Back in colonial times, the government was our enemy. You might not have had any glass for your window, but if all the King's men wanted to hear your seditious ideas about personal freedoms and representative government, they needed to plant an actual person in your yard. With today's technology they can capture any data they like and then look back in time to selectively reconstruct your guilt.
All you have to do is be a member of a group to get ethnically or otherwise profiled and the FBI will come down. Not on you in particular, but if your name comes up on the wrong list, good bye. Not that I feel strongly about Skakel, but isn't it worrying that Connecticut (and probably elsewhere) law allowed a murder conviction based entirely on circumstantial evidence? I don't know or care if he did it- I disapprove of the law that allowed that conviction. Now you were saying that I shouldn't worry about my privacy?
Lets face it, in the grand scheme of things most of you just are not that important.
I know that I'm not. I even work for a part of the government. Some of my attitudes can be misinterpreted, however. It's easy to get caught in a net that has nothing to do with you, especially in the last year. The public doesn't even know who has been arrested. Maybe everyone that's being held secretly since 9-11 is a mean terrorist. Maybe most of them are just poor immigrants. Maybe some of them are US citizens who just eat more couscous than the rest of us do. None of us know who they are, though. None of us know what perfectly legal and normal things are going to look wierd in what database and land you in a jail without a lawyer or a phone call. Therefore, we all need to worry about privacy.
I don't do anything bad; I'm not about to blow up the Chuck E. Cheese's down the street with a dirty bomb or anything.
That's shortsighted as hell. Maybe nothing you do is "bad" now, but maybe something you do will be illegal tomorrow. There are plenty of things that are perfectly legal that are unpopular as hell. Voting is legal, but the idea of the secret ballot is the only thing that makes it work. Privacy is more vital to our lives than simply not going to jail.
Remember: If we let Bush and Ashcroft tear up our Constitution, then the terrorists have already won.
Cell phone location is possible without GPS by timing the signal arrival between different towers. This is not nearly effective as GPS...
Umm... That's how GPS works. Your reciever times the arrival of signals from several sattelites and decides where it is. Cell tower positioning is the same thing with the work being done at the other end.
Keeping records and triangulating isn't "much more expensive and less accurate" than launching and maintaining a constellation of sattelites. It's just more expensive to reinvent the wheel. It is more accurate, however; a good GPS signal isn't always there, but if you're on the phone, you are hooked in to the towers.
Think it through. You wouldn't be hacking a system, but someone's account. They'd notice when it dried up, and you'd be on all those tapes. More interestingly, Big Brother could decide to look for him and come up with you. Try explaining to Ashcroft that you're not a terrorist threat, just a malicious hacker.
It's worth the buck. Unless you're getting on the Mass Pike from I 84, in which case they should pay you a toll for putting up with their bad road design.
AFAIK almost all countries in the world have different colored currency notes.
Um... So?
We don't have a lot of things here in the US that are pretty standard everywhere else, and vice versa. I see those people on CNN all the time, and you want us to imitate them? What concrete advantage will US citizens derive from another money change? For tourists who want the US and monopoly money, all I can say is Euro Disney, boys.
Our money is pretty boring compared to "exciting" foreign money.
I'm with you- money is supposed to be boring. Nothing beats stable currency. Maybe the problem is that a lot of foreigners simply cannot accept prices that don't have a ton of zeroes tacked on? If we go to color coding in order to fit in, we might only be making the problem worse. Now I just need to land a job at a duty-free store, heh heh heh.
I guess all those misleading numbers that were inadvertantly slipped into every corner of the design are just too confusing. This is simply retarded. We aren't asking anybody to know who Grant was, or even read the "Fifty Dollars" printed on each side. Just look at the 50 prominently displayed in each corner of both sides.
If numbers are too tough, then you shouldn't be playing with that much money anyway. In 2004, we get to hear about how this system discriminates against the color blind. By 2006, John Ashcroft will assign each foreign tourist his own government "helper" to keep track of his money for him. by 2008 the system will be working so smoothly that all citizens will be "entitled" to the same help. All because of a few morons who couldn't count.
Make sure you spot the new member. The one in the suit, scribbling madly in his notebook. Don't forget that a LUG is one of the most subversive organizations around. Hell, one of our guys keeps talking about world domination. I guess he'll be the first one to disappear.
Erm - why not just carry a spare key in your wallet instead?
It's not just the identity thing, it's the DO NOT DUPLICATE that's on every dorm key in the world. The pick set is the easiest way to have a backup key, which is a legitimate reason to hand the fascists who make you justify such things.
My evidence is anecdotal only from your point of view.
