About the Community of trust argument: The reason that privacy is such a large issue is because the "trust" you value has already been devastated by the business community in general. It's a lost war. Now, the name of the game is to protect yourself against the all-too-common violations of trust.
If building a community of trust is the issue, the anonymous transactions can go very far in promoting it, by removing the question of whether or not the institutions you're dealing with are trustworthy.
I think you're missing the privacy point. The point isn't to be anonymous to the person you're doing business with as such -- the point is for there to be no record, outside of you and whoever you did business with, of the transaction. This is the problem with debit and credit cards -- the card company knows what, when, and where you bought.
So, no, I wouldn't hire a babysitter who remains anonymous to me. However, I also don't want PaylPal, Visa, or anybody else to know that I hired a babysitter, who the sitter was, when I needed one, or how much I paid.
"I strongly recommend you have a look at Paypal's Privacy Policy [paypal.com]."
Hahahaha. Ummm, there's been a number of incidents where sites have changed their privacy policy retroactively and without notice. This turns out to be legal, and also makes privacy policies totally worthless, so it's pretty hard to fault anyone for ignoring them.
That said, I want to point out that Michael's privacy complaint is the result of confusion -- he is complaining that PayPal is not anonymous eCash. It's a little like complaining that a cow doesn't make bacon, but there you go. The net *desperately* needs some real cash equivelent (including anonymity).
I am one of those privacy freaks who won't use paypal (and only very rarely uses credit cards for any transaction, online or not), out of privacy concerns. I don't use "frequent shopper" cards or debit cards, either. I use cash.
Michael's concern is legitimate, and ridiculing people who find value in avoiding the data miners, targeted advertising, and worse isn't productive at all. Remember a while back when Safeway used a shopper's purchase history (obtained through the use of his affinity card) against him in a slip-and-fall lawsuit? They tred to smear his character by showing that he bought an awful lot of beer.
All that said, you are fundamentally correct -- if privacy is important to you, you must not use PayPal, as well as a lot of other services. You may find such a lifestyle decision baffling, but that doesn't make it stupid or wrong.
Yes indeed. Actually, I've become so lost in the binary world that I frequently find myself doing the everyday calculations everyone does when shopping or bill-paying by converting to hexadecimal first. Also, I can quickly calculate 15% of anything in microseconds, from tipping. It's a trivial calculation, of course, however I do it so frequently that I developed a shortcut nonetheless (divide by ten and add half the result).
I think the basic lesson is that when we do anything often enough, we notice patterns that are otherwise invisible. The shortcuts usually seem to be simply repeating a pattern. The fact that today's generation doesn't know how to pull old standard math-tricks isn't a sign that they're supider or even that anything's been lost. It's a sign that the relevent patterns have changed. Let's see Mr. Feynman quickly normalize a segmented pointer!!
Oh, and here's a non-mathematical example of repetition leading to finding hidden patterns: music. Good music reveals intricacies which are completely invisible until you've listened to it a number of times, and learned the pattern.
The constitution says nothing about individuals interfering with religion
True, what it does say is that Congress shall make NO LAW regarding religion, along with a few other things. My personal interpretation of this is that it goes both way -- NO LAW against religious activities, of course, but likewise NO LAW to benefit or protect them, either. Of course, laws can exist that protect fundamental rights, which affect religious issues, but not ones that directly and specifically address religion. So, it seems to me, any ruling that says you can't make fun of someone for their religion is very unconstitutional.
And does anyone remember, not so long ago, that Scientology used to vehemently deny that they were a religion at all? They did! They claimed they were a science (as in the name), with philosophical implications. In fact, they are a scam designed to soak as much money out of people as they can. In my opinion. Please don't sue me.
Well, if I'm going to be attacked, I'd rather be attacked by this than a more malicious worm -- BUT:
This is no more defensible than any other attack. Having good intentions doesn't erase the wrongdoing. I wouldn't want someone entering my house when I'm gone, either, even if they only did it to lock all my doors and windows.
