Were the British civilised in the late 1700s? The Union or Confederacy in the US in the late 1800s? The Germans in the 1930s and 40s? Pick a country and you'll likely find an example.
We're all civilised people equally capable of rational debate or viciously and thoughtlessly slaughtering each other. What happened in Germany in the 1930s could well happen in the UK or the US in the 2030s. You'd do well to remember Britain's stunning success engaging in rational debate with Germany in the 1940s.
"You people", as you say, also need to grow up and realize that rational debate is all well and good, but periodically we're called to defend our selves and families by any means available. If you're fortunate enough to live in someplace like the US or the UK, it hasn't happened on a large scale for quite some time, although it happens on an individual basis more frequently. I understand there's a gentleman in jail for life in the UK for shooting a pair of crowbar-wielding intruders in his home. Apparently he should have fended them off with rational debate? If you live in or near the West Bank in Israel, you'd better be prepared to defend yourself and your family with something more than "rational debate" right now.
I'm sorry, but much as I'd like to live in the world you seem to believe you live in, history has shown me that I don't. You may choose to ignore this fact. I can't.
Freedom and the free market are perfectly compatible. Freedom and ignorance are not. If corporations which pulled this sort of garbage found their consumer base evaporating it wouldn't happen. Sadly, America has far more ignorance than freedom.
I am frankly tired of all these fascistic restrictions on free markets that Slashdot implicitly endorses over and over again.
What restrictions? What endorsement? Moreover, what free market? Cable service is a regulated monopoly in most places. If you want it to be a free market as in I can choose any cable company that wants to offer me service, I'm with ya all the way! That said, I've *never* lived in a place where I had a choice of more than one cable company. The only response I advocate is refusing to give money to companies that choose to try to screw me. That's a free market tactic if ever there was one. You can screw other consumers if you so choose, but I'm not going to participate, thanks.
They probably aren't stupid, but grasp the fact that most of the American public does a convincing job of acting stupidly[0], and therefore, they can probably get away with it. If not, they'll get a slap on the wrist which pales in comparison to the potential profit.
[0] Acting, because I believe the American public isn't really stupid, they're just not paying attention. Ignorant, perhaps, is a better word. Someday, hopefully soon, they'll wake up.
I read it as TW denying the charge that they're not committed to open access. Perhaps they view confiscatory fees as "open". If M$ can define "innovate", why shouldn't TW define "open access"?:)
Maybe they should merge so we can have innovative, open access.NET solutions which will be guaranteed not interoperable with anything else, but work flawlessly on supported equipment. Well, except when they don't.:)
Aww, that's too bad. I have to add another company to the list of people who I won't do business with, and only a month before Road Runner hits my area.
To those of you who are salesdroids or marketing weasels, listen up. When your corporate persona is exploitive and abusive, I won't do business with you. This is ESPECIALLY true when you sell toys (defined as anything I don't really need, cable service and cable net access are certainly included). This is a growing sentiment. Don't let the door hit you in the a$$ on the way out.
No, not really, unless you're speaking in a religious context, not of extinction as a biological process. Extinction is a consequence, not a design goal, so there was a reason it happened, but not a point in the sense of "This is why it was done."
A fine point, maybe, but it makes the difference between there being merit to restoring lost species. Take dinosaurs, for examples. Failure to adapt to an event that occurs every 50,000,000 years or so isn't that great a flaw, IMO. Do you design for events that very nearly never happen? Should we kill that Linux thing that's so beloved around here because it isn't perfect either? (Ooh! Sacrilege!)
Please read the article. Using cord blood is absolutely irrelevant to the ethical issue at hand. I happen to think disposing of "unwanted" embryos is unethical. Using cord blood is fine.
That said, I've refused to participate not over ethical issues, but over stupid legal issues. The cord blood goes not necessarily to save lives but to whatever purpose they find useful. The defined purpose is to save lives, but sometimes the blood isn't suitable, at which point it gets used for unspecified research projects. You don't get to choose if you want to be part of those projects. You can exercise no control over the dissemination of information about the child which is contained in that blood. I wouldn't pass out a copy of my DNA for unspecified use, neither will I do so on my children's behalf.
