Let's face it: if you know which way the wind is blowing, why the hell are you going to protest right outside the goddamn Great Hall of the People? And when the media barely gives you any coverage any more? If you're going to do unpopular activities, don't flaunt them in front of the authorities. This applies in the United States too, by the way.
Does it? I see the KKK march down 5th avenue in NYC, and cars with "Kill Bill Clinton" bumper stickers on them all the time. Needless to say, these are not "popular" activities (actually, the kill bill clinton one is relatively popular!). No one gets arrested for them, though there's usually a larger counter-protest for the KKK (g)...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Some (many?) states have shield laws that protect journalists to a degree. In federal court, there's no protection.
The majority of the time the journalists are protected by the judge by tradition and respect for the press, but they certainly have the ability to compel a journalist to testify if they want to.
Law and Order is about NY City/State courts, so there is probably a good journalistic protection at both levels given the history of journalism in NYC.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
The problem is that once you are on the stand, and have answered ANY questions at all in any manner other than "I plead the 5th", you are required to answer all questions asked of you. So he basically has to trust that the prosecutors will keep their word (which they should, because they'll never get another person to testify if they don't). Or hope that the judge will encourage the prosecutors keep their word out of respect for the free press.
But once he's on the stand, any deals are only as reliable as the integrity of the person you're dealing with...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Thus, the courts have found that in order to have a free press, it is necessary for journalists to have the same sort of confidentiality protection that doctors and priests have
While this is true in practice (most judges are very wary of contempt of court againsta reporter for resfusing to reveal sources) there isn't any legal basis for this.
Doctors and priests do have a legal confidentiality that takes a lot of work to get around, wheras the confidentiality of journalistic sources is based entirely on tradition and respect for the free press.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
I don't see how the heck this can progress -- what restriction does a private company have on using another private company as a filtering list manager for their own private business?
This would also imply that someone listed on a censorware package could sue for exactly the same thing, which is presumably restraint of trade (since they talk about the adverse economic impact?) or possibly defamation (for listing them as "spammers")?
Once more, we've got an interesting techno-legal battle that will have much greater effects than I think we immediately forsee.
But if these guys win against MAPS, I'd suggest a quick suit against censorware makers under the same principles...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
That's true, but the internet has no impact on that freedom. Barring you access to internet has no more affect on your right to free speech than a publisher refusing to publish your book
If Earthlink refuses to sell you internet access, it's the same as a publisher refusing to publish your book.
The FBI (or other government agent) has no right to restrict your internet access (however if you are convicted of a crime it could be a penalty).
While the freedom of speech does have limitations on time and place and method, the supreme court has stated explicitly that the internet is deserving of the very highest level of protection under the first amendment because of it's unprecedented ability to facilitate speech on such a large scale.
So yes, barring access to the internet DOES impact your freedom of speech, no less than barring your access to all libraries or all bookstores...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
I've seen dozens of stories around the whole "rising from the dead and voting" thing. Why are the dead always democrat? Don't republicians support dead rights? Is this a whole special interest group that republicians overlooked?
Democrats have the dead VOTE -- Republicans have them RUN FOR OFFICE! See Strom Thurmond, who has been dead for at least 20 years and keeps getting reelected...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Look, I'm sorry that you got cracked, but if you (or your sister) spent five hours securing, maybe you wouldn't have had to spend twenty cleaning up. If you don't know how, then what business do you have putting systems on the Internet anyway? The world is a dangerous place. Better to recognize that fact in advance than to act like a naive mooncalf and then get mad at other people because reality got shoved in your face.
The simple fact of the matter is that other people wasted his time by snooping around property that wasn't theirs. He wasn't railing against the laws of physics, so having "reality" shoved in his face is pointless.
There is always someone smarter, who knows more or has a better exploit -- saying that it's simply "reality" that they will break into your system and waste your time unless you spend 24 hours a day securing your personal web server is at best offensive and at worst actively destructive to our society.
Take some damn responsibility -- if you're cracking a system you're being an asshole and wasting other people's time and property. Reality has jack to do with it, and we shouldn't have to unplug our computers to satisfy your elitist view of who should and shouldn't be "allowed" to connect to the internet.
The poster's original point was that there is no such thing as "harmless" hacking when it involves someone else's system. Even if he'd been totally secured, you still waste his time and network resources with vain attempts, and if you do succeed you waste even more...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
While it's true that the pay standard is set by the regular guv'ment scales, Uncle Sam has the same bad habit of adopting useless "metrics" in evasluating employee performance that private industry does. While a cop won't get paid less for not meeting his "performance expectation" of tickets, don't call them "quotas"!...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
IIRC, you must vigorously defent every patent infringement or lose your ability to sue altogether. This was sone to prevent this exact problem.
That's only for trademarks. Copyright and patents are very different, and do not require you to pursue infringers to hold the patent/copyright. You are allowed to pick and choose who you sue and who you don't...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
No country is obligated to obey those organizations. They have no armies
They have armies of lawyers, accountants, and businessmen. They have enough economic influence to destroy most countries' economies single-handedly if they should desire to do so (you see, most countries on earth have much smaller economies than the US).
