This is exacerbated by the fact that so many Windows applications require the user to have Administrator authority"
Isn't the same true on Linux? I remember reading (three years ago or so) that 3D shooters required superuser privilege to access video devices. It may no longer be the case these days, I don't know.
In FireFox, with JavaScript enabled but prevented from modifying the status bar text, those links do not show (status bar is blank when you mouse over links).
I've been doing this for over a yea, since I registered my own domain. Whenever I subscribe to a newsletter, buy software etc, I always use a unique address (if the zine is Foo, I subscribe to it as foozine@mydomain). Obviously I was hoping to find out who the slimeballs are that sell my address.
Strange thing, they don't! I have never received a single spam to an email address registered in this way, and though I haven't kept count, there's at least fifty of those. Maybe I'm just dealing with exceptionally honest people, I don't know. I only get spam to the actual email that's posted on the website, plus the usual tricks such as webmaster@domain. And the greatest amount of spam by far comes to the (separate) address I post as on usenet.
Oh boy, that's as good as "they hate us because we're free". I was born on the other side of the cold war, so to speak, and I remember those times well. Reagan helped. But let me tell you, if the US "won" the cold war, it did so by default. What happened was the Soviet Union stopped fighting the war and just collapsed under its own inefficient weight. Oh, and there were lots of brave people on this side who put up a good fight themselves.
Did it show the capitalist system works, and the communist system does not? It sure did. Did Reagan's policies help the US economy? Check your recession and unemployment history.
That's like saying "your locked home isn't all that private either". Sure you can break most security devices, locks just as well as paper envelopes. That is not the point.
Snail mail is private inasmuch as it is protected by law. And whatever US law currently says, it *should* be saying "provacy of correspondence", not "privacy of snail-mail". I'd be surprised if it were saying the latter.
That's a frequent argument, but you know, e-mail has an envelope too. Most people cannot read bits as they pass through wires. You actually have to use a piece of software, select or intercept a specific message, press a few keys. Not much different, conceptually, from unsealing a paper envelope, except it's undetectable.
Bin Laden had no support from Hussein or Iraq. No evidence whatsoever of such support or link has been shown. Dick Cheney has insinuated he knows of such evidence, but he didn't even produce it for the 9-11 Commission. In fact the 9-11 Commission said only last week there was no relationship between Hussein and Bin Laden. You, of course, know better. Or is it what you WANT to believe, because if you stop believing this, you will have to agree that war on Iraq was unprovoked and illegal and your president should be flown to the Hague in chains?
Good list of books, well-written primer. Thanks for compiling all that information. (Have you considered adding Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" to your list of books?)
Actually, saying "our product is best" may run afoul of local regulations, since it's a subjective opinion at best, not (usually) a fact. There are very few companies who could get away with saying that wherever truth-in-advertising legislation has any teeth.
In my post I didn't say it was or was not OK. I only said this is the mantra, because it is and you've seen it counless times on Slashdot. But if it is OK, then I argue against parent poster(s) who claim that laws supposedly prevent the companies from "even thinking" about the Right Thing(tm). They never did and never will. Monsanto, anyone?
They can also track you by the books you buy. And they can use that knowledge - that, and about those condoms - to blackmail you, extort confessions, all kinds of things. Don't EVER say "it can't happen here". I'm sure you never thought American GIs would torture POW's and have fun doing so, did you?
If the consumer doesn't care, then to him it is not "The Wrong Thing."
Not necessarily. Consumers may well care about the number of telemarketing calls they receive during dinnertime, but they may not readily link that to providing a bit of personal information once to a website that PROMISED to protect their privacy. Thanks to electronic databses and the American tradition of free-for-all when it comes to selling personal information, making such links has become practically impossible, unless you just want to say "come company I trusted violated my privacy".
Consumers do often care, but they have very little ecourse, so it gets swept under the rug as small stuff it's not worth sweating about. Thing is, it's only small stuff up to a point, like spam once was.
It doesn't matter why they do or do not comply. It's the right-wing mantra that a company has only one legitimate motivation, that is profit. Anything else doesn't matter. A profitable company can shut down its operation, lay of a few thousand people and move overseas so that it becomes even more profitable - and that is OK, because the company acts to increase its profit. If we then agree and accept as a fact of life that companies are motivated solely by profit, we cannot then expect them to consider any other motives.
