"Mr. Matheson has agreed to plead to a non-criminal code regulatory offense under the Customs Act of Canada."
Hey look buddy, we know you're going to sue the pants off of us if we don't nail you with something, so our lawyers found this obscure section of the customs code that is really vague and could nail anyone, because heh, that's what it's there for, and anyway, yeah... you're guilty, and your sentence is, er, nothing. But the important thing here is that justice was served: Namely, We Got Our Man(tm). Er, sorry about ruining your life dude... sorta. Okay, not really. Heh heh, eh? Now if you'll excuse us, we have to go watch videos of ourselves beating the crap out of a bunch of illegal immigrants as part of some 'sensitivity training'. It's mandatory, and so the boss made it BYOB. Man this job sucks... they don't pay for the beer. My last law enforcement job paid for the beer... oh.. crap... is this thing still recording?
There will be people who will find the inconvenience enough incentive to get their insurance which is exactly the goal.
Of course, this neatly side-steps the issue of mandating drivers give money to private organizations that have huge profit margins every quarter, can deny a claim on a whim and have an inpenetrable bureauacracy within which appeals against said whims can prevail. One might argue it is unethical to pay drivers to pay arbitrary amounts of money based on age, sex, style of house they live in, occupation, etc., -- none of which are related to their driving ability or condition of vehicle, which are the only two things that influence a person's risk of accident (what insurance is supposed to protect against).
Maybe geeks do what most people should do when they see a stupid law: Ignore it. This should be celebrated, not condemned as anti-social or subversive. Especially when something as unethical as this is being foisted upon the populace.
Manufacturing paper is incredibly messy business, with a huge carbon footprint.
It's rather small compared to the carbon footprint created by having children. Just sayin'.
Recycling paper is a good step in the right direction, but it still pales in comparison to unprinting.
Yes, but your technique depends on prestine, unfolded, or slightly folded paper. Current recycling technologies can be used where you just dump the paper in a large vat, add water and microbes, and stir. It may not be as glorious and technologically sophisticated, but it has the benefit of being almost ridiculously simple. Also... as a method of mass recycling, it's probably more efficient: Less electricity is needed to stir a large vat of paper goo than to zap it a few thousand times with a laser.
I would bet that if you compared the carbon foot print of "Laser the sh*t out of it" with "Stuff it in a vat and let the microbes have a party", the current technology would win... it doesn't need much (if any) electricity.
This just in: Companies in a recessionary economy are cheap.
Guys, seriously. Nobody wants to spend money on an employee they aren't likely to have around in a year or two anyway; and even if they did, it's easier just to phone HR and say "Hey, I need a dozen people with xyzzy skill." "derp derp derp" "Okay then! I'll see them on monday." The idea of the company taking care of you died in about, er... the 1950s. Deal with it.
Yes, well... we're free in the same way china is a democracy: It's in the name, it's not what we do. In the "land of the free", everything needs to have an owner and a price. There is no public and there is no free; Even your rights can be sold. Just sign here on the dotted line and we'll give you 15% off on your car insurance.
I guess I'm old fashioned when I say that one should only kill another animal if it is wounded and will die (mercy killing), if it has been wounded and will not heal well enough to serve it's job (ie, a gimp horse), or for food. Now we have people running around with cameras on their guns proving how manly they are killing creatures for their own pleasure. How utterly wasteful...
Why does he feel he has the right to vandalize stuff and disobey the laws?
He doesn't have the right. He has a duty to do so -- these cameras are against the public interest. They increase the accident rate, the seriousness of accidents in the areas they monitor. If safety were a concern, longer yellow lights have a far greater impact on both pedestrian and vehicular safety.
The quantity of time and energy these guys spend suing each other is staggering.
Yeah. It's shocking anyone still tries to launch a dot com startup in this country. And the vote of no confidence in ICANN is another nail in the coffin of US dominance of the internet. It's very quickly becoming a bit player thanks to its short-sighted public policies. I know of several friends of mine that are working on some interesting IT projects that could get them some venture funding; I've helped all of them prepare passports and a list of investment firms that do not share this country's zest for fucking itself with a 6 foot long hot poker while singing Pink Floyd's "Money".
