> What are people so afraid about anyways with respect to privacy? There seems > to be sooo much fear and baseless paranoia around the idea of privacy. What > information are people trying to protect and why?
Now THAT is ironic!:-)
And, dear AC, just to be clear...I fully support your right and use of anonymity for no other reason than...BECAUSE! By keeping up and defending your rights, I defend my own!
> The difference is that a website is persistent and an email is transient.
What makes you think so? An aweful lot of people use e-mail via websites and even if not, how can you be sure that your 'transient' e-mail hasn't been stored somewhere in full over the last ten years?
> Weren't these guys that were trying to blow up the planes with explosives > that professional chemists with a chemlab available consider a tricky thing > to make?
In a world, where they tell you that shoes will explode I guess all is possible...
> Indeed the set surveyed does reflect windows users fairly well in at least > some regards because OpenOffice has been slow in adoption in segments where > MS Office is well entrenched. > Or, the sample is not well selected to reflect on Windows users in general; > they are adopting OpenOffice at a much lower rate than stated. > Or, the sample is not well selected, and Windows users are adopting at a > much higher rate than stated.
Dunno, which one is correct. Maybe a bit of all depending on location.
I do know this though: while in large corporate environments MS-Office still reigns supreme, OpenOffice does make significant inroads in the private market...read households. It's simply too convenient to just download the thing and have a fully functioning Office Suite 10 minutes later. If and when Windows users switch to Windows 7, we might just see a small surge in OpenOffice usage. A lot of people I know have MS-Office installed on their XP but do not own CD's and activation codes. Replacing it with OpenOffice during an OS upgrade/switch might for many simply be easier than trying to hold on to MSO. Further, even the Windows geeks now routinely install open source software, incl. OpenOffice, for other people when called upon to do a reinstall. So ironically OpenOffice etc. might just tunnel into the corporate world by way of the living room...
I limit myself to bug reports, encouraging/thank you e-mails to maintainers, buying Linux distributions or individual programs I like and generally spreading the word.
To make certain portions only available to a chosen set of people is a feature I always wanted to see with GPG picture ID's. I want my Mom, my GF and certain other family and friends to be able to see my picture associated with my key, but not the whole Internet. There's gotta be a way to encrypt the picture ID to specific people('s keys) so only they can decrypt/see it just like any other content. That way you could add your picture ID to your public key and upload to a key server and still be reasonably sure, that only some hand-picked people see that you're a dog...
> if you buy their products, it's your money being spent. I use GNU/Linux > exclusively since 2001, so that's a non-issue to me.
Well, spending money on something useful to you should be an issue for you, especially when using Linux. Put your money where your mouth is and support the open projects you benefit from!
> Its not going to be mainstream until the prices of both ebooks and readers > are reasonable. That means $1-$2 for most ebooks ($3 max) and all ebooks > available in non-DRMed formats, and about $50.00 for ebook readers.
I completely agree with you. And in regards to pricing of the e-readers themselves...it won't improve as long as those idiots try to cram every freaking technology into them as if it was necessary. Netcam's...WTF?! Show me the book that has a camera inside....or let's you make phone calls. Not even the phone book does that! So get rid of all this junk and stick with what's needed:
1. A screen that's easy to read and good resolution for pix 2. USB port to transfer the texts 3. Open and standardized e-book format 4. Totally optional and best reserved for "Deluxe model": wireless and touchpen
for notes.
> put something so juicy in a bogus email that an obsessed ex-lover reading it > would be likely to act on the information--say, a fake date at a time and > place--if your stalker ex "happens by," s/he is probably reading your email.
Somebody that obsessed might just kill you if they found something 'so juicy'.
Remember...somebody going so far as to gain unauthorized access to your account and perusing your mail already has some serious mental problems (though it will never occur to them as, of course, everybody else, most of all the partner, is at fault for everything that ever happened to them). Trust me...seen it. These people can become very dangerous very quickly. Do not force the issue with something 'juicily' stupid but leave as fast and as far away as you can from such a person!
> all your email is transferred is in the open unless you understand to check > the box...
