The major difference actually is, that mercenaries had balls and risked their life while doing all this.
Hm - I'd venture to guess that if you piss enough people off in a big enough way, they (the lawyers) may assume that characteristic as well- minus the balls, of course.
I seem to remember a big flap about companies that published information (like telephone directories) who were pissed because they considered that "copyrighted material". If I'm not mistaken, raw data is not subject to copyright- copyright protects the manner in which the data is presented, but not the data itself. This implies that if a certain degree of creativity has not been applied, there is nothing to copyright. With the corporate-bought political system in the US, and Bush in office, this may have changed since I last heard about it.
Ultimately, you, the consumer, are still left with the final word. Since broadcast media depends, oh, I'd say, 100% or so, on whether or not you actually watch it, take the gun away from your head, and go do something else.
If consumers play their cards right (which is a long shot, having some idea of typical consumer behavior), this broadcast flag could become a rather significant problem for those using it, rather than the control mechanism originally intended...it all depends on how willfully consumers decide to put up with it.
Seriously...they aren't charging late fees. I think it's all pretty simple...if you keep the movie of longer than seven days past the due date, Blockbuster makes a reasonable assumption that you want to buy it, at which point they charge you the purchase price.
If someone can't rent. view, and return a movie within 1-2 weeks, they can't handle the resonsibiilty, so they shouldn't be renting in the first place.
Must MILLIONS of US citizens have their personal information warehoused, prostituted, and subject to theft because of the comparatively few that it may have helped? This is one case where I believe the cost FAR outweighs the benefit.
Americans retain this "I've got to have it now" mentality...waiting for something to ship via an internet purchase breaks this paradigm. Having a product shipped overnight is very expensive, so it often isn't a consideration.
Here's just a very small, probably completely insignificant anecdote: I needed some memory for an older computer. I did quite a bit of research online, comparing prices and the like. That in itself is quite a hassle. After all was said and done, instead of ordering and waiting, I hopped on down to the local computer store and bought some. I probably paid more than I could have gotten it for online, but the point is, I needed it, and I got it. Now.
I'm tempted to think the fear had by brick-and-mortar retailers might be at least partly unfounded. As I see it, this issue based far more on consumer psychology than anything else.
With kids, there are unfortunately many circumstances which might necessitate "violating" their privacy. We might have 13 innocent people still alive today if the parents of Harris and Klebold had any idea what their kids were up to.
I seem to recall something not too long ago that discussed the issue as it pertained to parents and their kids. I can't remember if it was a local story, or on one of the national broadcasts. In any event, they basically stated that it may be against the law in certain states to spy on your kids, by listening to phone calls, intercepting internet communications, etc. I'm sure this can be extrapolated to include other adults.
Just the same, as far is it pertains to kids, I find this quite disturbing. It's easy to rail on parents who don't do their job, but it's completely insane with the law makes it illegal.
...make companies that want to reap the rewards for harvesting and prostituting personal information, also bear the consequences.
One thing I'd have to wonder...what would a company like ChoicePoint be doing with someone's personal data(like Social Security Number), unless they had been explicitly authorized to have it? As far as I'm concerned, ChoicePoint might very well be the unauthorized third party.
What's interesting about all of these acquisitions is that yes, in the short term, it may reduce some degree of choice we once had as consumers. But bear in mind, that just as old, crusty, entrenched companies can be laid to rest by merging with other old, crusty, entrenched companies, there is always room for new competitors. Simply put, the monopolies resulting from these acquisitions still need to stay on their toes, lest the carpet be yanked out from under them by newer, leaner, more innovative, more agile, competitors.
Just think...a new public, open standard called Digital Music Markup Language. Then you can use a convertor utility similar to XSLT to decide on what format you need...only problem is converting digital music to text is very costly in terms of space requirements. 2-3GB per song, as opposed to 2-3MB.
Kidding aside, it would be cool if there was a public standard for a raw binary format, where you *could* use an XSLT-like translation utility to turn it into whatever format you want.
I see people moaning about how the record companies won't "give" this to consumers. I'm cool with that. It's just one more reason to keep me from "giving" them any of my hard-earned money.
Credit companies have turn to tactics like usuriously high interest rates, and STEEP increases in interest rates based on nothing to do with your relationship with the company. The consumer credit market is quite staturated, so the only way these companies can show any real revenue growth is to keep coming up with more innovative ways to screw their customers. My advice...stay away from credit cards except for absolute emergencies. Accepting a credit card these days is like shackling yourself and giving them the key.
But the official said the episode had helped discover and fix serious security breaches at Los Alamos, and therefore the department had no regrets.