We also have to be aware that things can go wrong. A worm with the best intentions in the world can still be buggy, after all!
There's a middle-ground, though -- what about if the good worms only affected systems that hang out some kind of "welcome mat"? They don't change your system around any unless you have a special file or something stored in a particular place on your computer.
And yet, there is something to be said for keeping a close eye on the competition. Case in point: One of my least favorite IDEs for programming under Windows is Visual Studio. It simply sucks. Yes, I've used worse, but still...
And yet, I'm continually running into programmers who swear it's great, but who also have never seriously used anything else. Most of the time, if I can talk them into trying other development environments, they see the deficiencies of Studio.
The point being, of course, that if you never have experience with anything else, you're going to be satisfied with what you have. This might counter the theory that using what you make will automatically lead to better software. Sometimes the only way to notice a problem is through comparison with products that don't have the problem.
Also my email address will be @aol.com so forget about geting my real name as a username.
That's probably for the best. One of the few knee-jerk prejudices I have is that I still think "newbie" or "luser" whenever I see an @aol address. I would insist on not attaching my real name to such an address, myself!
I know this is offtopic, but why does this phrase keep coming up? Usually, I see it in the context of copy protection (to prevent accidental copying??). Puh-leeze. If you're honest, you don't need anything to keep you that way! Why not just say it like it is? To expose the liars and cheats!!
Woodpulp into food - a hit: ever seen a cattle feedlot? Those poor buggers are eating nothing but woodchip waste, it seems. Ugh.
A bigger hit than you let on. Sometime, look again at all those prepared foods -- especially thicker liquid foods. See "dietary cellulose"? That's nothing more than a better-sounding name for "finely ground sawdust".
Indeed, that is the hard part, and my earlier reply does, in fact, illustrate this. Doh!
Uglyduckling's response is well taken, however, although I suspect that it's a little optimistic to expect people to fess up just by being asked. Of course, there is the time-honored "prisoner's dilemma" technique -- isolate the suspects, and tell each of them that the other one already ratted them out...
But really, we're entering the realm of truth-detection, which is an inexact science, to put it kindly.
My fundamental question is, how big of a scourge is cheating, anyway? Yes, it's bad, and should be punished when found, but... it's also a time-honored tradition, and hasn't seemed to cause the downfall of society yet.
So, perhaps a moderate path is best -- punish those cases when it's clear who was the copier and who was the copiee (I love making up new words!), and scare the willies out of those in unclear situations, then let it go at that...
Excellent point! I have a fond memory of running into my 3rd grade teacher once I was an adult. She actually apologized to me after all those years, because the kid who sat next to me copied from my papers, and she thought it was _I_ who was cheating (I didn't know the kid was copying). She realized her mistake the next year when I wasn't in her class anymore, but the other kid was, and the quality of his work plummetted.
A potential solution to this would be to simply not punish the ones whose paper got copied -- only the one who plagerized. Sure, some people will get away with "aiding and abetting", but better to a let a few guilty go free than to punish someone who was truly innocent.
Could be, could be -- but perhaps the surplus is not CDRs, but rather CD-RWs! I use CDRs to backup things and to move lots of data to a machine I have that isn't on my LAN. I would probably switch to CD-RWs if the blank CDR media got expensive enough -- I only do it because they are nearly free. That, and to complete the CD house siding project that I started with my first 1000 AOL CDs. It's shiny.
I agree. There is a certain amount of consent involved when you are using other people's data -- you consent to accept whatever the data consists of. It seems fair to me that people who create data should be able to embed whatever markings they want into it.
This is a completely different from the issues raised by copy-protection, as you pointed out, in that it doesn't restrain rightful and legal use, but does give a a certain measure by which violators could get caught. Kinda like LoJack in your car.
It's also different from the abominal practice of embedding ID numbers into data that you or I create (a la Word documents) without our knowing or consenting to such identifiers.
