So this guy is so rich that he can afford to finance a whole industry of millions of workers to monitor the web? Well, that should solve a lot of economic problems in India! Maybe he could outsource some of those jobs over here!
Nope. We came up with the Internet, therefore, the default tld's (.com,.net, etc) refer to sites hosted in the US. For the reason, Great Britain is the only country in the world that does not have the name of their country on their postage stamps. When you are somewhere first, you get the naming rights.
What you type into the URL bar is not public -- but where you go when you hit enter is. It has to be. That is the way the web works. When you travel around you are broadcasting your IP as you connect to different servers around the globe. The servers that you connect to are under no obligation to hide the fact that you have been in there. Think of the Internet as a big city (a city where you really, really want to stay away from the red-light district); as you walk around you are essentially anonymous due to the mass of people, but in reality everything you are doing is in the open. If you walk into a store and buy something, the store is not violating your privacy by acknowledging that you were there. If this were not the case, society wouldn't work. The Internet is the same thing; it is essentially anonymous due to the overwhelming amount of traffic, but at the end of the day, everything you are doing is public.
Encrypted data, however, is a different thing entirely. Encrypted data is more akin to carrying a letter around this city in a sealed envelope. There IS an expectation of privacy as to the contents of that letter; you put it in an envelope so that the guy sitting next to you on the train can't read it. Now, I know that Google does analyze the content of encrypted emails, but you are using their service, so this should again be expected. If I were to write something on paper while sitting in a Google office, I would have a very different expectation of privacy; it should be expected that they are able to monitor what happens on their own service (or building, in this analogy).
CIQ, however, effectively breaks all of our expectations of privacy. In this analogy, even if you locked yourself in your bedroom, made sure nobody was around, wrote the letter, and then sealed it in a light-proof envelope, CIQ would still know what you wrote on that letter. They would know because THEY WATCHED YOU WRITING IT. While you were writing that letter and taking all the proper measures to keep it private, they had a camera over your shoulder watching as your pen scribbled across the page. It was never disclosed to you that this camera was here. Now, they are defending themselves by saying that we cannot prove that the camera was actually transmitting the data back home, but we know for a fact that it was there and it was recording data. This is why a keylogger is a whole new level of privacy violation; it violates the sanctity of the physical device you are working on. This is what makes it orders of magnitude worse than anything in Marc Zuckerberg's wildest dreams. This is also why keyloggers are almost universally criminal. To compare it to Google Analytics belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the tech at hand. There is a relevant exchange in Pulp Fiction:
Vincent: I didn't say it's the same thing, I said it's the same ballpark.
Jules; Ain't no fuckin' ballpark neither! It ain't the same fuckin' league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport!
While these characters were talking about something different, the same principle applies. Not only are Google Analytics not the same ball park, they ain't even the same fuckin' sport. The difference in magnitude is astonishing, and making such ill-fitting comparisons only diminishes the affront to decency that this software poses.
There is a big, BIG difference between CIQ and Google Analytics. Google Analytics tracks your browsing behavior, which is on the open web, and is being done in public. While it is certainly creepy that your web browsing behavior is being tracked, you are still doing all of that in public, where you have no expectation of privacy. CIQ, on the other hand, is a keylogger. It can track private communications that you are intending to send out encrypted before you even send them. This is a whole different ball of wax, and is considered to be criminal behavior in almost all cases in the PC world. Comparing Google Analytics to CIQ is like comparing a case of the common cold to ebola, there are certainly similarities, but one is VERY different in terms of degree.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's
on
Napster Being Shut Down
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
First of all, you are misunderstanding the reason that artists create things. People create things because they want to create things. This is why there are so many starving artists out there; millions of people are willing to go without in order to continue focusing on expressing themselves and creating art. Any musician who molds their output completely around profits is NOT an artist by any stretch of the imagination; they are a corporate shill and a hack. This is the biggest problem with the media companies, they used to produce art, now they generate content. It quite honestly makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth and makes me yearn for the day that the RIAA, MPAA and all the other associated blood-sucking, soul-killing leeches die off and sink into the mud like the filthy parasites that they are.
