1. There is a fundamental distinction, in American law, between the minor and the adult. The adult is able to vote, purchase controlled substances, join the military, etc. The minor is denied these rights, to the point of having no legal rights at all (save basic human rights). The basic premise of the distinction between young and old is that the young are not experienced enough or mature enough to make rational, informed decisions. Your WAVE project relies on youths to categorize behavioral patterns of their peers; to decide who is stable and who is "at risk." How do you, as a corporate entity, propose to utilize the reasoning power of a segment of society that is legally defined as having no decision-making capacity?
2. Given that there is no way to guarantee the security and/or the integrity of any stored information, what recompensations is Pinkerton Corp prepared to make to those damaged *WHEN* your database is penetrated, copied, and disseminated across the 'Net? It may not happen this year, or next year, but I can envision a future political race greatly impacted by the "discovery" of a twenty-year-old database entry declaring a candidate to be "troubled" or "at risk". Conspiracy: Or is this Pinkerton's long-sighted goal: The slow manipulation of America's future political candidates by database tagging and referencing (rather like time-delay blackmail)?/Conspiracy
Tonight I spoke with a sales rep at (888-564-6762) regarding liability for late payments (if they pay your bill late, they'll pay the late fee), and mentioned that I was calling because of the Slashdot article. I had to explain Slashdot to her, but she said they were experiencing extremely high call-volume and webhits tonight ---and nobody knew why.
I wonder if PayMyBills.com will add a 'We've been Slashdotted' button to their site?:)
My suggestion to Chris DiBona: If indeed there is a rally tomorrow at the Santa Clara Courthouse, print the sourcecode for DeCSS on a few thousand flyers and hand them out. (Gotta love that First Amendment!) --unx
This is completely and totally legal, and ethical. It's my computer(s), so I'm gonna know everything there is to know about it, from your logon/off times to a spread of your most commonly accessed webpages from that machine.
[Seriously guys, what kind of moron looks at porn from work? The kind that needs to be *fired*!]
If I were in this guy's position, I would take a gentle, fascist approach. Since the Company wants to know what's on the Company's computers, and all employees of the Company are part of the Company, all employees should know the results of porn-sweeps.
Create a public message board, in a main breakroom or hallway, and post the results, sorted by name, of potentially offensive emails and files stored in all employees' work systems and mailboxes.
[Now, if the HR people *happen* to get subscribed to the Naked Amputee Chat mailing list, wouldn't that serve 'em right?]
Heck, once this plan goes into effect, broaden your power! Bug all phone-lines and Icecast them! Monitor everyone, and broadcast it on the local lan! Webcams in every office! In the restrooms! (That way you can find out who's been leaving that horrible noxious vapor after lunch...) Infrared those cameras so that everyone can see who's been farting in the hallways, and who gets aroused around the secretaries! PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW THESE THINGS! Contract some ex-NSA spooks to follow all employees home! Force your hired spooks to sleep under your employees' beds, in case they talk in their sleep!
Check out the Packeteer PacketShaper. (www.packeteer.com). I've used this product before, and it's well worth the cash you pay for it.
I don't know what kind of budget you have, but considering that you are planning on implementing this in a business, I highly suggest you go with a hardware solution. As I don't work for Packeteer, I suggest you call their sales staff for more info.
Something I've mentioned before (I think) is an idea I've had regarding copyrighting your personal information.
Why not?
It's obvious that your personal information (age, sex, race, shopping preferences) is worth a lot of money. Consider how many companies pay big bucks to other companies to get that information. Consider how desperate many companies are to get that information; so desperate, in fact, that they are willing to bribe you with t-shirts and tech support.
The current information service industry makes money by selling information collated from data they gather from various sources.
Why not gather every scrap of information about yourself into a searchable database (your brain, maybe?), and then charge companies for the use of that data?
Copyright yourself, or at least the data fingerprint you leave upon the world. If the software industry can make much ado about little 1s and 0s being copyrightable, surely your personality can be copyrightable. And wouldn't it make you feel a lot better to know that every time your name passed through a database in some obscure system, you made a few cents, and if the bad ole NSI sells that information about you without your consent, well... they could meet with Mr. Copyright Infringement suit. Or pay you royalties...
Neat.. if at least the 737 people who answered "yes" to the poll return their copiefs of windows, and they all get at least $50, (could be more!), that's almost $37,000 that Microsoft loses in one day! Not much, but still rather satisfying.:)
As a matter of fact, there's quite a large group of Linux users in the North Alabama area. We host LUNA Lunches every few weeks, and have InstallFests every other month. At the last Fest, we had well over 50 people show up! (Not sure of the exact max; I was working). There are quite a few more than that subscribed to our mailing list, and some of our more distant members are trying to create Middle and North-Western Users Groups as well. If you're within driving distance and interested in attending the next Fest, or you'd just like more information, check out our page at: http://luna.huntsville.al.us/ .
Slashdot Mirror
I have two questions of Pinkerton Corp:
/Conspiracy
1. There is a fundamental distinction, in American law, between the minor and the adult. The adult is able to vote, purchase controlled substances, join the military, etc. The minor is denied these rights, to the point of having no legal rights at all (save basic human rights). The basic premise of the distinction between young and old is that the young are not experienced enough or mature enough to make rational, informed decisions.
Your WAVE project relies on youths to categorize behavioral patterns of their peers; to decide who is stable and who is "at risk."
