I was looking forward to having a bit of fun trying to identify robocaller vs a real human being.
As in, in the middle of the conversation, drop something completely unexpected like "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything plus one?"
A human would give the correct answer - or at least go "Uuh? What's that got to do with anything?" A robocaller would politely say "I'm sorry Sir, I'm not sure I understand your question...", indicating to me that it's time to hang up because I don't want to interact with Google's dystopia.
You know what? If I was condemned to death, I'd want a pullet through the head. That's VERY quick and painless.
If a state is callous enough to consider the killing of human beings an acceptable form of punishnment, why is it so fixated on killing them by pumping them full of chemicals or gasses?
If the state officials want to sanitize the act of murdering a human being, all they have to do is stick them into a box with some kind of automated mechanism to fire a bullet through the person's head inside the box. Okay, say three bullets to be extra-sure. Then if they really, REALLY don't want to deal with the mess, they can take out the closed box whole for incineration. See? All they'd have to watch is a guy going into a box, and the guy inside the box would never suffer. No need for all that nitrogen nonsense.
Incidentally, all these talks of gassing prisoners reeks of something else we've seen in the past. I'm surprised our powers-that-be don't try at all costs to steer clear away from the immediate parallel those of us with a memory are certain to draw...
I have a fireplace insert for heating. it's not an open fire - no smoke, no cancer. For cooking, I have an electric stove. And for hot water, I use my regular heating fuel boiler. That's why I said burning the paper briquettes only covers 3/4th of my heating needs.
But thanks for immediately assuming I'm a dumbass...
I could never stop junk mail coming into my mailbox. So I decided to valorize it instead: years ago, I gave my adress to many stores, and in short order, I started receiving a lot of junk mail. As in, a LOT of junk mail.
What do I do with all that junk mail you ask? I make briquettes to throw in the fire in the winter. 3/4th of my heating needs are taken care of by that free fuel, delivered for free right on my doorstep. In the summer, I store the briquettes, and if I have too many of them, I sell them to the local recycler, who pays a token sum for it by the ton and burns it in our local power plant.
Making the briquette is a bit of a pain, even with the briquette machine, and they require sweeping the chimney more often because burning glossy paper fouls it up real fast. Also, burning the chemicals contained in the paper and in the ink isn't terribly green. But it results in real savings in heating fuel.
No OS is perfect, it's true. But Linux has one thing going for it that neither Windows 10, iOS or Android have: it's not designed to put my ass under surveillance and rape my privacy behind my back.
I'll take any OS designed with honesty in mind, however flawed, over an OS backed by big data any day of the week.
- Openbook will run out of money (yes, it costs money to run servers for hundreds of millions of users) - Openbook will sell ads to fund themselves - Openbook will realize it's even more profitable to collect data and sell it to the highest bidder - Openbook will get a "think of the children" or "Uuh! Terrorism!" injunction from some court or governmental agency, and will share their data with them - Openbook = Facebook
The businessman who won his case was convicted 10 years ago of conspiring to intercept communications. He spent six months in jail.
Poor sumbitch did time for intercepting communications, yet I don't see anybody from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Doubleclick or CloudFlare in the slammer...
I doubt it. I bet you anything that deep down in the TOS that all Facebook users have agreed to - after reading it carefully from beginning to end, no doubt - there is a provision saying the users lets FB use and abuse their data any which way it wants.
You can't report Zuck: he ain't a thieve, he's a con artist: he managed to convince his users that giving away their data is a negligible price to pay in exchange for a great service. People are slowly discovering it's the other way around, but it's too late now.
The best option is a class action lawsuit to force them to delete and not retain your info.
Okay. Say they get sued and they lose the class action (fat chance). How can you tell they'll actually delete the data?
Facebook's infrastructure is vast. Technically, it'd take experts months to ensure they actually comply with the judge's order - and that's assuming FB doesn't actively try to deceive them. What would most likely happen is, FB would simply promise to comply in writing, and we all know what FB's promises are worth...
I am tired of having to "worry" about FaceBook and how it handles data.
Me, I'm tired of having to worry about how any of my data is mishandled by Facebook - or Google, or CloudFlare, or Apple, or Microsoft, or any other big data player for that matter - when I explicitely and quite deliberately refuse to use any their "services".