...this is still surprising to see this coming from someone with a D after their name. This is not because they are fundamentally more decent, but their usual constituency doesn't really seem to buy the "blame the middle class" argument, at least not as much. This seems like a really, really dumb idea, if for no other reason than the political fallout it will create.
Seriously? This is on the front page? First of all, should that really be a surprise that a brand new, quad core chip can beat a 9 month old, slower, dual core? Secondly, Apple's success has NEVER been due to its high performance, it has always been about the shiny factor and the intuitive software design. I am personally excited about the arms race we are seeing in tablets, and hope to see high end Android tablets gain more traction, but this is just silly.
It is not, however, important for them to have the keystrokes that you enter into your phone before sending encrypted communications. There is NO WAY that this is not a violation of the law if it is not explicitly mentioned in the ToS, as keystroke logging could never be remotely construed as even remotely necessary for system diagnostics; its only purpose is the violation of privacy.
I sincerely hope that we don't have flying cars any time soon -- just look how bad people are at paying attention to our current two dimensional travel. Adding a third dimension into the mix would be very, very bad. Now, couple this with Google's self driving car tech and we could have something interesting...
The middle class is already getting squeezed out of existence. By making enough money to get by, they are ensuring that they don't get any assistance, and have to pay a quarter to a third of their income in taxes before they even get to see it. The middle class ALREADY carries the burden of taking care of the poor, while the rich hide behind tax loopholes and foreign bank accounts. If you think that the middle class is the source of any of these problems, you are a fucking idiot. There is no debate, no discussion, you are simply wrong and are going after the wrong enemy. The middle class was no responsible for crashing the economy, and it was the middle class that fell the furthest. We work our asses off and we pay taxes, it is time for the leeches at the top to join us.
Why don't we then create a specialized graduate level degree for politicians? Engineers, professors, doctors, and lawyers all (typically) require some graduate level degree, why not politicians? The decisions they make have a far wider impact. The graduate degree would simply be an additional 2 years beyond a bachelor's and would be a crash course in bioethics, technology, economics, and other academic subjects that would help the decision-making process. The goal is not to make them experts in everything, but to make sure that they know SOMETHING about what they are talking about. Right now, politicians typically know nothing about what they are legislating. If they did, SOPA would not even be on the table, and stem cell research would not be even remotely contentious.
But I'm not, nor would I play one on TV. If I were in a position where I had to make decisions regarding law and politics that affected millions of people, I would do everything I could to learn as much about it as humanly possible and get myself to where I was as close to an expert as I could be within the given time frame. If I could not learn enough to make an informed decision on the matter, I would then defer the decision to someone who is qualified. I see nothing of this sort in politics; they get together with their lobbyists, hear one side of the story from a clearly interested party, and then go out and vote on something of which they have no understanding (see: The Internet is not a dump truck, it's a series of tubes).
This is the fundamental problem -- people ought not be allowed to make wide reaching decisions about things that they don't understand. We need to figure out some sort of system by which decision-makers (judges, legislators, etc) must have a working knowledge of what they are talking about. If they can't show that they know what they are talking about, their decision doesn't count. I don't go to my doctor when my transmission is acting up, nor do I ask my mechanic about health issues. It is even more critical that politicians know what they are talking about, as they get to decide what EVERYONE is and is not allowed to do.
We don't have a complete and total understanding of the Universe, but that doesn't make fairies any more likely to be real. More importantly, I think that the burden of proof ought to be on those that are making a claim contrary to our current understanding; you need to prove that there is an underlying order to the Universe. Right now, that doesn't seem to be the case. I would absolutely be open to evidence that suggests that our current understanding is mistaken, but until we see it, it is just empty speculation.
