Professors here at Ohio State have a variety of ways to deal with secondhand book sales. Some textbooks here are only available in looseleaf form so they cannot be sold back. Many are "OSU Edition" copies, to ensure they cannot be sold online; to book stores in other regions; or at all after 1--2 years once the publisher comes out with the next edition. Barns & Noble, the "official" OSU bookstore has a program called "textbook rental" to curb resale of used textbooks. Then, one of the worst models is in the Physics department; they have an agreement with the publishers and a company called WebAssign, where although you can buy a used copy of a textbook, only the new ones have a "product key" which you need to do your (required) online homework.
Under none of these circumstances do professors pay anything for students, and (for obvious) reasons professors get the materials for free and most don't have a clue what the books cost until a student tells them (which they ignore). I can't say I'm surprised by any of this. Publishers make enormous profits by revising textbooks and requiring newer versions, and because students (who have to buy the books) don't have a choice. All the while, these new techniques are being upheld as "cost saving" and "convenient" for students. Consumer choice and the free market at work I guess.
Facebook does submit your information over HTTPS; they just load the page over HTTP by default. Passive sniffing won't work on it. Here, take a look at the following code from http://www.facebook.com/:
The problem with this approach is, while it saves server resources, an attacker could trivially perform a man-in-the-middle attack on an average person connecting to http://www.facebook.com/ rewriting the above code to HTTP or running a squid proxy or something, and they would never notice because their browser says "http" like always.
That said, if you're worried about it you could always install HTTPS Everywhere and it will make Facebook always load using SSL.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I should have known Adobe wasn't really going to embed videos without requiring viewers to install proprietary plugins. After all, people wouldn't have any reason to use Flash anymore if they did.
That's not funny. This isn't a video game, and there are real, live, innocent people in those 100 cars that you'd be getting into an accident. To purposely add to a mess like this for "points" like it were a video game is disgusting, and whoever modded this up should be ashamed. Imagine the number of people who you'd be killing or sending to the hospital in your 100x chain reaction bonus.
Actually, I think that's just reporters screwing up the "technical jargon," as they often do. I highly doubt an engineer would actually have used "delta difference".
The postal worker doesn't have a choice here. He is legally required to deliver all your mail (think net neutrality), no matter what it contains. He just doesn't want to be a felon from working at a federal job. I don't think the corruption is with the postal worker here; it's just the advertising company. As for opting out, the advertisement model here is designed to be unavoidable, but you could always try this and see if they still send you junk mail...
Thanks for your concern, but I think I'll just stubbornly fight it for another few years, or however long it takes for my willpower and friend count to reach zero. My mom can just keep using that cell phone she bought me if she still wants to talk to me, and my friends are all at other colleges anyway.
The point of my post is that while what the original AC poster suggested is definitely possible, it's a lot harder for non-geeks (or geeks with non-geek friends) than Slashdotters give credit for. From my original quote, it's not so much of a free market when refusing to do business with a leading company (like Facebook) on a matter of principles (or non-acceptance of privacy policies) comes at that kind of a cost, and people have to choose between their values or freedoms, and other aspects of their daily life which they used to get without said company's help. Or, if it is a free market, then I'm not so sure I like it, or something like that.
--
root@localhost:~# echo -e "127.0.0.1\tfacebook.com" | sudo tee -a/etc/hosts # Make the internet a better place
These are friends (and family) who I have had long, long before Facebook. I think they still like me, but they're too annoyed (or worried) by my "paranoia" to be around me because I won't "friend them". I told them they're free to e-mail, instant message, or call me, like they always have in the past, but that's "old fashioned" and "everybody else uses Facebook" so they usually just meet or hang out without me. I still see them once in a while when "nobody is online", but then they try to convince me to sign up so they "aren't alone" and they can add me to their contact lists in the same convenient place they have everyone else.
I don't do things because everybody else does them, but in this particular case, with the size and influence Facebook has over people's lives, I can understand why someone might put their privacy values aside and sign up, pretending privacy concerns don't exist. I'd say I'm a little more strong-willed and passionate than that, but it comes at a price. I respect your suggestion, and I'd normally suggest the same, but it's not just some "buddies" from school who I barely know; it's people I've known for a long time and gotten along quite well with, up until everyone got sucked into this thing. Now, to me, they seem disconnected from reality, while to them I appear like a disconnected, paranoid Luddite.
And to think now some of my college professors are considering putting their coursework in Facebook... I just can't win.
Many of us get along quite nicely not using Facebook.
If only my friends (and parents) would tolerate and respect that. It's hard when everyone you know uses Facebook and shuns you for not being their "Facebook friend" because you're the one weirdo who refuses to create a Facebook account, never mind privacy concerns. No, I still haven't created a Facebook profile (and won't), but I also still take a lot of flak for it the few circumstances my friends are willing to talk to me. It's like you're free to not do business with a company, only as long as you're willing to give up aspects of your life (like friendship) you used to get for free.