Watermarking doesn't offend me in the slightest. DRMs do, and will prevent me from purchasing music and players.
I seem to remember, back before Ma Bell was split up here in the US, they tried to pull that same stunt. It went to court, (if I remember right, but it was a long time ago), and the court called B.S. on that. The court had the authority because the phone company was a regulated monopoly.
The phone company also used to require that any equipment attached to the phone lines had to be owned by the phone company -- customers leased their telephones and modems. Ten years or so ago, I had a somewhat rough time even convincing my mother that it was legal to plug the phone line into her new modem!!
Timing is everything. I recently moved back to the big city, very much against my wishes. The one plus to the move, I thought, was that I'd be able to get DSL.
After moving in, I discovered that there is _no_ form of broadband that services my house. No DSL, no cable modem, and I don't have a clear view of the right part of the sky for one of those sattelite link-ups.
I persisted, though, and after six months of searching, finally found an approximation of broadband: iDSL (for $100/mo!), from Northpoint. I wrestled with whether I wanted to pay that much for 128kps, and finally decided to do it. The day I was going to call to order the hookup was the exact same day Northpoint announced bankruptcy, and they cut off all their existing customers!
Yup, timing is everything. My pessimistic side say "it figures". My optimistic side say "Wow, a day earlier, and you would have been taken for all that up-front money! Lucky you!"
While you're right, us Americans engage in more than our fair share of privacy abuses (especially in the latitude we give to corps), this is also part of why we're so sensitive about it all. Trying to raise consciousness.
But I think you're missing the point. I don't know about the UK, but here, crime in general and violent crime in particular are at the lowest rates they've been at in something like 50 years. We don't need or want CCTV for that reason. YMMV, and the UK can do what it pleases. I know that the massive surveillance there certainly means I'll exercise my freedom to never go there, and I'll fight tooth and nail against it happening here, where I don't have the choice of leaving (despite the "love it or leave it crowd" -- where would I leave _to_?)
Massive surveillance nearly guarantees tyranny. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually it will happen. I fight against this stuff not for me, but for my daughter. And once the "fifth utility" is entrenched, and if it brings tyranny, then the game is over and the only recourse to regain freedom would be revolution.
I think it's better to raise a (nonrevolutionary) stink now, while there's at least some chance of winning.
This is a travesty. In a world where ads are already plastered over virtually every public surface in cities, the last thing I want to see is for companies to start painting them on the sidewalks!
Even though it's a bit of a cool idea, and it's for a Good Product, I don't like seeing Tux being used to further destroy the visual landscape and turn formerly innnocent sidewalks into tools of coercion.
IBM should get hit hard for this, if only to send a clear message that there really are limits to where you can put ads.
God bless your company, it sounds like you guys are doing it right!
Truth be told, I very rarely recieve spam from mainstream companies. 90% of it leans towards the get-rich-quick, grow-new-hair, get-dirty-pictures varieties. When I apply the word "evil", these are the outfits I have in mind.
If I do business with a company online, and get a subsequent ad from them, it doesn't really bother me unless there's no clear, easy, and functioning way to stop the flow.
The one thing mainstream companies often do that gets me even more steamed than spam itself is when they hand my email address over to spammers.
For a while, I used the old postal spam tracking trick of giving your name out in minor spelling variants to see who sells you to, so I could avoid doing business with the worst of them. Online, I do the same thing.
I don't know the particulars about your organization, but I can't tell you how many times I got bit by the stupid opt-out policies of various spammers. It is borderline deceptive for the checkboxes on some web sites to be automatically set to "spam me", and then made a small typeface, or hidden where they're unlikely to be noticed.
I legitimately gripe to companies that spam me because I "voluntarily" opt-in like this. Since I don't want or request junk mail from any company for any reason, _all_ ads I get in my inbox are targets of my ire.
