Shouldn't they have reached this conclusion *before* they took action?
But then we get into a chicken/egg scenario. You need data & evidence to determine if there's a clear and present danger. But you're saying they need to know if there's a clear and present danger (or get a subpeona) before they go searching for information.
Looking at it from another direction, I'd say they were derelict in their duty if they waited around to get a subpeona before approaching the librarian and asking for access. As you said, at that time they didn't know there wasn't a clear and present danger. They did know there was a credible threat -that's a "damn good reason" in my book to gain access to a public terminal. Imagine the uproar if life was lost while the FBI was off getting their subpeona and hadn't bothered to simply ask first.
Maybe the FBI agents should have just filled out the form to get a library card. Then they'd have access to the computers, just like everyone else with a card.
There was a threat -the FBI responsed in the most direct, quickest way available. They went right to the library and tried to persuade the librarian to give them the computers. From the article, there was a "credible threat" made from one of the computers, though there was no "clear and present danger". As I said before, there's nothing wrong with asking for cooperation -it has nothing to do with "looking out for your rights". In some circles it may even be seen as more polite than getting a warrant and "breaking down the doors".
I might also note that the last paragraph of TFA notes that some people think the librarian "acted irresponsibly and could have jeopardized people's lives." The librarian had a right to refuse (and she did). But did she have an obligation to cooperate too?
There's scant real information in TFA. I find it "Informative" to see how people interpret that information.
And of course the article's writer, editor, etc. wouldn't spice things up a bit to increase readership. There's just nothing there for me to get upset about.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking for voluntary compliance without a warrent. Law enforcement at all levels often do this to save time. When the librarian said, "No, get a warrent." that's what they did.
Time for some to pick up a basic physiology textbook and read the sections on endocrinology. You may find calorie retention/loss is much more complex than how much food you eat and how much exercise you get. Our bodies have a vast range of "efficiencies" that are controlled both by environment and genetics.
My point was that its not just the GOP who has allowed them to continue to exist. Funny, not even Carter got rid of them. I guess he was being immoral too...
You make a good point. Its tough to know though, what level of fine is enough to induce the changes needed to help prevent this from happening again? On one hand many people who make up the company and did no wrong may be hurt. OTOH many individuals who didn't do anything wrong are in some serious pain and this fine won't really help them.
From my experience, that only happens when you're running more than one app that's fairly processor intensive. More common is that one really hungry app maxes at 100% of one processor, and the rest of the stuff takes 20-50% of the other. Every little bit helps though.
However, many other morally-minded people would also do what Google did, if they were faced with that decision.
Like my parents told me, and I tell my kids, just because someone else does it, doesn't mean its right. Someone else thinking its OK, doesn't make it so.
The fact that Google may lose money by not doing it does not make it right.
I don't have to prove to you that what they're doing is wrong for me to believe its wrong. We don't have to agree on what's wrong for me to say, "Shame on Google!"
Aside from the fact that partial results (read skewed information) can be worse than no information, is the warning really worth anything? Every search done in China now will say, "This search has been filtered to comply with local laws". It doesn't say what was filtered, how much was filtered, or even why it was filtered.
It is a public company, not doing business in China means lower dividends, which means the stockholders fire their CEO and hire someone a little more china-friendly.
OTOH people who invested in Google because of its ethics and those who are seeing their stock prices drop because of this can fire their CEO and hire someone a little more human-friendly.
Providing a powerful search service makes people better-informed and more productive. That's good!
Only if that search is complete and accurate. Providing skewed results may be worse than providing no results. IOW, bad information is not better than no information.At least its obvious when there's no information.
As far as other companies stepping in to fill the void, I'm reminded of an interview on PBS last night. The person interviewed made the assertion that if Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and a couple other companies would actually stand together on this social issue, they could easily "push back" on China. But they won't.
How would the Chinese people know about the censorship if no one tells them about it?
