Funny, though - the article doesn't make it clear as to which action was the indiscretion - the comment about digging up Albrecht's juicy past, or the mistake of replying instead of forwarding...
Not to mention, nothing that Molpus was quoted as saying in the article actually indicated that they weren't trying to dig up dirt...for instance:
"Her request for a copy of your bio was simply a part of a normal effort to obtain information about those who lead organisations with an interest in industry issues"
This could mean that they were only trying to get a bio, or it could mean that their normal effort is to find some ammunition in their target's current life. It's not terribly clear, to me, anyway, but I tend to wear a tinfoil hat...
Wasn't there a court ruling recently that declared detaining someone without trial or outside contact, even with the backing of the Patriot Act, was unconstitutional?
Did anyone else RTFA far down enough to notice the quote from Langley...
"A large percentage [of the vendors] are of a Hispanic nature," Langley said. "Today he's Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow he's Raul something or other, and tomorrow after that he's something else. These people change their identity all the time. A picture's worth a thousand words."
WTF? THESE PEOPLE? Is it just me or does it seem that these guys are trying to prey on immigrant (illegal or otherwise) fears of police authority?
I'd like to see some sort of study of how many people are out hawking pirated wares, broken down by race, versus the race breakdown for the people the RIAA are busting. I know it doesn't matter because they're not actually imposing any authority, but it would be interesting to see the Hispanic community's reaction to the above quotation, and those numbers.
Just curious...who forces you to pay $10 a show and $5 for a watery drink to watch the movie in the theater? Does someone make you watch the movie in the theater instead of waiting for the rental or for it to appear on cable/satellite/the late-nite show on the local network?
Having kicked caffeine for a short period of time MANY times, I can tell you with some certainty that my afternoon crashes were not caused by caffeine, but by poor diet - usually eating a high-carb lunch without much protein to supplement it. I'm not a proponent of Atkins - I got very sick on Atkins - but eating a good balance of veggies, fruit, and protein in my lunch and limiting foods like pasta and breads took care of a lot of the afternoon lethargy.
Upping water intake makes a HUGE life difference, too. It affects everything from sleep (once you get over the initial having to go to the bathroom every hour, anyway) to hunger to skin quality (fewer zits, smoother skin) to joint health. I've found that as long as I drink plenty of water, the amount of caffeine I consume doesn't really have an adverse affect on my lifestyle (I drink 2-3 pots of coffee a day).
Are you saying that, for instance, Slashdot's list of addresses would be illegal if they were burned to CD? There are a lot of perfectly legitimate, completely non-spam-related uses for a bunch of email addresses. IIRC, 'substantial, non-infringing use' applies to copyright violation and infringement and P2P networking instead of people's right to privacy anyway.
The only way I could see a government being able to justify prosecution of someone based on possession of one of these CDs is if they definitely had caught them distributing spam and had passed this law to tack other charges on just to make it more painful to get caught. This has been done before - for instance, in Oklahoma, it is illegal to sell drugs without a tax stamp. I don't think they actually expect anyone to actually purchase these stamps - it's just used to nail a dealer for tax evasion in addition to drug dealing.
I think the better question would be, at what point does it become a spamatorium vs the e-mails I have for my personal or business use? Where can the legal line be drawn? (I personally don't much care for laws that cover 'intent', your beliefs may be different.)
I imagine if one were to look at the number and type of e-mail addresses that, for instance,/. or Amazon.com or eBay has, it would look a lot like the list on the CD, except without the badly harvested email addresses that the list generator didn't bother removing.
You can't PROVE intent with one of these CDs. If I have a pound of marijuana on my kitchen table, the odds are good that someone is gonna use it in an illegal manner. It's not illegal to have e-mail addresses, though, because they can be used for something legitimate (i.e. research, as the author of the article did).
Let's do a hypothetical here, I'm going to use Gates Foundation because the parent post brought it up, not to try to play on any anti-Gates sentiment. Some other posts have suggested appealing to Sun or IBM, substitute in whomever you would like.