It requires real focus and total dedication to limit the amount of shit these companies know about me to an absolute minimum when I simply want to go on the internet - nevermind denying them the right to know anything at all, which is impossible. That's what's tiring in today's surveillance capitalist society.
It's becoming so problematic that I'm increasingly turning into poisoning the well instead of trying to dry it up - i.e. supply big data with as much bullshit information as possible, since they want data that bad...
More importantly, it's very likely that even if you deny Facebook the right to do something it wants to do, it'll do it anyway. There's no way to tell, why wouldn't they?
The permissions thing is just a dog-and-pony show...
There's a fine balance between not enough DRM, where copyright holders can't live off their work, and too much DRM that's so expensive and so annoying that people massively turn to piracy and ruin the copyright holders.
The right balance is where the return for copyright holders is maximized. Even greedy bastards like the MPAA/RIAA know it and turn a blind eye to massive copyright infringements that they would much rather didn't happen.
So the OP's point is moot: the internet will never be completely DRM-locked, because it would plain kill DRM in very short order.
I assume it's Horse Investment Disease - the ailment that afflicts people who bet on horse races, that makes them chronically poor. If you have in-depth knowledge of horses, it might just make you rich instead.
I'd rather cycle in Chicago in the middle of winter than on a pristine cycle path in sunny California in a Facebook village for overpaid yuppies. The latter sounds like my personal idea of hell on Earth.
That sort of shenanigan (and the desire to lower my electricity bill) is why I have a physical switch to remove the power to the devices I don't trust. That include PCs with wake-on-lan and shady BIOS code from Intel and whatnot.
With the power off, the only way for a device to phone home is to have its own battery and an internal 3G modem. Not impossible but not very likely, since sneaky manufacturers probably rely on people pushing the fake power-off button.
As for cellphones, since it's getting hard to find devices with removable batteries, I transport mine in a metal lunchbox. Yes I'm paranoid, but I'm proven right more and more everyday...
Slashdot Mirror
I was looking forward to having a bit of fun trying to identify robocaller vs a real human being.
As in, in the middle of the conversation, drop something completely unexpected like "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything plus one?"
A human would give the correct answer - or at least go "Uuh? What's that got to do with anything?" A robocaller would politely say "I'm sorry Sir, I'm not sure I understand your question...", indicating to me that it's time to hang up because I don't want to interact with Google's dystopia.
No: one charges the other and vice-versa.
In other words: FREE ENERGY BABY!
What part of "whenever I can" don't you understand?
I use Apple Pay wherever I can, because NFC payments rock; but I don't really see any advantage to carrying an Apple Pay branded piece of plastic.
I use cash wherever I can, because not giving any personal data or any of my money to megacorps who don't pay their fucking taxes rocks.
You know what? If I was condemned to death, I'd want a pullet through the head. That's VERY quick and painless.
If a state is callous enough to consider the killing of human beings an acceptable form of punishnment, why is it so fixated on killing them by pumping them full of chemicals or gasses?
If the state officials want to sanitize the act of murdering a human being, all they have to do is stick them into a box with some kind of automated mechanism to fire a bullet through the person's head inside the box. Okay, say three bullets to be extra-sure. Then if they really, REALLY don't want to deal with the mess, they can take out the closed box whole for incineration. See? All they'd have to watch is a guy going into a box, and the guy inside the box would never suffer. No need for all that nitrogen nonsense.
Incidentally, all these talks of gassing prisoners reeks of something else we've seen in the past. I'm surprised our powers-that-be don't try at all costs to steer clear away from the immediate parallel those of us with a memory are certain to draw...
supported by Google, Amazon and the others? That way I'll know exactly what to avoid.
I have a fireplace insert for heating. it's not an open fire - no smoke, no cancer. For cooking, I have an electric stove. And for hot water, I use my regular heating fuel boiler. That's why I said burning the paper briquettes only covers 3/4th of my heating needs.
But thanks for immediately assuming I'm a dumbass...
I could never stop junk mail coming into my mailbox. So I decided to valorize it instead: years ago, I gave my adress to many stores, and in short order, I started receiving a lot of junk mail. As in, a LOT of junk mail.
What do I do with all that junk mail you ask? I make briquettes to throw in the fire in the winter. 3/4th of my heating needs are taken care of by that free fuel, delivered for free right on my doorstep. In the summer, I store the briquettes, and if I have too many of them, I sell them to the local recycler, who pays a token sum for it by the ton and burns it in our local power plant.