That seemed to be the main point of the woman who was interviewed on "The News Hour" on PBS last night. Priot to this, if you did a Google search in China, you would see all the listings. If you clicked on a search result the Chinese government filtered, the link wouldn't load -but you knew it was there. The way Google does it now, that link will never show up in the first place. The searcher won't know what's missing. The only indication is getting a message the women being interviewed translated as something like, "These search results have been filtered according to local law", which appears at the bottom of the window.
When you take that $10 million out of the $27.68 million, I'd say that's a pretty big percentage of your profits gone. The idea is to punish the company, not kill it.
OTOH, considering what happened, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea...
Its one of those cases when I wonder if the problem is that this simply can't be done (or can't be done simply) with XP. A case where it really does require a major rewrite of the OS in order to implement something that on the face seems so simple and useful.
OS X was designed to be expandable and changeable -very layered, compartmentalized and modular. That may make it less efficient and not as fast as it could be -but look at how fast the upgrades and new features come out. And how quickly new hardware can be adopted. I thought NT, then XP was supposed to bring this to Windows. Will Vista?
I think he fails to realize the best way to protect my information is not to have MS wrap it in another layer of security, but to strengthen the layers of security that are already there. If nobody can get a rootkit, keylogger, whatever on my computer without my knowledge to begin with, my data is pretty darn safe -even if its in plain text.
Slashdot Mirror
Shouldn't they have reached this conclusion *before* they took action?
But then we get into a chicken/egg scenario. You need data & evidence to determine if there's a clear and present danger. But you're saying they need to know if there's a clear and present danger (or get a subpeona) before they go searching for information.
Looking at it from another direction, I'd say they were derelict in their duty if they waited around to get a subpeona before approaching the librarian and asking for access. As you said, at that time they didn't know there wasn't a clear and present danger. They did know there was a credible threat -that's a "damn good reason" in my book to gain access to a public terminal. Imagine the uproar if life was lost while the FBI was off getting their subpeona and hadn't bothered to simply ask first.
Maybe the FBI agents should have just filled out the form to get a library card. Then they'd have access to the computers, just like everyone else with a card.
There was a threat -the FBI responsed in the most direct, quickest way available. They went right to the library and tried to persuade the librarian to give them the computers. From the article, there was a "credible threat" made from one of the computers, though there was no "clear and present danger". As I said before, there's nothing wrong with asking for cooperation -it has nothing to do with "looking out for your rights". In some circles it may even be seen as more polite than getting a warrant and "breaking down the doors".
I might also note that the last paragraph of TFA notes that some people think the librarian "acted irresponsibly and could have jeopardized people's lives." The librarian had a right to refuse (and she did). But did she have an obligation to cooperate too?
There's scant real information in TFA. I find it "Informative" to see how people interpret that information.
And of course the article's writer, editor, etc. wouldn't spice things up a bit to increase readership. There's just nothing there for me to get upset about.
That's all true, but what did the FBI do wrong?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking for voluntary compliance without a warrent. Law enforcement at all levels often do this to save time. When the librarian said, "No, get a warrent." that's what they did.
Where's the beef?
Wow, way to hold the stereotype of "he who has no children but knows exactly how they will/should be raised".
Drop a line when reality hits.
Time for some to pick up a basic physiology textbook and read the sections on endocrinology. You may find calorie retention/loss is much more complex than how much food you eat and how much exercise you get. Our bodies have a vast range of "efficiencies" that are controlled both by environment and genetics.
That helps if an application is mutltithreaded to begin with, but it doesn't help at all if the app was written as one single thread.
My point was that its not just the GOP who has allowed them to continue to exist. Funny, not even Carter got rid of them. I guess he was being immoral too...
You make a good point. Its tough to know though, what level of fine is enough to induce the changes needed to help prevent this from happening again? On one hand many people who make up the company and did no wrong may be hurt. OTOH many individuals who didn't do anything wrong are in some serious pain and this fine won't really help them.
From my experience, that only happens when you're running more than one app that's fairly processor intensive. More common is that one really hungry app maxes at 100% of one processor, and the rest of the stuff takes 20-50% of the other. Every little bit helps though.