It's time to stop irresponsibly dropping cash on space research and start focusing on Earth-based work in genetics, medicine, etc. Unless you think that the cure for cancer or the secrets of the genome are going to come from moon rocks
Um, no -- but the laser optics and crystals and micro-circuitry and biological compounds that can be built in a zero-gravity environment (like, say, a space station?) can get us closer to those cures, as well as maintaining Moore's law.
It works the same way that NASA materials research has contributed to most modern computer technologies, not to mention artificial legs and replacement organs and other wasteful boondoggles like that...
They have to, without question, deal with and support unions.
Yeah, it was a real shame when companies had to stop paying the police to beat kill union members and their family members in the middle of the street.
A real blow to the free-market economy. Why can't the government just stay out of it?...
The poster (and Cliff) both seem to think that "no internet taxes" means that the internet is treated differently than the real world.
All that "no internet taxes" means is that internet purchases are treated just like any other transaction (there are no ADDITIONAL internet taxes).
This audit would be the same if you had purchased your goods through mail-order -- most places don't bother to pay the sales and use tax on mail-order goods, but legally you are required to do so and can be caught in an audit because of it. For private citizens this is not a big deal because you're not talking about much in the way of taxes, but a company that buys $100k of goods a month online should have their accountants paying attention to this.
This goes back to the issue of being a professional -- if you're running a business, you should have an accountant advising you on these matters, not the collective "wisdom" of slashdot (g)...
It's all jealousy. What about Oracle's monopoly? What about Sun's monopoly? What about IBM's monopoly?
I see these points made again and again.
Put them both together and ask yourself how they can be compatible?
If MS is being prosecuted for being successful, why aren't other, MORE successful companies being prosecuted? Why isn't Cisco (which has been passing MS on and off for total market value the past months)? Cisco is just as big, just as important, just as influential in their own way as MS is, but no one complains and no one is prosecuting.
Could it be because it's not about jealousy or influence, but abuse of that influence? About breaking the law? Maybe because Cisco doesn't try to "smother the baby in the crib" on a regular basis, but competes on a level playing field and just happens to kick ass?
If you think antitrust should be abolished or changed, that's fine, but it's a separate issue from saying MS is only being prosecuted because of jealousy. There are bigger fish than MS, and there have been rich bullies before Gates, but they were generally left alone until they did something wrong. Just as MS and Gates were -- in the 80s they were brilliant examples of what hard work, luck, skill, and genius could accomplish in the US.
They beat IBM at its own game and changed history. For that they deserve respect and much of the power and money that they've gained, but being a great person at 30 doesn't excuse your crimes at 40...
Not all, but then again I don't have any NUCLEAR SECRETS on my hard drive. I should hope they have slightly higher security standards than those I use to protect my amazon password...
Re:I wrote that code - I'll tell you what it does
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Mattel Spyware
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· Score: 2
You mean like a newspaper or cable TV?
You don't pay for a newspaper (or magazine) or cable TV. You pay for newspaper and cable TV delivery.
The paper itself, as well as the cable networks, are entirely advertiser-supported. If you actually had to pay the cost of a newspaper, it would be about $5.00 per issue, and magazines would be $10-15 or more.
As far as I know, the users accepting ads didn't get 95% off the retail price...
Well, we keep hearing the same refrain of "slow and controlled manner" that we have for the past decade. If this gets any more slow and controlled we could all be dead before the next TLD is born.
But seriously, why the emphasis on keeping domaind artificially scarce? The argument they keep discussing is one of needing to protect valuable marks, but that is only necessary when a limited number of domains are available. If you can register any 3-letter combination as a TLD (minus a few restricted ones?), you have just made it financally prohibitive for anyone with even a huge bankroll to do any domain squatting.
It is only by making domains scarce that they become individually valuable or threatening -- make them plentiful and it's up to the company to bring the value to the name (rather than vice-versa: the "roulette wheel" theory of domain registration - pick the right one and you're rich!)
At least they sort of tangentially talk about this when asking about differentiation. Why the hell should ICANN be concerned about differentiation? When companies are paying 50 grand to come up with names like Agilent and Agilant within 12 months of each other, why should ICANN be looking out for corporate identity differentiation? Bury us in 999 TLDs and maybe Agilent and Agilant can differentiate themselves with the extra three letters...
I asked them to show me the law that requires a person to have a SSN. They couldn't show me one, so I never gave one. Myself, and others work freely without a SSN. Look up the famous Taco-Bell case.
Would that be the case that was settled out of court? Cases are settled out of court all the time, and no precedent (or even legal nuance) is generated by them. Keep in mind that all the SS# cases that have gone past the first round of claims were all based on religious freedom under the EEOC (odd that a government so hell-bent on destroying us all stands up for religious freedom).
I work for an offshore company which provided a company credit card.
Ah, is this Personnel Supply Co? Forgive me, but I'd rather not entrust my employment and finances to an "offshore company" just to avoid whatever percieved evils the guv'ment is perpetrating on us Sheeple.
Thirdly, you DO NOT own your automobile UNLESS you have the "Manufactor's Statement of Origin."
Actually, I don't own it because I haven't paid off the loan yet. But I'm sure you know a way around that, too?
It is your right to refuse giving out personal information
Of course it is, who is arguing otherwise? All I'm saying is that people shouldn't be allowed to sell it if you do give it to people voluntarily for a specific purpose. Not ebveryone believes the 16th amendment is a fraud and there are really only 49 states, but we should be able to agree that selling personal information without informed consent is a Bad Thing (tm)...