Cord blood use is good. Stupid grasping institutions that like agreements that strip patients' rights ruin it.
Tell ya what. All those IT people are just a drain, a metaphorical hole in the payroll. Why don't you do the shareholders a favor, can them all, and let your VBCs share price skyrocket once those unencumbered Sales and Marketing droids *really* get things moving?
I once worked for a company with a similarly boneheaded strategy. The closed down the small division i was in not long after I left and outsourced all the work. They ended up with poorer service as they no longer had dedicated people whose only priority was that company, and paid more for it. From your perspective, they eliminated a "profit center" which wasn't profitable, yet they *lost* money in the process.
You, and manglers who think like you, need to understand that everyone plays an important role in the company's success (or you shouldn't have them on the payroll). Every morning when the cleaning staff goes through to empty out the trash I think to myself how its good that they're there to do this, that it's *important* that it be done, and it's more economical than having people who make high salaries carry their own trash can to the dumpster each day. I respect and appreciate them because they do something important, and do it well and reliably, yet they aren't recognized as contributing some certain dollar figure to the bottom line. Rest assured, they do.
Your IT department is no doubt much the same. They aren't recognized as contributing to your bottom line, but they do. The dollar amount would be determined by closing it down and watching the results. You *have* an IT department because you can't be competitive without it (your information infrastructure would gradually collapse). You have janitorial staff because, similarly, you can't be competitive without it. You aren't going to tell your new 6 figure project manager his duties include taking out the garbage if you really expect him to stay. For the most part, you can't expect your workers to stay if you don't provide basic workplace services.
Sales and Marketing is also more aptly described as Smoke and Mirrors. As a consumer of goods, I don't give a damn about the marketing pitch. Honestly, that's the crap I have to wade through to get to the substance I want. When I buy my next car all the glitzy ads will have gone to waste. My decision will be based on my own experience with manufacturers and third party reviews. S&M has a role, certainly, but the belief that they "drive corporate revenue" is naive. They *contribute*, but do does your receptionist, your janitor, your security guard, your manager, your CEO, and your IT department.
If you're 40, sitting on a pile of money, hating your job, do something about it. Go into business for yourself, hire like minded people, manage them *like* people, and reap the rewards of a workplace people want to stay with.
Alternatively, wait until I do it and come work for me.:) I don't care how old you are as long as you do quality work.
Using shame as a motivator in the same society where shows like Jerry Springer exist and actually have a significant audience strikes me as rather optimistic, at least in the short term. When people finally wake up and realize the trash they consume degrades the participants and the observers, then you have a chance.
Why is it always that "we" are right and "them companies" are wrong when it comes to finding smart ways to do business or break
other people's businesses.
Because, sadly, some companies seem to believe there's a protected "right to make money" which supercedes rights of real people. There is not. DC hasn't found a "smart way to do business", they used a model with obvious flaws: Give away a product and hope you can force people to use revenue generating associated services.
Now I really don't have any vested interest in seeing DC crushed, but I'm not going to sacrifice my rights to preserve their flawed business. IF they can find consumers who want to use the device on their terms, fine. Best wishes, good luck, and all that. If they can't do so, or someone else makes better gas/food/software, then like many companies, they'll fail due to their own error. This is a competitive economy and consumers have rights. If DC thinks they can push a product out the door and legally require that no one do a better job, they'd better pick up their marbles and go home.
Winning actually wouldn't surprise me in this case. MPAA/RIAA were backed by competent lawyers. DC seems to be spewing fairly incredible claims, and thanks to one enterprising person, has been shown to be in violation of federal law. This doesn't sound like they have competent legal advice.
FWIW, I got this spam too, but at an account Slashdot knows nothing about. The account Slashdot does know about, a disposable I'll use until it begins accumulating spam, hasn't seen it.
Maybe this is a better application for this slogan than that other, better known one.:)
If you're paying in cash, you have no reason at all to give out any information. Period. My favorite responses:
Phone number? You don't need that for a cash purchase.