How do you, as a corporate entity, propose to utilize the reasoning power of a segment of society that is legally defined as having no decision-making capacity?
2. Given that there is no way to guarantee the security and/or the integrity of any stored information, what recompensations is Pinkerton Corp prepared to make to those damaged *WHEN* your database is penetrated, copied, and disseminated across the 'Net?
It may not happen this year, or next year, but I can envision a future political race greatly impacted by the "discovery" of a twenty-year-old database entry declaring a candidate to be "troubled" or "at risk".
Conspiracy: Or is this Pinkerton's long-sighted goal: The slow manipulation of America's future political candidates by database tagging and referencing (rather like time-delay blackmail)?
Tonight I spoke with a sales rep at (888-564-6762) regarding liability for late payments (if they pay your bill late, they'll pay the late fee), and mentioned that I was calling because of the Slashdot article. I had to explain Slashdot to her, but she said they were experiencing extremely high call-volume and webhits tonight ---and nobody knew why.
:)
I wonder if PayMyBills.com will add a 'We've been Slashdotted' button to their site?
My suggestion to Chris DiBona:
If indeed there is a rally tomorrow at the Santa Clara Courthouse, print the sourcecode for DeCSS on a few thousand flyers and hand them out. (Gotta love that First Amendment!) --unx
I suggest contacting the administrators of this school and system and asking them (calmly) what their reasoning for making such an abhorrent decision.
h .htm
POC info is as follows:
http://www.esc11.net/schools/PonderISD/high/hig
This contains all staff information.
yp.yahoo.com information:
Ponder High School
501 Shaffner St
Ponder, TX
(940) 479-2245
Variance --- listed information on homepage:
Ponder High School
300 W. Bailey Street
Ponder, Texas 76259
940-479-2900
webmaster's email: hooperr@tenet.edu
It appears that the new Superintendent is Dr. Byron Welch.
This school appears to be in Texas Region IX. Here is the URL for contacting the Board of that region:
http://www.esc11.net/staff/bdadmin.html#board
This is completely and totally legal, and ethical. It's my computer(s), so I'm gonna know everything there is to know about it, from your logon/off times to a spread of your most commonly accessed webpages from that machine.
[Seriously guys, what kind of moron looks at porn from work? The kind that needs to be *fired*!]
If I were in this guy's position, I would take a gentle, fascist approach. Since the Company wants to know what's on the Company's computers, and all employees of the Company are part of the Company, all employees should know the results of porn-sweeps.
Create a public message board, in a main breakroom or hallway, and post the results, sorted by name, of potentially offensive emails and files stored in all employees' work systems and mailboxes.
[Now, if the HR people *happen* to get subscribed to the Naked Amputee Chat mailing list, wouldn't that serve 'em right?]
Heck, once this plan goes into effect, broaden your power! Bug all phone-lines and Icecast them! Monitor everyone, and broadcast it on the local lan! Webcams in every office! In the restrooms! (That way you can find out who's been leaving that horrible noxious vapor after lunch...) Infrared those cameras so that everyone can see who's been farting in the hallways, and who gets aroused around the secretaries! PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW THESE THINGS! Contract some ex-NSA spooks to follow all employees home! Force your hired spooks to sleep under your employees' beds, in case they talk in their sleep!
BRAIN IMPLANTS!!!
HIRE THE PSYCHIC NETWORK!!!
Check out the Packeteer PacketShaper. (www.packeteer.com). I've used this product before, and it's well worth the cash you pay for it.
I don't know what kind of budget you have, but considering that you are planning on implementing this in a business, I highly suggest you go with a hardware solution. As I don't work for Packeteer, I suggest you call their sales staff for more info.
Something I've mentioned before (I think) is an idea I've had regarding copyrighting your personal information.
Why not?
It's obvious that your personal information (age, sex, race, shopping preferences) is worth a lot of money. Consider how many companies pay big bucks to other companies to get that information. Consider how desperate many companies are to get that information; so desperate, in fact, that they are willing to bribe you with t-shirts and tech support.
The current information service industry makes money by selling information collated from data they gather from various sources.
Why not gather every scrap of information about yourself into a searchable database (your brain, maybe?), and then charge companies for the use of that data?
Copyright yourself, or at least the data fingerprint you leave upon the world. If the software industry can make much ado about little 1s and 0s being copyrightable, surely your personality can be copyrightable. And wouldn't it make you feel a lot better to know that every time your name passed through a database in some obscure system, you made a few cents, and if the bad ole NSI sells that information about you without your consent, well... they could meet with Mr. Copyright Infringement suit. Or pay you royalties...
Hmm.. Banner ads for the soul?
Neat.. if at least the 737 people who answered "yes" to the poll return their copiefs of windows, and they all get at least $50, (could be more!), that's almost $37,000 that Microsoft loses in one day! Not much, but still rather satisfying. :)
As a matter of fact, there's quite a large group of Linux users in the North Alabama area. We host LUNA Lunches every few weeks, and have InstallFests every other month. At the last Fest, we had well over 50 people show up! (Not sure of the exact max; I was working). There are quite a few more than that subscribed to our mailing list, and some of our more distant members are trying to create Middle and North-Western Users Groups as well. If you're within driving distance and interested in attending the next Fest, or you'd just like more information, check out our page at:
http://luna.huntsville.al.us/ .
LUNAtics -- to arms!
Unxmaal