Who cares why they comply with the law. Make sure the law is good and that they do comply.
It can be hubris and incompetence mnore than ill will. Collecting more information is much easier than figuring out how to link it all together. It's a way to show people they're doing something while actually making almost no effort at all.
"Someone who is found to be biased against Microsoft in the court"
You have your lawyers all mixed up. You're thinking of judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, of the MS anti-trust case. Judge Jackson penned the "findings of fact" document. No connection to Lawrence Lessig.
The problem is that there are only two or three CPU manufacturers in the world, and only one or two BIOS manufacturers. And only one Google.
Of course, whatever they do with gmail should in no way affect the search engine itself, and there are hundreds if not thousands of free email account services for those who really need one. So while 'm not much concerned about gmail, your analogous cases are quite problematic, actually.
Initially, the idea put me off horribly. Yes, I'm a bit of a privacy nut and all that. But then I thought - I would *love* being able to watch footage of my girfriend and me taking our first walk six years ago, back when we weren't quite boyfriend and girlfriend yet but somehow the next day we were.
Then again, if I'd worn a camera like this that day... I don't think the next six years would have happened the same way. So in reality you probably would get junk and junk only, because for those moments that are worth preserving you would switch the damn thing off without a second thought.
"Seems to me that you want a religion established here. "
I agree with what you are saying. I may have made my point too hastily. I don't propose that public display of religious conviction should be prohibited. I was rather trying to say that he shouldn't be praying in his office hours the same way he shouldn't be cutting his toenails in his office hours, unless during lunchtime.
But more than that, public officials should be particularly careful not to mix their personal convictions with their public duties. What he does on the job is not done by John Ashcroft the private individual, but is done in the name of the government and broader, in the name of the state. When he prays in his office, he's praying in the name of the state, as it were. And that he has no right to do. (Which president was it that caused a furor by publicly stating he didn't like broccoli? It's like that, but with more profound consequences.)
Slashdot Mirror
This is exacerbated by the fact that so many Windows applications require the user to have Administrator authority"
Isn't the same true on Linux? I remember reading (three years ago or so) that 3D shooters required superuser privilege to access video devices. It may no longer be the case these days, I don't know.
In FireFox, with JavaScript enabled but prevented from modifying the status bar text, those links do not show (status bar is blank when you mouse over links).
OT, but the word you;re looking for is bogosity
It wasn't a bot. Rule #3: Spammers are stupid.
I've been doing this for over a yea, since I registered my own domain. Whenever I subscribe to a newsletter, buy software etc, I always use a unique address (if the zine is Foo, I subscribe to it as foozine@mydomain). Obviously I was hoping to find out who the slimeballs are that sell my address.
Strange thing, they don't! I have never received a single spam to an email address registered in this way, and though I haven't kept count, there's at least fifty of those. Maybe I'm just dealing with exceptionally honest people, I don't know. I only get spam to the actual email that's posted on the website, plus the usual tricks such as webmaster@domain. And the greatest amount of spam by far comes to the (separate) address I post as on usenet.
What do you mean unconnected? These machines run Windows and have network connections.
Oh boy, that's as good as "they hate us because we're free". I was born on the other side of the cold war, so to speak, and I remember those times well. Reagan helped. But let me tell you, if the US "won" the cold war, it did so by default. What happened was the Soviet Union stopped fighting the war and just collapsed under its own inefficient weight. Oh, and there were lots of brave people on this side who put up a good fight themselves.
Did it show the capitalist system works, and the communist system does not? It sure did. Did Reagan's policies help the US economy? Check your recession and unemployment history.
That's like saying "your locked home isn't all that private either". Sure you can break most security devices, locks just as well as paper envelopes. That is not the point.
Snail mail is private inasmuch as it is protected by law. And whatever US law currently says, it *should* be saying "provacy of correspondence", not "privacy of snail-mail". I'd be surprised if it were saying the latter.
That's a frequent argument, but you know, e-mail has an envelope too. Most people cannot read bits as they pass through wires. You actually have to use a piece of software, select or intercept a specific message, press a few keys. Not much different, conceptually, from unsealing a paper envelope, except it's undetectable.
Bin Laden had no support from Hussein or Iraq. No evidence whatsoever of such support or link has been shown. Dick Cheney has insinuated he knows of such evidence, but he didn't even produce it for the 9-11 Commission. In fact the 9-11 Commission said only last week there was no relationship between Hussein and Bin Laden. You, of course, know better. Or is it what you WANT to believe, because if you stop believing this, you will have to agree that war on Iraq was unprovoked and illegal and your president should be flown to the Hague in chains?
