I've recently gotten AT&T U-Verse, who, according to their privacy statement, will be monitoring my TV watching habits for advertisement purposes. I'm extremely annoyed by that, yet I love the service so much and I don't think I can cancel it.
If there is a privacy war it is a war of one. You know the chef is poisoning the soup but you find it too delicious to stop eating.
Cancel your cable. War won.
Not surprisingly, people who refuse to grow a spine are one of the biggest parts of the problem.
There is nothing you can do to preserve your privacy while remaining in society. Privacy is dead and gone. The best thing you can do is work for a company which gathers private information on the richest and most powerful. If you don't want to help reduce privacy, then you are part of the problem and that is why you are being watched.
Even now, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world tends to be amazed by the amount and accuracy of the information that Stasi had collected about East German citizens in order to assist their oppression by the regime. Yet still, appallingly, it also refuses to learn any lesson at the same time.
Your making one large assumption there, that face book is more important than a teenagers first website.
Just because it has millions of users doesn't make it important, that site is essentially a recording of all the teenage girl conversations on the planet...aka, the most worthless data ever.
In other words, Facebook is just another landfill of the Internet, not unlike Geocities were a decade ago. Once all the hype surrounding it disappears, it will slowly slide into irrelevance and eventually completely disappear. The history will once again repeat itself.
Facebook is for attention whores who want other people to know details about their lives. Its fucking retarded to talk about privacy when the whole point is giving out your information.
Exactly. Somebody might say "Don't blame the tool," but I say this particular tool seems to be designed to promote cretinous behavior. Take the "poke" feature, for example. For fuck sake.
I know of 1 person with a facebook profile who isn't an attention whore, and they use it just so they can spy on others.
No one with a facebook account has any room to bitch about privacy, those that do are just using a different method of attention whoring, either way the result is the same.
The solution is relatively simple. Population control. I've also yet to meet anyone with a Facebook account that is actually useful to the world, so the next step would be to use the facebook account list to terminate a large number of morons.
Heheh, I believe whoever modded you down as a troll recognized yourself in your description.
Well, I've seen many surprisingly intelligent people who fell for that shit. A friend of mine opened an account because "all the hot chicks from the accounting department are there too" (I don't think he managed to score yet). Many others did it because of peer pressure -- which makes them spineless fucks, no matter how nice and intelligent people they might be otherwise.
why does everything has to be black or white? Just be careful of what you write in profile (I only post when I want to drive traffic to some link), and don't friend people you don't/barely know. It is much safe to have a controlled profile than risking yourself to be subject of a fake profile.
The problem are not the tools, but how people use/misuse them. If you are smart enough you can make this service (or any other service) work fine without exposing yourself. It's not like they are watching you from a satellite and posting pics of you every 5 mins without your consent, they publish what YOU publish.
I mostly agree with you on this. However, I've got an impression that many features of Facebook have been specifically designed to encourage its users to disregard their and others' privacy.
Possibilities to surrender f(r)iends' email addresses or passwords to your own email accounts to Facebook are only some of the examples.
That first link was interesting to me, right till I read:
So how do we know when help is either selfish or unselfish? How can we be sure that Bono, Madonna, Al Gore and Bill Gates are just rich swindlers? If we're honestly interested in helping someone, we do this best by solving their problem. Pumping in more money from the West does not solve the poverty of the Third World. Bono Loves Himself. In fact, the Western aid actually serves to increase poverty, by keeping generations of starving children alive - children that natural selection otherwise would take care of. Thus the number of people growing up without food and water naturally increases, contributing to the chaos and infections that run wild in Africa right now.
Oh bravo! By saving the lives of children you contribute to the problem... so how to solve this? cull the population down to a more manageable size. Now there's a solution that's not been tried before!
I merely suggested the reading and never stated I fully agree with those articles.
But still, the fact is that all efforts to feed hungry people, in Africa and elsewhere, leave only even more hungry people. Obviously many of them insist on mindless breeding even while starving. How would you exactly address this problem humanely?