The worst it could do to non-imaginary humans is throw plastic blocks at us, in which case you build something harder than plastic to hide in and you're safe. Sucks for all those innocent Lego-people who are hunted down in their own Lego-homes by Lego-terminators though...
This is just damage control. Microsoft got egg on their face a while back when they backed "piracy" raids, so now they're trying to provide the illusion of remorse and "make things right" so the Slashdot/Linux crowd can't use it as ammo against them and their anti-piracy campaign.
Contracts should not be changed at all without the signer's approval. That's why whenever you fill out a check or sign a contract, but notice a tiny mistake, you're asked to initial/sign over the mistake; proving that you accept the indicated change to the original document. This kind of tool alerts customers/users that something has changed, however small, and lets them decide. Maybe it's something small like a grammatical correction, or maybe it's a change of 1 or 2 words which significantly change the meaning of the contract, or maybe it's a complete re-write of part or all of the contract. It's nearly impossible to make that distinction without a program being able to conceptualize human language and interpret legal documents (if we manage that, well I guess we won't need compilers anymore). The point is to let the user make that distinction, not the software.
The problem here is not with TOSBack, or any related software, but that companies are able to change contracts after acceptance simply by putting them online. This is a tool to detect when companies are trying to bait-and-switch you by updating their terms of use, and if they decide they're going to bury such changes within hundreds or thousands of meaningless updates, then there is not a lot that can be done from the programmer's suggestion. We need to prohibit these kinds of changes, or make such "contracts" unenforceable, rather than expecting users to sift through multiple changes to a contract they irrevocably "signed" each day. Things like TOSBack are just automation tools to make that absurd legal expectation a little easier, but I feel like blaming the developer or tool is not appropriate in this situation.
Why was this tagged as EFF? There was not one link to any of EFF's websites, and as far as I know from any of the linked articles, this is not something EFF is involved with, however in line this is with their values and intentions.
they told him. "You don’t need to call your lawyer. Don’t worry, you’re boring."
There is probably a very good reason they said that. They know what they're doing is wrong, they got caught red-handed, they wanted the device back so it couldn't be used against them in court, and they ultimately don't want to be held accountable for a violation of his constitutional rights, in the unlikely event they still exist. Yasir Afifi should definitely press charges, just so this ruling gets reversed, and it looks like the ACLU is already interested in the case.
(3) disorganized speech (e.g., frequent derailment or incoherence),
(4) grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, and/or
(5) negative symptoms, i.e., affective flattening, alogia, or avolition.
With the debatable exception of (4) catatonia (buildings don't usually move around a whole lot), no corporations I know of exhibit any of these characteristics. Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7) (ASPD) on the other hand, is very much in line with corporate behavior; necessary for diagnosis, at least 3 of:
(1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
(2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
(3) impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
(4) irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
(5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
(6) consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations; and/or
(7) lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
Now I'd argue (much to the contrary of the supreme court) that a corporation is not a human being, and as such cannot be diagnosed as one, but I don't think anyone on Slashdot will disagree that most corporations exhibit at least most of these criteria - everything listed here in many cases. Incidentally, this same analysis was run by the documentary The Corporation.
Please have a heart and do not compare the poor souls who suffer from Schizophrenia to the soulless corporations of America.
249,428,104,576, or 249.4 billion messages will surpass the world GDP.
$61,060,000,000,000 GDP of world ÷ $244.80 per message. = 249,428,104,576 messages. Should a spammer send this many junk messages, and get caught, then by legal precedent he will owe the equivalent of the world GDP. I wonder if that's more than the number of AOL disks that have been mailed...
I wonder how much the fine would have been if each spam message contained a song "owned" by one of the MAFIAA. You could generate a fine larger than the entire money supply of the whole world put together. This feels almost like a challenge now.
4,366,386 messages x $200,000 = $873,277,200,000 or $873.3 billion. Actually, it's only a couple hundred times more than what he owes now, which is more than the total amount of money the U.S. government gave the banks in the TARP program, but still just under 1/3 of the U.S. national debt as of October 2009. Are there any economists out there who can tell us if this amount of money is printed (Canada or U.S.)? Would it be theoretically possible for him to walk into the court, and pay in cash?
$1,068,928,721.46 ÷ 4,366,386 spam messages = $244.80 per message. I know we're probably trying to have a deterrent effect on spam, and it's a LOT lower than copyright fines, but it's still kind of high
At least spamming carries a stiffer penalty for copyright infringement. Now if we could just work all these individual fines down to a level less than corporations are required to pay...