Just out of curiousity, how many of these phones were able to actually send/receive calls, and (most importantly) -- did they have a phone book entry titled "Mom". Because whenever I find a lost phone, that's the number I call. People are generally honest -- contrary to what this study suggests. If the number is that low, it's probably something wrong with the methodology; ie, a cell phone left at a restaurant has a lot higher chance of making it back to its owner than being left sitting at a bus station. A test like this should try to accurately reproduce where someone would leave their phone, otherwise the stats gathered aren't very interesting.
When it's past the statute of limitations, speaking details is still stupid to reveal, but technique is not. If information can keep a curious kid from getting ass raped by the system, that is a good thing.
A good observation unfortunately lost to this crowd. They all imagine themselves to be capable of being criminal masterminds, and think that it's only "stupid" people that get caught, and other self-deluding beliefs. And in either event, nobody seems to have noticed that I pointed out the person in question here did, in fact, get busted. Guilty. Convicted. There's no reason left to lie, and given that I have met this person in real life, at a real police station, with real suspects, and seen real evidence sitting on his very real desk, all the admonishments of the wannabe intellectual crowd here on slashdot means nothing to me. They're too into themselves to realize that most criminal activity doesn't happen for the reasons they think it does. I've talked to this person's coworkers; They just as often feel bad for the person they're dragging in for questioning as not -- not because they think he's innocent, but because they can understand why he did what they're charging him with. But a crime is a crime, you know... and everybody has a story. It doesn't change the fact they have a job to do, and the reasons for doing it really just do not matter.
That's all I wanted to point out about the lulzsec members: There's probably a story here that's quite different than what's known or being published. Only very rarely does the media get the full story at the time of arrest. Hell, even after a conviction, there's usually a lot of unanswered questions. If they've managed to stay ahead of law enforcement for this long, there's a reason for that even if we don't know it. And there's a reason they're being brought in now too, and I'm pretty sure we don't know that reason either. But... I can offer my experience and knowledge here and suggest that, whatever lulzsec was publicly, privately there was probably organized criminal activity that was creating profit for someone... and these arrests are probably just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Doing it "for the lulz" has got to be one of the stupidest reasons for organized crime I've ever heard and I'm really disappointed anyone here believes that.
Their surveilance didn't pick up on the weird stuff he was doing, rigging equipment to print his intitials, but would have noticed if he'd put a letter in the post? WTF?
So how would you get a message to the authorities, had you been in his situation? I eagerly await your response, knowing full well you'd have to do the same thing.
A bit of time ago, I met a man who was very good at computer and physical security. He works now as a consultant for a local law enforcement agency; They bring him in for high tech crimes that are beyond their resources to crack. I know I'm being a bit short on details here, but bear with me. Anyway, he became a consultant because in his earlier life, he had gotten into some financial hardship and made a couple poor judgement calls, as seems to happen so often to otherwise highly intelligent people. Well, part of that contract was that he had to work for some unsavory folk helping them bypass security. That group of individuals then graduated from protection racket and simple ID theft to clearing out a dozen floors of a skyscraper under cover of darkness.
The police didn't know what to do, and they didn't make it public because the enormity of the crime would have rocked the downtown financial district. Now my friend didn't want to be doing this forever, but he was rather stuck -- because now that the crimes were done, he was a liability, but at the same time, an asset to the organization he worked for. He knew it was only a matter of time before the liability side of the equation exceeded his usefulness and they ended him.
So he did what anyone would do: He asked for help. Not straight out. Not directly, because he was under surveillance all the time by his "friends". So he started leaving clues. Misplaced equipment that would, say, print out his initials over and over again when found later at the crime scene. Subtle things. But enough that law enforcement got the idea that someone was trying to say "help me get out."