My reply: I don't know just how to make this thing look as fancy as you folks so please forgive the lack of breaks, paragraphs and Italics
Just submit everything as "plain old text" and use basic HTML (such as the and ) to do simple formatting. And two enters or a or a will give you paragraphs; much easier to read and follow.
My assertion is that this problem can be worked out between the customers and the companies who are doing the gathering WITHOUT government interference
Well to that i can only say that nothing indicates you are correct. We've had this probelm for several years now, and it's not a secret. The companies have been complained to numerous times, and they've been warned by individuals, other companies, and government agencies (such as the FTC) that they need to get better privacy policies. They insist that self-regulation will work (essentially what you are suggesting). but it hasn't. They've made industry groups (like TrustE, etc) but nothing has changed. They still wheel and deal with our personal data while saying that those who complain have nothing to worry about.
So when does all this magical self-regulation take place? When do they suddently start listening to us? They haven't so far -- what will be different in the future (other than them having even more data on us)?
An example - try to buy insurance wihtout giving your social security number. It's impossible. No company in america will sell you insurance without having a social security number. But they don't need it. Try telling that to the guy on the phone, or his boss, or his boss, or HIS boss. It doesn't matter, because "we don't make the rules, sir." Write a letter, phone, whatever you like, it doesn't matter -- people have been telling the insurance companies for a few decades now that they don't need a social security number for anything, but they still demand it. And once they have it, they are more than happy to sell it to anyone willing to pay.
Many people seem to think that government is benevolent and that it can solve this problem and save us all from the scourge of data mining. It isn't and it won't. It will only make the problem worse
I don't think too many people believe the government is benevolent, or that it can save us all from much of anything. But it is a useful tool that can be used by society to push or pull in a direction. It's a useful way for us to say, "hey, our information is private, and unless you ask someone first you're not allowed to use it."
As for making the problem worse, I'm not sure how putting information merchants under the jurisdiction of the FTC would make them sell MORE of our information, or sell it with less discrimination, or for a lower cost. They already sell it to pretty much anyone who asks.
As an example of the so-called benevolence of government data-gathering, made oh so easy by forcing us all to have numbers and licenses, is the misuse of the census data to round up Japanese Americans and herding them into concentration camps during WWII. An activity which is and was completely illegal I might add. Where was the protection you seek the government to provide?
Obviously it wasn't there, but again, no one claimed the government was a benevolent overlord. We could just as easily point to the poor working conditions and slave labor of the same time period and ask where the benevolence of the corporations was.
The utopian world envisioned by those who think government will protect our privacy is nothing but a fantasy. Government has and will continue to abuse our rights and has nothing but bad intentions for the use of the data
Again, i doubt many people think the government will "protect" our privacy any more than they will "protect" out physical safety. Murder is illegal but there's still a lot of it going around. The most the government can do is make laws, and enforce them as best they can. The imperfect nature of the laws (and the enforcement) is no reason to claim the entire system is flawed. Fortunately we have the tools to tune it up as we see fit.
Giving the FTC regulatory ability over online privacy will not solve our problems forever, but it's a push in the right direction. Companies will push in the other direction, other laws and organisations will push in still other directions. You can push with technology (I push in my own way by using Cookie Pal to refuse most cookies, and using Freedom to surf when i really want to be anonymous.)
I'll stay with my own methods for protecting my privacy even though I must give up many benifits of "modern society" because I refuse to be a number.
And I have no doubt people who use more than one method of protecting privacy will be more successful at it than those who rely on any one method (wether it be the benevolence of a company, a government, or others).
I know folks who drink nothing but bottled water, even though the tap water is perfectly healthy. For whatever reason they want that extra feeling of comfort, and they're entitled to it. But I'd still like for the water supply plant to have to meet minumum standards of quality and sanitation. Not because I'm incapable of boiling the water, but because it's a waste of my time when they can process it there.
Can you say "BAAAAA!"
It's funny, I'm so cynical and pessemistic, but on Slashdot I'm practically Mary Poppins (relatively speaking). I've never seen so many people so convinced that everyone else is brainwashed (presumably by "The Man") and the world is coming to a fiery end. I've met suicides with more hope for the future of our country! (g)...
Obviously, I didn't use the internet to do any of these things. We are talking about internet privacy aren't we? I don't use the internet to pay my bills, Having worked in IS for 30 years has given me a respect for what can go wrong with auch online transactions. Bill paying is to important to leave to a machine. I pay and I get a receipt which I can show if necessary. This is usually not possible online
That's all good and well for you today, but what about those of us who DO get jobs online? Who do pay bills online? In 20 years it's highly likely that many items or services will have to be paid for online. There are many companies in existance today that will take nothing but a credit card for payment -- unthinkable 20 years ago. They don't want cash, they don't want checks, they want a credit card or won't do business with you. There are too many good reasons for them to operate this way -- it provides more protection for everyone involved in the transaction. Some companies have already reached that point online, many others will quickly be reaching that point.
The option of going offline simply to protect privacy (which of course is ridiculous, since your bank shares information with your insurance company anyways) is rapidly going away. And while we may be specifically talking about online provacy here, why NOT expand the policies to cover offline companies as well?