I couldn't disagree with the legislative approach more. As a consumer, if I want to take a risk on my own shoulders, I should be able to do so, and a company should be able to service me.
OTOH, some sort of "plain language risk disclosure" law might be a good move, so at least consumers will have a shot at knowing what they're getting into. (Reading licensing agreements is worthless -- they're far too easy to misunderstand, even if you have the patience to muck your way through them)
But surely a corporation does speak with its own voice. Yes, an employee is the mechanism of communication, but I can hardly believe that public statements made by corporate representatives reflect anything but official (collectively determined) company perspective. Surely, someone who stands up and, in his/her company's name states opinions and views which are at odds with the company's perspective would be justifiably fired.
Now, it seems obvious that individuals do not lose any of their rights simply by working for, or being the mouthpiece of, a corporation. And perhaps often, a given individual's personal views may coincide with that of the corp. but they still are two different things, and it is usually clear when someone is speaking "for the company" and when someone is speaking for themselves. Besides, when a corporation invokes "free speech" nowadays, they invariably mean either "freedom to advertise whatever they want" or "freedom to buy off politicians with huge political donations".
As far as responsibility and liability are concernced, the corporate structure provides a far greater shield than you insinuate. Obviously, if an individual breaks the law, the individual should be held accountable. But, in a corporation, it is pretty rare that single individuals end up being the cause of illegal activities. The effect of the corporation is to diffuse blame to many, many people, so prosecution becomes nearly impossible. Then, there's many instances where corps can do things without consequence that a human being would be locked up or otherwise sanctioned for.
But my basic point remains: corporations are in a special position to accumulate power far beyond what the vast majority of real people can hope for (Ted Turners and Bill Gateses are the exceptions that prove the rule).
They can do this in large part because they have special legal priveledges granted them simply by virtue of being a corporation. I should know, I started my own corporation precisely to take advantage of those special favors.
A person who both wields an abnormally large amount of power, and has no scruples or social conscience, is traditionally and rightfully despised in America. And yet a corporation is given special help to attain just this status.
I am not anti-corporation. I simply believe that the public has a ligitimate right and interest in regulating corporations to a far greater extent than is currently done, and/or removing corporation's status is "persons" under the law. They are given special priveledges, and they should be restrained because of the special advantages they have.
Remember, this "corps are people" thing is relatively recent in the history of corporations in general (the concept having been invented in America in the late 1800s). It's also interesting that the legal rationale for allowing this sorry state of affairs is based on the 18th (I think, but could have the # wrong) amendment, which was _intended_ to ensure that freed slaves were considered full citizens under the Constitution -- corporations didn't enter into it. Yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
I'm actually a big supporter of capitalism. It isn't anywhere near perfect, nor will it lead to utpoia, but of the things we've seen so far in history, it seems to be the most useful framework.
But, here's the problem in America, and this article fell right into this trap: In America, we artificially (through law) have declared corporations to be "persons". I.e., AT&T is just as much a citizen as you or me.
This is a greivous error. People are complex entiries who have a myriad goals and are (generally) responsible for their actions.
Corporations are machines of capitalist production. They have no conscience, no responsibility, and no goals other than accumulation of capital. Not that that's a bad thing -- but it makes them fundamentally different than people. Corporations are incapable of morality. Indeed, are often legally prohibited form taking a moral stance.
It seems fair and right that we should consider corporations as something other than people. In exchange for the special priveledges we give to corps, we should strip them of rights reserved for the people -- that is, free speech, etc. I cringe every time I hear a sorp representative say that such-and-such would violate the corps basic right "x". They should have NONE. The fact that they are artificially "people" is clearly destroying the system we have here, and turning it into our new, modern, American version of fascism.
Contrast this to a sole proprietorship, where the person running the show and the company are one and the same. Those type of companies _are_ people, and have all the usual rights people have.
Well -- a good starting point would be to not buy anything anymore. More realistically, stop buying things you don't really want or need, and stop letting the marketers "educate" you as to what your wants and needs are.
