture notes would be, since they are a direct or nearly direct transcription of my presentation), and profit from it, without my consent.
I have all my notes from college and graduate school, both the courses I took and the course I taught. None of these is near a transcription nor even remotely indicative of the presentation - not even for the courses I taught (mostly nursing chemistry and organic chemistry).
As an instructor, I used the current textbook, textbooks from when I took the same classes, and my old notes when preparing my lectures. I don't know of any instructors who don't do this their first few years out.
I mean, did anyone REALLY think I was going to entirely create a course in organic chemistry from scratch? Doing so is equivalent to writing a new textbook, not something most new instructors expect as part of a teaching assignment.
Why is it that "my" community is always there when it comes to ruining legitimate businesses?
Whether a business is "legitimate" or not has nothing to do with legalities; it has to do with whether they do things in a way I like or not.
I do not consider myself to be primarily a consumer, which is how businesses view me. I consider myself to be a human being and a citizen entitled to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If a company wants my business, they won't attempt to misuse privacy information, they won't build browser-incompatible web sites, they won't run sweatshops, and they won't try to screw me or other individuals out of individual rights.
If they do stuff I don't like, I don't expect to ever give them a nickel of my business and do not consider them "legitimate."
Obviously they are expecting to have lots of bugs -- I mean, you put things on the desktop you expect people to use often, right?
No, you put things on the desktop because some company pays you to put their crap on the desktop.
I imagine that the "report bug" icon probably sends emails to pay-by-incident tech support somewhere.
it's about establishing a base level competancy. obviosly someone with 5 years is going to be more experienced that someone who went to a boot camp - a company can tell that by looking at your resume.
Experience isn't necessarily a measure of competence either. Sometimes, 5 years experience simply means the person did stupid things for 5 years and never bothered learning why those things were stupid.
It's not a matter of whether Amazon has done something wrong. Everyone keeps arguing about price discrimination and whether it's similar to coupons or how airline tickets have different prices and car prices vary for different customers, etc.
Right or wrong isn't the point. The point is they pissed off customers - which isn't nearly so much a question of ethics as it is a question of intelligence.
Whether this move was "wrong" or not is irrelevant - that it was incredibly stupid is relevant.
Code *IS* speech.
I speak to my computer using code. I speak to the ASP.dll at work using code.
I teach courses using code, often code I've written for other projects, but sometimes code I've written specifically for the course.
I learn reading books full of code, or web sites full of code - meaning that I receive communication (speech) via code.
Those who don't happen to "speak" code ought not be discussing removing the right to free speech for coders based on whatever criteria might be inconvenient for you. It's rather equivalent to saying free speech doesn't apply to Spanish just because you don't speak Spanish.
Code *is* speech - that's why we call them "languages." You may not speak in code, but I certainly do.
You own stuff you pay for.
This is a seriously limited view.
I have owned bank accounts and bonds in my name that I never paid for (given to me by my grandmother).
I own the Christmas gifts given to me by family and friends last year that I never paid for.
If paying for something meant you owned it, then people would OWN software, not license it.
It won't help if you change your info. From their privacy policy:
You can add or update certain information on pages such as those listed in the "What Information Can I Access?" section above. When you update information, we usually keep a copy of the prior version for our records.
What if both yo-yos say that?
Then vote for the Libertarian candidate; he or she will NOT be saying that.
Used to be a nerd, now a geek
on
Geeks vs. Nerds
·
· Score: 1
I was a biochemist, and while working in QA for a large pharmaceutical company, I started programming. I left that job to program full-time and have not done a lick of chemistry since.
I often joke that I got tired of being a nerd and decided to become a geek instead.
You're presuming online communication necessarily involves email, which is not necessarily so. Email is great for communicating in a specific situation, where the person you are communicating with is not actually available. You write when it's convenient for you, they respond when it's convenient for them.
But there's also chat - which is a much more useful method of online communication in some instance. IMHO, more useful than face-to-face meetings even.
There are things you can do in chat that you cannot do in any other mdoe of communication. When I first got online about 10 years ago, I called a local BBS that had around 70 lines. Often there were 30 or 40 folks in the main chat channel.
Advantage 1: I learned to read at 2400 baud.;)
Advantage 2: You can join 2 or 3 rooms at once and participate in all of them. Therefore you can actually attend several meetings at once.
Advantage 3: You can also conduct private conversations at the same time. So you can make smart-ass comments to a friend on the side, or discuss a technical issue with a co-worker before answering a question in the main discussion.