You can believe what you want, but it doesn't change the way the Universe works. Sure, we may find out that the roots of uncertainty lie only in our ignorance, but it does not seem likely that that is the case. I mean, Einstein spent a good chunk of his life trying to prove your hypothesis, as he did not like the idea of uncertainty and randomness, but he only ended up massively proving quantum mechanics.
Seriously. Hearing about this shit makes me see red. What sort of low-life, piece of shit assholes run this clinic? Not only are they scamming people who are extremely vulnerable (some of whom could potentially be helped and/or saved by real medical intervention), they have the unmitigated audacity to try to silence critics who would out them. This is beyond unacceptable. I think we all need to stand in solidarity with Rhys Morgan and let this asshole know what we think.
On that note: Fuck you, Stanislaw Burzynski, you lying, quack, fraudulent piece of shit. I hope you end up rotting in a prison cell for what you have done.
We all know that in most cases, whatever seasonal flu virus goes around ends up being no worse than average (which, by the way, is about 30,000 deaths annually). What is also known, however, is that each flu virus carries a small probability that it could become a pandemic. It has happened in the past, and it will almost certainly happen again. We take the seasonal flu virus seriously because we will not know it is going to go pandemic until, you know, it actually does. At this point, it is far harder to get it under control. Ubiquitous flu vaccination is the best tool that we have right now to defend against it, and we need everyone that can get vaccinated to do so to protect those that are not able to. So, in short, fuck you. You are letting your ignorance put others in harm's way.
You are a fool. It takes only a cursory glance at disease and vaccination statistics to see the efficacy of vaccination. The fact that, despite your hard-headed idiocy, you did not happen to get sick, says absolutely nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
So this guy is so rich that he can afford to finance a whole industry of millions of workers to monitor the web? Well, that should solve a lot of economic problems in India! Maybe he could outsource some of those jobs over here!
Yes, but only if you have a gun to your head and are getting a blowjob while you do it...
Nope. We came up with the Internet, therefore, the default tld's (.com, .net, etc) refer to sites hosted in the US. For the reason, Great Britain is the only country in the world that does not have the name of their country on their postage stamps. When you are somewhere first, you get the naming rights.
What you type into the URL bar is not public -- but where you go when you hit enter is. It has to be. That is the way the web works. When you travel around you are broadcasting your IP as you connect to different servers around the globe. The servers that you connect to are under no obligation to hide the fact that you have been in there. Think of the Internet as a big city (a city where you really, really want to stay away from the red-light district); as you walk around you are essentially anonymous due to the mass of people, but in reality everything you are doing is in the open. If you walk into a store and buy something, the store is not violating your privacy by acknowledging that you were there. If this were not the case, society wouldn't work. The Internet is the same thing; it is essentially anonymous due to the overwhelming amount of traffic, but at the end of the day, everything you are doing is public.
Encrypted data, however, is a different thing entirely. Encrypted data is more akin to carrying a letter around this city in a sealed envelope. There IS an expectation of privacy as to the contents of that letter; you put it in an envelope so that the guy sitting next to you on the train can't read it. Now, I know that Google does analyze the content of encrypted emails, but you are using their service, so this should again be expected. If I were to write something on paper while sitting in a Google office, I would have a very different expectation of privacy; it should be expected that they are able to monitor what happens on their own service (or building, in this analogy).
CIQ, however, effectively breaks all of our expectations of privacy. In this analogy, even if you locked yourself in your bedroom, made sure nobody was around, wrote the letter, and then sealed it in a light-proof envelope, CIQ would still know what you wrote on that letter. They would know because THEY WATCHED YOU WRITING IT. While you were writing that letter and taking all the proper measures to keep it private, they had a camera over your shoulder watching as your pen scribbled across the page. It was never disclosed to you that this camera was here. Now, they are defending themselves by saying that we cannot prove that the camera was actually transmitting the data back home, but we know for a fact that it was there and it was recording data. This is why a keylogger is a whole new level of privacy violation; it violates the sanctity of the physical device you are working on. This is what makes it orders of magnitude worse than anything in Marc Zuckerberg's wildest dreams. This is also why keyloggers are almost universally criminal. To compare it to Google Analytics belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the tech at hand. There is a relevant exchange in Pulp Fiction:
Vincent: I didn't say it's the same thing, I said it's the same ballpark.