Bill paying is to important to leave to a machine
Well, having worked in IS for 30 years I assume you're aware that pretty much every dollar in the country (and world) gets automatically swapped by machines every second of the day. If that's your big concern, then you'd better pull your cash out of the bank because they're paying all their bills with machines, and they pay your checks with machines, and the IRS does your taxes with machines. Paper checks are convenience items only -- the actual monetary transaction is handled by machines, just the same as with cash.
Of course, sometimes it IS necessary but I am aware that it will probably be used in ways I hadn't intended. This is a choice I freely make and a risk I freely take.
While I congratulate you on your yogi-like wisdom, I have to ask the obvious question: why should giving my information to a company have "unintended" consequences? Should I expect that buying a carton of milk, I may also be adopting an orphan? Or by signing a check to the phone company it may have the unintended consequence of voiding the warranty on my toaster?
We're not talking about Acts of God here, where needless court battles are fought when someone trips on the sidewalk, we're talking about human beings (corporations) deliberately making the decision to use information in a way they were never authorized to use it. Why should giving my social security number to the DMV for the sake of getting a drivers license give them the right to sell it to auto insurance companies, or Kraft Foods, or any guy whon walks in with a check? That's not an "unintended consequence", it's people selling my information without my permission against my wishes! It's completely intended by the people doing it.
I don't need the government nanny state to "protect" me. In fact, it is the government which requires me to disclose my SSN (the mark of the beast) to get a job. It is the government which requires me to have a license to travel. It is the government which now seeks to fix a problem which the government created in the first place.
I assure you that there is no law on the books anywhere in this country that requires your employer to sell your social security number. There is none that requires insurance companies to have it at all (though they will need it to pay benefits, for tax purposes). It is the insurance companies' policies that demand your social security number to buy a policy not the law. There are VERY, VERY, few organizations on this planet that have the legal abligation to collect your social security number, and fewer still with any obligation to share it with anyone outside the IRS and the Social security administration.
It is private companies that have built this tangled mess of SS numbers being used as "personal identifiers" for everything from credit cards to the warranty on your car.
You seem to be asserting that a crime needing a government solution is being committed by companies which use personal information of their customers which is freely given and which people have been amply warned about.
This may be the crux of our disgreement. I don't believe the information has been given voluntarily or that customers have been "amply warned" about it. If that is the case, then no one would be violating this proposed law. But unilaterally selling the information to a third party with no relationship or logical interest in my transaction does not, to me, seem "voluntary". And accurate disclosure of what will happen to information has always been the greatest sticking point -- why do companies fear so having to disclose WHAT and TO WHOM they are giving this information?
DoubleClick changed from "we will never connect this online information to offline identities" to "we will do everything in our power to connect this information to offline identities, if you don't like it, too bad, we've already got your info". Do you consider that "disclosure", or even remotely honest?
Well maybe not because of building codes, alas - another freedom lost
I'm sure the people who died in the hi-rise apartmnent building collapse in Cairo last week (due to a dramatically deteriorated foundation and other structural problems with the building) will rest easy in the afterlife knowing that they died for the sake of freedom. After all, everyone should be a structural engineer and be able to tell for themselves the difference between a load-bearing beam of 6 tons and 8 tons.
Yes it is true that government has it's self interest at heart as do corporations. The difference is that governments seek to regulate and rule and always do this with a heavy hand.
And what is to prevent corporations from functioning with a heavy hand? Or governments from operating with a light hand? I personally would suggest that the FTC is one of the lightest-handed government groups on Earth. They generally keep their heads down due to the influence and dollars of the folks they regulate, and as I said before will send about a hundred cease-and-desist letters before they get really nasty and tell you to "stop doing that or we'll write even nastier letters".
Whan the feds get these databases of online transactions, how long do you suppose it will be before these records are shared with the state governments?
I dunno, but considering most transactions are electronic already (thanks to credit cards), we should already be seeing the effects of the government having this huge dossier on our spending habits. Of course if the governemnt ever asked for the information, every company would sue (since this is valuable property).
Privacy concerns can be worked out by people interacting in a voluntary way.
I think I've heard that song before. Doesn't the second verse go something like "if we took the guns away from both sides, no one would be able to fight". Nice in theory, but how efficient is it going to be for DoublClick to negotiate privacy policies with 250 million individual people? Isn't it a lot easier for us to just vote on a baseline standard and if you want to give more information, put it on a t-shirt to wear around town. I'm sure people would be happy to have your social security number -- no one is suggesting you can't give it out.
If your concern is for the sheeple who can't protect their privacy then you could mount a campaign to inform them of how to do it but don't think I will react kindly to your asking the government to trample anyone's rights, especially mine.
My concern is not for the Sheeple (though I do have some concern for the regularity with which some people feel it necessary to portray other human beings as sub-human by using such phrases). No, in good American style I'm in it for myself -- I'd rather not spend every second of every day holding a lengthy negotiation with every business over my personal privacy policy. Purely selfish, I know, but despite some folks' assertations that businesses are always receptive to customers' demands, I've found that very few businesses are interested in negotiating my privacy concerns...
Slashdot Mirror
Let's face it: if you know which way the wind is blowing, why the hell are you going to protest right outside the goddamn Great Hall of the People? And when the media barely gives you any coverage any more? If you're going to do unpopular activities, don't flaunt them in front of the authorities. This applies in the United States too, by the way.
