Hu Jintao has a hydraulic engineering degree. His first job was at a hydro-power station. So, is hydraulic engineering a liberal art or are you completely full of it?
I think that your reply shows a certain amount of paranoia, not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it's easier to live if certain good faith assumptions are made.
Speeding tickets are part of the public record since police and cities/states are involved as one of two parties. Hence the tickets become part of the public record (open government and all that).
Medical information is available to insurance companies since they are usually paying for things. No amount of complaints about the abuse of the "original intent" of social security numbers will change the fact that, like it or not, they are no de facto national id numbers, and are the best method for identifying unique individuals. Furthermore, medical record LAWS essentially require health providers to gather SSN information from patients.
Of course financial companies mine through public data, it's a good strategy for them to evaluate risk, which should help them make money. But this leads to the point that I was originally trying to make: what compelling reason could be given to make a database of bar visits public, or available to public corporations? Both of the involved parties are private entities. If the bar tried to sell the data there would be a huge uproar. Lawsuits about invasion of privacy, etc. would be filed. People who wanted to drink would no longer visit, just like in the anecdote you cited. What makes you think that market forces would not tilt so heavily that these businesses would fail?
Everyone is up in arms about what COULD be done with these databases. However, there is no compelling reason to believe that any of these things would be legal, or would be tolerated by the public in general. Are there not enough problems already with data mining and intrusion into our personal behavior that we must seek out things that might potentially be abuses in the future?
1) Why is it assumed that entering a bar automatically implies that you were drinking?
2) I find it really dubious that employers would ever get access to this sort of information and I think that it is unlikely that they would be allowed to use it without being sued.
While the potential exists for all sorts of "big brother" type applications, I find most of these scenarios to be somewhat far-fetched.
Alternatively, 1M people downloaded Safari, discovered it was buggy, that it occasionally caused Windows to hang (I know somebody who had to basically do a hard reset each session), and are not particularly impressed. Sure, the bugs are fixed now, but first impressions are a big deal. I personally do not see any advantages to using Safari over my current combination of Opera and Firefox.
That's the whole point of triangle bo to trick the censorware. Unfortunately, triangle boy only works with win2k and linux. They are working on other versions.
Censoring will not work. You can just use safeweb to bypass it (or safeweb and triangle boy if you have to). Safeweb can also block all cookies and popups, and even scramble the URLs you visited so that no one can figure out where you were.
I think that the technical difficulties involved with censoring are difficult enough (safeweb is not the only way to beat censors), there is also the dilemma of letting some large corporation decide what kids can and cannot see. Unfortunately, I think that it will be nearly impossible to prevent the installation of filtering software. Any protests at this time will likely be unsucessful, but removal at a later time might be possible, when the idea that computers are evil dies down.
It seems to me that this WAVE program is very similar to the anti-communist witch hunts that occured in this country during part of the Cold War. Most people decry this as a sad time in our history. We are now providing an opportunity for students to turn in each other, with no risk themselves. This is remarkably reminiscent of the anti-red hunts where people denounced others for their own gain, and were never punished. How many innocent children must be harmed to catch one "problem child"? How long before students start reporting others just because they don't like them? How long before the system is extended to adults to keep them from harming others? It seems to me that this is a dangerous slippery slope. How far can we go before we become a police state, with government spies watching us for abnormal behavior? This country was founded on the principle of individual freedom. The Consitution, especially the Bill of Rights, was designed to keep the government out of our lives. I don't care what important sounding justification is used, there is no excuse for setting up a program like this, which in the end can not help but hurting many and helping few.
However, if a solution must be proposed, how about this: instead of punishing the few, educate the many. In a true democracy, the majority always prevails. However, this country was designed to have safeguards that prevented the majority from exercising tyrannical power over the minority. Unfortunately, most children are educated at government schools and are indoctrinated against standing out. It seems ironic that a government that was supposed to protect individual freedoms has begun to support the destruction of these freedoms. If this is not stopped now, there is no telling where it will end.
I would be grateful if someone would tell me where to place bets on how long it will take to develop a hack for the system that allows vote manipulation. This seems almost inevitable if Microsoft is involved. I can imagine the headlines "Romanian Hacker Breaks into US Electronic Voting System" or "World Workers Party Wins Suspect Presidential Election." Imagine, fourteen year old IRC addicts and foreign citizens could also add their votes. This sounds great!!!
There have been a number of strange things happening in the 3D market lately. One time industry leader DiamondMM decided to pull out of the board manufacturing industry and focus on its MP3 player. Now 3dfx has also pulled out. It seems to be hard times for the board makers. Two major manufacturers have stopped making products. Is this part of a general trend in the marketplace away from high powered graphics boards?
Perhaps it is just that those who entered the market first did not make good enough products to survive when the competition got serious. I was never impressed by 3dfxs decision to focus on its own proprietary format instead of OpenGL. Was there ever a 3dfx product that had full OpenGL support? Also, I own a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra and it was a real pain to get working. I was never impressed by their customer service and I recommend against them.