Jules; Ain't no fuckin' ballpark neither! It ain't the same fuckin' league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport!
While these characters were talking about something different, the same principle applies. Not only are Google Analytics not the same ball park, they ain't even the same fuckin' sport. The difference in magnitude is astonishing, and making such ill-fitting comparisons only diminishes the affront to decency that this software poses.
There is a big, BIG difference between CIQ and Google Analytics. Google Analytics tracks your browsing behavior, which is on the open web, and is being done in public. While it is certainly creepy that your web browsing behavior is being tracked, you are still doing all of that in public, where you have no expectation of privacy. CIQ, on the other hand, is a keylogger. It can track private communications that you are intending to send out encrypted before you even send them. This is a whole different ball of wax, and is considered to be criminal behavior in almost all cases in the PC world. Comparing Google Analytics to CIQ is like comparing a case of the common cold to ebola, there are certainly similarities, but one is VERY different in terms of degree.
First of all, you are misunderstanding the reason that artists create things. People create things because they want to create things. This is why there are so many starving artists out there; millions of people are willing to go without in order to continue focusing on expressing themselves and creating art. Any musician who molds their output completely around profits is NOT an artist by any stretch of the imagination; they are a corporate shill and a hack. This is the biggest problem with the media companies, they used to produce art, now they generate content. It quite honestly makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth and makes me yearn for the day that the RIAA, MPAA and all the other associated blood-sucking, soul-killing leeches die off and sink into the mud like the filthy parasites that they are.
...this is still surprising to see this coming from someone with a D after their name. This is not because they are fundamentally more decent, but their usual constituency doesn't really seem to buy the "blame the middle class" argument, at least not as much. This seems like a really, really dumb idea, if for no other reason than the political fallout it will create.
What Star Wars prequels?
Seriously? This is on the front page? First of all, should that really be a surprise that a brand new, quad core chip can beat a 9 month old, slower, dual core? Secondly, Apple's success has NEVER been due to its high performance, it has always been about the shiny factor and the intuitive software design. I am personally excited about the arms race we are seeing in tablets, and hope to see high end Android tablets gain more traction, but this is just silly.
It is not, however, important for them to have the keystrokes that you enter into your phone before sending encrypted communications. There is NO WAY that this is not a violation of the law if it is not explicitly mentioned in the ToS, as keystroke logging could never be remotely construed as even remotely necessary for system diagnostics; its only purpose is the violation of privacy.
Wow, that looks like a pretty well-hidden goatse. I have still yet to fall for one of those on /. but I know that it's only a matter of time...
I sincerely hope that we don't have flying cars any time soon -- just look how bad people are at paying attention to our current two dimensional travel. Adding a third dimension into the mix would be very, very bad. Now, couple this with Google's self driving car tech and we could have something interesting...
Your analogy doesn't quite illustrate the risk involved. It would be more like pacing an Indy 500 race with a moped.
I was more thinking rocket skates...
The middle class is already getting squeezed out of existence. By making enough money to get by, they are ensuring that they don't get any assistance, and have to pay a quarter to a third of their income in taxes before they even get to see it. The middle class ALREADY carries the burden of taking care of the poor, while the rich hide behind tax loopholes and foreign bank accounts. If you think that the middle class is the source of any of these problems, you are a fucking idiot. There is no debate, no discussion, you are simply wrong and are going after the wrong enemy. The middle class was no responsible for crashing the economy, and it was the middle class that fell the furthest. We work our asses off and we pay taxes, it is time for the leeches at the top to join us.