Does it? I see the KKK march down 5th avenue in NYC, and cars with "Kill Bill Clinton" bumper stickers on them all the time. Needless to say, these are not "popular" activities (actually, the kill bill clinton one is relatively popular!). No one gets arrested for them, though there's usually a larger counter-protest for the KKK (g)...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
It's a fucking meritocracy compared to the US where everything depends on how much you've got in your bank account.
Wouldn't someone smart or fast or strong or clever be able to get money in their bank account?
It seems to me the main point of capitalism is that money is the unit of measurement in a meritocracy.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Some (many?) states have shield laws that protect journalists to a degree. In federal court, there's no protection.
The majority of the time the journalists are protected by the judge by tradition and respect for the press, but they certainly have the ability to compel a journalist to testify if they want to.
Law and Order is about NY City/State courts, so there is probably a good journalistic protection at both levels given the history of journalism in NYC.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
The problem is that once you are on the stand, and have answered ANY questions at all in any manner other than "I plead the 5th", you are required to answer all questions asked of you. So he basically has to trust that the prosecutors will keep their word (which they should, because they'll never get another person to testify if they don't). Or hope that the judge will encourage the prosecutors keep their word out of respect for the free press.
But once he's on the stand, any deals are only as reliable as the integrity of the person you're dealing with...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Thus, the courts have found that in order to have a free press, it is necessary for journalists to have the same sort of confidentiality protection that doctors and priests have
While this is true in practice (most judges are very wary of contempt of court againsta reporter for resfusing to reveal sources) there isn't any legal basis for this.
Doctors and priests do have a legal confidentiality that takes a lot of work to get around, wheras the confidentiality of journalistic sources is based entirely on tradition and respect for the free press.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
I don't see how the heck this can progress -- what restriction does a private company have on using another private company as a filtering list manager for their own private business?
This would also imply that someone listed on a censorware package could sue for exactly the same thing, which is presumably restraint of trade (since they talk about the adverse economic impact?) or possibly defamation (for listing them as "spammers")?
Once more, we've got an interesting techno-legal battle that will have much greater effects than I think we immediately forsee.
But if these guys win against MAPS, I'd suggest a quick suit against censorware makers under the same principles...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
That's true, but the internet has no impact on that freedom. Barring you access to internet has no more affect on your right to free speech than a publisher refusing to publish your book
If Earthlink refuses to sell you internet access, it's the same as a publisher refusing to publish your book.
The FBI (or other government agent) has no right to restrict your internet access (however if you are convicted of a crime it could be a penalty).
While the freedom of speech does have limitations on time and place and method, the supreme court has stated explicitly that the internet is deserving of the very highest level of protection under the first amendment because of it's unprecedented ability to facilitate speech on such a large scale.
So yes, barring access to the internet DOES impact your freedom of speech, no less than barring your access to all libraries or all bookstores...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
I've seen dozens of stories around the whole "rising from the dead and voting" thing. Why are the dead always democrat? Don't republicians support dead rights? Is this a whole special interest group that republicians overlooked?
Democrats have the dead VOTE -- Republicans have them RUN FOR OFFICE! See Strom Thurmond, who has been dead for at least 20 years and keeps getting reelected...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Look, I'm sorry that you got cracked, but if you (or your sister) spent five hours securing, maybe you wouldn't have had to spend twenty cleaning up. If you don't know how, then what business do you have putting systems on the Internet anyway? The world is a dangerous place. Better to recognize that fact in advance than to act like a naive mooncalf and then get mad at other people because reality got shoved in your face.
The simple fact of the matter is that other people wasted his time by snooping around property that wasn't theirs. He wasn't railing against the laws of physics, so having "reality" shoved in his face is pointless.
There is always someone smarter, who knows more or has a better exploit -- saying that it's simply "reality" that they will break into your system and waste your time unless you spend 24 hours a day securing your personal web server is at best offensive and at worst actively destructive to our society.
Take some damn responsibility -- if you're cracking a system you're being an asshole and wasting other people's time and property. Reality has jack to do with it, and we shouldn't have to unplug our computers to satisfy your elitist view of who should and shouldn't be "allowed" to connect to the internet.
The poster's original point was that there is no such thing as "harmless" hacking when it involves someone else's system. Even if he'd been totally secured, you still waste his time and network resources with vain attempts, and if you do succeed you waste even more...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
While it's true that the pay standard is set by the regular guv'ment scales, Uncle Sam has the same bad habit of adopting useless "metrics" in evasluating employee performance that private industry does. While a cop won't get paid less for not meeting his "performance expectation" of tickets, don't call them "quotas"!...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
IIRC, you must vigorously defent every patent infringement or lose your ability to sue altogether. This was sone to prevent this exact problem.
That's only for trademarks. Copyright and patents are very different, and do not require you to pursue infringers to hold the patent/copyright. You are allowed to pick and choose who you sue and who you don't...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed this post -- good food for thought in there that hadn't occurred to me before!
/. after all...
I guess there's a reason to read
No country is obligated to obey those organizations. They have no armies
They have armies of lawyers, accountants, and businessmen. They have enough economic influence to destroy most countries' economies single-handedly if they should desire to do so (you see, most countries on earth have much smaller economies than the US).