Slashdot Mirror
OOps! I forgot a paragraph:
About the Community of trust argument: The reason that privacy is such a large issue is because the "trust" you value has already been devastated by the business community in general. It's a lost war. Now, the name of the game is to protect yourself against the all-too-common violations of trust.
If building a community of trust is the issue, the anonymous transactions can go very far in promoting it, by removing the question of whether or not the institutions you're dealing with are trustworthy.
I think you're missing the privacy point. The point isn't to be anonymous to the person you're doing business with as such -- the point is for there to be no record, outside of you and whoever you did business with, of the transaction. This is the problem with debit and credit cards -- the card company knows what, when, and where you bought.
So, no, I wouldn't hire a babysitter who remains anonymous to me. However, I also don't want PaylPal, Visa, or anybody else to know that I hired a babysitter, who the sitter was, when I needed one, or how much I paid.
Hahahaha. Ummm, there's been a number of incidents where sites have changed their privacy policy retroactively and without notice. This turns out to be legal, and also makes privacy policies totally worthless, so it's pretty hard to fault anyone for ignoring them.
That said, I want to point out that Michael's privacy complaint is the result of confusion -- he is complaining that PayPal is not anonymous eCash. It's a little like complaining that a cow doesn't make bacon, but there you go. The net *desperately* needs some real cash equivelent (including anonymity).
I am one of those privacy freaks who won't use paypal (and only very rarely uses credit cards for any transaction, online or not), out of privacy concerns. I don't use "frequent shopper" cards or debit cards, either. I use cash.
Michael's concern is legitimate, and ridiculing people who find value in avoiding the data miners, targeted advertising, and worse isn't productive at all. Remember a while back when Safeway used a shopper's purchase history (obtained through the use of his affinity card) against him in a slip-and-fall lawsuit? They tred to smear his character by showing that he bought an awful lot of beer.
All that said, you are fundamentally correct -- if privacy is important to you, you must not use PayPal, as well as a lot of other services. You may find such a lifestyle decision baffling, but that doesn't make it stupid or wrong.
Yes indeed. Actually, I've become so lost in the binary world that I frequently find myself doing the everyday calculations everyone does when shopping or bill-paying by converting to hexadecimal first. Also, I can quickly calculate 15% of anything in microseconds, from tipping. It's a trivial calculation, of course, however I do it so frequently that I developed a shortcut nonetheless (divide by ten and add half the result).
I think the basic lesson is that when we do anything often enough, we notice patterns that are otherwise invisible. The shortcuts usually seem to be simply repeating a pattern. The fact that today's generation doesn't know how to pull old standard math-tricks isn't a sign that they're supider or even that anything's been lost. It's a sign that the relevent patterns have changed. Let's see Mr. Feynman quickly normalize a segmented pointer!!
Oh, and here's a non-mathematical example of repetition leading to finding hidden patterns: music. Good music reveals intricacies which are completely invisible until you've listened to it a number of times, and learned the pattern.
Each of us has the perfect right to destroy ourselves and our own property. The other examples are of destroying _other_ people and their property.
More than a slight difference.
True, what it does say is that Congress shall make NO LAW regarding religion, along with a few other things. My personal interpretation of this is that it goes both way -- NO LAW against religious activities, of course, but likewise NO LAW to benefit or protect them, either. Of course, laws can exist that protect fundamental rights, which affect religious issues, but not ones that directly and specifically address religion. So, it seems to me, any ruling that says you can't make fun of someone for their religion is very unconstitutional.
And does anyone remember, not so long ago, that Scientology used to vehemently deny that they were a religion at all? They did! They claimed they were a science (as in the name), with philosophical implications. In fact, they are a scam designed to soak as much money out of people as they can. In my opinion. Please don't sue me.