Eventually, without his testimony being needed, they were able to piece together the bread crumb trail and nail the entire criminal organization in one sweep. He had to do time of course, but after only a year or so, they let him out on a very generous probation on one condition: Help them solve other crimes too complex for them to deal with.
Now there was no movie ever made about this guy, no book deals, nothing. But he's not the first, he surely won't be the last, and I think it would behoove you people to consider that these people might have wanted to get caught. Sometimes people just get tired. Sometimes they have a change of heart. Sometimes they find out that it was all fun and games until they found out who was writing the paycheck. These "security researchers" are more than likely ex-members of similar organizations that are doing the same thing for the lulzsec people that someone else once did for them: Extradite them from a situation they've gotten too far into.
So people, just remember: You may have their names. It's almost assured you do not have their story.
They sometimes ask you for your phone number to prevent account abuse. This is completely different from what you said.
Yes. I said they require a phone number to setup an account. Which they do. It's exactly what I said. There is no "sometimes"; Go ahead. Setup a brand new account right now. Go on. Do it. Let me know when you get to the part where it doesn't ask for the phone number. Oh yeah... you don't ever get that bit.
Apple is not making any claims on patents on the general idea of a tablet. They asserting design patents on specific design elements.
Translation: Now I'm not saying Apple patented the idea of the tablet, but Apple patented the idea of the tablet. They're burying the competition in a sea of lawsuits claiming that they invented every design element of the tablet computer is pretty much the same thing... we're arguing over semantics. There is not a single manufacturer of tablets that hasn't been sued by Apple.
Google seem to go out of its ways to pissed of long time customers.
Truth. I've been setting up to quit every google product ever since they instituted this new "privacy" policy where you have to give up your real name, phone number, and bunches of other personal info, and then they cram 'Plus' down their subscribers throats and all that product does is beg for still more personal info. Add to that the tracking of every search ever done being stored forever, as well as every result a subscriber clicks on, along with working to actively bypass every privacy block on every major web browser: Which they did simultaniously about a month ago now, and I can safely say: Google is evil.
They might have started off with a solid product offering, a set of ethical corporate officers, and an unambiguous policy of doing right by the customer, but like all corporations that 'go public', they've inevitably slid into the 'f*ck them for all they're worth' school of management. I mean, when I have to install a special browser and then connect it to the Tor network, the same network used to provide internet users a measure of freedom from censorship in oppressive regimes, before I even feel comfortable connecting to your server... you've done f*cked up.:(
But what happens after a month when those computers have their OS reinstalled - with Linux or a commercial UNIX, or even, zOS if need be, and the data you've deleted has been restored from backup CDs
Most businesses don't have disaster recovery plans. And those that do, like mine, haven't given much thought to the timetable on a full restore of all IT resources from nothingness. The one I'm working for right now has a 4 year plan for rolling out Windows 7 that started last month. In other words, they started the rollout late, and they'll be deploying outdated tech well past the point when the next version comes out. This just loading the operating system... consider all the other IT resources that would need to be rebuilt.
On to data backup and restore functionality: All the backups are stored on NAS devices that are always connected. There is no offline backup. They don't use tapes, optical media, or any of that jazz. And most of those backups are located on-site, adding insult to injury. It's taking them 4 years to roll out an operating system remotely, the process is largely manual, riddled with errors, and each system requires, on average, 3 hours of support resources to complete the upgrade.
Without getting into details, this is a Fortune 100 company, and because of the nature of its business is required by law to have stringent backup policies as well as data protection. The state of the art encryption and data protections can all be catastrophically bypassed by design using a 4 digit PIN. the 4 digit pin... is the last 4 digits of the user's SSN. The first and last name, as well as geolocation information, is in active directory, which even the 'guest' account can access. Every person who works support, from phone to desktop, network to deployment, as local admin rights to every workstation in the company. Do the math. Then cry.
...that's going to change the way consumers think about pictures.