It's time to stop irresponsibly dropping cash on space research and start focusing on Earth-based work in genetics, medicine, etc. Unless you think that the cure for cancer or the secrets of the genome are going to come from moon rocks
Um, no -- but the laser optics and crystals and micro-circuitry and biological compounds that can be built in a zero-gravity environment (like, say, a space station?) can get us closer to those cures, as well as maintaining Moore's law.
It works the same way that NASA materials research has contributed to most modern computer technologies, not to mention artificial legs and replacement organs and other wasteful boondoggles like that...
They have to, without question, deal with and support unions.
Yeah, it was a real shame when companies had to stop paying the police to beat kill union members and their family members in the middle of the street.
A real blow to the free-market economy. Why can't the government just stay out of it?...
So C# could also be pronounced "C Hash", or simply "Cash".
Methinks it's the same guys who named WinCe...
The poster (and Cliff) both seem to think that "no internet taxes" means that the internet is treated differently than the real world.
All that "no internet taxes" means is that internet purchases are treated just like any other transaction (there are no ADDITIONAL internet taxes).
This audit would be the same if you had purchased your goods through mail-order -- most places don't bother to pay the sales and use tax on mail-order goods, but legally you are required to do so and can be caught in an audit because of it. For private citizens this is not a big deal because you're not talking about much in the way of taxes, but a company that buys $100k of goods a month online should have their accountants paying attention to this.
This goes back to the issue of being a professional -- if you're running a business, you should have an accountant advising you on these matters, not the collective "wisdom" of slashdot (g)...
It's all jealousy.
What about Oracle's monopoly? What about Sun's monopoly? What about IBM's monopoly?
I see these points made again and again.
Put them both together and ask yourself how they can be compatible?
If MS is being prosecuted for being successful, why aren't other, MORE successful companies being prosecuted? Why isn't Cisco (which has been passing MS on and off for total market value the past months)? Cisco is just as big, just as important, just as influential in their own way as MS is, but no one complains and no one is prosecuting.
Could it be because it's not about jealousy or influence, but abuse of that influence? About breaking the law? Maybe because Cisco doesn't try to "smother the baby in the crib" on a regular basis, but competes on a level playing field and just happens to kick ass?
If you think antitrust should be abolished or changed, that's fine, but it's a separate issue from saying MS is only being prosecuted because of jealousy. There are bigger fish than MS, and there have been rich bullies before Gates, but they were generally left alone until they did something wrong. Just as MS and Gates were -- in the 80s they were brilliant examples of what hard work, luck, skill, and genius could accomplish in the US.
They beat IBM at its own game and changed history. For that they deserve respect and much of the power and money that they've gained, but being a great person at 30 doesn't excuse your crimes at 40...
Do you encrypt all of your data?
Not all, but then again I don't have any NUCLEAR SECRETS on my hard drive. I should hope they have slightly higher security standards than those I use to protect my amazon password...
You mean like a newspaper or cable TV?
You don't pay for a newspaper (or magazine) or cable TV. You pay for newspaper and cable TV delivery.
The paper itself, as well as the cable networks, are entirely advertiser-supported. If you actually had to pay the cost of a newspaper, it would be about $5.00 per issue, and magazines would be $10-15 or more.
As far as I know, the users accepting ads didn't get 95% off the retail price...
Well, we keep hearing the same refrain of "slow and controlled manner" that we have for the past decade. If this gets any more slow and controlled we could all be dead before the next TLD is born.
But seriously, why the emphasis on keeping domaind artificially scarce? The argument they keep discussing is one of needing to protect valuable marks, but that is only necessary when a limited number of domains are available. If you can register any 3-letter combination as a TLD (minus a few restricted ones?), you have just made it financally prohibitive for anyone with even a huge bankroll to do any domain squatting.
It is only by making domains scarce that they become individually valuable or threatening -- make them plentiful and it's up to the company to bring the value to the name (rather than vice-versa: the "roulette wheel" theory of domain registration - pick the right one and you're rich!)
At least they sort of tangentially talk about this when asking about differentiation. Why the hell should ICANN be concerned about differentiation? When companies are paying 50 grand to come up with names like Agilent and Agilant within 12 months of each other, why should ICANN be looking out for corporate identity differentiation? Bury us in 999 TLDs and maybe Agilent and Agilant can differentiate themselves with the extra three letters...
I asked them to show me the law that requires a person to have a SSN. They couldn't show me one, so I never gave one. Myself, and others work freely without a SSN. Look up the famous Taco-Bell case.
Would that be the case that was settled out of court? Cases are settled out of court all the time, and no precedent (or even legal nuance) is generated by them. Keep in mind that all the SS# cases that have gone past the first round of claims were all based on religious freedom under the EEOC (odd that a government so hell-bent on destroying us all stands up for religious freedom).
I work for an offshore company which provided a company credit card.
Ah, is this Personnel Supply Co? Forgive me, but I'd rather not entrust my employment and finances to an "offshore company" just to avoid whatever percieved evils the guv'ment is perpetrating on us Sheeple.
Thirdly, you DO NOT own your automobile UNLESS you have the "Manufactor's Statement of Origin."
Actually, I don't own it because I haven't paid off the loan yet. But I'm sure you know a way around that, too?