Slashdot Mirror
Professors here at Ohio State have a variety of ways to deal with secondhand book sales. Some textbooks here are only available in looseleaf form so they cannot be sold back. Many are "OSU Edition" copies, to ensure they cannot be sold online; to book stores in other regions; or at all after 1--2 years once the publisher comes out with the next edition. Barns & Noble, the "official" OSU bookstore has a program called "textbook rental" to curb resale of used textbooks. Then, one of the worst models is in the Physics department; they have an agreement with the publishers and a company called WebAssign, where although you can buy a used copy of a textbook, only the new ones have a "product key" which you need to do your (required) online homework.
Under none of these circumstances do professors pay anything for students, and (for obvious) reasons professors get the materials for free and most don't have a clue what the books cost until a student tells them (which they ignore). I can't say I'm surprised by any of this. Publishers make enormous profits by revising textbooks and requiring newer versions, and because students (who have to buy the books) don't have a choice. All the while, these new techniques are being upheld as "cost saving" and "convenient" for students. Consumer choice and the free market at work I guess.
To the hell with online textbooks!
Facebook does submit your information over HTTPS; they just load the page over HTTP by default. Passive sniffing won't work on it. Here, take a look at the following code from http://www.facebook.com/:
<form method="POST" action="https://login.facebook.com/login.php?login_attempt=1" id="login_form">
The problem with this approach is, while it saves server resources, an attacker could trivially perform a man-in-the-middle attack on an average person connecting to http://www.facebook.com/ rewriting the above code to HTTP or running a squid proxy or something, and they would never notice because their browser says "http" like always.
That said, if you're worried about it you could always install HTTPS Everywhere and it will make Facebook always load using SSL.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I should have known Adobe wasn't really going to embed videos without requiring viewers to install proprietary plugins. After all, people wouldn't have any reason to use Flash anymore if they did.
That's not funny. This isn't a video game, and there are real, live, innocent people in those 100 cars that you'd be getting into an accident. To purposely add to a mess like this for "points" like it were a video game is disgusting, and whoever modded this up should be ashamed. Imagine the number of people who you'd be killing or sending to the hospital in your 100x chain reaction bonus.
Actually, I think that's just reporters screwing up the "technical jargon," as they often do. I highly doubt an engineer would actually have used "delta difference".
At least nobody was injured in the crash.
The postal worker doesn't have a choice here. He is legally required to deliver all your mail (think net neutrality), no matter what it contains. He just doesn't want to be a felon from working at a federal job. I don't think the corruption is with the postal worker here; it's just the advertising company. As for opting out, the advertisement model here is designed to be unavoidable, but you could always try this and see if they still send you junk mail...
Thanks for your concern, but I think I'll just stubbornly fight it for another few years, or however long it takes for my willpower and friend count to reach zero. My mom can just keep using that cell phone she bought me if she still wants to talk to me, and my friends are all at other colleges anyway.
The point of my post is that while what the original AC poster suggested is definitely possible, it's a lot harder for non-geeks (or geeks with non-geek friends) than Slashdotters give credit for. From my original quote, it's not so much of a free market when refusing to do business with a leading company (like Facebook) on a matter of principles (or non-acceptance of privacy policies) comes at that kind of a cost, and people have to choose between their values or freedoms, and other aspects of their daily life which they used to get without said company's help. Or, if it is a free market, then I'm not so sure I like it, or something like that.
-- /etc/hosts # Make the internet a better place
root@localhost:~# echo -e "127.0.0.1\tfacebook.com" | sudo tee -a
These are friends (and family) who I have had long, long before Facebook. I think they still like me, but they're too annoyed (or worried) by my "paranoia" to be around me because I won't "friend them". I told them they're free to e-mail, instant message, or call me, like they always have in the past, but that's "old fashioned" and "everybody else uses Facebook" so they usually just meet or hang out without me. I still see them once in a while when "nobody is online", but then they try to convince me to sign up so they "aren't alone" and they can add me to their contact lists in the same convenient place they have everyone else.
I don't do things because everybody else does them, but in this particular case, with the size and influence Facebook has over people's lives, I can understand why someone might put their privacy values aside and sign up, pretending privacy concerns don't exist. I'd say I'm a little more strong-willed and passionate than that, but it comes at a price. I respect your suggestion, and I'd normally suggest the same, but it's not just some "buddies" from school who I barely know; it's people I've known for a long time and gotten along quite well with, up until everyone got sucked into this thing. Now, to me, they seem disconnected from reality, while to them I appear like a disconnected, paranoid Luddite.
And to think now some of my college professors are considering putting their coursework in Facebook... I just can't win.
Many of us get along quite nicely not using Facebook.
If only my friends (and parents) would tolerate and respect that. It's hard when everyone you know uses Facebook and shuns you for not being their "Facebook friend" because you're the one weirdo who refuses to create a Facebook account, never mind privacy concerns. No, I still haven't created a Facebook profile (and won't), but I also still take a lot of flak for it the few circumstances my friends are willing to talk to me. It's like you're free to not do business with a company, only as long as you're willing to give up aspects of your life (like friendship) you used to get for free.