Name? You don't need that for a cash purchase.
Address? You don't need that for a cash purchase.
Zip code? You don't need that for a cash purchase.
It's rare that I even get so much as a "We need it for our records." or "I have to have something to put in!" which a second refusal almost invariably kills. Only once have I had to go to "You can leave it blank, make something up, or I can buy it somewhere else." This is preferable to making something up yourself because not only does it protect your data, it also sends the message that you don't want to be profiled. Some companies I use have stopped asking. I'd like to believe this is because some not-insignificant number were refusing to provide data, and they realized if 5% outright refuse, probably still more provide false data. It's your money and your data. Take an active role in protecting it.
ObExcessiveProfiling: Buying contact lenses and being asked for my SSN.
"My what?"
"Your social security number."
"What could you possibly need that for."
"So we can file insurance."
"Did I give you any insurance information?"
"Uhhhh, no."
*smile* "Well, then, I guess you don't need it after all."
It's nice to make the people who mindlessly ask for this stuff completely out of habit, because they were told to, or "for our records" think now and again.
Open source works well for the classic problem often noted here: programmers scratching their own itch. It doesn't work well for all projects, or all parts of the project. In my experience as a user of open source software, I find that documentation is often really awful. It's a case of programmers fixing their own problems. As the writers of the software, they're not the primary beneficiaries of documentation, therefore they seem not to be too interested in writing it.
Case in point, OpenSSL. Great package, and I'm glad the developers went through the trouble to create it, however the documentation is all but nonexistant. I subscribed to the various mailing lists for a while and found that documentation basically was in the oral tradition form, with some third party, out of data stuff available (for SSLeay, the predecessor), and some examples. This is where a formal process in a corporate setting, with a profit motive is useful. Sure, the programmers don't want to document what they've done, management would rather do something else too, but the customer will insist on documentation, so you'd better produce it if you want to make sales.
Take this as a plea to make good documentation a part of your project, not a peripheral activity or one left for someone else to do after you're finished. My thanks go out to the projects which have been fabulously easy to use due to well written docs. I'm not going to name names as I'm sure to miss some.
Fair enough. IMO he and Gore both sound alike and I'm not voting for either. They're debating which flavor of ice cream to give us in order to buy the most votes. I'm reading the Constitution trying to determine which part gives them the authority to do that, and still can't find it.
Ah well, what the Constitution says is only relevant if the citizens know and care what it says. They don't on both counts.
Consider this: If someone broke into your house, while you were watching TV, romped through the kitchen naked, and left out the
back door, but didn't take anything, would the courts care? No -- the police officer who showed up would say that since nothing was
stolen, and no one was hurt, it's probably not worth the hassle to take it to court. But if someone were to enter your computer system
it's a felony?
I think you're deliberatly misunderstanding here. When I see a compromised system with no apparent damage other than an obvious exploit, say a spare inetd running, I may have a clueless script kiddie, or I may have a more sophisticated intruder who has installed his rootkit, but didn't get rid of the initial hole yet. Rootkits can be *quite* good. In theory, they can be made undetectable short of offline examination of the data on disk. I don't know that anyone's done this yet, but the major building blocks are definitely available. Your example leaves out the reality that when someone breaks in you typically don't get to see what they've done. You get evidence which they've quite possibly altered.
The question to ask, is if you come home, find your door unlocked, find fingerprints inside, and have to have every object in your house painstakingly examined to make sure, for example, that your TV isn't really a time bomb that looks like a TV, your phone isn't bugged, or bulldoze your house and build a new one, what sort of penalty should attach to the perpatrator? Should an act that costs you thousands of dollars carry a lesser penalty than stealing your $300 TV? I don't think so.
There simply is no harmless way to compromise a system. Minimally there's time and expense involved in returning the system to a trusted state, which involves careful determination of what, EXACTLY, the intruder did. Reinstalling is all well and good, and necessary, but will only restore you to the state which left you vulnerable in the first place. No obvious damage means either none was done, or it was well hidden. If the system does anything at all important, there's cost associaed with the system being unavailable for its design purpose. Please lets not go down the path of blaming the SA unless you'd also blame yourself if someone broke the windows of your car and filled it with cement. After all, you know you should properly secure your car. Lexan windows, perhaps?