It is your right to refuse giving out personal information
Of course it is, who is arguing otherwise? All I'm saying is that people shouldn't be allowed to sell it if you do give it to people voluntarily for a specific purpose. Not ebveryone believes the 16th amendment is a fraud and there are really only 49 states, but we should be able to agree that selling personal information without informed consent is a Bad Thing (tm)...
My reply: I don't know just how to make this thing look as fancy as you folks so please forgive the lack of breaks, paragraphs and Italics
Just submit everything as "plain old text" and use basic HTML (such as the and ) to do simple formatting. And two enters or a or a will give you paragraphs; much easier to read and follow.
My assertion is that this problem can be worked out between the customers and the companies who are doing the gathering WITHOUT government interference
Well to that i can only say that nothing indicates you are correct. We've had this probelm for several years now, and it's not a secret. The companies have been complained to numerous times, and they've been warned by individuals, other companies, and government agencies (such as the FTC) that they need to get better privacy policies. They insist that self-regulation will work (essentially what you are suggesting). but it hasn't. They've made industry groups (like TrustE, etc) but nothing has changed. They still wheel and deal with our personal data while saying that those who complain have nothing to worry about.
So when does all this magical self-regulation take place? When do they suddently start listening to us? They haven't so far -- what will be different in the future (other than them having even more data on us)?
An example - try to buy insurance wihtout giving your social security number. It's impossible. No company in america will sell you insurance without having a social security number. But they don't need it. Try telling that to the guy on the phone, or his boss, or his boss, or HIS boss. It doesn't matter, because "we don't make the rules, sir." Write a letter, phone, whatever you like, it doesn't matter -- people have been telling the insurance companies for a few decades now that they don't need a social security number for anything, but they still demand it. And once they have it, they are more than happy to sell it to anyone willing to pay.
Many people seem to think that government is benevolent and that it can solve this problem and save us all from the scourge of data mining. It isn't and it won't. It will only make the problem worse
I don't think too many people believe the government is benevolent, or that it can save us all from much of anything. But it is a useful tool that can be used by society to push or pull in a direction. It's a useful way for us to say, "hey, our information is private, and unless you ask someone first you're not allowed to use it."
As for making the problem worse, I'm not sure how putting information merchants under the jurisdiction of the FTC would make them sell MORE of our information, or sell it with less discrimination, or for a lower cost. They already sell it to pretty much anyone who asks.
As an example of the so-called benevolence of government data-gathering, made oh so easy by forcing us all to have numbers and licenses, is the misuse of the census data to round up Japanese Americans and herding them into concentration camps during WWII. An activity which is and was completely illegal I might add. Where was the protection you seek the government to provide?
Obviously it wasn't there, but again, no one claimed the government was a benevolent overlord. We could just as easily point to the poor working conditions and slave labor of the same time period and ask where the benevolence of the corporations was.
The utopian world envisioned by those who think government will protect our privacy is nothing but a fantasy. Government has and will continue to abuse our rights and has nothing but bad intentions for the use of the data
Again, i doubt many people think the government will "protect" our privacy any more than they will "protect" out physical safety. Murder is illegal but there's still a lot of it going around. The most the government can do is make laws, and enforce them as best they can. The imperfect nature of the laws (and the enforcement) is no reason to claim the entire system is flawed. Fortunately we have the tools to tune it up as we see fit.
Giving the FTC regulatory ability over online privacy will not solve our problems forever, but it's a push in the right direction. Companies will push in the other direction, other laws and organisations will push in still other directions. You can push with technology (I push in my own way by using Cookie Pal to refuse most cookies, and using Freedom to surf when i really want to be anonymous.)
I'll stay with my own methods for protecting my privacy even though I must give up many benifits of "modern society" because I refuse to be a number.
And I have no doubt people who use more than one method of protecting privacy will be more successful at it than those who rely on any one method (wether it be the benevolence of a company, a government, or others).
I know folks who drink nothing but bottled water, even though the tap water is perfectly healthy. For whatever reason they want that extra feeling of comfort, and they're entitled to it. But I'd still like for the water supply plant to have to meet minumum standards of quality and sanitation. Not because I'm incapable of boiling the water, but because it's a waste of my time when they can process it there.
Can you say "BAAAAA!"
It's funny, I'm so cynical and pessemistic, but on Slashdot I'm practically Mary Poppins (relatively speaking). I've never seen so many people so convinced that everyone else is brainwashed (presumably by "The Man") and the world is coming to a fiery end. I've met suicides with more hope for the future of our country! (g)...
Could I buy a line break please?
But seriously, folks-
Obviously, I didn't use the internet to do any of these things. We are talking about internet privacy aren't we? I don't use the internet to pay my bills, Having worked in IS for 30 years has given me a respect for what can go wrong with auch online transactions. Bill paying is to important to leave to a machine. I pay and I get a receipt which I can show if necessary. This is usually not possible online
That's all good and well for you today, but what about those of us who DO get jobs online? Who do pay bills online? In 20 years it's highly likely that many items or services will have to be paid for online. There are many companies in existance today that will take nothing but a credit card for payment -- unthinkable 20 years ago. They don't want cash, they don't want checks, they want a credit card or won't do business with you. There are too many good reasons for them to operate this way -- it provides more protection for everyone involved in the transaction. Some companies have already reached that point online, many others will quickly be reaching that point.