You're overestimating the average consumer: You believe they think prior to taking a picture. Having gone through enough cell phones left abandoned and dropped off at the lost in found before finally pressing 'm' in the phone book and calling their mom to say they lost their phone at my workplace... I can say with a fair degree of confidence most people take pictures of themselves, themselves with friends, more pictures of themselves and... (guys only)... pictures of inanimate objects that they never share or send to anyone. Ever. They're usually things like sign posts, car wheels (not actual cars, this would be too obvious), or random corners of buildings. From this, I can deduce that no actual thinking occurs for at least 95% of your everyday consumer's use of a camera.
Source? According to the Human Rights Council's website, the US and China are both current members.
Er, currently yes. Not in the past. Apparently the US pulled all of its funding for the UN after that fiasco, and they had little choice but to give the seat back, despite an unwillingness by the US to address any of the concerns. Basically, the US would have been booted out of most of the UN counsels because of its atrocious domestic and foreign policies, except it's sort of that rich uncle everyone sucks up to.... so they tolerate said rich uncle routinely making an ass of himself.
are you seriously arguing that China has a better record on human rights than the US?
Per capita? Yes. The majority of Chinese citizens will not personally know someone taken by the police and put in jail. The average american has a friend or family member in jail right now. Especially since their governmental reform program during the 80s. The Chinese government isn't much seen in the daily lives of its citizens, and have less to fear from their government; There's a lot less government per person in China than here, and entire towns can go years without having a "fed" drop in.
While the Chinese government may be ideologically less supportive of civil rights, by virtue of there being less government to go around, they come out ahead.
Slashdot Mirror
"Mr. Matheson has agreed to plead to a non-criminal code regulatory offense under the Customs Act of Canada."
Hey look buddy, we know you're going to sue the pants off of us if we don't nail you with something, so our lawyers found this obscure section of the customs code that is really vague and could nail anyone, because heh, that's what it's there for, and anyway, yeah... you're guilty, and your sentence is, er, nothing. But the important thing here is that justice was served: Namely, We Got Our Man(tm). Er, sorry about ruining your life dude... sorta. Okay, not really. Heh heh, eh? Now if you'll excuse us, we have to go watch videos of ourselves beating the crap out of a bunch of illegal immigrants as part of some 'sensitivity training'. It's mandatory, and so the boss made it BYOB. Man this job sucks... they don't pay for the beer. My last law enforcement job paid for the beer... oh .. crap... is this thing still recording?
There will be people who will find the inconvenience enough incentive to get their insurance which is exactly the goal.
Of course, this neatly side-steps the issue of mandating drivers give money to private organizations that have huge profit margins every quarter, can deny a claim on a whim and have an inpenetrable bureauacracy within which appeals against said whims can prevail. One might argue it is unethical to pay drivers to pay arbitrary amounts of money based on age, sex, style of house they live in, occupation, etc., -- none of which are related to their driving ability or condition of vehicle, which are the only two things that influence a person's risk of accident (what insurance is supposed to protect against).
Maybe geeks do what most people should do when they see a stupid law: Ignore it. This should be celebrated, not condemned as anti-social or subversive. Especially when something as unethical as this is being foisted upon the populace.
I would also bet you can' look at anything but the most simplest of diagrams without getting a head ache.
I followed the one with the word douchebag and an arrow pointing at a picture of you pretty well....
Manufacturing paper is incredibly messy business, with a huge carbon footprint.
It's rather small compared to the carbon footprint created by having children. Just sayin'.
Recycling paper is a good step in the right direction, but it still pales in comparison to unprinting.
Yes, but your technique depends on prestine, unfolded, or slightly folded paper. Current recycling technologies can be used where you just dump the paper in a large vat, add water and microbes, and stir. It may not be as glorious and technologically sophisticated, but it has the benefit of being almost ridiculously simple. Also... as a method of mass recycling, it's probably more efficient: Less electricity is needed to stir a large vat of paper goo than to zap it a few thousand times with a laser.
I would bet that if you compared the carbon foot print of "Laser the sh*t out of it" with "Stuff it in a vat and let the microbes have a party", the current technology would win... it doesn't need much (if any) electricity.