Or simply bookmark as https://mail.google.com/ in which case the entire session is SSL'ed anyway. The extra setting to "Always use HTTPS" does help to make sure.
> It's not the IP address that matters, it's the fact that a single source > made 32 attempts to login to your account. This warning might prompt you to > take additional steps, such as changing your password to something random.
This warning will not prompt most non-geek users to change their passwords, but to call their bank in panic and BITCH at them why THEY don't do something about it. And that's why the banks will not disclose that information because they don't want to have to deal with the fallout and the *image loss* of 'permitting' apparent hacker activity.
> I'd imagine it has more to do with those damn required "Security Questions", > many of which use publicly available information.
While I agree, that those questions are stupid, I do not agree, that they "use publicly available information". Your answer does, if at all. And that's your choice. So treat the answers just as another password. What's your highschool? EswB2aal!
> The PS3 autodetects when you go to the display options, or at least has an > option to.
It did autodetect when I switched from the TV (composite cable) to a computer monitor with HDMI cable. It did not auto-detect doing the reverse until I hooked up the monitor again and manually switched it back.
> Or you could just use the versatility of an older PC to run Linux, on a > regular ass monitor that costs a third as much.
I use my computer monitor (24"/16:9) for the occasional HD-gaming on the PS3. Works well if put on the living room table in front of the couch. Beats the 40"/4:3 Trinitron TV but involves manual effort to move the stuff (incl. boxes) around before and after gaming. Cheap solution thought hat works until the far away day when we buy a widescreen flat-panel HD-TV. And no...not in a particular rush about it. TV's get better, cheaper, less energy-consuming each year so time works for us.
> any songwriting money that would go to John Lennon presumably goes to Yoko > Ono via Lennon's estate. So, by buying Beatles music we're encouraging - or > at least enabling - her to make more songs.
Last I checked most Beatles song 'rights' were owned by Michael Jackson. So when you buy Beatles you're encouraging Michael Jackson to make more son....Oh wait....
Every human has not just one, but two analog devices enabling them to listen to potentially unlicensed and unpaid-for music, which the artists have starved and bled to create etc.pp.. Since every such device merely CAPABLE of aiding in the listening and consumption of unpaid-for content is likely ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL and aids in the dry-up of vital content industry revenue, it needs to be levied accordingly to make up for lost income. Therefore a new law will be enacted to combat these uncontrolled free listening behaviours and at last close the remaining analog hole(s) called ears. The new levy shall appear on your yearly tax form and be ear-marked (pun intended) accordingly.
We're still working on the draft for the eye law...watch this space (for a small fee of 50 cents per week) for further announcements.
The belief, that we humans can 'engineer' the earth and bend it to our expectations is exactly, what got us into this mess in the first place. How about re-engineering ourselves instead for the better?
Well, the overall format is still the same actually, but a new compression algorithm is being used. This results in smaller package files and a new extension *.txz, as opposed to the older *.tgz.
> I used to use slackware but the novelty of manually setting everything up > wore off a while back. Plus theres so much more to set up in a modern > distribution that you really don't want to have to worry about getting low > level plumbing up and running - it should just work out of the box.
Am with you on that. But funnily enough a new Slackware install doesn't exactly take me a whole lot longer than, say, an Ubuntu install anymore. Either I got really good at it or Slackware did:-)
Example: With my M-Audio Revolution 7.1 a few years ago I putzed around for days with Alsa and whatnot. Now it just works OOTB. They even fixed that stupid bug, where initially sound would only come out of one side/speaker until you changed the volume...
Slashdot Mirror
> by Anonymous Coward
> What are people so afraid about anyways with respect to privacy? There seems
> to be sooo much fear and baseless paranoia around the idea of privacy. What
> information are people trying to protect and why?
Now THAT is ironic! :-)
And, dear AC, just to be clear...I fully support your right and use of
anonymity for no other reason than...BECAUSE! By keeping up and defending your
rights, I defend my own!
> The difference is that a website is persistent and an email is transient.
What makes you think so? An aweful lot of people use e-mail via websites and even if not, how can you be sure that your 'transient' e-mail hasn't been stored somewhere in full over the last ten years?