Suppose the Gates Foundation bailed out Wikipedia, either by giving them a one-time large donation or by promising support for a specified or indeterminate amount of time.
How many people would feel that the Gates Foundation now 'owned' (not literally, more in the 'I've got you by the short hairs' sense) Wikipedia? How would this add to or detract from Wikipedia's value as a resource?
Would Wikipedia feel the need, consciously or unconsciously, to temper what was said about the Gates Foundation, either out of fear of future financial repercussions or out of a warm fuzzy feeling for their benefactor?
I personally would prefer Wikipedia remain without corporate sponsorship - which means that I have an obligation to pitch in with a few bucks.
What you should have said was, 'Add me to your Do Not Call list' instead of 'Remove me from your list'.
You can also avoid the wardialer-type calls quite a bit of the time by not answering your telephone with "Hello" - the software is programmed to recognize that word, but if you answer the phone with something like "This is Doc Ruby", the software thinks you are an answering machine and hangs up.
You probably also have the option of not answering calls from numbers you don't recognize (provided Caller ID is available in your area and you subscribe), and some areas have services where calls that do not display numbers or identify themselves are routed through a service that requests the phone number prior to actually putting the call through - which also takes care of random number dialers.
On E-470/Northwest Parkway in the Denver metro area, they run your license plate through the database before issuing a ticket or a fine. If the database shows that you have an ExpressToll transponder, they just bill your account as they would have if your transponder had registered - the only difference is that it shows up with the label 'VTOL' instead of 'TOLL'. Very handy.
ExpressToll used to allow users to just call in additional cars (i.e. rental cars) so there wasn't a problem with rental cars - you just added them to your account when you got the rental, called back and removed the rental car when you turned it in - but they disallowed more than one car per transponder a few months ago.
At least, it was handy being able to put the rental car on the transponder until I found out several months after the fact that my husband had forgotten to remove a rental car from the transponder...
BTW, the ExpressToll transponders work when placed on the dashboard of the car - I have not tried them in the glovebox, though - too much work going back and checking the bills.
I seem to remember that Burnt Umber is one of the colors that Crayola is discontinuing, at least from the crayons, but I can't find a link to support it.
It doesn't even need to be the northern US - my pipes froze after one night of cold weather in central Oklahoma. S/he must live in Florida or something...
And this is EXACTLY why there are market approvals for hardware and not software...Because if it IS on fire, it's most likely a hardware problem. The "risk to the user of death, injury, occupational illness, damage to or loss of equipment or property, or damage to the environment" is generally minimal for software, unless of course you are in the medical software field or some other field where the software sort of reaches out and touches you.
Yeah, but it's a real shame when it's implemented and they only let you use it for e-mail.
Example: We wanted to move our bugs database to Notes. The company ended up purchasing a separate product that is defective and featureless in more ways than I can count.
Example: The admin made it so cumbersome to reserve a meeting room (he has to give approval for each request, and doesn't delegate it to someone when he is on holiday) that all the rooms just have pieces of paper taped on the door now
Example: Over half the employees have Pocket PCs, but the company will not provide synchronization software so that we can actually carry our calendars with us. Cheapest good software I've found is about $75, if anyone has any free suggestions let me know - I'm not going to purchase a piece of software that I may not be able to use if I get fired next week.
I guess it comes down to Lotus Notes being as effective as its administrator. Yeah, it's ugly, yeah, it has some minor bugs, but the biggest problems come from its administration.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, I just have to throw in two cents here...
I know apoplectic (the submitter)...his mom's name is Susan.
No, I'm not kidding.
Quit talking about his mom, dammit!
Funny, though - the article doesn't make it clear as to which action was the indiscretion - the comment about digging up Albrecht's juicy past, or the mistake of replying instead of forwarding...