The worst it could do to non-imaginary humans is throw plastic blocks at us, in which case you build something harder than plastic to hide in and you're safe. Sucks for all those innocent Lego-people who are hunted down in their own Lego-homes by Lego-terminators though...
That's nice and all, but can it build an exact copy of itself? That would be awesome.
This is just damage control. Microsoft got egg on their face a while back when they backed "piracy" raids, so now they're trying to provide the illusion of remorse and "make things right" so the Slashdot/Linux crowd can't use it as ammo against them and their anti-piracy campaign.
Steve Gibson covered this over 3 years ago. https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-082.htm
How meaningful is your life if you spend your life pondering the meaning of life?
What's the point in hiding things no sane person would agree to in a contract if it's easy to read?
Contracts should not be changed at all without the signer's approval. That's why whenever you fill out a check or sign a contract, but notice a tiny mistake, you're asked to initial/sign over the mistake; proving that you accept the indicated change to the original document. This kind of tool alerts customers/users that something has changed, however small, and lets them decide. Maybe it's something small like a grammatical correction, or maybe it's a change of 1 or 2 words which significantly change the meaning of the contract, or maybe it's a complete re-write of part or all of the contract. It's nearly impossible to make that distinction without a program being able to conceptualize human language and interpret legal documents (if we manage that, well I guess we won't need compilers anymore). The point is to let the user make that distinction, not the software.
The problem here is not with TOSBack, or any related software, but that companies are able to change contracts after acceptance simply by putting them online. This is a tool to detect when companies are trying to bait-and-switch you by updating their terms of use, and if they decide they're going to bury such changes within hundreds or thousands of meaningless updates, then there is not a lot that can be done from the programmer's suggestion. We need to prohibit these kinds of changes, or make such "contracts" unenforceable, rather than expecting users to sift through multiple changes to a contract they irrevocably "signed" each day. Things like TOSBack are just automation tools to make that absurd legal expectation a little easier, but I feel like blaming the developer or tool is not appropriate in this situation.
Why was this tagged as EFF? There was not one link to any of EFF's websites, and as far as I know from any of the linked articles, this is not something EFF is involved with, however in line this is with their values and intentions.
they told him. "You don’t need to call your lawyer. Don’t worry, you’re boring."
There is probably a very good reason they said that. They know what they're doing is wrong, they got caught red-handed, they wanted the device back so it couldn't be used against them in court, and they ultimately don't want to be held accountable for a violation of his constitutional rights, in the unlikely event they still exist. Yasir Afifi should definitely press charges, just so this ruling gets reversed, and it looks like the ACLU is already interested in the case.
No. Schizophrenia (295) is characterized by:
With the debatable exception of (4) catatonia (buildings don't usually move around a whole lot), no corporations I know of exhibit any of these characteristics. Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7) (ASPD) on the other hand, is very much in line with corporate behavior; necessary for diagnosis, at least 3 of:
Now I'd argue (much to the contrary of the supreme court) that a corporation is not a human being, and as such cannot be diagnosed as one, but I don't think anyone on Slashdot will disagree that most corporations exhibit at least most of these criteria - everything listed here in many cases. Incidentally, this same analysis was run by the documentary The Corporation.
Please have a heart and do not compare the poor souls who suffer from Schizophrenia to the soulless corporations of America.
249,428,104,576, or 249.4 billion messages will surpass the world GDP.
$61,060,000,000,000 GDP of world ÷ $244.80 per message. = 249,428,104,576 messages. Should a spammer send this many junk messages, and get caught, then by legal precedent he will owe the equivalent of the world GDP. I wonder if that's more than the number of AOL disks that have been mailed...
but still just under 1/3 of the U.S. national debt as of October 2009.
Errr... I meant to say "2/3 of the U.S. national debt as of October 2009".
Sorry.
I wonder how much the fine would have been if each spam message contained a song "owned" by one of the MAFIAA. You could generate a fine larger than the entire money supply of the whole world put together. This feels almost like a challenge now.
4,366,386 messages x $200,000 = $873,277,200,000 or $873.3 billion. Actually, it's only a couple hundred times more than what he owes now, which is more than the total amount of money the U.S. government gave the banks in the TARP program, but still just under 1/3 of the U.S. national debt as of October 2009. Are there any economists out there who can tell us if this amount of money is printed (Canada or U.S.)? Would it be theoretically possible for him to walk into the court, and pay in cash?
$1,068,928,721.46 ÷ 4,366,386 spam messages = $244.80 per message. I know we're probably trying to have a deterrent effect on spam, and it's a LOT lower than copyright fines, but it's still kind of high
At least spamming carries a stiffer penalty for copyright infringement. Now if we could just work all these individual fines down to a level less than corporations are required to pay...