Seriously. When you think about it, there's nothing TrustE can do to prevent privacy policy violations from ALL the sites certified after the initial process. And yes, most of this is TrustE's fault, or better put, a serious ethical problem with TrustE's business model. I've a problem with the last sentence of this rant, more to follow.
TrustE is a really well-entrenched brand name. Sure, they're the only company I've read about with the sheer temerity to implicitly rely (in their business model) on the fact that the average consumer is an absolute retard that has been hit over and over on the head with the tackhammer that is our media machine.
TrustE is in business to make money. Well, not really. You failed to notice in the article (Because I'm sure you read it right?) that TrustE is a non-profit corporation.
TrustE makes that money selling the essentially one-time process of certifying sites' privacy policy, for hundreds to thousands of dollars a pop. Again, in your assimilation of this article you missed an important fact: TrustE works at regular intervals to make sure companies are in accordance with their privacy policies. This statement is also misleading because, again, in the article it says that TrustE charges about $300 to $4999 to certify a company's website. Sure this is "hundreds to thousands of dollars" but it isn't a grand a sum as the phrase would elicit now is it?
TrustE relies on a QUANTITY of business to keep them afloat. That and compliance by the very entities it is trying to police, which coincidentally are the very entities that pay the certification charges. *boggle*
Since TrustE has an enormous amount of customers(sites) they've certified, to properly police all of them (protect the integrity of their seal) would cost far more than the revenue generated from the initial process. This statement is pure speculation, I'm sure you have no financial knowledge of how TrustE operates, because if you had and made a post with this tone not as an AC, I'm sure your affiliation with TrustE would soon end.
Thus, the certification is symbolic at best. I agree wholeheartedly. Different logic sure, but this conclusion is apt nonetheless.
So, what have we learned? Well, I've learned that you don't read articles very thoroughly or at all.
But by the same token, nothing beats doing business with who you know and trust, symbolic declarations of good intentions be damned. Here, here!
I don't begrudge TrustE - they have a hell of a racket, make a TON of cash, and I'm sure in the same position I'd do the same thing. I'm not so sure. When the issue of TrustE's inability popped up a while ago considerable criticism of their business model was hashed out here. The problem, as mentioned above, is that TrustE makes it's revenues from the companies it certifies. The implicit problem with this is that TrustE cannot effectively enforce anything unless the company under scrutiny complies with TrustE's wishes.
The bottom line is that TrustE has no proverbial leg to stand on when it comes time to enforce policy because as soon as they try, a company can simply refuse to comply, thereby kicking what support TrustE had out from under it and allowing it to hang on the rope it weaved and noose-tied for itself--witness Microsoft's refusal of a privacy policy audit in the afore-mentioned discussion of TrustE's problems. Just my thoughts...
John Carmack of id wrote Quake III, but Loki ported it to Linux This is flat out wrong. Dave Hircsh, aka Zoid, along with Carmack (both of id) were responsible for the linux code for quake3. Loki merely repackaged and distributed the linux version of the software.
As of today, we are stepping up our involvement and taking more aggressive action by performing frequent network wide scans of our customer base to target proxy servers. Once these customers are identified, we are suspending their news service immediately. Re-enabling will not occur until we are assured that their machines are secure. We feel that this proactive effort will dramatically decrease the amount of extraneous news traffic originating from home.com.
Funny but this seems suspiciously like a placating move by the @Home people until they do initiate some changes other than what is specified in the response. I say this because I recently received a form letter from @Home saying they will be changing upstream perfomance for all subscribers by capping it at 5k/s. This is to take place sometime in January (I can't remember the exact date). What's more, the wording of the letter was vague and acutely clueless in its reasoning:(I'm paraphrasing here)
We will be enforcing this because some customers are abusing their bandwidth which is in turn detrimental to the new customer experience.
Excuse me?! What about my 40 bucks a month for the last 6 months?! This tells me 2 very important facts concerning @Home as an ISP: 1) they have no clue how to properly police their own network, and 2) they will change policy and service on a whim to punish many for the abuses of relatively few.
Another corollary implication that comes to mind is that @Home cares little for current customers (We have your credit card number, we charge it monthly, and hey, you STILL have some of the best speed-wise connectivity around.) and more for garnering the attention of new customers. Whats the first thing you look for in claims of speed from an ISP? That's right, download speed, which, thankfully, @Home isn't touching...yet.
Well, to make a long story short @Home is/will be doing something about the USENET abuse it's just not what was passed on in their official response. However, I have feel absolutely certain that whatever @Home manages to concoct as a solution to USENET abuse by it's network will be just as effective as it's changes-to-be-made-soon-now that were shared in the UDP response.*chuckle*
Slashdot Mirror
"Trust Noone".