I guess this gives a green light to government-backed fishing expeditions. Funny how heads rolled for a problem that didn't exist, but nobody is held accountable for the false information that started the whole mess. The Bush camp seems to thrive on imaginary monsters. I'm willing to bet that Los Alamos and WMD either are, or will be only the tip of the iceberg.
If the states were smart, they'd tell the fed to take their highway money and shove it up their pothole.
Will highways start suffering? They could...but this puts the responsility solely where it belongs, because voters will be more likely to elect representatives with their constituents interests in mind, rather than whatever they think will advance the U.S. further toward a police state.
The service will probably be contracted to a friend, it will probably suck, and there won't be much that can be done about it since the service contract will be valid for several years. As far as I'm concerned, there are very few real winners with respect to private-public partnerships- the few that get the lion's share of the money.
Something else to consider...it's damn funny to hear government entities talking about the stranglehold certain companies have (which is unfortunately true), but this same stranglehold provides the government a very convenient way to increase taxes- by conjuring up a new name for it, and calling it a "fee". I looked at my electricity bill today - it has about 7 different "fees" associated with it - one of them is 10% of the total.
I'm already wary of the monopolists. I'd be even more wary of a government-run monopoly.
Painter is the same way...the tools are in their own panel, and the painting is done in its own window. I don't really see a problem with this separation - it makes sense to me. The tool box is for tools, and the canvas is for drawing with those tools. It fits well with many real-life paradigms. Take a carpenter for example...does he take every one of his tools and lay them out on or around the object he's working on? Not really.
BTW - most tools in the Gimp are available in the canvas window - from the menus.
The problem I see isn't the necessarily the separation, but the workflow. The more I have to keep clicking different windows or selecting different tools just to do something that I should be able to do with my current tool, the more unncessarily cluttered the workflow becomes. I wouldn't mind seeing more attention focused on that particular aspect.
Maybe, but if people start employing avatars (virtual users), to access the net while they're away from the computer, the signal-to-noise will be lowered significantly. Tracking what people do will be increasingly meaningless, because you'll never know if it was them, or their avatar.
Slashdot Mirror
The major difference actually is, that mercenaries had balls and risked their life while doing all this.
Hm - I'd venture to guess that if you piss enough people off in a big enough way, they (the lawyers) may assume that characteristic as well- minus the balls, of course.
I seem to remember a big flap about companies that published information (like telephone directories) who were pissed because they considered that "copyrighted material". If I'm not mistaken, raw data is not subject to copyright- copyright protects the manner in which the data is presented, but not the data itself. This implies that if a certain degree of creativity has not been applied, there is nothing to copyright. With the corporate-bought political system in the US, and Bush in office, this may have changed since I last heard about it.
It's just another form of spam. No more, no less.
Ultimately, you, the consumer, are still left with the final word. Since broadcast media depends, oh, I'd say, 100% or so, on whether or not you actually watch it, take the gun away from your head, and go do something else.
If consumers play their cards right (which is a long shot, having some idea of typical consumer behavior), this broadcast flag could become a rather significant problem for those using it, rather than the control mechanism originally intended...it all depends on how willfully consumers decide to put up with it.
Enough said...
Seriously...they aren't charging late fees. I think it's all pretty simple...if you keep the movie of longer than seven days past the due date, Blockbuster makes a reasonable assumption that you want to buy it, at which point they charge you the purchase price.
If someone can't rent. view, and return a movie within 1-2 weeks, they can't handle the resonsibiilty, so they shouldn't be renting in the first place.
Must MILLIONS of US citizens have their personal information warehoused, prostituted, and subject to theft because of the comparatively few that it may have helped? This is one case where I believe the cost FAR outweighs the benefit.
Americans retain this "I've got to have it now" mentality...waiting for something to ship via an internet purchase breaks this paradigm. Having a product shipped overnight is very expensive, so it often isn't a consideration.
Here's just a very small, probably completely insignificant anecdote: I needed some memory for an older computer. I did quite a bit of research online, comparing prices and the like. That in itself is quite a hassle. After all was said and done, instead of ordering and waiting, I hopped on down to the local computer store and bought some. I probably paid more than I could have gotten it for online, but the point is, I needed it, and I got it. Now.
I'm tempted to think the fear had by brick-and-mortar retailers might be at least partly unfounded. As I see it, this issue based far more on consumer psychology than anything else.
On several occasions (years) Sellafield has reclaimed more fuel than estimated.
How come we don't see headlines like, "Anonymous Source Returns 20Kg of Plutonium to Nuclear Power plant."
With Reich its....
Knock....Knock....Knock....Knock
To Reich's credit, at least his work is somewhat coherent.