> Weren't these guys that were trying to blow up the planes with explosives
> that professional chemists with a chemlab available consider a tricky thing
> to make?
In a world, where they tell you that shoes will explode I guess all is
possible...
> Indeed the set surveyed does reflect windows users fairly well in at least
> some regards because OpenOffice has been slow in adoption in segments where
> MS Office is well entrenched.
> Or, the sample is not well selected to reflect on Windows users in general;
> they are adopting OpenOffice at a much lower rate than stated.
> Or, the sample is not well selected, and Windows users are adopting at a
> much higher rate than stated.
Dunno, which one is correct. Maybe a bit of all depending on location.
I do know this though:
while in large corporate environments MS-Office still reigns supreme,
OpenOffice does make significant inroads in the private market...read
households. It's simply too convenient to just download the thing and have a
fully functioning Office Suite 10 minutes later.
If and when Windows users switch to Windows 7, we might just see a small surge
in OpenOffice usage. A lot of people I know have MS-Office installed on their
XP but do not own CD's and activation codes. Replacing it with OpenOffice
during an OS upgrade/switch might for many simply be easier than trying to
hold on to MSO.
Further, even the Windows geeks now routinely install open source software,
incl. OpenOffice, for other people when called upon to do a reinstall. So
ironically OpenOffice etc. might just tunnel into the corporate world by way
of the living room...
I limit myself to bug reports, encouraging/thank you e-mails to maintainers, buying Linux distributions or individual programs I like and generally spreading the word.
To make certain portions only available to a chosen set of people is a feature I always wanted to see with GPG picture ID's. I want my Mom, my GF and certain other family and friends to be able to see my picture associated with my key, but not the whole Internet. There's gotta be a way to encrypt the picture ID to specific people('s keys) so only they can decrypt/see it just like any other content. That way you could add your picture ID to your public key and upload to a key server and still be reasonably sure, that only some hand-picked people see that you're a dog...
> if you buy their products, it's your money being spent. I use GNU/Linux
> exclusively since 2001, so that's a non-issue to me.
Well, spending money on something useful to you should be an issue for you,
especially when using Linux. Put your money where your mouth is and support
the open projects you benefit from!
> Its not going to be mainstream until the prices of both ebooks and readers
> are reasonable. That means $1-$2 for most ebooks ($3 max) and all ebooks
> available in non-DRMed formats, and about $50.00 for ebook readers.
I completely agree with you. And in regards to pricing of the e-readers
themselves...it won't improve as long as those idiots try to cram every
freaking technology into them as if it was necessary. Netcam's...WTF?! Show me
the book that has a camera inside....or let's you make phone calls. Not even
the phone book does that! So get rid of all this junk and stick with what's
needed:
1. A screen that's easy to read and good resolution for pix
2. USB port to transfer the texts
3. Open and standardized e-book format
4. Totally optional and best reserved for "Deluxe model": wireless and touchpen
for notes.
> if you forget your password, you recover it with another password that you
> can't remember?
You don't recover passwords. You write them down and store them accordingly.
> put something so juicy in a bogus email that an obsessed ex-lover reading it
> would be likely to act on the information--say, a fake date at a time and
> place--if your stalker ex "happens by," s/he is probably reading your email.
Somebody that obsessed might just kill you if they found something 'so juicy'.
Remember...somebody going so far as to gain unauthorized access to your
account and perusing your mail already has some serious mental problems
(though it will never occur to them as, of course, everybody else, most of all
the partner, is at fault for everything that ever happened to them). Trust
me...seen it. These people can become very dangerous very quickly. Do not
force the issue with something 'juicily' stupid but leave as fast and as far
away as you can from such a person!
> all your email is transferred is in the open unless you understand to check
> the box...
Or simply bookmark as https://mail.google.com/ in which case the entire
session is SSL'ed anyway. The extra setting to "Always use HTTPS" does help to
make sure.
> As a Gmail user with a relatively long and complicated password, how would
> these services go about hacking into my Gmail account?
Inside source?
