If someone tags a non-FB member its just a name attached to a photo. It doesn't really go anywhere. Its true that someone could see it or read a note mentioning you and connect it to you, or do sophisticated data mining to link all those references together and assemble a profile... but if you tag someone who is a fb member (the way they want you to) it creates a link back to that account, making it utterly TRIVIAL to connect it back to you.
Not on my account, it doesn't. You can set it as an option, and make it so that mentions of you don't show a link to your profile.
In fact, my situation is better than you: by being on Facebook, I'm notified everytime someone uploads a photo of me that they tag me, so I can at least check it out in case it's something I might not want (Facebook also has the advantage of not being public - even if it's open to all, you still need an account, thus blocking search engine spiders, so this is much better than the days when people would upload photos of you to public search-indexed pages, without you even knowing). But I still don't have links back to my profile.
its idiotic that anyone would participate
As opposed to making criticisms of something you haven't even participated in? If you had, you might have known that what you said doesn't have to be true.
Well that reminds me of another point - how do these researchers find out someone's friends in the first place?
Facebook is very good with this - you can set whether you're listed in people's friends lists. I don't show up at all, and I believe there are other settings too (I forget what the default is). So all of us can join you in the "I'm not on Facebook" smugness, as we also would be immune to this "research".
Now you're probably going to say they're not really friends, but the same is true of other online networks like Facebook. Sure, it might be more extensive on Facebook, but don't try to pretend that you're completely immune, or somehow superior to Facebook users. If they can infer information just from online connections, why should the fact that you post to Slashdot be any different?
Indeed, even without your "friends", the fact that someone posts to Slashdot gives us plenty of information about the sort of person they are likely to be: almost certain to be a male geek, likes computers, probably more likely to have liberal views (in the not-conservative, anti-authoritarianism sense; not necessarily Liberal or whatever connotations other people like to put on the word). Opposes censorship, patents, and the RIAA. I bet you that assessment is at least as accurate as anything they could get from looking at Facebook friends.
To be honest, whilst the data may be useful, I'm not sure that anyone risks being outed, as there will be a large number of false positives. This is simply a more rigorous version of the bleeding obvious "people mix in circles with people similar to them" - but with sexuality, religion, political views or whatever else, there will be enough false positives to provide plausible deniability to anyone who doesn't want to be outed. So in other words, please save your "I'm not on Facebook" smugness for another article:)
There simply isn't a Mac available in the price range that many if not most people are now buying laptops, that are more than powerful for most people's needs.
I love it how elsewhere in the thread, people are ridiculing the idea of spending loads of money on the latest quadcore processor just to surf the web, yet for some reason things are different when it's a Mac, and any other laptop is branded "shitty" (it's especially hilarious when the one reason an average person might need a high end computers - games - is something that Mac OS is far less of a suitable choice for, anyway).
It's particularly ironic hearing all the praise when you remember that, yes that's right, it's an Intel processor. Not PowerPC that we heard was so great for all those years. I bet Apple could drop OS X for Windows (hell, they ditched their "Mac" OS once before), and we'd then be hearing how much better Macs are than PCs, "because they can run the latest Windows".
Indeed. Btw, I hope you make exactly the same criticisms to every company that advertises, right?
Most open source solutions are terribly documented It's software where you need to *just know* what's going or hit the forums or wikis.
I can't remember the last time I got an actual manual with a closed source software product - they stopped doing that in most cases years ago. Even for hardware products like cameras, often you now just get a PDF on the software disc.
And yes, having to look up how to do things on the web, when things aren't going right, is commonplace, for closed or open software.
What's so great about free software? It's free? Is Open Office better then MS Office? No? Is GIMP better than Photoshop or PSP or anything? No? Is Linux easier to use than OEM Windows or Mac? Absolutely not?
Even if your straw man argument was accurate, you have provided the answer: if all things are equal, surely people most certainly would be better off with the cheaper (free, in this case), version?
I'm a Windows user btw, but some of the responses in this thread are ridiculous.
How stupid of AOL! If only you had been around to tell them how pointless their stategy was, they would have saved wasting all those disks and CDs they gave away. Heaven knows how they managed to get millions of customers, because obviously everyone behaves just like you do.
Clearly no one else would ever dare run a piece of software they don't trust. That's why viruses are never effective.