I think you missed the entire point of the article/summary.
Or maybe I was reinforcing it... Of course, I can see how on an internet forum the two can be easily confused, given the total absence of a SNARK tag.
Guys, seriously. Nobody wants to spend money on an employee they aren't likely to have around in a year or two anyway; and even if they did, it's easier just to phone HR and say "Hey, I need a dozen people with xyzzy skill." "derp derp derp" "Okay then! I'll see them on monday." The idea of the company taking care of you died in about, er... the 1950s. Deal with it.
Yep, leaders of the free world we are.
Yes, well... we're free in the same way china is a democracy: It's in the name, it's not what we do. In the "land of the free", everything needs to have an owner and a price. There is no public and there is no free; Even your rights can be sold. Just sign here on the dotted line and we'll give you 15% off on your car insurance.
I guess I'm old fashioned when I say that one should only kill another animal if it is wounded and will die (mercy killing), if it has been wounded and will not heal well enough to serve it's job (ie, a gimp horse), or for food. Now we have people running around with cameras on their guns proving how manly they are killing creatures for their own pleasure. How utterly wasteful...
Why does he feel he has the right to vandalize stuff and disobey the laws?
He doesn't have the right. He has a duty to do so -- these cameras are against the public interest. They increase the accident rate, the seriousness of accidents in the areas they monitor. If safety were a concern, longer yellow lights have a far greater impact on both pedestrian and vehicular safety.
The quantity of time and energy these guys spend suing each other is staggering.
Yeah. It's shocking anyone still tries to launch a dot com startup in this country. And the vote of no confidence in ICANN is another nail in the coffin of US dominance of the internet. It's very quickly becoming a bit player thanks to its short-sighted public policies. I know of several friends of mine that are working on some interesting IT projects that could get them some venture funding; I've helped all of them prepare passports and a list of investment firms that do not share this country's zest for fucking itself with a 6 foot long hot poker while singing Pink Floyd's "Money".
Just out of curiousity, how many of these phones were able to actually send/receive calls, and (most importantly) -- did they have a phone book entry titled "Mom". Because whenever I find a lost phone, that's the number I call. People are generally honest -- contrary to what this study suggests. If the number is that low, it's probably something wrong with the methodology; ie, a cell phone left at a restaurant has a lot higher chance of making it back to its owner than being left sitting at a bus station. A test like this should try to accurately reproduce where someone would leave their phone, otherwise the stats gathered aren't very interesting.
When it's past the statute of limitations, speaking details is still stupid to reveal, but technique is not. If information can keep a curious kid from getting ass raped by the system, that is a good thing.
A good observation unfortunately lost to this crowd. They all imagine themselves to be capable of being criminal masterminds, and think that it's only "stupid" people that get caught, and other self-deluding beliefs. And in either event, nobody seems to have noticed that I pointed out the person in question here did, in fact, get busted. Guilty. Convicted. There's no reason left to lie, and given that I have met this person in real life, at a real police station, with real suspects, and seen real evidence sitting on his very real desk, all the admonishments of the wannabe intellectual crowd here on slashdot means nothing to me. They're too into themselves to realize that most criminal activity doesn't happen for the reasons they think it does. I've talked to this person's coworkers; They just as often feel bad for the person they're dragging in for questioning as not -- not because they think he's innocent, but because they can understand why he did what they're charging him with. But a crime is a crime, you know... and everybody has a story. It doesn't change the fact they have a job to do, and the reasons for doing it really just do not matter.
That's all I wanted to point out about the lulzsec members: There's probably a story here that's quite different than what's known or being published. Only very rarely does the media get the full story at the time of arrest. Hell, even after a conviction, there's usually a lot of unanswered questions. If they've managed to stay ahead of law enforcement for this long, there's a reason for that even if we don't know it. And there's a reason they're being brought in now too, and I'm pretty sure we don't know that reason either. But... I can offer my experience and knowledge here and suggest that, whatever lulzsec was publicly, privately there was probably organized criminal activity that was creating profit for someone... and these arrests are probably just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Doing it "for the lulz" has got to be one of the stupidest reasons for organized crime I've ever heard and I'm really disappointed anyone here believes that.