I think a severe penalty is just fine. If you're breaking into someone else's computer, potentially rendering it unusable for some period of time, with NO regard for what the consequences are, you deserve a severe penalty. It's rather like drunk driving. It's an irresponsible act that sometimes doesn't hurt anyone, but often enough the consequences are severe. People who break into systems don't care what the consequences are because they typically don't attach to them. It's time to change that.
Nobody would ever look at your stats specifically and say "Wow, this fellow sure likes watching the Playboy Channel".
Unless you're in the public eye, or of interest to someone with access to the data. This happens in organizations with big databases, specifically it's been known to happen in the IRS and medical centers where employees have been found to access records of famous people, family, friends and enemies. Why, exactly, it's fun to look up Bill Gates tax return, or see what his spleen looks like is beyond me, but it does happen and employees are disciplined for it.
Sure, nobody cares if you watch the playboy channel (with the possible exception of your future ex-wife in the divorce trial). You'd better believe a lot of people would be interested in Bush's or Gore's viewing habits. Look how entranced we are, as a nation, by the fact that Gore kissed his wife and Bush thinks a reporter is an a**hole. Imagine if Gore's viewing habits include lots of violent and sexual movies. Given his criticism of the industry which brings us these movies, much would be made of this.
Go read Database Nation. Sure, sometimes consumer profiling is innocent, and can even benefit the consumer. It is also true that the data can be misused. For example, you decide to go into politics and your nightly habit of watching *cough* adult movies is used to discredit you. Or perhaps you watch lots of action/adventure movies. Can't have someone with such a clear predisposition to violence as mayor|police officer|school teacher|you name it.
The problem, as always, isn't with using the information in the manner they claim they're going to use it. Do I care if I see an ad for a computer product, which I might buy, instead of a MagnetTherapySnakeOil Miracle Cure? Actually, yes, I'd rather not see ads for products which I have contempt for. The problem is the misuse of the data, which is not typically disclosed (we're going to use your data to threaten you if you get hurt in our store), and probably unplanned.
I don't doubt that there are marketers sitting around thinking how great targeted ads are. The problem is that in 5 years (or less) there'll be this big pile of data on what you've been doing for the last 5 years, and someone else will realize how useful that data is for...? I don't know what the use will be, but I know with fair certainty that once collected, you can't get the data back.
What we truly need is for someone with a clear mind, solid ethics, and a desire to protect the freedoms of US citizens to hold their nose and get into politics, and then we need to vote for them.
The solution isn't to protect students from the bad corporate interests, it's to educate them financially. I think it's apalling that so many adults, not to mention college students, are financially incompetent. It's hard to take advantage of an educated consumer who falls over laughing at the 24% or higher APR with $29 annual fee. If students are being "forced" into bankruptcy, it's because they irresponsibly spent more money than they could afford to.
Better they learn at 18 when they go in than 22 when they go out. Better still they learn some financial common sense before 18. Parents, where are you and why aren't you doing your job?
No, they don't. Whoever builds the system has the responsibility to not defraud their customers. This is the same misguided logic that says products which "facilitate" copyright violation should be illegal. Copyright violation and fraud are already both illegal. Prosecute the crime, don't criminalize something peripheral. That a system builder can misuse a CPU to defraud a consumer does not make the CPU manufacturer responsible for preventing it, which isn't to say it wouldn't be a good PR move and entirely within their rights to do it.
...get away from your monitor and get on the phone with your representatives. Tell them what you think and what you want them to do if they want your vote. Get out your checkbook and write them a big check. Get together with like minded people and hire a 6 figure salary lobbyist to fight for your cause. In short, do just precisely what the RIAA and MPAA do.
Your rights are for sale to the highest bidder. You'd better be the highest bidder, fix the process, or get used to doing what the highest bidder permits.
I'm only halfway kidding here. There really should be a coalition of those of us who oppose this kind of thing and are willing to actively (and financially) back it.