Well, if I'm going to be attacked, I'd rather be attacked by this than a more malicious worm -- BUT:
This is no more defensible than any other attack. Having good intentions doesn't erase the wrongdoing. I wouldn't want someone entering my house when I'm gone, either, even if they only did it to lock all my doors and windows.
We also have to be aware that things can go wrong. A worm with the best intentions in the world can still be buggy, after all!
There's a middle-ground, though -- what about if the good worms only affected systems that hang out some kind of "welcome mat"? They don't change your system around any unless you have a special file or something stored in a particular place on your computer.
And yet, there is something to be said for keeping a close eye on the competition. Case in point: One of my least favorite IDEs for programming under Windows is Visual Studio. It simply sucks. Yes, I've used worse, but still...
And yet, I'm continually running into programmers who swear it's great, but who also have never seriously used anything else. Most of the time, if I can talk them into trying other development environments, they see the deficiencies of Studio.
The point being, of course, that if you never have experience with anything else, you're going to be satisfied with what you have. This might counter the theory that using what you make will automatically lead to better software. Sometimes the only way to notice a problem is through comparison with products that don't have the problem.
That's probably for the best. One of the few knee-jerk prejudices I have is that I still think "newbie" or "luser" whenever I see an @aol address. I would insist on not attaching my real name to such an address, myself!
I know this is offtopic, but why does this phrase keep coming up? Usually, I see it in the context of copy protection (to prevent accidental copying??). Puh-leeze. If you're honest, you don't need anything to keep you that way! Why not just say it like it is? To expose the liars and cheats!!
Ok, rant is over!
A bigger hit than you let on. Sometime, look again at all those prepared foods -- especially thicker liquid foods. See "dietary cellulose"? That's nothing more than a better-sounding name for "finely ground sawdust".
Indeed, that is the hard part, and my earlier reply does, in fact, illustrate this. Doh!
Uglyduckling's response is well taken, however, although I suspect that it's a little optimistic to expect people to fess up just by being asked. Of course, there is the time-honored "prisoner's dilemma" technique -- isolate the suspects, and tell each of them that the other one already ratted them out...
But really, we're entering the realm of truth-detection, which is an inexact science, to put it kindly.
My fundamental question is, how big of a scourge is cheating, anyway? Yes, it's bad, and should be punished when found, but... it's also a time-honored tradition, and hasn't seemed to cause the downfall of society yet.
So, perhaps a moderate path is best -- punish those cases when it's clear who was the copier and who was the copiee (I love making up new words!), and scare the willies out of those in unclear situations, then let it go at that...
Excellent point! I have a fond memory of running into my 3rd grade teacher once I was an adult. She actually apologized to me after all those years, because the kid who sat next to me copied from my papers, and she thought it was _I_ who was cheating (I didn't know the kid was copying). She realized her mistake the next year when I wasn't in her class anymore, but the other kid was, and the quality of his work plummetted.
A potential solution to this would be to simply not punish the ones whose paper got copied -- only the one who plagerized. Sure, some people will get away with "aiding and abetting", but better to a let a few guilty go free than to punish someone who was truly innocent.
Could be, could be -- but perhaps the surplus is not CDRs, but rather CD-RWs! I use CDRs to backup things and to move lots of data to a machine I have that isn't on my LAN. I would probably switch to CD-RWs if the blank CDR media got expensive enough -- I only do it because they are nearly free. That, and to complete the CD house siding project that I started with my first 1000 AOL CDs. It's shiny.
I agree. There is a certain amount of consent involved when you are using other people's data -- you consent to accept whatever the data consists of. It seems fair to me that people who create data should be able to embed whatever markings they want into it.
This is a completely different from the issues raised by copy-protection, as you pointed out, in that it doesn't restrain rightful and legal use, but does give a a certain measure by which violators could get caught. Kinda like LoJack in your car.
It's also different from the abominal practice of embedding ID numbers into data that you or I create (a la Word documents) without our knowing or consenting to such identifiers.