The option of going offline simply to protect privacy (which of course is ridiculous, since your bank shares information with your insurance company anyways) is rapidly going away. And while we may be specifically talking about online provacy here, why NOT expand the policies to cover offline companies as well?
Bill paying is to important to leave to a machine
Well, having worked in IS for 30 years I assume you're aware that pretty much every dollar in the country (and world) gets automatically swapped by machines every second of the day. If that's your big concern, then you'd better pull your cash out of the bank because they're paying all their bills with machines, and they pay your checks with machines, and the IRS does your taxes with machines. Paper checks are convenience items only -- the actual monetary transaction is handled by machines, just the same as with cash.
Of course, sometimes it IS necessary but I am aware that it will probably be used in ways I hadn't intended. This is a choice I freely make and a risk I freely take.
While I congratulate you on your yogi-like wisdom, I have to ask the obvious question: why should giving my information to a company have "unintended" consequences? Should I expect that buying a carton of milk, I may also be adopting an orphan? Or by signing a check to the phone company it may have the unintended consequence of voiding the warranty on my toaster?
We're not talking about Acts of God here, where needless court battles are fought when someone trips on the sidewalk, we're talking about human beings (corporations) deliberately making the decision to use information in a way they were never authorized to use it. Why should giving my social security number to the DMV for the sake of getting a drivers license give them the right to sell it to auto insurance companies, or Kraft Foods, or any guy whon walks in with a check? That's not an "unintended consequence", it's people selling my information without my permission against my wishes! It's completely intended by the people doing it.
I don't need the government nanny state to "protect" me. In fact, it is the government which requires me to disclose my SSN (the mark of the beast) to get a job. It is the government which requires me to have a license to travel. It is the government which now seeks to fix a problem which the government created in the first place.
I assure you that there is no law on the books anywhere in this country that requires your employer to sell your social security number. There is none that requires insurance companies to have it at all (though they will need it to pay benefits, for tax purposes). It is the insurance companies' policies that demand your social security number to buy a policy not the law. There are VERY, VERY, few organizations on this planet that have the legal abligation to collect your social security number, and fewer still with any obligation to share it with anyone outside the IRS and the Social security administration.
It is private companies that have built this tangled mess of SS numbers being used as "personal identifiers" for everything from credit cards to the warranty on your car.
You seem to be asserting that a crime needing a government solution is being committed by companies which use personal information of their customers which is freely given and which people have been amply warned about.
This may be the crux of our disgreement. I don't believe the information has been given voluntarily or that customers have been "amply warned" about it. If that is the case, then no one would be violating this proposed law. But unilaterally selling the information to a third party with no relationship or logical interest in my transaction does not, to me, seem "voluntary". And accurate disclosure of what will happen to information has always been the greatest sticking point -- why do companies fear so having to disclose WHAT and TO WHOM they are giving this information?
DoubleClick changed from "we will never connect this online information to offline identities" to "we will do everything in our power to connect this information to offline identities, if you don't like it, too bad, we've already got your info". Do you consider that "disclosure", or even remotely honest?
Well maybe not because of building codes, alas - another freedom lost
I'm sure the people who died in the hi-rise apartmnent building collapse in Cairo last week (due to a dramatically deteriorated foundation and other structural problems with the building) will rest easy in the afterlife knowing that they died for the sake of freedom. After all, everyone should be a structural engineer and be able to tell for themselves the difference between a load-bearing beam of 6 tons and 8 tons.
Yes it is true that government has it's self interest at heart as do corporations. The difference is that governments seek to regulate and rule and always do this with a heavy hand.
And what is to prevent corporations from functioning with a heavy hand? Or governments from operating with a light hand? I personally would suggest that the FTC is one of the lightest-handed government groups on Earth. They generally keep their heads down due to the influence and dollars of the folks they regulate, and as I said before will send about a hundred cease-and-desist letters before they get really nasty and tell you to "stop doing that or we'll write even nastier letters".
Whan the feds get these databases of online transactions, how long do you suppose it will be before these records are shared with the state governments?
I dunno, but considering most transactions are electronic already (thanks to credit cards), we should already be seeing the effects of the government having this huge dossier on our spending habits. Of course if the governemnt ever asked for the information, every company would sue (since this is valuable property).
Privacy concerns can be worked out by people interacting in a voluntary way.
I think I've heard that song before. Doesn't the second verse go something like "if we took the guns away from both sides, no one would be able to fight". Nice in theory, but how efficient is it going to be for DoublClick to negotiate privacy policies with 250 million individual people? Isn't it a lot easier for us to just vote on a baseline standard and if you want to give more information, put it on a t-shirt to wear around town. I'm sure people would be happy to have your social security number -- no one is suggesting you can't give it out.
If your concern is for the sheeple who can't protect their privacy then you could mount a campaign to inform them of how to do it but don't think I will react kindly to your asking the government to trample anyone's rights, especially mine.
My concern is not for the Sheeple (though I do have some concern for the regularity with which some people feel it necessary to portray other human beings as sub-human by using such phrases). No, in good American style I'm in it for myself -- I'd rather not spend every second of every day holding a lengthy negotiation with every business over my personal privacy policy. Purely selfish, I know, but despite some folks' assertations that businesses are always receptive to customers' demands, I've found that very few businesses are interested in negotiating my privacy concerns...
God, I really suck at typing on this ergonomic keyboard. Sorry for all the misspellings and bad edits...