There is no way to do multiple conversations like this IRL.
Course, there's disadvantages too... like when you accidentally type the wrong thing in the wrong covnersation. On the bright side, you get to be amused when other folks do the same.;)
So telling them first makes it OK? How about I TELL you I'm gonna hack into your box and load it full of child porn and then call the cops? Is it OK for me to do this just cause I told you ahead of time?
Slashdot Mirror
>I can't seem to understand the danger in this. I for one really want marketers to know what I'm interested in; We have a real chance to change the role of advertising from a broadbased attack on our senses to facilitate brand reconition for products and services we don't need or want
(current) to a tool that educates us to the availibility of products and services we genuinanly would like to know about.
I don't want to know about ANY products or services via email, phone or misleading snail mail. When I want to know about a product, I will look for the info - I don't want it provided to me. When I have needed information about products or services for my job, I've had a damned difficult time getting it out of the sales and marketing folks any damned way (they have LOTS of glitzy brochures, but no white papers), all I want from marketers is for them to leave me the fuck alone.
I have refused to buy things that I wanted due to intrusive marketing. If you call me, or spam me, or mail me misleading envelopes, or insist on speaking to me in market-speak instead of plain English, I will not buy your product even if it's exactly what I'm looking for at half the price I've seen elsewhere - because I do not want to be bothered and will not reward any business that makes it part of their business plan to bother me.
In a cashless society where marketers had that level of information about me and the ability to annoy me more regularly, I'd end up growing my own vegetables out back, patching my clothes and using this same computer until I died.
If you want marketers to know your preferences, opt-in to all their lists to your hearts' content, but that it doesn't bother you doesn't mean all MY transactions should be available for their perusal.
>I don't see any reason why providers shouldn't block port 80 incoming. The only reason to have that open is to >run a webserver -- something most broadband providers explicitely disallow for residential customers. That's >one of the reasons why a "business" account usually costs a lot more, even for the same speeds.
You seem to assume there is no non-business use for a web server.
Or are all of us supposed to get Geocity sites and let Yahoo copyright our work?
>I really don't have the least bit of sympathy >for anyone who has been hit with this. You agree >to a contract that describes the terms of your >service. That contract almost certainly says >that running servers is prohibited, but up until >now most ISPs were happy to look the other way >for the occasional server that didn't waste >their bandwidth. *I* agreed to a TOS that said I could use their SMTP server. And I also agreed to keep the service for one year or pay them for their crappy DSL modem. *They* chose to change the TOS after I joined.
They shut their own servers down, to prevent us from using it except with one of their addresses, but we set up an SMTP server on one of our own boxes and it works fine. I haven't tried to set up a web server yet, so can't comment on port 80 blocking.
I voted Democrat every election - until 1992 when I quit voting in disgust. In 1996, I re-registered to vote as a Libertarian and have voted such since.
The 2, 3 or 4% who voted for Nader didn't take votes from Gore - you have no idea that they'd have voted for Gore! Rather, they might instead have voted with the 50% of the populaiton who didn't bother at all.
The third parties have brought many voices BACK to the political process - voices that preferred not voting to the choice of the two main bozos.
My 17-year-old daughter and I went to see Harry Browne speak in Philadelphia last night.
I was seriously impressed. I was not so much impressed with the ideals; they are my ideals after all. Rather I was impressed by Harry's ability to express those ideas, to answer questions. He patiently explained why a constitutional amendment wasn't necessary to end the war on drugs to a teenager unaware that alcohol prohibition had to be repealed, to a kid who isn't old enough to vote anyway, I had a very moving realization. Harry is not stumping for votes because of a personal desire for political power, he doesn't expect to win anyway. Rather, Harry is working fulltime to give voice to my ideals, to market freedom, to teach and explain the importance of liberty to people.
These are not *my* ideals in the sense of original thoughts I had that I want to share. Rather they are along the lines of thoughts I've had while reading the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams, wondering why our country isn't really like that, wondering why people don't seem to be aware of what the founding fathers intended. These thoughts have deeply effected my values and ethics, and profoundly matter to me.
Do I do much about this? Not really. I'm a single mom, I work, clean my house, tend my garden, take care of my child. I rarely get enough sleep, let alone have much time to involve myself in politics. But these values effect my life nonetheless, I believe strongly in both individual freedom and personal responsibility and make every decision I can based on those beliefs. As my liberty is gradually eroded by "my" government, I don't do much more than bitch and maybe write off another check to the Libertarian Party.