I am/. I am reading your report, which makes it anecdotal to me. My report is anecdotal to you. Who wins? The/. reader, who sifts through our conflicting, anecdotal reports. Until either of us publishes a study in a well respected journal, anything we write on/. is anecdotal to the rest of the world. I cannot respect anything you say more than I respect what the members of my LUG tell me. To tell you the truth, I respect their anecdotal evidence more, because I know them personally. Nothing posted here is empirical- sorry.
So my anecdotal evidence is "demonstrably false" in the face of yours? Hmmm...
But you cost the cable company the same whether you receive 8 channels or 800. The wire costs the same. The equipment costs the same.
I'll reiterate a point I made in a previous post: you're not paying for the content. You're paying for the delivery of that content.
The wire costs the same, even if I'm not subscribing. I've gone a couple years without cable a couple of times, and I'm not far from it again. Reduced revenue is preferable to none, and I'm willing to pay the same for reduced content. I want to see what I want to see, and I also want to be left alone. That's not unrealistic.
i mean, if it is on BBC, i don't imagine that you have your parental controls blocking that channel to begin with, and they could just sit down and watch it when it was live.
Of course, there's this argument, posted before yours was. It says "The Dossa & Jo promo contains some bad language and is unsuitable for younger viewers. Parental controls are not effective so be careful." (quoted from Gary Sargent, a moderator at TiVo).
I'm with you, but now you can't even control what your PVR is recording. Maybe BBC's daytime kid shows are fine, while their late night isn't what I want my kids to see.
wanting the government or electronic boxes to parent thier children for them.
Again, I'm with you. But I don't want my electronic box to parent me, either. I want it to do what I tell it to, not what the highest bidder tells it to. Me, I want a Personal Video Recorder, not a Prostituted Video Recorder.
if it forces me to record shows that I probably would be interested in, I've got even less to complain about...
It's not a show you would probably be interested in. They didn't do that kind of in depth tracking of your viewing habits and link that to new shows. It was spam. BBC paid Tivo, Tivo told all of its boxen (its, not your) to record the show. I'll bet BBC got a rebate on all the Tivos that were recording something else at the time. This was only a service to you if you own BBC or Tivo stock.
Crippleware won't work unless you keep paying. The Tivo users I know have told me that the clock doesn't do a real 24 hour day. Unless it constantly phones home to reset itself, you won't be recording the shows you're looking for. In order to sell more subscriptions, Tivo crippled their clock. Crippleware.
Spam in unsolicited commercial email. Not having an existing relationship with the BBC, Joe Tivo user suddenly found that his TV watching appliance had been told to record a particular show and put it in his menu. Not even going near the pop-up that he would have gotten had he been watching at the moment, that's unsolicited as hell and at the very least an annoyance to delete or have to see on his menu until it gets replaced by the next spam infomercial or show.
I think both crippleware and spam apply here very nicely, thank you.
I'm in touch with time and energy right now because my cable company just threw more channels at me and changed the menu system into something totally unusable. It would rather give me highlights of what they're getting kickbacks to feature and what's on PPV than let me see what's on one channel for the next two days. Don't even try to go from looking at what's on channel 36 to what's on channel 225 in less than two minutes. These channels actually do have a cost in time and effort- and I'm paying for the privilege.
I'll watch Space Ghost sometimes, so now I've got an eighth channel that isn't a waste, from that whole influx of channels I don't want. I'll pay the same amount- okay, I'd rather have them knock off $10/month, for the 8 channels that I want.
Ha! I 1) don't mind good ads, 2) despite the misleading sig, work for a crappy end of the government, and 3) am enough of a sellout that he'd have an aneurism if he met me.
I wasn't calling you a typical MS customer- them's fighting words. I was saying that my demands in a product sounded like MS' meal ticket. Except that I want it to work, and work for me; not the company that I bought it from. It's mine now, it should do what I want it to, not what the suits can think of to make more money after the sale. It's okay to make money on the box- just ask Sony and Nintendo. I'll buy one. Anybody know of a PVR that isn't crippleware/spamware?
For somebody who seems to want his entertainment for free or very little cost, you sure do bitch a lot about commercials. You can't have it both ways, man.
It's not about cost, it's about efficiency; cost in terms of time and energy. I watch 8 channels. Ever. Not over the course of a week, but ever. I don't want 200 channels. I want 8. I don't have a PVR because of this spam. I don't want to pay for 200 channels. I don't want to buy a crippleware Tivo that needs a subscription to work properly and be insulted by spam. That's not having it both ways, that's having it my way.
If it doesn't take up space, and will lower the overall cost of the unit by allowing another revenue stream for Tivo, and you don't have to watch it, and it doesn't interfere with the rest of your programming, why is this news? Am I missing something?