From an Irish Slashdotter, I think it's only fair to say. I apologise most unreservedly to the world for not flushing this floater when we had the chance.
Don't worry buddy, it's not your fault. Every nation has its black sheep and fuckups.
For those not aware what kind of a hypocritical scumbag Bono really is, here is some good reading:
Saab was badge-engineering well before GM got involved. They used Triumph Dolomite engines in the 99 and Ford V4 engines in the Sonatas, The Saab 600 was a Lancia Delta, and the 9000 a Fiat Croma/Type Four.
While it is true that Saab was badge-engineering before its GM era, let's put a couple of facts straight.
First of all, sharing engines is far from badge engineering. Badge engineering refers to the practice of selling otherwise identical cars under different badges. Apart from the Saab 600/Lancia Delta, Saab 9-2X and 9-7X, i cannot think of any other example. While the 9000 shares a lot of its DNA with Fiat Croma and Alfa Romeo 164, it is not the same car. The same goes for the current 9-3 and 9-3X.
There was certainly no Saab "Sonata", ever - I assume you meant Sonett. The Sonett never shared anything with any other make apart from the Ford V4 engine. The same goes for the 99 from the same period of time. Again, sharing engines is not badge engineering.
Apart from a few of the very early models, Saabs were, mechanically at least, generic eurocars.
And this is supposed to mean - what exactly? What is a "generic eurocar"?
This is very interesting and gives another dimension to the story. Indeed, cultural details should be taken into consideration before deploying such a service world wide.
Perhaps I shouldn't have called detractors of Google Street View "mental midgets", but I had heard much more stupid stories on this topic in the past, so therefore my reaction.
That stupid skank whore in New York got a court to force Google to give up the ID of someone who hurt her feelings and now everyone will use that precedent to do the same.
the google car is no worse then a pair of eyes walking down the street or one of the millions of camera's around the place.
Exactly! And for everybody half-reasonable, this is the beginning and the end of the whole story about Google Street View "invading privacy".
Right on. Because somebody walking down the street is the same as making lasting pictures and publishing on the internet.
Any ordinary citizen can do exactly the same thing -- take a picture of somebody making an ass of himself in public and make fun of him online later on. How is that exactly different?
The only practical difference I can see is that legally pursuing a corporation will bring you publicity, while taking Flickr user John Doe to court will not.
Please... Japanese value their privacy. (Well, some do anyway.) If republication of the photos has led to bullying, should Google share in the responsibility?
Again, there is no such thing as privacy in a public place. Google Street View is a very cool and useful service and I can't stand mental midgets opposing it for their anal retentive reasons.
How is that different than any other software you "buy?"
I can go pick up DVD containing Office 2007 but I don't own Office 2007. I own a nice piece of plastic and a license granting me use of the software.
The striking difference is that you will be able to continue using your copy of Office 2007 even after Microsoft goes titsup.
Now if Apple could just invent a docking station... so corporate users wouldn't have to plug in half a dozen cables every day. Of course you could go out an buy the Apple Monitor, which would eliminate 1 cable...
The only thing the war on drugs accomplishes is making criminals extremely wealthy.
I would add the hypocritical and corrupt government and justice to the list of those who profit on the war on drugs, but they are also criminals themselves, anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
If there is a privacy war it is a war of one. You know the chef is poisoning the soup but you find it too delicious to stop eating.
Cancel your cable. War won.
Not surprisingly, people who refuse to grow a spine are one of the biggest parts of the problem.
There is nothing you can do to preserve your privacy while remaining in society. Privacy is dead and gone. The best thing you can do is work for a company which gathers private information on the richest and most powerful. If you don't want to help reduce privacy, then you are part of the problem and that is why you are being watched.