One of the things that bugs me - while I rarely initiate conversations about politics in the work force, in the past weeks due to the election, lots of people have been having these conversations. And when asked who I am voting for, interesting conversations result. When I begin explaining ending the war on drugs, disbanding the IRS, eliminating social security - every single person I have spoken to about this stuff agrees with me. People AGREE with these ideas, they just don't know that they have a choice beyond the two mainstream parties, other than the real looneytoon third parties.
I have heard these comments from people I work with:
"I went to that Harry guy's web site. Is this really for real?"
"So what exactly are libertarians for besides liberty? Come to think of it, that'd solve a lot of problems right there."
"Ending the war on drugs? Disbanding the IRS? Where do I sign up for THAT?"
People are hungry for the Libertarian message; it's simply a matter of marketing. People WANT this kind of government in droves! But I'm not really a marketing person, and even if I had the talents, I don't have the time or energy to be really good at this. For one thing, I'm volatile - it's easy for me to go into flamewar mode about anything I feel strongly about. For another, I'm sarcastic, if some kid asked me about needing a constiutional amendment to end the drug war, my response would likely be less patient - and have to do with the federal government decimating the educational system in this country, DARE classes having pre-empted history. And finally, I am entirely too busy earning a living (particularly after paying my "fair share" for government), to really have the time to invest in chagning things significantly.
And what I realized last night was... Harry has worked fulltime through two elections to represent me, to make sure my ideas get heard, to take my message to the voters, to provide the www.harrybrowne.org URL I hand out, to stand against the erosion of freedom and liberty that I experience in my day-to-day life. I was honored to meet him, shake his hand, and thank him for standing up for me.
The Green party is gung-ho to get x amount of votes so they can qualify for federal matching funds next time around.
Browne has qualified and turned down the money.
I helped pay for the Libertarian convention - because I'm a member of the party and wrote a check to them specifically. Unfortunately, I also helped pay for the Republican and Democratic conventions, with money those parties extracted from me with the threat of force. Nader's "reform" would involve forcing me to pay for his party, as well as the Republicrats, by threat of force.
I don't consider this much of an improvement.
They may be using Word directly as their email client - Exchange client used to let you choose Word as your email client.
This is the second or third post I've seen implying that one of the strengths of Windows is how easy it is to install for end users. NT is easy to install, server or workstation, takes a few minutes and the prompts are obvious. But your average home user is not going to have NT. Windows 95/98 is an absolute *bitch* to reinstall. I've never had everything reinstaleld and working again in less than 2 days. Windows 9x is only easy if you buy it preinstalled, never add any addityional software or hardware to your configuration, and your installation never goes foobar. Otherwise, it's an absolute nightmare...
It's like buying a house with pink flamingos...
I read the chat log last night myself; it was posted to the story announcing the chat. I finished it well before 10:19 AM this morning.
I completly disagree with attendance policies, I disagreed when I was a student, I disagreed when I was an instructor, and I still disagree today out in the corporate world. If you want students to attend your classes, then you need to teach better than they can learn on their own, either make the leanring easier or more enjoyable than what they can accomplish out there. That's it.
I had a Genetics instructor who never did anything except regurgitate what was in the book, and often got confused about it himself. I never attended class after the first exam and I never made less than 100% on his tests (he gave bonus questions). I did not need to attend his classes to learn the material and I didn't find attending them useful.
I had a Calculus instructor who humiliated a student asking a question the first day of class and I simply decided that day that he was a jerk and I refused to learn from him. He had an attendance policy, so I showed up every class period and read pornography in his class as obviously as possible. Again, I scored over 100% on each and every test he gave - I learned the material myself (much more difficult than Genetics was).
I've also had many, many excellent teachers, instructors whom assisted me in understanding the material, whose lectures I enjoyed. I didn't wish to learn the material on my own because it was easier and more enjoyable to learn it with them.
When I taught, in addition to classes, I held regular office hours and 4-hour review sessions a couple days before tests (students could come and go at any time during the review session, no one had to be there for 4 hours except me). I also was rather nuts about working around schedules - I had one student who left school right after lab for a second shift job whom I met at midnight to give extra help to. And while I would not fail someone for not showing up at class, I'd not cut ANY slack on a borderline grade for anyone who missed a lot of classes, skipped all the review sessions and never asked for help at all. But on the other hand, if someone showed up just for the four exams in a lecture course, they got whatever grade they earned on tests (this obviously couldn't apply to lab courses).