Why don't we then create a specialized graduate level degree for politicians? Engineers, professors, doctors, and lawyers all (typically) require some graduate level degree, why not politicians? The decisions they make have a far wider impact. The graduate degree would simply be an additional 2 years beyond a bachelor's and would be a crash course in bioethics, technology, economics, and other academic subjects that would help the decision-making process. The goal is not to make them experts in everything, but to make sure that they know SOMETHING about what they are talking about. Right now, politicians typically know nothing about what they are legislating. If they did, SOPA would not even be on the table, and stem cell research would not be even remotely contentious.
But I'm not, nor would I play one on TV. If I were in a position where I had to make decisions regarding law and politics that affected millions of people, I would do everything I could to learn as much about it as humanly possible and get myself to where I was as close to an expert as I could be within the given time frame. If I could not learn enough to make an informed decision on the matter, I would then defer the decision to someone who is qualified. I see nothing of this sort in politics; they get together with their lobbyists, hear one side of the story from a clearly interested party, and then go out and vote on something of which they have no understanding (see: The Internet is not a dump truck, it's a series of tubes).
"No reason to believe that there is" != "Can't be"
This is the fundamental problem -- people ought not be allowed to make wide reaching decisions about things that they don't understand. We need to figure out some sort of system by which decision-makers (judges, legislators, etc) must have a working knowledge of what they are talking about. If they can't show that they know what they are talking about, their decision doesn't count. I don't go to my doctor when my transmission is acting up, nor do I ask my mechanic about health issues. It is even more critical that politicians know what they are talking about, as they get to decide what EVERYONE is and is not allowed to do.
We don't have a complete and total understanding of the Universe, but that doesn't make fairies any more likely to be real. More importantly, I think that the burden of proof ought to be on those that are making a claim contrary to our current understanding; you need to prove that there is an underlying order to the Universe. Right now, that doesn't seem to be the case. I would absolutely be open to evidence that suggests that our current understanding is mistaken, but until we see it, it is just empty speculation.
You can believe what you want, but it doesn't change the way the Universe works. Sure, we may find out that the roots of uncertainty lie only in our ignorance, but it does not seem likely that that is the case. I mean, Einstein spent a good chunk of his life trying to prove your hypothesis, as he did not like the idea of uncertainty and randomness, but he only ended up massively proving quantum mechanics.
Seriously. Hearing about this shit makes me see red. What sort of low-life, piece of shit assholes run this clinic? Not only are they scamming people who are extremely vulnerable (some of whom could potentially be helped and/or saved by real medical intervention), they have the unmitigated audacity to try to silence critics who would out them. This is beyond unacceptable. I think we all need to stand in solidarity with Rhys Morgan and let this asshole know what we think.
On that note: Fuck you, Stanislaw Burzynski, you lying, quack, fraudulent piece of shit. I hope you end up rotting in a prison cell for what you have done.
Whatever makes us undead makes us slower.
Not necessarily these days. Did you see that piece of shit Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead?
We all know that in most cases, whatever seasonal flu virus goes around ends up being no worse than average (which, by the way, is about 30,000 deaths annually). What is also known, however, is that each flu virus carries a small probability that it could become a pandemic. It has happened in the past, and it will almost certainly happen again. We take the seasonal flu virus seriously because we will not know it is going to go pandemic until, you know, it actually does. At this point, it is far harder to get it under control. Ubiquitous flu vaccination is the best tool that we have right now to defend against it, and we need everyone that can get vaccinated to do so to protect those that are not able to. So, in short, fuck you. You are letting your ignorance put others in harm's way.
You are a fool. It takes only a cursory glance at disease and vaccination statistics to see the efficacy of vaccination. The fact that, despite your hard-headed idiocy, you did not happen to get sick, says absolutely nothing.
That was AWESOME.