Their surveilance didn't pick up on the weird stuff he was doing, rigging equipment to print his intitials, but would have noticed if he'd put a letter in the post? WTF?
So how would you get a message to the authorities, had you been in his situation? I eagerly await your response, knowing full well you'd have to do the same thing.
A bit of time ago, I met a man who was very good at computer and physical security. He works now as a consultant for a local law enforcement agency; They bring him in for high tech crimes that are beyond their resources to crack. I know I'm being a bit short on details here, but bear with me. Anyway, he became a consultant because in his earlier life, he had gotten into some financial hardship and made a couple poor judgement calls, as seems to happen so often to otherwise highly intelligent people. Well, part of that contract was that he had to work for some unsavory folk helping them bypass security. That group of individuals then graduated from protection racket and simple ID theft to clearing out a dozen floors of a skyscraper under cover of darkness.
The police didn't know what to do, and they didn't make it public because the enormity of the crime would have rocked the downtown financial district. Now my friend didn't want to be doing this forever, but he was rather stuck -- because now that the crimes were done, he was a liability, but at the same time, an asset to the organization he worked for. He knew it was only a matter of time before the liability side of the equation exceeded his usefulness and they ended him.
So he did what anyone would do: He asked for help. Not straight out. Not directly, because he was under surveillance all the time by his "friends". So he started leaving clues. Misplaced equipment that would, say, print out his initials over and over again when found later at the crime scene. Subtle things. But enough that law enforcement got the idea that someone was trying to say "help me get out."
Eventually, without his testimony being needed, they were able to piece together the bread crumb trail and nail the entire criminal organization in one sweep. He had to do time of course, but after only a year or so, they let him out on a very generous probation on one condition: Help them solve other crimes too complex for them to deal with.
Now there was no movie ever made about this guy, no book deals, nothing. But he's not the first, he surely won't be the last, and I think it would behoove you people to consider that these people might have wanted to get caught. Sometimes people just get tired. Sometimes they have a change of heart. Sometimes they find out that it was all fun and games until they found out who was writing the paycheck. These "security researchers" are more than likely ex-members of similar organizations that are doing the same thing for the lulzsec people that someone else once did for them: Extradite them from a situation they've gotten too far into.
So people, just remember: You may have their names. It's almost assured you do not have their story.
They sometimes ask you for your phone number to prevent account abuse. This is completely different from what you said.
Yes. I said they require a phone number to setup an account. Which they do. It's exactly what I said. There is no "sometimes"; Go ahead. Setup a brand new account right now. Go on. Do it. Let me know when you get to the part where it doesn't ask for the phone number. Oh yeah... you don't ever get that bit.
If you believe any of what you just said you're illiterate or trusted the wrong source.
And if you posted that, you're both condescending AND a f*cking prick. Three words: Real Name Policy. I rest my case.
Apple is not making any claims on patents on the general idea of a tablet. They asserting design patents on specific design elements.
Translation: Now I'm not saying Apple patented the idea of the tablet, but Apple patented the idea of the tablet. They're burying the competition in a sea of lawsuits claiming that they invented every design element of the tablet computer is pretty much the same thing... we're arguing over semantics. There is not a single manufacturer of tablets that hasn't been sued by Apple.
Google forcing you to give your phone number is a lie.
From the Anonymous Coward's Dictionary:
Lie, def.: True
Since discovering the verbatim feature for Google, the search works once more. Most of my searches are now done with it enabled.
"...And we appreciate your continued use of our product after our amended privacy policy became active, John Anderson of 3920 West 182nd St."
Google seem to go out of its ways to pissed of long time customers.