Good list of books, well-written primer. Thanks for compiling all that information. (Have you considered adding Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" to your list of books?)
In fact, you want a tyranny. No wonder you'll be voting for Bush.
Actually, saying "our product is best" may run afoul of local regulations, since it's a subjective opinion at best, not (usually) a fact. There are very few companies who could get away with saying that wherever truth-in-advertising legislation has any teeth.
In my post I didn't say it was or was not OK. I only said this is the mantra, because it is and you've seen it counless times on Slashdot. But if it is OK, then I argue against parent poster(s) who claim that laws supposedly prevent the companies from "even thinking" about the Right Thing(tm). They never did and never will. Monsanto, anyone?
They can also track you by the books you buy. And they can use that knowledge - that, and about those condoms - to blackmail you, extort confessions, all kinds of things. Don't EVER say "it can't happen here". I'm sure you never thought American GIs would torture POW's and have fun doing so, did you?
Not necessarily. Consumers may well care about the number of telemarketing calls they receive during dinnertime, but they may not readily link that to providing a bit of personal information once to a website that PROMISED to protect their privacy. Thanks to electronic databses and the American tradition of free-for-all when it comes to selling personal information, making such links has become practically impossible, unless you just want to say "come company I trusted violated my privacy".
Consumers do often care, but they have very little ecourse, so it gets swept under the rug as small stuff it's not worth sweating about. Thing is, it's only small stuff up to a point, like spam once was.
It doesn't matter why they do or do not comply. It's the right-wing mantra that a company has only one legitimate motivation, that is profit. Anything else doesn't matter. A profitable company can shut down its operation, lay of a few thousand people and move overseas so that it becomes even more profitable - and that is OK, because the company acts to increase its profit. If we then agree and accept as a fact of life that companies are motivated solely by profit, we cannot then expect them to consider any other motives.
Who cares why they comply with the law. Make sure the law is good and that they do comply.
It can be hubris and incompetence mnore than ill will. Collecting more information is much easier than figuring out how to link it all together. It's a way to show people they're doing something while actually making almost no effort at all.
"Someone who is found to be biased against Microsoft in the court"
You have your lawyers all mixed up. You're thinking of judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, of the MS anti-trust case. Judge Jackson penned the "findings of fact" document. No connection to Lawrence Lessig.
Well, we're looking at PCs, so Motorola doesn't count. That's three.
The problem is that there are only two or three CPU manufacturers in the world, and only one or two BIOS manufacturers. And only one Google.
Of course, whatever they do with gmail should in no way affect the search engine itself, and there are hundreds if not thousands of free email account services for those who really need one. So while 'm not much concerned about gmail, your analogous cases are quite problematic, actually.
Initially, the idea put me off horribly. Yes, I'm a bit of a privacy nut and all that. But then I thought - I would *love* being able to watch footage of my girfriend and me taking our first walk six years ago, back when we weren't quite boyfriend and girlfriend yet but somehow the next day we were.
Then again, if I'd worn a camera like this that day... I don't think the next six years would have happened the same way. So in reality you probably would get junk and junk only, because for those moments that are worth preserving you would switch the damn thing off without a second thought.
Moderators, get off your asses! Parent post is bloody hilarious.
"Seems to me that you want a religion established here. "
I agree with what you are saying. I may have made my point too hastily. I don't propose that public display of religious conviction should be prohibited. I was rather trying to say that he shouldn't be praying in his office hours the same way he shouldn't be cutting his toenails in his office hours, unless during lunchtime.
But more than that, public officials should be particularly careful not to mix their personal convictions with their public duties. What he does on the job is not done by John Ashcroft the private individual, but is done in the name of the government and broader, in the name of the state. When he prays in his office, he's praying in the name of the state, as it were. And that he has no right to do. (Which president was it that caused a furor by publicly stating he didn't like broccoli? It's like that, but with more profound consequences.)
"If he were a member of the Islam religion and had had similar objections to nakedness, would you take fault with him then?"
I would take fault with anyone who looks at a statue of justice and sees nakedness.
"So he should be forbidden from praying?"
On the job? Absolutely, unless he's doing it during his lunch break and in private.