Some of the things which were "going to happen twenty years from now in the seventies" have. Some things which weren't dreamed have. As always, a lot was ridiculous hype.
The airplane for everyone nonsense is a wonderful example. Most people aren't responsible enough to drive their cars. Take some time and research the causes for traffic accidents. Most are caused because the driver did something stupid. They were drunk, doing something else in the car and not paying enough attention, driving too fast for conditions (ever see a Southerner in snow? It's scary.), riding someone's bumper (this one really irritates me) so that when the person in front of them has to stop abruptly you're guaranteed an accident.
Do any of you *really* want to be 2 miles up at 200 mph with the same people you share the road with every day? I'd *love* to have a plane (just as soon as I can scrape together that $200k for the one I want...), but the day everybody becomes a pilot is the day I stop.
Slashdot Mirror
Were the British civilised in the late 1700s? The Union or Confederacy in the US in the late 1800s? The Germans in the 1930s and 40s? Pick a country and you'll likely find an example.
We're all civilised people equally capable of rational debate or viciously and thoughtlessly slaughtering each other. What happened in Germany in the 1930s could well happen in the UK or the US in the 2030s. You'd do well to remember Britain's stunning success engaging in rational debate with Germany in the 1940s.
"You people", as you say, also need to grow up and realize that rational debate is all well and good, but periodically we're called to defend our selves and families by any means available. If you're fortunate enough to live in someplace like the US or the UK, it hasn't happened on a large scale for quite some time, although it happens on an individual basis more frequently. I understand there's a gentleman in jail for life in the UK for shooting a pair of crowbar-wielding intruders in his home. Apparently he should have fended them off with rational debate? If you live in or near the West Bank in Israel, you'd better be prepared to defend yourself and your family with something more than "rational debate" right now.
I'm sorry, but much as I'd like to live in the world you seem to believe you live in, history has shown me that I don't. You may choose to ignore this fact. I can't.
Freedom and the free market are perfectly compatible. Freedom and ignorance are not. If corporations which pulled this sort of garbage found their consumer base evaporating it wouldn't happen. Sadly, America has far more ignorance than freedom.
[0] Acting, because I believe the American public isn't really stupid, they're just not paying attention. Ignorant, perhaps, is a better word. Someday, hopefully soon, they'll wake up.
Maybe they should merge so we can have innovative, open access .NET solutions which will be guaranteed not interoperable with anything else, but work flawlessly on supported equipment. Well, except when they don't. :)
To those of you who are salesdroids or marketing weasels, listen up. When your corporate persona is exploitive and abusive, I won't do business with you. This is ESPECIALLY true when you sell toys (defined as anything I don't really need, cable service and cable net access are certainly included). This is a growing sentiment. Don't let the door hit you in the a$$ on the way out.
A fine point, maybe, but it makes the difference between there being merit to restoring lost species. Take dinosaurs, for examples. Failure to adapt to an event that occurs every 50,000,000 years or so isn't that great a flaw, IMO. Do you design for events that very nearly never happen? Should we kill that Linux thing that's so beloved around here because it isn't perfect either? (Ooh! Sacrilege!)
That said, I've refused to participate not over ethical issues, but over stupid legal issues. The cord blood goes not necessarily to save lives but to whatever purpose they find useful. The defined purpose is to save lives, but sometimes the blood isn't suitable, at which point it gets used for unspecified research projects. You don't get to choose if you want to be part of those projects. You can exercise no control over the dissemination of information about the child which is contained in that blood. I wouldn't pass out a copy of my DNA for unspecified use, neither will I do so on my children's behalf.
Cord blood use is good. Stupid grasping institutions that like agreements that strip patients' rights ruin it.
Tell ya what. All those IT people are just a drain, a metaphorical hole in the payroll. Why don't you do the shareholders a favor, can them all, and let your VBCs share price skyrocket once those unencumbered Sales and Marketing droids *really* get things moving?