Truth. I've been setting up to quit every google product ever since they instituted this new "privacy" policy where you have to give up your real name, phone number, and bunches of other personal info, and then they cram 'Plus' down their subscribers throats and all that product does is beg for still more personal info. Add to that the tracking of every search ever done being stored forever, as well as every result a subscriber clicks on, along with working to actively bypass every privacy block on every major web browser: Which they did simultaniously about a month ago now, and I can safely say: Google is evil.
:(
They might have started off with a solid product offering, a set of ethical corporate officers, and an unambiguous policy of doing right by the customer, but like all corporations that 'go public', they've inevitably slid into the 'f*ck them for all they're worth' school of management. I mean, when I have to install a special browser and then connect it to the Tor network, the same network used to provide internet users a measure of freedom from censorship in oppressive regimes, before I even feel comfortable connecting to your server... you've done f*cked up.
Goodbye Google.
But what happens after a month when those computers have their OS reinstalled - with Linux or a commercial UNIX, or even, zOS if need be, and the data you've deleted has been restored from backup CDs
Most businesses don't have disaster recovery plans. And those that do, like mine, haven't given much thought to the timetable on a full restore of all IT resources from nothingness. The one I'm working for right now has a 4 year plan for rolling out Windows 7 that started last month. In other words, they started the rollout late, and they'll be deploying outdated tech well past the point when the next version comes out. This just loading the operating system... consider all the other IT resources that would need to be rebuilt.
On to data backup and restore functionality: All the backups are stored on NAS devices that are always connected. There is no offline backup. They don't use tapes, optical media, or any of that jazz. And most of those backups are located on-site, adding insult to injury. It's taking them 4 years to roll out an operating system remotely, the process is largely manual, riddled with errors, and each system requires, on average, 3 hours of support resources to complete the upgrade.
Without getting into details, this is a Fortune 100 company, and because of the nature of its business is required by law to have stringent backup policies as well as data protection. The state of the art encryption and data protections can all be catastrophically bypassed by design using a 4 digit PIN. the 4 digit pin... is the last 4 digits of the user's SSN. The first and last name, as well as geolocation information, is in active directory, which even the 'guest' account can access. Every person who works support, from phone to desktop, network to deployment, as local admin rights to every workstation in the company. Do the math. Then cry.
This... is typical for most large businesses.
Occupying the...
Pitching tents in front of websites and smoking crack.com is no way to go through life, son.
...that's going to change the way consumers think about pictures.
You're overestimating the average consumer: You believe they think prior to taking a picture. Having gone through enough cell phones left abandoned and dropped off at the lost in found before finally pressing 'm' in the phone book and calling their mom to say they lost their phone at my workplace... I can say with a fair degree of confidence most people take pictures of themselves, themselves with friends, more pictures of themselves and... (guys only)... pictures of inanimate objects that they never share or send to anyone. Ever. They're usually things like sign posts, car wheels (not actual cars, this would be too obvious), or random corners of buildings. From this, I can deduce that no actual thinking occurs for at least 95% of your everyday consumer's use of a camera.
Source? According to the Human Rights Council's website, the US and China are both current members.
Er, currently yes. Not in the past. Apparently the US pulled all of its funding for the UN after that fiasco, and they had little choice but to give the seat back, despite an unwillingness by the US to address any of the concerns. Basically, the US would have been booted out of most of the UN counsels because of its atrocious domestic and foreign policies, except it's sort of that rich uncle everyone sucks up to.... so they tolerate said rich uncle routinely making an ass of himself.
are you seriously arguing that China has a better record on human rights than the US?
Per capita? Yes. The majority of Chinese citizens will not personally know someone taken by the police and put in jail. The average american has a friend or family member in jail right now. Especially since their governmental reform program during the 80s. The Chinese government isn't much seen in the daily lives of its citizens, and have less to fear from their government; There's a lot less government per person in China than here, and entire towns can go years without having a "fed" drop in.
While the Chinese government may be ideologically less supportive of civil rights, by virtue of there being less government to go around, they come out ahead.
nor would it be remotely relevant to a discussion of German law today.
Those who do not remember history are doomed to post slashdot comments about it.