When I say 'good people' and 'bad people' I'm referring to the government and it's various agencies. People on this group seem to think they're the 'bad people' even when they'd risk their lives to save us all.
I happen to work for a US government agency and I can tell you that we're all just 'people' like the rest of the world. Not 'good', not 'bad', just people. In any large group, you're just as likely to find someone who would abuse the power of their position, as you are to find a self-sacrificing hero. That's just human nature.
Judging by the way you've written your reply, you're not too happy with people knowing what you do - opportunist theif? Paedophile? It sounds like you have something to hide.
Now that's just a cheap shot. If the government wanted to put cameras in your bathroom and bedroom with 24 hour monitoring to help out in case you fell and hit your head, would you be OK with that? Got something to hide:). Everyone draws the line at a different place. Steeltoe is just less comfortable with surveillance than you.
True, the idea of privacy has its advantages (such as at home) but when you're out in the community it makes sense to relinquish just a little piece of 'privacy' for safety.
It might make sense to you, but others value their privacy over the small increase in safety that constant surveillance would provide. As far as I'm concerned it also makes sense not to smoke cigarettes, which are known to shorten your life, but I'm not about to tell someone else they can't do it. It's all about personal choice.
In this day and age, privacy is an illusion. It stopped existing the moment communications spread faster than we could. Even when you think you're not being tracked, you are. I'm no conspiracy theorist (in fact, I hate anyone who says they are:)) but if the government wants to know where we are, they will find out, whether we know it or not.
I think you're right to a degree. The developing problems with privacy stem from the same combination of pervasiveness and ease of use that caused Napster to become such an issue for the RIAA. When tracking someone's movements used to require two guys in a car following you all over the city, there was little chance of this being done capriciously. When we get to the point where anyone with appropriate access can punch up a complete log of my comings and goings whenever they like, it's more likely to lead to abuse of that info. The Acme case is a good example of people with access to private info abusing it and overstepping their authority. In the end, everything worked out, but not without unnecessarily hassling a lot of people. The fact that personal privacy is being slowly eroded by technology is no reason to roll over and give it all up.
Re:The full text of "Hackers" is available at
on
The Hacker Ethic
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· Score: 1
Wow...tantalizing, but not quite there. Missing Chapter 11 and then everything after 13...which eventually went on the cover RMS in the final chapter.
Still, it's more than the 2 chapters available at Project Gutenberg, and what is there is presented in HTML...much nicer than the pure text version at PG.
Just last night I was goofing off, looking through the list of eTexts available at Project Gutenberg. I was very pleased to see a partial copy of Hacker's: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Stephen Levy listed there. I looked at the eText and it seems to be only the first two chapters. Hopefully, that's just the beginning of what will one day be a full electronic version of this great book.
It is the proxy bidding system, but it's the other way around...opa-opa was actually manually entering new bids and montana131's proxy bid kept upping the anty. For some reason those intermediate proxy amounts never show up, just the final amount. montana131 must have entered some ridiculous max bid early on to get this result. I only know this because I was involved in the same situation a few days back.
I'll be really interested to see how many of these silly 5 figure bids actually pay off. At least one already has negative feedback posted (cillbosby)...plenty more to come I'm sure. I know I'm just an old softy, but I still have some hope that people can't really be *this* stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't ever forget that "killing Windows is killing Microsoft"*, so it will fight for it's life whenever threatened.
If that's the case then, according to a link to an article I saw reported on DSLReports, they're threatening to commit suicide.
I happen to work for a US government agency and I can tell you that we're all just 'people' like the rest of the world. Not 'good', not 'bad', just people. In any large group, you're just as likely to find someone who would abuse the power of their position, as you are to find a self-sacrificing hero. That's just human nature.
Judging by the way you've written your reply, you're not too happy with people knowing what you do - opportunist theif? Paedophile? It sounds like you have something to hide.
Now that's just a cheap shot. If the government wanted to put cameras in your bathroom and bedroom with 24 hour monitoring to help out in case you fell and hit your head, would you be OK with that? Got something to hide :). Everyone draws the line at a different place. Steeltoe is just less comfortable with surveillance than you.
True, the idea of privacy has its advantages (such as at home) but when you're out in the community it makes sense to relinquish just a little piece of 'privacy' for safety.
It might make sense to you, but others value their privacy over the small increase in safety that constant surveillance would provide. As far as I'm concerned it also makes sense not to smoke cigarettes, which are known to shorten your life, but I'm not about to tell someone else they can't do it. It's all about personal choice.
In this day and age, privacy is an illusion. It stopped existing the moment communications spread faster than we could. Even when you think you're not being tracked, you are. I'm no conspiracy theorist (in fact, I hate anyone who says they are :)) but if the government wants to know where we are, they will find out, whether we know it or not.
I think you're right to a degree. The developing problems with privacy stem from the same combination of pervasiveness and ease of use that caused Napster to become such an issue for the RIAA. When tracking someone's movements used to require two guys in a car following you all over the city, there was little chance of this being done capriciously. When we get to the point where anyone with appropriate access can punch up a complete log of my comings and goings whenever they like, it's more likely to lead to abuse of that info. The Acme case is a good example of people with access to private info abusing it and overstepping their authority. In the end, everything worked out, but not without unnecessarily hassling a lot of people. The fact that personal privacy is being slowly eroded by technology is no reason to roll over and give it all up.
Wow...tantalizing, but not quite there. Missing Chapter 11 and then everything after 13...which eventually went on the cover RMS in the final chapter. Still, it's more than the 2 chapters available at Project Gutenberg, and what is there is presented in HTML...much nicer than the pure text version at PG.
Just last night I was goofing off, looking through the list of eTexts available at Project Gutenberg. I was very pleased to see a partial copy of Hacker's: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Stephen Levy listed there. I looked at the eText and it seems to be only the first two chapters. Hopefully, that's just the beginning of what will one day be a full electronic version of this great book.
It is the proxy bidding system, but it's the other way around...opa-opa was actually manually entering new bids and montana131's proxy bid kept upping the anty. For some reason those intermediate proxy amounts never show up, just the final amount. montana131 must have entered some ridiculous max bid early on to get this result. I only know this because I was involved in the same situation a few days back.
I'll be really interested to see how many of these silly 5 figure bids actually pay off. At least one already has negative feedback posted (cillbosby)...plenty more to come I'm sure. I know I'm just an old softy, but I still have some hope that people can't really be *this* stupid.