> It's not the IP address that matters, it's the fact that a single source
> made 32 attempts to login to your account. This warning might prompt you to
> take additional steps, such as changing your password to something random.
This warning will not prompt most non-geek users to change their passwords,
but to call their bank in panic and BITCH at them why THEY don't do something
about it. And that's why the banks will not disclose that information because
they don't want to have to deal with the fallout and the *image loss* of
'permitting' apparent hacker activity.
> I'd imagine it has more to do with those damn required "Security Questions",
> many of which use publicly available information.
While I agree, that those questions are stupid, I do not agree, that they "use
publicly available information". Your answer does, if at all. And that's
your choice. So treat the answers just as another password. What's your
highschool? EswB2aal!
> Beats the 40"/4:3 Trinitron TV
Make that 27"/4:3 Trinitron...
> The PS3 autodetects when you go to the display options, or at least has an
> option to.
It did autodetect when I switched from the TV (composite cable) to a
computer monitor with HDMI cable. It did not auto-detect doing the reverse
until I hooked up the monitor again and manually switched it back.
> Or you could just use the versatility of an older PC to run Linux, on a
> regular ass monitor that costs a third as much.
I use my computer monitor (24"/16:9) for the occasional HD-gaming on the PS3.
Works well if put on the living room table in front of the couch. Beats the
40"/4:3 Trinitron TV but involves manual effort to move the stuff (incl.
boxes) around before and after gaming. Cheap solution thought hat works until
the far away day when we buy a widescreen flat-panel HD-TV. And no...not in a
particular rush about it. TV's get better, cheaper, less energy-consuming each
year so time works for us.
> And I don't have a wife to supplement my income.
U got that wrong. *Because* you don't have a wife you have any income left to speak of!
> any songwriting money that would go to John Lennon presumably goes to Yoko
> Ono via Lennon's estate. So, by buying Beatles music we're encouraging - or
> at least enabling - her to make more songs.
Last I checked most Beatles song 'rights' were owned by Michael Jackson. So
when you buy Beatles you're encouraging Michael Jackson to make more son....Oh
wait....
Let's go all the way:
Every human has not just one, but two analog devices enabling them to listen to potentially unlicensed and unpaid-for music, which the artists have starved and bled to create etc.pp..
Since every such device merely CAPABLE of aiding in the listening and consumption of unpaid-for content is likely ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL and aids in the dry-up of vital content industry revenue, it needs to be levied accordingly to make up for lost income. Therefore a new law will be enacted to combat these uncontrolled free listening behaviours and at last close the remaining analog hole(s) called ears. The new levy shall appear on your yearly tax form and be ear-marked (pun intended) accordingly.
We're still working on the draft for the eye law...watch this space (for a small fee of 50 cents per week) for further announcements.
> Nice plan until Apple decides which songs can be downloaded onto their hardware.
Again and again I am reminded of how necessary openness for standards, hardware, software etc. really is.
Just say no to Vendor-Lock-in! Yes, you can!
> Is there a different prayer for priests to to say before giving "educational
> guidance" to altar boys?
"Please God, help turn this water into Gamma-hydroxybutyrate...!"
The belief, that we humans can 'engineer' the earth and bend it to our expectations is exactly, what got us into this mess in the first place. How about re-engineering ourselves instead for the better?
Well, the overall format is still the same actually, but a new compression
algorithm is being used. This results in smaller package files and a new
extension *.txz, as opposed to the older *.tgz.
> I used to use slackware but the novelty of manually setting everything up
> wore off a while back. Plus theres so much more to set up in a modern
> distribution that you really don't want to have to worry about getting low
> level plumbing up and running - it should just work out of the box.
Am with you on that. But funnily enough a new Slackware install doesn't :-)
exactly take me a whole lot longer than, say, an Ubuntu install anymore.
Either I got really good at it or Slackware did
Example: With my M-Audio Revolution 7.1 a few years ago I putzed around for
days with Alsa and whatnot. Now it just works OOTB. They even fixed that
stupid bug, where initially sound would only come out of one side/speaker
until you changed the volume...