I still teach - I teach HTML, JavaScript, VBScript and ASP at work. And one of *my* requirements is that I won't teach a class consisting of people who didn't choose to take it - managers are not allowed to require anyone to take my classes. And the notes are available on the intranet for those who wish to learn without my assistance. My classes remain popular though.
As an instructor, I used the current textbook, textbooks from when I took the same classes, and my old notes when preparing my lectures. I don't know of any instructors who don't do this their first few years out.
I mean, did anyone REALLY think I was going to entirely create a course in organic chemistry from scratch? Doing so is equivalent to writing a new textbook, not something most new instructors expect as part of a teaching assignment.
Why is it that "my" community is always there when it comes to ruining legitimate businesses? Whether a business is "legitimate" or not has nothing to do with legalities; it has to do with whether they do things in a way I like or not. I do not consider myself to be primarily a consumer, which is how businesses view me. I consider myself to be a human being and a citizen entitled to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If a company wants my business, they won't attempt to misuse privacy information, they won't build browser-incompatible web sites, they won't run sweatshops, and they won't try to screw me or other individuals out of individual rights. If they do stuff I don't like, I don't expect to ever give them a nickel of my business and do not consider them "legitimate."
Obviously they are expecting to have lots of bugs -- I mean, you put things on the desktop you expect people to use often, right? No, you put things on the desktop because some company pays you to put their crap on the desktop. I imagine that the "report bug" icon probably sends emails to pay-by-incident tech support somewhere.
it's about establishing a base level competancy. obviosly someone with 5 years is going to be more experienced that someone who went to a boot camp - a company can tell that by looking at your resume. Experience isn't necessarily a measure of competence either. Sometimes, 5 years experience simply means the person did stupid things for 5 years and never bothered learning why those things were stupid.
Can someone explain why this doesn't apply to all those coasters AOL has been mailing out for years and years now?
Right or wrong isn't the point. The point is they pissed off customers - which isn't nearly so much a question of ethics as it is a question of intelligence.
Whether this move was "wrong" or not is irrelevant - that it was incredibly stupid is relevant.
Code *IS* speech. I speak to my computer using code. I speak to the ASP.dll at work using code. I teach courses using code, often code I've written for other projects, but sometimes code I've written specifically for the course. I learn reading books full of code, or web sites full of code - meaning that I receive communication (speech) via code. Those who don't happen to "speak" code ought not be discussing removing the right to free speech for coders based on whatever criteria might be inconvenient for you. It's rather equivalent to saying free speech doesn't apply to Spanish just because you don't speak Spanish. Code *is* speech - that's why we call them "languages." You may not speak in code, but I certainly do.
You own stuff you pay for. This is a seriously limited view. I have owned bank accounts and bonds in my name that I never paid for (given to me by my grandmother). I own the Christmas gifts given to me by family and friends last year that I never paid for. If paying for something meant you owned it, then people would OWN software, not license it.
It won't help if you change your info. From their privacy policy: You can add or update certain information on pages such as those listed in the "What Information Can I Access?" section above. When you update information, we usually keep a copy of the prior version for our records.
What if both yo-yos say that? Then vote for the Libertarian candidate; he or she will NOT be saying that.
I was a biochemist, and while working in QA for a large pharmaceutical company, I started programming. I left that job to program full-time and have not done a lick of chemistry since. I often joke that I got tired of being a nerd and decided to become a geek instead.
But there's also chat - which is a much more useful method of online communication in some instance. IMHO, more useful than face-to-face meetings even.
There are things you can do in chat that you cannot do in any other mdoe of communication. When I first got online about 10 years ago, I called a local BBS that had around 70 lines. Often there were 30 or 40 folks in the main chat channel.
Advantage 1: I learned to read at 2400 baud. ;)
Advantage 2: You can join 2 or 3 rooms at once and participate in all of them. Therefore you can actually attend several meetings at once.
Advantage 3: You can also conduct private conversations at the same time. So you can make smart-ass comments to a friend on the side, or discuss a technical issue with a co-worker before answering a question in the main discussion.
There is no way to do multiple conversations like this IRL.
Course, there's disadvantages too... like when you accidentally type the wrong thing in the wrong covnersation. On the bright side, you get to be amused when other folks do the same. ;)
So telling them first makes it OK? How about I TELL you I'm gonna hack into your box and load it full of child porn and then call the cops? Is it OK for me to do this just cause I told you ahead of time?