I once worked for a company with a similarly boneheaded strategy. The closed down the small division i was in not long after I left and outsourced all the work. They ended up with poorer service as they no longer had dedicated people whose only priority was that company, and paid more for it. From your perspective, they eliminated a "profit center" which wasn't profitable, yet they *lost* money in the process.
You, and manglers who think like you, need to understand that everyone plays an important role in the company's success (or you shouldn't have them on the payroll). Every morning when the cleaning staff goes through to empty out the trash I think to myself how its good that they're there to do this, that it's *important* that it be done, and it's more economical than having people who make high salaries carry their own trash can to the dumpster each day. I respect and appreciate them because they do something important, and do it well and reliably, yet they aren't recognized as contributing some certain dollar figure to the bottom line. Rest assured, they do.
Your IT department is no doubt much the same. They aren't recognized as contributing to your bottom line, but they do. The dollar amount would be determined by closing it down and watching the results. You *have* an IT department because you can't be competitive without it (your information infrastructure would gradually collapse). You have janitorial staff because, similarly, you can't be competitive without it. You aren't going to tell your new 6 figure project manager his duties include taking out the garbage if you really expect him to stay. For the most part, you can't expect your workers to stay if you don't provide basic workplace services.
Sales and Marketing is also more aptly described as Smoke and Mirrors. As a consumer of goods, I don't give a damn about the marketing pitch. Honestly, that's the crap I have to wade through to get to the substance I want. When I buy my next car all the glitzy ads will have gone to waste. My decision will be based on my own experience with manufacturers and third party reviews. S&M has a role, certainly, but the belief that they "drive corporate revenue" is naive. They *contribute*, but do does your receptionist, your janitor, your security guard, your manager, your CEO, and your IT department.
Alternatively, wait until I do it and come work for me. :) I don't care how old you are as long as you do quality work.
Good luck.
Now I really don't have any vested interest in seeing DC crushed, but I'm not going to sacrifice my rights to preserve their flawed business. IF they can find consumers who want to use the device on their terms, fine. Best wishes, good luck, and all that. If they can't do so, or someone else makes better gas/food/software, then like many companies, they'll fail due to their own error. This is a competitive economy and consumers have rights. If DC thinks they can push a product out the door and legally require that no one do a better job, they'd better pick up their marbles and go home.
Winning actually wouldn't surprise me in this case. MPAA/RIAA were backed by competent lawyers. DC seems to be spewing fairly incredible claims, and thanks to one enterprising person, has been shown to be in violation of federal law. This doesn't sound like they have competent legal advice.
FWIW, I got this spam too, but at an account Slashdot knows nothing about. The account Slashdot does know about, a disposable I'll use until it begins accumulating spam, hasn't seen it.
If you're paying in cash, you have no reason at all to give out any information. Period. My favorite responses:
Phone number? You don't need that for a cash purchase.
Name? You don't need that for a cash purchase.
Address? You don't need that for a cash purchase.
Zip code? You don't need that for a cash purchase.
It's rare that I even get so much as a "We need it for our records." or "I have to have something to put in!" which a second refusal almost invariably kills. Only once have I had to go to "You can leave it blank, make something up, or I can buy it somewhere else." This is preferable to making something up yourself because not only does it protect your data, it also sends the message that you don't want to be profiled. Some companies I use have stopped asking. I'd like to believe this is because some not-insignificant number were refusing to provide data, and they realized if 5% outright refuse, probably still more provide false data. It's your money and your data. Take an active role in protecting it.
ObExcessiveProfiling: Buying contact lenses and being asked for my SSN.
"My what?"
"Your social security number."
"What could you possibly need that for."
"So we can file insurance."
"Did I give you any insurance information?"
"Uhhhh, no."
*smile* "Well, then, I guess you don't need it after all."
It's nice to make the people who mindlessly ask for this stuff completely out of habit, because they were told to, or "for our records" think now and again.
Case in point, OpenSSL. Great package, and I'm glad the developers went through the trouble to create it, however the documentation is all but nonexistant. I subscribed to the various mailing lists for a while and found that documentation basically was in the oral tradition form, with some third party, out of data stuff available (for SSLeay, the predecessor), and some examples. This is where a formal process in a corporate setting, with a profit motive is useful. Sure, the programmers don't want to document what they've done, management would rather do something else too, but the customer will insist on documentation, so you'd better produce it if you want to make sales.