You're missing a hell of a lot. I'll pay. I'll pay extra. I'll pay for a box that does what I want it to do, because I don't want to be bothered. Sound like your typical MS customer? Wrong. I said I don't want to be bothered. MS, like Tivo, does a lot of bothering. Don't track, don't spy, don't record what the networks think I want to watch, don't crash. Be an appliance; do what I paid for. It's my box- remember that. Nobody srews with my VCR or alarm clock, why should my PVR allow intrusions?
I'm asking again: Anybody know of a PVR that does what you want it to do?
Amen, brother. That's why I don't own a PVR. I want one that doesn't need to phone home, and can get its programming info from the guide channel or something. Am I reduced to the Linux PVR project? I'd rather not build my own.
Great. And then most of the bands you love you would never have even heard of.
Neither would any of the bands I hate. That's a s/n ratio I'll happily lose some good bands for. I'll probably end up hearing the good ones anyway, plus a lot of other really good ones that aren't getting heard by anyone right now.
I'm with you. You can find anything in the world via google, as the first few posts in an Ask Slashdot usually tell everyone, but that doesn't always help. Discussion, experiences, insights. Getting the feel of the/. attitude on something. It makes it a little more of a community.
Slashdot Mirror
All you have to do is be a member of a group to get ethnically or otherwise profiled and the FBI will come down. Not on you in particular, but if your name comes up on the wrong list, good bye. Not that I feel strongly about Skakel, but isn't it worrying that Connecticut (and probably elsewhere) law allowed a murder conviction based entirely on circumstantial evidence? I don't know or care if he did it- I disapprove of the law that allowed that conviction. Now you were saying that I shouldn't worry about my privacy?
I know that I'm not. I even work for a part of the government. Some of my attitudes can be misinterpreted, however. It's easy to get caught in a net that has nothing to do with you, especially in the last year. The public doesn't even know who has been arrested. Maybe everyone that's being held secretly since 9-11 is a mean terrorist. Maybe most of them are just poor immigrants. Maybe some of them are US citizens who just eat more couscous than the rest of us do. None of us know who they are, though. None of us know what perfectly legal and normal things are going to look wierd in what database and land you in a jail without a lawyer or a phone call. Therefore, we all need to worry about privacy.
That's shortsighted as hell. Maybe nothing you do is "bad" now, but maybe something you do will be illegal tomorrow. There are plenty of things that are perfectly legal that are unpopular as hell. Voting is legal, but the idea of the secret ballot is the only thing that makes it work. Privacy is more vital to our lives than simply not going to jail.
Remember: If we let Bush and Ashcroft tear up our Constitution, then the terrorists have already won.
Umm... That's how GPS works. Your reciever times the arrival of signals from several sattelites and decides where it is. Cell tower positioning is the same thing with the work being done at the other end.
Keeping records and triangulating isn't "much more expensive and less accurate" than launching and maintaining a constellation of sattelites. It's just more expensive to reinvent the wheel. It is more accurate, however; a good GPS signal isn't always there, but if you're on the phone, you are hooked in to the towers.
It's worth the buck. Unless you're getting on the Mass Pike from I 84, in which case they should pay you a toll for putting up with their bad road design.
Um... So?
We don't have a lot of things here in the US that are pretty standard everywhere else, and vice versa. I see those people on CNN all the time, and you want us to imitate them? What concrete advantage will US citizens derive from another money change? For tourists who want the US and monopoly money, all I can say is Euro Disney, boys.
I'm with you- money is supposed to be boring. Nothing beats stable currency. Maybe the problem is that a lot of foreigners simply cannot accept prices that don't have a ton of zeroes tacked on? If we go to color coding in order to fit in, we might only be making the problem worse. Now I just need to land a job at a duty-free store, heh heh heh.
If numbers are too tough, then you shouldn't be playing with that much money anyway. In 2004, we get to hear about how this system discriminates against the color blind. By 2006, John Ashcroft will assign each foreign tourist his own government "helper" to keep track of his money for him. by 2008 the system will be working so smoothly that all citizens will be "entitled" to the same help. All because of a few morons who couldn't count.
It's not just the identity thing, it's the DO NOT DUPLICATE that's on every dorm key in the world. The pick set is the easiest way to have a backup key, which is a legitimate reason to hand the fascists who make you justify such things.
I am /. I am reading your report, which makes it anecdotal to me. My report is anecdotal to you. Who wins? The /. reader, who sifts through our conflicting, anecdotal reports. Until either of us publishes a study in a well respected journal, anything we write on /. is anecdotal to the rest of the world. I cannot respect anything you say more than I respect what the members of my LUG tell me. To tell you the truth, I respect their anecdotal evidence more, because I know them personally. Nothing posted here is empirical- sorry.
So my anecdotal evidence is "demonstrably false" in the face of yours? Hmmm...
But you cost the cable company the same whether you receive 8 channels or 800. The wire costs the same. The equipment costs the same.