Yes, I remember all those benchmarks from the past where the final line went something like,
...OX X multiprocessing sucks."
"The dual 1.2 GHz Mac was barely 20% faster than the 1 GHz single processor machine...
-or
"According to Apple this dual processor Mac should be smoking this single processor Pentium system, but its barely keeping up..."
Never seeming to understand what happens when a single-threaded benchmark runs on a dual processor/core system.
However, many other morally-minded people would also do what Google did, if they were faced with that decision.
Like my parents told me, and I tell my kids, just because someone else does it, doesn't mean its right. Someone else thinking its OK, doesn't make it so.
The fact that Google may lose money by not doing it does not make it right.
I don't have to prove to you that what they're doing is wrong for me to believe its wrong. We don't have to agree on what's wrong for me to say, "Shame on Google!"
Aside from the fact that partial results (read skewed information) can be worse than no information, is the warning really worth anything? Every search done in China now will say, "This search has been filtered to comply with local laws". It doesn't say what was filtered, how much was filtered, or even why it was filtered.
Pretty useless IMO.
they then start defending a chain of secret prisons throughout the world
And they just sprouted up when GWB took office? Or have they been there since the Cold War?
Remember that kid in Singapore that got caned in the '90s for spitting on the street?
No, what Google is doing is equivalent to staying to China to aid in the caning instead of walking away.
IOW there's a difference between acknowledging a country's right to sovereignty and helping it to enforce laws you feel are unjust.
It is a public company, not doing business in China means lower dividends, which means the stockholders fire their CEO and hire someone a little more china-friendly.
OTOH people who invested in Google because of its ethics and those who are seeing their stock prices drop because of this can fire their CEO and hire someone a little more human-friendly.
Providing a powerful search service makes people better-informed and more productive. That's good!
Only if that search is complete and accurate. Providing skewed results may be worse than providing no results. IOW, bad information is not better than no information.At least its obvious when there's no information.
As far as other companies stepping in to fill the void, I'm reminded of an interview on PBS last night. The person interviewed made the assertion that if Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and a couple other companies would actually stand together on this social issue, they could easily "push back" on China. But they won't.
Not only that, it sets a precedent. They did it for China, why not every other country?
How would the Chinese people know about the censorship if no one tells them about it?
That seemed to be the main point of the woman who was interviewed on "The News Hour" on PBS last night. Priot to this, if you did a Google search in China, you would see all the listings. If you clicked on a search result the Chinese government filtered, the link wouldn't load -but you knew it was there. The way Google does it now, that link will never show up in the first place. The searcher won't know what's missing. The only indication is getting a message the women being interviewed translated as something like, "These search results have been filtered according to local law", which appears at the bottom of the window.
IOW, had they "shared" 140,000 music titles instead of personal information, they could have been up for a real smack-down!
Too bad my personal information isn't copyrighted, patented or a trade secret.
When you take that $10 million out of the $27.68 million, I'd say that's a pretty big percentage of your profits gone. The idea is to punish the company, not kill it.
OTOH, considering what happened, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea...
Its one of those cases when I wonder if the problem is that this simply can't be done (or can't be done simply) with XP. A case where it really does require a major rewrite of the OS in order to implement something that on the face seems so simple and useful.
OS X was designed to be expandable and changeable -very layered, compartmentalized and modular. That may make it less efficient and not as fast as it could be -but look at how fast the upgrades and new features come out. And how quickly new hardware can be adopted. I thought NT, then XP was supposed to bring this to Windows. Will Vista?
I think he fails to realize the best way to protect my information is not to have MS wrap it in another layer of security, but to strengthen the layers of security that are already there. If nobody can get a rootkit, keylogger, whatever on my computer without my knowledge to begin with, my data is pretty darn safe -even if its in plain text.
Just FYI, Apple's Safari uses the KHTML library, which is what other applications can use to render HTML as well.
IMO the "R" in both terms more accurately stands for "restrictions".
None of this stuff has anything to do with enforcing "rights", its all about managing restrictions.