Making the briquette is a bit of a pain, even with the briquette machine, and they require sweeping the chimney more often because burning glossy paper fouls it up real fast. Also, burning the chemicals contained in the paper and in the ink isn't terribly green. But it results in real savings in heating fuel.
No OS is perfect, it's true. But Linux has one thing going for it that neither Windows 10, iOS or Android have: it's not designed to put my ass under surveillance and rape my privacy behind my back.
I'll take any OS designed with honesty in mind, however flawed, over an OS backed by big data any day of the week.
- Openbook will run out of money (yes, it costs money to run servers for hundreds of millions of users)
- Openbook will sell ads to fund themselves
- Openbook will realize it's even more profitable to collect data and sell it to the highest bidder
- Openbook will get a "think of the children" or "Uuh! Terrorism!" injunction from some court or governmental agency, and will share their data with them
- Openbook = Facebook
Poor sumbitch did time for intercepting communications, yet I don't see anybody from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Doubleclick or CloudFlare in the slammer...
I doubt it. I bet you anything that deep down in the TOS that all Facebook users have agreed to - after reading it carefully from beginning to end, no doubt - there is a provision saying the users lets FB use and abuse their data any which way it wants.
You can't report Zuck: he ain't a thieve, he's a con artist: he managed to convince his users that giving away their data is a negligible price to pay in exchange for a great service. People are slowly discovering it's the other way around, but it's too late now.
Wherever it gets published, you can bet you'll have to solve an impossible captcha to get to it.
Okay. Say they get sued and they lose the class action (fat chance). How can you tell they'll actually delete the data?
Facebook's infrastructure is vast. Technically, it'd take experts months to ensure they actually comply with the judge's order - and that's assuming FB doesn't actively try to deceive them. What would most likely happen is, FB would simply promise to comply in writing, and we all know what FB's promises are worth...
Me, I'm tired of having to worry about how any of my data is mishandled by Facebook - or Google, or CloudFlare, or Apple, or Microsoft, or any other big data player for that matter - when I explicitely and quite deliberately refuse to use any their "services".
It requires real focus and total dedication to limit the amount of shit these companies know about me to an absolute minimum when I simply want to go on the internet - nevermind denying them the right to know anything at all, which is impossible. That's what's tiring in today's surveillance capitalist society.
It's becoming so problematic that I'm increasingly turning into poisoning the well instead of trying to dry it up - i.e. supply big data with as much bullshit information as possible, since they want data that bad...
More importantly, it's very likely that even if you deny Facebook the right to do something it wants to do, it'll do it anyway. There's no way to tell, why wouldn't they?
The permissions thing is just a dog-and-pony show...
There's a fine balance between not enough DRM, where copyright holders can't live off their work, and too much DRM that's so expensive and so annoying that people massively turn to piracy and ruin the copyright holders.
The right balance is where the return for copyright holders is maximized. Even greedy bastards like the MPAA/RIAA know it and turn a blind eye to massive copyright infringements that they would much rather didn't happen.
So the OP's point is moot: the internet will never be completely DRM-locked, because it would plain kill DRM in very short order.
Facebook spreads hates and help militias
Zuckerberg gets richer by the day
As Muslims oppress the Rohingyas
Burma-Shave
Seriously? What century is the OP from?
When I was a student, teachers and TAs could be bribed with acid - and I'm not that young...
I assume it's Horse Investment Disease - the ailment that afflicts people who bet on horse races, that makes them chronically poor. If you have in-depth knowledge of horses, it might just make you rich instead.
I'd rather cycle in Chicago in the middle of winter than on a pristine cycle path in sunny California in a Facebook village for overpaid yuppies. The latter sounds like my personal idea of hell on Earth.
Cutting the power?
That sort of shenanigan (and the desire to lower my electricity bill) is why I have a physical switch to remove the power to the devices I don't trust. That include PCs with wake-on-lan and shady BIOS code from Intel and whatnot.
With the power off, the only way for a device to phone home is to have its own battery and an internal 3G modem. Not impossible but not very likely, since sneaky manufacturers probably rely on people pushing the fake power-off button.
As for cellphones, since it's getting hard to find devices with removable batteries, I transport mine in a metal lunchbox. Yes I'm paranoid, but I'm proven right more and more everyday...