Even now, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world tends to be amazed by the amount and accuracy of the information that Stasi had collected about East German citizens in order to assist their oppression by the regime. Yet still, appallingly, it also refuses to learn any lesson at the same time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsxxsrn2Tfs
Thank you. I will now accept that privacy is dead and gone and get over it, solely thanks to an anonymous douchebag and his pompous PPT slides.
does that mean you have no friends too? ;)
I don't, for instance. I only have people I hate slightly less then the others, but that isn't same as the widely accepted definition of "friends".
Saab has 34,000 employees and builds around 100,000 cars a year.
You are mistaken about the number of Saab employees by a whole order of magnitude.
Your making one large assumption there, that face book is more important than a teenagers first website.
Just because it has millions of users doesn't make it important, that site is essentially a recording of all the teenage girl conversations on the planet...aka, the most worthless data ever.
In other words, Facebook is just another landfill of the Internet, not unlike Geocities were a decade ago. Once all the hype surrounding it disappears, it will slowly slide into irrelevance and eventually completely disappear. The history will once again repeat itself.
Facebook is for attention whores who want other people to know details about their lives. Its fucking retarded to talk about privacy when the whole point is giving out your information.
Exactly. Somebody might say "Don't blame the tool," but I say this particular tool seems to be designed to promote cretinous behavior. Take the "poke" feature, for example. For fuck sake.
I know of 1 person with a facebook profile who isn't an attention whore, and they use it just so they can spy on others.
No one with a facebook account has any room to bitch about privacy, those that do are just using a different method of attention whoring, either way the result is the same.
The solution is relatively simple. Population control. I've also yet to meet anyone with a Facebook account that is actually useful to the world, so the next step would be to use the facebook account list to terminate a large number of morons.
Heheh, I believe whoever modded you down as a troll recognized yourself in your description.
Well, I've seen many surprisingly intelligent people who fell for that shit. A friend of mine opened an account because "all the hot chicks from the accounting department are there too" (I don't think he managed to score yet). Many others did it because of peer pressure -- which makes them spineless fucks, no matter how nice and intelligent people they might be otherwise.
why does everything has to be black or white? Just be careful of what you write in profile (I only post when I want to drive traffic to some link), and don't friend people you don't/barely know. It is much safe to have a controlled profile than risking yourself to be subject of a fake profile. The problem are not the tools, but how people use/misuse them. If you are smart enough you can make this service (or any other service) work fine without exposing yourself. It's not like they are watching you from a satellite and posting pics of you every 5 mins without your consent, they publish what YOU publish.
I mostly agree with you on this. However, I've got an impression that many features of Facebook have been specifically designed to encourage its users to disregard their and others' privacy.
Possibilities to surrender f(r)iends' email addresses or passwords to your own email accounts to Facebook are only some of the examples.
Very well written. I fail to understand why is your post modded as "funny" at this moment, though.
That first link was interesting to me, right till I read:
Oh bravo! By saving the lives of children you contribute to the problem... so how to solve this? cull the population down to a more manageable size. Now there's a solution that's not been tried before!
I merely suggested the reading and never stated I fully agree with those articles.
But still, the fact is that all efforts to feed hungry people, in Africa and elsewhere, leave only even more hungry people. Obviously many of them insist on mindless breeding even while starving. How would you exactly address this problem humanely?
From an Irish Slashdotter, I think it's only fair to say. I apologise most unreservedly to the world for not flushing this floater when we had the chance.
Don't worry buddy, it's not your fault. Every nation has its black sheep and fuckups.
For those not aware what kind of a hypocritical scumbag Bono really is, here is some good reading:
Jesus Loves U 2
Philanthropy and hypocrisy
What makes Mercola an überquack?
Excellent post!
It's GPL! If you like it that much, just fork it and the community will... wait, oh, I see. Sorry, never mind.
Now, applying some relatively recent trends in IT to the automotive industry might not be a bad idea at all, actually. :)
Gad. I hated the Saabarus and what GM did.
Why?