Watermarking doesn't offend me in the slightest. DRMs do, and will prevent me from purchasing music and players.
I seem to remember, back before Ma Bell was split up here in the US, they tried to pull that same stunt. It went to court, (if I remember right, but it was a long time ago), and the court called B.S. on that. The court had the authority because the phone company was a regulated monopoly.
The phone company also used to require that any equipment attached to the phone lines had to be owned by the phone company -- customers leased their telephones and modems. Ten years or so ago, I had a somewhat rough time even convincing my mother that it was legal to plug the phone line into her new modem!!
Timing is everything. I recently moved back to the big city, very much against my wishes. The one plus to the move, I thought, was that I'd be able to get DSL.
After moving in, I discovered that there is _no_ form of broadband that services my house. No DSL, no cable modem, and I don't have a clear view of the right part of the sky for one of those sattelite link-ups.
I persisted, though, and after six months of searching, finally found an approximation of broadband: iDSL (for $100/mo!), from Northpoint. I wrestled with whether I wanted to pay that much for 128kps, and finally decided to do it. The day I was going to call to order the hookup was the exact same day Northpoint announced bankruptcy, and they cut off all their existing customers!
Yup, timing is everything. My pessimistic side say "it figures". My optimistic side say "Wow, a day earlier, and you would have been taken for all that up-front money! Lucky you!"
While you're right, us Americans engage in more than our fair share of privacy abuses (especially in the latitude we give to corps), this is also part of why we're so sensitive about it all. Trying to raise consciousness.
But I think you're missing the point. I don't know about the UK, but here, crime in general and violent crime in particular are at the lowest rates they've been at in something like 50 years. We don't need or want CCTV for that reason. YMMV, and the UK can do what it pleases. I know that the massive surveillance there certainly means I'll exercise my freedom to never go there, and I'll fight tooth and nail against it happening here, where I don't have the choice of leaving (despite the "love it or leave it crowd" -- where would I leave _to_?)
Massive surveillance nearly guarantees tyranny. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually it will happen. I fight against this stuff not for me, but for my daughter. And once the "fifth utility" is entrenched, and if it brings tyranny, then the game is over and the only recourse to regain freedom would be revolution.
I think it's better to raise a (nonrevolutionary) stink now, while there's at least some chance of winning.
This is a travesty. In a world where ads are already plastered over virtually every public surface in cities, the last thing I want to see is for companies to start painting them on the sidewalks!
Even though it's a bit of a cool idea, and it's for a Good Product, I don't like seeing Tux being used to further destroy the visual landscape and turn formerly innnocent sidewalks into tools of coercion.
IBM should get hit hard for this, if only to send a clear message that there really are limits to where you can put ads.
God bless your company, it sounds like you guys are doing it right!
Truth be told, I very rarely recieve spam from mainstream companies. 90% of it leans towards the get-rich-quick, grow-new-hair, get-dirty-pictures varieties. When I apply the word "evil", these are the outfits I have in mind.
If I do business with a company online, and get a subsequent ad from them, it doesn't really bother me unless there's no clear, easy, and functioning way to stop the flow.
The one thing mainstream companies often do that gets me even more steamed than spam itself is when they hand my email address over to spammers.
For a while, I used the old postal spam tracking trick of giving your name out in minor spelling variants to see who sells you to, so I could avoid doing business with the worst of them. Online, I do the same thing.
I don't know the particulars about your organization, but I can't tell you how many times I got bit by the stupid opt-out policies of various spammers. It is borderline deceptive for the checkboxes on some web sites to be automatically set to "spam me", and then made a small typeface, or hidden where they're unlikely to be noticed.
I legitimately gripe to companies that spam me because I "voluntarily" opt-in like this. Since I don't want or request junk mail from any company for any reason, _all_ ads I get in my inbox are targets of my ire.
Could this be similar to your company's policies?
I couldn't disagree with the legislative approach more. As a consumer, if I want to take a risk on my own shoulders, I should be able to do so, and a company should be able to service me.