With kids, there are unfortunately many circumstances which might necessitate "violating" their privacy. We might have 13 innocent people still alive today if the parents of Harris and Klebold had any idea what their kids were up to.
If you think parenting doesn't involve keeping an eye on what your kids are doing, you have a very ill-conceived notion of what parenting really is.
I seem to recall something not too long ago that discussed the issue as it pertained to parents and their kids. I can't remember if it was a local story, or on one of the national broadcasts. In any event, they basically stated that it may be against the law in certain states to spy on your kids, by listening to phone calls, intercepting internet communications, etc. I'm sure this can be extrapolated to include other adults.
Just the same, as far is it pertains to kids, I find this quite disturbing. It's easy to rail on parents who don't do their job, but it's completely insane with the law makes it illegal.
One thing I'd have to wonder...what would a company like ChoicePoint be doing with someone's personal data(like Social Security Number), unless they had been explicitly authorized to have it? As far as I'm concerned, ChoicePoint might very well be the unauthorized third party.
What's interesting about all of these acquisitions is that yes, in the short term, it may reduce some degree of choice we once had as consumers. But bear in mind, that just as old, crusty, entrenched companies can be laid to rest by merging with other old, crusty, entrenched companies, there is always room for new competitors. Simply put, the monopolies resulting from these acquisitions still need to stay on their toes, lest the carpet be yanked out from under them by newer, leaner, more innovative, more agile, competitors.
Just think...a new public, open standard called Digital Music Markup Language. Then you can use a convertor utility similar to XSLT to decide on what format you need...only problem is converting digital music to text is very costly in terms of space requirements. 2-3GB per song, as opposed to 2-3MB.
Kidding aside, it would be cool if there was a public standard for a raw binary format, where you *could* use an XSLT-like translation utility to turn it into whatever format you want.
I see people moaning about how the record companies won't "give" this to consumers. I'm cool with that. It's just one more reason to keep me from "giving" them any of my hard-earned money.
Credit companies have turn to tactics like usuriously high interest rates, and STEEP increases in interest rates based on nothing to do with your relationship with the company. The consumer credit market is quite staturated, so the only way these companies can show any real revenue growth is to keep coming up with more innovative ways to screw their customers. My advice...stay away from credit cards except for absolute emergencies. Accepting a credit card these days is like shackling yourself and giving them the key.
But the official said the episode had helped discover and fix serious security breaches at Los Alamos, and therefore the department had no regrets.
I guess this gives a green light to government-backed fishing expeditions. Funny how heads rolled for a problem that didn't exist, but nobody is held accountable for the false information that started the whole mess. The Bush camp seems to thrive on imaginary monsters. I'm willing to bet that Los Alamos and WMD either are, or will be only the tip of the iceberg.
If the states were smart, they'd tell the fed to take their highway money and shove it up their pothole.
Will highways start suffering? They could...but this puts the responsility solely where it belongs, because voters will be more likely to elect representatives with their constituents interests in mind, rather than whatever they think will advance the U.S. further toward a police state.
The service will probably be contracted to a friend, it will probably suck, and there won't be much that can be done about it since the service contract will be valid for several years. As far as I'm concerned, there are very few real winners with respect to private-public partnerships- the few that get the lion's share of the money.
Something else to consider...it's damn funny to hear government entities talking about the stranglehold certain companies have (which is unfortunately true), but this same stranglehold provides the government a very convenient way to increase taxes- by conjuring up a new name for it, and calling it a "fee". I looked at my electricity bill today - it has about 7 different "fees" associated with it - one of them is 10% of the total.
I'm already wary of the monopolists. I'd be even more wary of a government-run monopoly.
Painter is the same way...the tools are in their own panel, and the painting is done in its own window. I don't really see a problem with this separation - it makes sense to me. The tool box is for tools, and the canvas is for drawing with those tools. It fits well with many real-life paradigms. Take a carpenter for example...does he take every one of his tools and lay them out on or around the object he's working on? Not really.
BTW - most tools in the Gimp are available in the canvas window - from the menus.
The problem I see isn't the necessarily the separation, but the workflow. The more I have to keep clicking different windows or selecting different tools just to do something that I should be able to do with my current tool, the more unncessarily cluttered the workflow becomes. I wouldn't mind seeing more attention focused on that particular aspect.
Sell a crappy OS, then sell people the ability to protect themselves from it. Could this be a new form of double-dipping?
Maybe, but if people start employing avatars (virtual users), to access the net while they're away from the computer, the signal-to-noise will be lowered significantly. Tracking what people do will be increasingly meaningless, because you'll never know if it was them, or their avatar.