Well duh =)
Seriously. When you think about it, there's nothing TrustE can do to prevent privacy policy violations from ALL the sites certified after the initial process. And yes, most of this is TrustE's fault, or better put, a serious ethical problem with TrustE's business model.
I've a problem with the last sentence of this rant, more to follow.
TrustE is a really well-entrenched brand name.
Sure, they're the only company I've read about with the sheer temerity to implicitly rely (in their business model) on the fact that the average consumer is an absolute retard that has been hit over and over on the head with the tackhammer that is our media machine.
TrustE is in business to make money.
Well, not really. You failed to notice in the article (Because I'm sure you read it right?) that TrustE is a non-profit corporation.
TrustE makes that money selling the essentially one-time process of certifying sites' privacy policy, for hundreds to thousands of dollars a pop.
Again, in your assimilation of this article you missed an important fact: TrustE works at regular intervals to make sure companies are in accordance with their privacy policies. This statement is also misleading because, again, in the article it says that TrustE charges about $300 to $4999 to certify a company's website. Sure this is "hundreds to thousands of dollars" but it isn't a grand a sum as the phrase would elicit now is it?
TrustE relies on a QUANTITY of business to keep them afloat.
That and compliance by the very entities it is trying to police, which coincidentally are the very entities that pay the certification charges. *boggle*
Since TrustE has an enormous amount of customers(sites) they've certified, to properly police all of them (protect the integrity of their seal) would cost far more than the revenue generated from the initial process.
This statement is pure speculation, I'm sure you have no financial knowledge of how TrustE operates, because if you had and made a post with this tone not as an AC, I'm sure your affiliation with TrustE would soon end.
Thus, the certification is symbolic at best.
I agree wholeheartedly. Different logic sure, but this conclusion is apt nonetheless.
So, what have we learned?
Well, I've learned that you don't read articles very thoroughly or at all.
But by the same token, nothing beats doing business with who you know and trust, symbolic declarations of good intentions be damned.
Here, here!
I don't begrudge TrustE - they have a hell of a racket, make a TON of cash, and I'm sure in the same position I'd do the same thing.
I'm not so sure. When the issue of TrustE's inability popped up a while ago considerable criticism of their business model was hashed out here. The problem, as mentioned above, is that TrustE makes it's revenues from the companies it certifies. The implicit problem with this is that TrustE cannot effectively enforce anything unless the company under scrutiny complies with TrustE's wishes.
The bottom line is that TrustE has no proverbial leg to stand on when it comes time to enforce policy because as soon as they try, a company can simply refuse to comply, thereby kicking what support TrustE had out from under it and allowing it to hang on the rope it weaved and noose-tied for itself--witness Microsoft's refusal of a privacy policy audit in the afore-mentioned discussion of TrustE's problems.
Just my thoughts...
--
John Carmack of id wrote Quake III, but Loki ported it to Linux
This is flat out wrong. Dave Hircsh, aka Zoid, along with Carmack (both of id) were responsible for the linux code for quake3. Loki merely repackaged and distributed the linux version of the software.
--
As of today, we are stepping up our involvement and taking more aggressive action by performing frequent network wide scans of our
customer base to target proxy servers. Once these customers are identified, we are suspending their news service immediately.
Re-enabling will not occur until we are assured that their machines are secure. We feel that this proactive effort will dramatically
decrease the amount of extraneous news traffic originating from home.com.
Funny but this seems suspiciously like a placating move by the @Home people until they do initiate some changes other than what is specified in the response. I say this because I recently received a form letter from @Home saying they will be changing upstream perfomance for all subscribers by capping it at 5k/s. This is to take place sometime in January (I can't remember the exact date). What's more, the wording of the letter was vague and acutely clueless in its reasoning:(I'm paraphrasing here)
We will be enforcing this because some customers are abusing their bandwidth which is in turn detrimental to the new customer experience.
Excuse me?! What about my 40 bucks a month for the last 6 months?!
This tells me 2 very important facts concerning @Home as an ISP:
1) they have no clue how to properly police their own network, and
2) they will change policy and service on a whim to punish many for the abuses of relatively few.
Another corollary implication that comes to mind is that @Home cares little for current customers (We have your credit card number, we charge it monthly, and hey, you STILL have some of the best speed-wise connectivity around.) and more for garnering the attention of new customers. Whats the first thing you look for in claims of speed from an ISP? That's right, download speed, which, thankfully, @Home isn't touching...yet.
Well, to make a long story short @Home is/will be doing something about the USENET abuse it's just not what was passed on in their official response. However, I have feel absolutely certain that whatever @Home manages to concoct as a solution to USENET abuse by it's network will be just as effective as it's changes-to-be-made-soon-now that were shared in the UDP response.*chuckle*
Jakus, a miffed @Home user
--
if you don't understand the physics you are not even close to qualified to speculate on the likeliness of the theory.