I'll reiterate a point I made in a previous post: you're not paying for the content. You're paying for the delivery of that content.
The wire costs the same, even if I'm not subscribing. I've gone a couple years without cable a couple of times, and I'm not far from it again. Reduced revenue is preferable to none, and I'm willing to pay the same for reduced content. I want to see what I want to see, and I also want to be left alone. That's not unrealistic.
Of course, there's this argument, posted before yours was. It says "The Dossa & Jo promo contains some bad language and is unsuitable for younger viewers. Parental controls are not effective so be careful." (quoted from Gary Sargent, a moderator at TiVo).
I'm with you, but now you can't even control what your PVR is recording. Maybe BBC's daytime kid shows are fine, while their late night isn't what I want my kids to see.
wanting the government or electronic boxes to parent thier children for them.
Again, I'm with you. But I don't want my electronic box to parent me, either. I want it to do what I tell it to, not what the highest bidder tells it to. Me, I want a Personal Video Recorder, not a Prostituted Video Recorder.
It's not a show you would probably be interested in. They didn't do that kind of in depth tracking of your viewing habits and link that to new shows. It was spam. BBC paid Tivo, Tivo told all of its boxen (its, not your) to record the show. I'll bet BBC got a rebate on all the Tivos that were recording something else at the time. This was only a service to you if you own BBC or Tivo stock.
Which one is it, Replay? Do tell!
Crippleware won't work unless you keep paying. The Tivo users I know have told me that the clock doesn't do a real 24 hour day. Unless it constantly phones home to reset itself, you won't be recording the shows you're looking for. In order to sell more subscriptions, Tivo crippled their clock. Crippleware.
Spam in unsolicited commercial email. Not having an existing relationship with the BBC, Joe Tivo user suddenly found that his TV watching appliance had been told to record a particular show and put it in his menu. Not even going near the pop-up that he would have gotten had he been watching at the moment, that's unsolicited as hell and at the very least an annoyance to delete or have to see on his menu until it gets replaced by the next spam infomercial or show.
I think both crippleware and spam apply here very nicely, thank you.
I'm in touch with time and energy right now because my cable company just threw more channels at me and changed the menu system into something totally unusable. It would rather give me highlights of what they're getting kickbacks to feature and what's on PPV than let me see what's on one channel for the next two days. Don't even try to go from looking at what's on channel 36 to what's on channel 225 in less than two minutes. These channels actually do have a cost in time and effort- and I'm paying for the privilege.
I'll watch Space Ghost sometimes, so now I've got an eighth channel that isn't a waste, from that whole influx of channels I don't want. I'll pay the same amount- okay, I'd rather have them knock off $10/month, for the 8 channels that I want.
anti-adds anti-gvt and very RMS like.
Ha! I 1) don't mind good ads, 2) despite the misleading sig, work for a crappy end of the government, and 3) am enough of a sellout that he'd have an aneurism if he met me.
I wasn't calling you a typical MS customer- them's fighting words. I was saying that my demands in a product sounded like MS' meal ticket. Except that I want it to work, and work for me; not the company that I bought it from. It's mine now, it should do what I want it to, not what the suits can think of to make more money after the sale. It's okay to make money on the box- just ask Sony and Nintendo. I'll buy one. Anybody know of a PVR that isn't crippleware/spamware?
It's not about cost, it's about efficiency; cost in terms of time and energy. I watch 8 channels. Ever. Not over the course of a week, but ever. I don't want 200 channels. I want 8. I don't have a PVR because of this spam. I don't want to pay for 200 channels. I don't want to buy a crippleware Tivo that needs a subscription to work properly and be insulted by spam. That's not having it both ways, that's having it my way.
You're missing a hell of a lot. I'll pay. I'll pay extra. I'll pay for a box that does what I want it to do, because I don't want to be bothered. Sound like your typical MS customer? Wrong. I said I don't want to be bothered. MS, like Tivo, does a lot of bothering. Don't track, don't spy, don't record what the networks think I want to watch, don't crash. Be an appliance; do what I paid for. It's my box- remember that. Nobody srews with my VCR or alarm clock, why should my PVR allow intrusions?
I'm asking again: Anybody know of a PVR that does what you want it to do?
Amen, brother. That's why I don't own a PVR. I want one that doesn't need to phone home, and can get its programming info from the guide channel or something. Am I reduced to the Linux PVR project? I'd rather not build my own.
Neither would any of the bands I hate. That's a s/n ratio I'll happily lose some good bands for. I'll probably end up hearing the good ones anyway, plus a lot of other really good ones that aren't getting heard by anyone right now.
I'm with you. You can find anything in the world via google, as the first few posts in an Ask Slashdot usually tell everyone, but that doesn't always help. Discussion, experiences, insights. Getting the feel of the /. attitude on something. It makes it a little more of a community.