What was the point of the review. Everyone knows that the best books come from O'Reilly. What else is there to say? I personally own the Camel for Perl, I use it for all my reference needs. All that really needs to be said is: "there is a good book you don't have. the title is x. go buy it."
It seems to me that the most appropriate section to place this article in would be web scams. Here are con artists on the web tricking people out of money and essentially providing nothing in return. This is not an attempt to "free" the web, it is a scam, pure and simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Hu Jintao has a hydraulic engineering degree. His first job was at a hydro-power station. So, is hydraulic engineering a liberal art or are you completely full of it?
I think that your reply shows a certain amount of paranoia, not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it's easier to live if certain good faith assumptions are made.
Speeding tickets are part of the public record since police and cities/states are involved as one of two parties. Hence the tickets become part of the public record (open government and all that).
Medical information is available to insurance companies since they are usually paying for things. No amount of complaints about the abuse of the "original intent" of social security numbers will change the fact that, like it or not, they are no de facto national id numbers, and are the best method for identifying unique individuals. Furthermore, medical record LAWS essentially require health providers to gather SSN information from patients.
Of course financial companies mine through public data, it's a good strategy for them to evaluate risk, which should help them make money. But this leads to the point that I was originally trying to make: what compelling reason could be given to make a database of bar visits public, or available to public corporations? Both of the involved parties are private entities. If the bar tried to sell the data there would be a huge uproar. Lawsuits about invasion of privacy, etc. would be filed. People who wanted to drink would no longer visit, just like in the anecdote you cited. What makes you think that market forces would not tilt so heavily that these businesses would fail?
Everyone is up in arms about what COULD be done with these databases. However, there is no compelling reason to believe that any of these things would be legal, or would be tolerated by the public in general. Are there not enough problems already with data mining and intrusion into our personal behavior that we must seek out things that might potentially be abuses in the future?
1) Why is it assumed that entering a bar automatically implies that you were drinking?
2) I find it really dubious that employers would ever get access to this sort of information and I think that it is unlikely that they would be allowed to use it without being sued.
While the potential exists for all sorts of "big brother" type applications, I find most of these scenarios to be somewhat far-fetched.
Alternatively, 1M people downloaded Safari, discovered it was buggy, that it occasionally caused Windows to hang (I know somebody who had to basically do a hard reset each session), and are not particularly impressed. Sure, the bugs are fixed now, but first impressions are a big deal. I personally do not see any advantages to using Safari over my current combination of Opera and Firefox.
makaera
I think that the technical difficulties involved with censoring are difficult enough (safeweb is not the only way to beat censors), there is also the dilemma of letting some large corporation decide what kids can and cannot see. Unfortunately, I think that it will be nearly impossible to prevent the installation of filtering software. Any protests at this time will likely be unsucessful, but removal at a later time might be possible, when the idea that computers are evil dies down.
makaera
It seems that the Bill Gates of real life is becoming more like his clone in Antitrust. Or is it the other way around...
However, if a solution must be proposed, how about this: instead of punishing the few, educate the many. In a true democracy, the majority always prevails. However, this country was designed to have safeguards that prevented the majority from exercising tyrannical power over the minority. Unfortunately, most children are educated at government schools and are indoctrinated against standing out. It seems ironic that a government that was supposed to protect individual freedoms has begun to support the destruction of these freedoms. If this is not stopped now, there is no telling where it will end.
Makaera
I would be grateful if someone would tell me where to place bets on how long it will take to develop a hack for the system that allows vote manipulation. This seems almost inevitable if Microsoft is involved. I can imagine the headlines "Romanian Hacker Breaks into US Electronic Voting System" or "World Workers Party Wins Suspect Presidential Election." Imagine, fourteen year old IRC addicts and foreign citizens could also add their votes. This sounds great!!!
There have been a number of strange things happening in the 3D market lately. One time industry leader DiamondMM decided to pull out of the board manufacturing industry and focus on its MP3 player. Now 3dfx has also pulled out. It seems to be hard times for the board makers. Two major manufacturers have stopped making products. Is this part of a general trend in the marketplace away from high powered graphics boards?
Perhaps it is just that those who entered the market first did not make good enough products to survive when the competition got serious. I was never impressed by 3dfxs decision to focus on its own proprietary format instead of OpenGL. Was there ever a 3dfx product that had full OpenGL support? Also, I own a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra and it was a real pain to get working. I was never impressed by their customer service and I recommend against them.
What was the point of the review. Everyone knows that the best books come from O'Reilly. What else is there to say? I personally own the Camel for Perl, I use it for all my reference needs. All that really needs to be said is: "there is a good book you don't have. the title is x. go buy it."
It seems to me that the most appropriate section to place this article in would be web scams. Here are con artists on the web tricking people out of money and essentially providing nothing in return. This is not an attempt to "free" the web, it is a scam, pure and simple.