Take this as a plea to make good documentation a part of your project, not a peripheral activity or one left for someone else to do after you're finished. My thanks go out to the projects which have been fabulously easy to use due to well written docs. I'm not going to name names as I'm sure to miss some.
Ah well, what the Constitution says is only relevant if the citizens know and care what it says. They don't on both counts.
The question to ask, is if you come home, find your door unlocked, find fingerprints inside, and have to have every object in your house painstakingly examined to make sure, for example, that your TV isn't really a time bomb that looks like a TV, your phone isn't bugged, or bulldoze your house and build a new one, what sort of penalty should attach to the perpatrator? Should an act that costs you thousands of dollars carry a lesser penalty than stealing your $300 TV? I don't think so.
There simply is no harmless way to compromise a system. Minimally there's time and expense involved in returning the system to a trusted state, which involves careful determination of what, EXACTLY, the intruder did. Reinstalling is all well and good, and necessary, but will only restore you to the state which left you vulnerable in the first place. No obvious damage means either none was done, or it was well hidden. If the system does anything at all important, there's cost associaed with the system being unavailable for its design purpose. Please lets not go down the path of blaming the SA unless you'd also blame yourself if someone broke the windows of your car and filled it with cement. After all, you know you should properly secure your car. Lexan windows, perhaps?
I think a severe penalty is just fine. If you're breaking into someone else's computer, potentially rendering it unusable for some period of time, with NO regard for what the consequences are, you deserve a severe penalty. It's rather like drunk driving. It's an irresponsible act that sometimes doesn't hurt anyone, but often enough the consequences are severe. People who break into systems don't care what the consequences are because they typically don't attach to them. It's time to change that.
The problem, as always, isn't with using the information in the manner they claim they're going to use it. Do I care if I see an ad for a computer product, which I might buy, instead of a MagnetTherapySnakeOil Miracle Cure? Actually, yes, I'd rather not see ads for products which I have contempt for. The problem is the misuse of the data, which is not typically disclosed (we're going to use your data to threaten you if you get hurt in our store), and probably unplanned.
I don't doubt that there are marketers sitting around thinking how great targeted ads are. The problem is that in 5 years (or less) there'll be this big pile of data on what you've been doing for the last 5 years, and someone else will realize how useful that data is for...? I don't know what the use will be, but I know with fair certainty that once collected, you can't get the data back.
Better they learn at 18 when they go in than 22 when they go out. Better still they learn some financial common sense before 18. Parents, where are you and why aren't you doing your job?
No, they don't. Whoever builds the system has the responsibility to not defraud their customers. This is the same misguided logic that says products which "facilitate" copyright violation should be illegal. Copyright violation and fraud are already both illegal. Prosecute the crime, don't criminalize something peripheral. That a system builder can misuse a CPU to defraud a consumer does not make the CPU manufacturer responsible for preventing it, which isn't to say it wouldn't be a good PR move and entirely within their rights to do it.
Your rights are for sale to the highest bidder. You'd better be the highest bidder, fix the process, or get used to doing what the highest bidder permits.
I'm only halfway kidding here. There really should be a coalition of those of us who oppose this kind of thing and are willing to actively (and financially) back it.
The airplane for everyone nonsense is a wonderful example. Most people aren't responsible enough to drive their cars. Take some time and research the causes for traffic accidents. Most are caused because the driver did something stupid. They were drunk, doing something else in the car and not paying enough attention, driving too fast for conditions (ever see a Southerner in snow? It's scary.), riding someone's bumper (this one really irritates me) so that when the person in front of them has to stop abruptly you're guaranteed an accident.
Do any of you *really* want to be 2 miles up at 200 mph with the same people you share the road with every day? I'd *love* to have a plane (just as soon as I can scrape together that $200k for the one I want...), but the day everybody becomes a pilot is the day I stop.