Not to mention, nothing that Molpus was quoted as saying in the article actually indicated that they weren't trying to dig up dirt...for instance:
"Her request for a copy of your bio was simply a part of a normal effort to obtain information about those who lead organisations with an interest in industry issues"
This could mean that they were only trying to get a bio, or it could mean that their normal effort is to find some ammunition in their target's current life. It's not terribly clear, to me, anyway, but I tend to wear a tinfoil hat...
Great, now the Secret Service is gonna have
Wasn't there a court ruling recently that declared detaining someone without trial or outside contact, even with the backing of the Patriot Act, was unconstitutional?
(I am too lazy to look it up)
Did anyone else RTFA far down enough to notice the quote from Langley...
"A large percentage [of the vendors] are of a Hispanic nature," Langley said. "Today he's Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow he's Raul something or other, and tomorrow after that he's something else. These people change their identity all the time. A picture's worth a thousand words."
WTF? THESE PEOPLE? Is it just me or does it seem that these guys are trying to prey on immigrant (illegal or otherwise) fears of police authority?
I'd like to see some sort of study of how many people are out hawking pirated wares, broken down by race, versus the race breakdown for the people the RIAA are busting. I know it doesn't matter because they're not actually imposing any authority, but it would be interesting to see the Hispanic community's reaction to the above quotation, and those numbers.
Your comment, coffee, nose, keyboard.
I'm gonna be randomly chuckling about this one all day....
Are we sure this story isn't an SCO plant to spread FUD?
Just curious...who forces you to pay $10 a show and $5 for a watery drink to watch the movie in the theater? Does someone make you watch the movie in the theater instead of waiting for the rental or for it to appear on cable/satellite/the late-nite show on the local network?
Having kicked caffeine for a short period of time MANY times, I can tell you with some certainty that my afternoon crashes were not caused by caffeine, but by poor diet - usually eating a high-carb lunch without much protein to supplement it. I'm not a proponent of Atkins - I got very sick on Atkins - but eating a good balance of veggies, fruit, and protein in my lunch and limiting foods like pasta and breads took care of a lot of the afternoon lethargy.
Upping water intake makes a HUGE life difference, too. It affects everything from sleep (once you get over the initial having to go to the bathroom every hour, anyway) to hunger to skin quality (fewer zits, smoother skin) to joint health. I've found that as long as I drink plenty of water, the amount of caffeine I consume doesn't really have an adverse affect on my lifestyle (I drink 2-3 pots of coffee a day).
Are you saying that, for instance, Slashdot's list of addresses would be illegal if they were burned to CD? There are a lot of perfectly legitimate, completely non-spam-related uses for a bunch of email addresses. IIRC, 'substantial, non-infringing use' applies to copyright violation and infringement and P2P networking instead of people's right to privacy anyway.
The only way I could see a government being able to justify prosecution of someone based on possession of one of these CDs is if they definitely had caught them distributing spam and had passed this law to tack other charges on just to make it more painful to get caught. This has been done before - for instance, in Oklahoma, it is illegal to sell drugs without a tax stamp. I don't think they actually expect anyone to actually purchase these stamps - it's just used to nail a dealer for tax evasion in addition to drug dealing.
Only if it's on your kitchen counter ;)
I think the better question would be, at what point does it become a spamatorium vs the e-mails I have for my personal or business use? Where can the legal line be drawn? (I personally don't much care for laws that cover 'intent', your beliefs may be different.)
/. or Amazon.com or eBay has, it would look a lot like the list on the CD, except without the badly harvested email addresses that the list generator didn't bother removing.
I imagine if one were to look at the number and type of e-mail addresses that, for instance,
You can't PROVE intent with one of these CDs. If I have a pound of marijuana on my kitchen table, the odds are good that someone is gonna use it in an illegal manner. It's not illegal to have e-mail addresses, though, because they can be used for something legitimate (i.e. research, as the author of the article did).
Tell 'em to post a paypal link - worked for wikipedia...
Here's some information on it (warning: PDF link). It's apparently a bigger deal in Australia than here in the US, as most of the links I found were to Australian websites.