Saab was badge-engineering well before GM got involved. They used Triumph Dolomite engines in the 99 and Ford V4 engines in the Sonatas, The Saab 600 was a Lancia Delta, and the 9000 a Fiat Croma/Type Four.
While it is true that Saab was badge-engineering before its GM era, let's put a couple of facts straight.
First of all, sharing engines is far from badge engineering. Badge engineering refers to the practice of selling otherwise identical cars under different badges. Apart from the Saab 600/Lancia Delta, Saab 9-2X and 9-7X, i cannot think of any other example. While the 9000 shares a lot of its DNA with Fiat Croma and Alfa Romeo 164, it is not the same car. The same goes for the current 9-3 and 9-3X.
There was certainly no Saab "Sonata", ever - I assume you meant Sonett. The Sonett never shared anything with any other make apart from the Ford V4 engine. The same goes for the 99 from the same period of time. Again, sharing engines is not badge engineering.
Apart from a few of the very early models, Saabs were, mechanically at least, generic eurocars.
And this is supposed to mean - what exactly? What is a "generic eurocar"?
And if is a bank's responsibility, are they going to go into my PC to fix it?
Here in Luxembourg, some banks actually force you to have an insecure PC. So yes, in that case they should take responsibility if it gets broken into.
Any details?
This is very interesting and gives another dimension to the story. Indeed, cultural details should be taken into consideration before deploying such a service world wide.
Perhaps I shouldn't have called detractors of Google Street View "mental midgets", but I had heard much more stupid stories on this topic in the past, so therefore my reaction.
You must be new here.
Thanks.
Or, judging by your name, I just fed a troll.
I merely politely asked for more information. Chill out.
That stupid skank whore in New York got a court to force Google to give up the ID of someone who hurt her feelings and now everyone will use that precedent to do the same.
LK
Any details? Where is the story?
the google car is no worse then a pair of eyes walking down the street or one of the millions of camera's around the place.
Exactly! And for everybody half-reasonable, this is the beginning and the end of the whole story about Google Street View "invading privacy".
Right on. Because somebody walking down the street is the same as making lasting pictures and publishing on the internet.
Any ordinary citizen can do exactly the same thing -- take a picture of somebody making an ass of himself in public and make fun of him online later on. How is that exactly different?
The only practical difference I can see is that legally pursuing a corporation will bring you publicity, while taking Flickr user John Doe to court will not.
the google car is no worse then a pair of eyes walking down the street or one of the millions of camera's around the place.
Exactly! And for everybody half-reasonable, this is the beginning and the end of the whole story about Google Street View "invading privacy".
Please ... Japanese value their privacy. (Well, some do anyway.) If republication of the photos has led to bullying, should Google share in the responsibility?
Again, there is no such thing as privacy in a public place. Google Street View is a very cool and useful service and I can't stand mental midgets opposing it for their anal retentive reasons.
It's not your software. It's their software.
How is that different than any other software you "buy?" I can go pick up DVD containing Office 2007 but I don't own Office 2007. I own a nice piece of plastic and a license granting me use of the software.
The striking difference is that you will be able to continue using your copy of Office 2007 even after Microsoft goes titsup.
I've seen lots of links and stories about the kid in Paris who got glass in his eye, and apparently he won't turn over the iPod for testing.
Why would he surrender the evidence to Apple? So that they can conveniently destroy it?
Apple says they're aware of fewer than ten incidents, and that these all seem to be caused by "external force", not battery issues.
Apple says. Excuse me if I prefer listening to a less biased source.
Now if Apple could just invent a docking station... so corporate users wouldn't have to plug in half a dozen cables every day. Of course you could go out an buy the Apple Monitor, which would eliminate 1 cable...
Is this what you are looking for? :>
The only thing the war on drugs accomplishes is making criminals extremely wealthy.
I would add the hypocritical and corrupt government and justice to the list of those who profit on the war on drugs, but they are also criminals themselves, anyway.
Otherwise, very well written. Mod up.