OTOH, some sort of "plain language risk disclosure" law might be a good move, so at least consumers will have a shot at knowing what they're getting into. (Reading licensing agreements is worthless -- they're far too easy to misunderstand, even if you have the patience to muck your way through them)
But surely a corporation does speak with its own voice. Yes, an employee is the mechanism of communication, but I can hardly believe that public statements made by corporate representatives reflect anything but official (collectively determined) company perspective. Surely, someone who stands up and, in his/her company's name states opinions and views which are at odds with the company's perspective would be justifiably fired.
Now, it seems obvious that individuals do not lose any of their rights simply by working for, or being the mouthpiece of, a corporation. And perhaps often, a given individual's personal views may coincide with that of the corp. but they still are two different things, and it is usually clear when someone is speaking "for the company" and when someone is speaking for themselves. Besides, when a corporation invokes "free speech" nowadays, they invariably mean either "freedom to advertise whatever they want" or "freedom to buy off politicians with huge political donations".
As far as responsibility and liability are concernced, the corporate structure provides a far greater shield than you insinuate. Obviously, if an individual breaks the law, the individual should be held accountable. But, in a corporation, it is pretty rare that single individuals end up being the cause of illegal activities. The effect of the corporation is to diffuse blame to many, many people, so prosecution becomes nearly impossible. Then, there's many instances where corps can do things without consequence that a human being would be locked up or otherwise sanctioned for.
But my basic point remains: corporations are in a special position to accumulate power far beyond what the vast majority of real people can hope for (Ted Turners and Bill Gateses are the exceptions that prove the rule).
They can do this in large part because they have special legal priveledges granted them simply by virtue of being a corporation. I should know, I started my own corporation precisely to take advantage of those special favors.
A person who both wields an abnormally large amount of power, and has no scruples or social conscience, is traditionally and rightfully despised in America. And yet a corporation is given special help to attain just this status.
I am not anti-corporation. I simply believe that the public has a ligitimate right and interest in regulating corporations to a far greater extent than is currently done, and/or removing corporation's status is "persons" under the law. They are given special priveledges, and they should be restrained because of the special advantages they have.
Remember, this "corps are people" thing is relatively recent in the history of corporations in general (the concept having been invented in America in the late 1800s). It's also interesting that the legal rationale for allowing this sorry state of affairs is based on the 18th (I think, but could have the # wrong) amendment, which was _intended_ to ensure that freed slaves were considered full citizens under the Constitution -- corporations didn't enter into it. Yet another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
I'm actually a big supporter of capitalism. It isn't anywhere near perfect, nor will it lead to utpoia, but of the things we've seen so far in history, it seems to be the most useful framework.
But, here's the problem in America, and this article fell right into this trap: In America, we artificially (through law) have declared corporations to be "persons". I.e., AT&T is just as much a citizen as you or me.
This is a greivous error. People are complex entiries who have a myriad goals and are (generally) responsible for their actions.
Corporations are machines of capitalist production. They have no conscience, no responsibility, and no goals other than accumulation of capital. Not that that's a bad thing -- but it makes them fundamentally different than people. Corporations are incapable of morality. Indeed, are often legally prohibited form taking a moral stance.
It seems fair and right that we should consider corporations as something other than people. In exchange for the special priveledges we give to corps, we should strip them of rights reserved for the people -- that is, free speech, etc. I cringe every time I hear a sorp representative say that such-and-such would violate the corps basic right "x". They should have NONE. The fact that they are artificially "people" is clearly destroying the system we have here, and turning it into our new, modern, American version of fascism.
Contrast this to a sole proprietorship, where the person running the show and the company are one and the same. Those type of companies _are_ people, and have all the usual rights people have.
Well -- a good starting point would be to not buy anything anymore. More realistically, stop buying things you don't really want or need, and stop letting the marketers "educate" you as to what your wants and needs are.