Let's do a hypothetical here, I'm going to use Gates Foundation because the parent post brought it up, not to try to play on any anti-Gates sentiment. Some other posts have suggested appealing to Sun or IBM, substitute in whomever you would like.
Suppose the Gates Foundation bailed out Wikipedia, either by giving them a one-time large donation or by promising support for a specified or indeterminate amount of time.
How many people would feel that the Gates Foundation now 'owned' (not literally, more in the 'I've got you by the short hairs' sense) Wikipedia? How would this add to or detract from Wikipedia's value as a resource?
Would Wikipedia feel the need, consciously or unconsciously, to temper what was said about the Gates Foundation, either out of fear of future financial repercussions or out of a warm fuzzy feeling for their benefactor?
I personally would prefer Wikipedia remain without corporate sponsorship - which means that I have an obligation to pitch in with a few bucks.
What you should have said was, 'Add me to your Do Not Call list' instead of 'Remove me from your list'.
You can also avoid the wardialer-type calls quite a bit of the time by not answering your telephone with "Hello" - the software is programmed to recognize that word, but if you answer the phone with something like "This is Doc Ruby", the software thinks you are an answering machine and hangs up.
You probably also have the option of not answering calls from numbers you don't recognize (provided Caller ID is available in your area and you subscribe), and some areas have services where calls that do not display numbers or identify themselves are routed through a service that requests the phone number prior to actually putting the call through - which also takes care of random number dialers.
Yup, that's exactly why I used the exact phraseology I used.
And then they can sue Al Gore, since he took the initiative in creating the Internet.
Hey, maybe this IS a good idea...
On E-470/Northwest Parkway in the Denver metro area, they run your license plate through the database before issuing a ticket or a fine. If the database shows that you have an ExpressToll transponder, they just bill your account as they would have if your transponder had registered - the only difference is that it shows up with the label 'VTOL' instead of 'TOLL'. Very handy.
ExpressToll used to allow users to just call in additional cars (i.e. rental cars) so there wasn't a problem with rental cars - you just added them to your account when you got the rental, called back and removed the rental car when you turned it in - but they disallowed more than one car per transponder a few months ago.
At least, it was handy being able to put the rental car on the transponder until I found out several months after the fact that my husband had forgotten to remove a rental car from the transponder...
BTW, the ExpressToll transponders work when placed on the dashboard of the car - I have not tried them in the glovebox, though - too much work going back and checking the bills.
Oh, yes, I believe you are right.
That would explain why I couldn't find verification.
(slaps self on hand) Bad, bad poster.
I seem to remember that Burnt Umber is one of the colors that Crayola is discontinuing, at least from the crayons, but I can't find a link to support it.
It doesn't even need to be the northern US - my pipes froze after one night of cold weather in central Oklahoma. S/he must live in Florida or something...
And this is EXACTLY why there are market approvals for hardware and not software...Because if it IS on fire, it's most likely a hardware problem. The "risk to the user of death, injury, occupational illness, damage to or loss of equipment or property, or damage to the environment" is generally minimal for software, unless of course you are in the medical software field or some other field where the software sort of reaches out and touches you.
I really like the joke, though....
Yeah, but it's a real shame when it's implemented and they only let you use it for e-mail.
Example: We wanted to move our bugs database to Notes. The company ended up purchasing a separate product that is defective and featureless in more ways than I can count.
Example: The admin made it so cumbersome to reserve a meeting room (he has to give approval for each request, and doesn't delegate it to someone when he is on holiday) that all the rooms just have pieces of paper taped on the door now
Example: Over half the employees have Pocket PCs, but the company will not provide synchronization software so that we can actually carry our calendars with us. Cheapest good software I've found is about $75, if anyone has any free suggestions let me know - I'm not going to purchase a piece of software that I may not be able to use if I get fired next week.
I guess it comes down to Lotus Notes being as effective as its administrator. Yeah, it's ugly, yeah, it has some minor bugs, but the biggest problems come from its administration.