You mean, it doesn't get any better than you picking the most popular from one, and biasedly comparing to the least popular from another? Here, let me try:
Now sure yes, I can't find something beating 2 million - given that Microsoft are the largest software company in the world, by far, that's hardly surprising. But your biased comparison is misleading and unfair. Even a trivial search receives large numbers of videos about open source software, easily hitting several 10,000s and 100,000s.
And if you meant to say how companies can get higher view counts than individuals - well firstly, that's hardly surprising, secondly, try this Windows and Linux video at 5.6 million views.
Yes that's why everyone is using OS X and not Windows. Oh wait - sales figures suggest otherwise.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying their stategy for adverising open source is good or not, but please let's not the RDF confuse the matter. The validity of their argument against closed source solutions in general - be it from a freedom point of view, or lower cost - is not affected by a niche of users preferring OS X to Windows.
That's the problem with FOSS advocates, they keep coming up with these wacky ideas, and each time they put them into action the public sees.... err, a wacky idea, associated with FOSS.
Yeah, next thing you know they'll be suggesting people have "FOSS house parties" or throwing butterflies around the place. Or maybe they'll come up with an advertising campaign where they use childish and outdated stereotypes of the competition, portraying them as dumb boring businessmen, whilst FOSS is represented by the cool trendy hipster.
If you want to really promote FOSS set up a business based on FOSS and make it work and grow.
Oh I see - if a business does these things instead of a group of people, that makes it okay then.
But showing up at someone's door isn't the same as giving stuff out in the street. And the criticism is also about disputing the claims that Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses etc make.
If you're going to claim that anyone advertising anything is as bad as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses turning up at your door, then perhaps you should criticise companies (including software companies) that spend millions on shoving adverts everywhere, rather than a handful of volunteers in the street?
As a workaround, note that you can delete the "idle." in the URL when replying, and it takes you to the same page but without the abysmal idle formatting.
1. Intentionally committing a criminal offence to illegal spy on someone, using malicious spyware - $100.
2. Being the victim of a crime, and being tricked into running an email attachment - $50,000.
3. Being the victim of a crime - $1,000,000.
Did the guy intend to spy on the medical procedures of those patients? No!
Did he intend to spy on whatever was on the computer that he sent the spyware too? Yes.
So you shoot a picture which say captures some trade secret. Now do you get thrown in jail for industrial espionage?
Last time I looked, taking photos wasn't illegal. If you broke into somewhere, took photos of the place, then yes, I'd say that "But I didn't mean to take a picture of that" isn't much of a defence.
Well there's a point - did he have permission to use the spyware application, or did he steal it? If he stole it, then the $33,000 will be nothing compared to the millions that the spyware author will be entitled to.
Um, always? Most crimes require intent. Some require merely negligence. If you're charged with a crime that requires intent, and intent cannot be proven, then you cannot be sentenced for it.
But there is intent - he clearly intended to commit the crime of installing spyware.
Now, should someone's punishment take into account the effects, including things he didn't intended? In general, my understand is that this does happen. In fact, in some cases you can be charged for more serious crimes, even if you didn't intended that, on the grounds that you intended to commit a less serious crime. The obvious example is murder, where if you intended to harm someone, and they die as a result, that's still murder even if you didn't intend them to die.
This makes sense if you think about it, otherwise someone could just claim they when they shot someone in the stomach, they didn't intended them to die. The point is that if you intended to commit a crime, you take responsibility for the consequences.
In this case, it's not unreasonable to realise that installing something like spyware might have knock on unintentional effects.
Indeed - if anything, if we're going to stereotype, I'd argue that geeks are more likely to value privacy, at least when it comes to technology, and they ought to be more likely to be aware of the consequences of these sorts of things.
then yes, we probably would hold recipients accountable for not taking appropriate precautions when opening their mail.
They might get in trouble with their work if their work has trained their employees to do this (we don't know if that's the case). But it would never be a criminal offence - and we would still be charge the guy responsible.
The guy's an idiot. Maybe he doesn't deserve years in prison, but he's stupid to even try such a thing. I don't understand why this is a "lesson" to geeks, as TFS suggests - as a geek, the idea of using technology to invade privacy is the sort of thing I would oppose on principle.
the first personal computer for/so/ many people, hence have value.
You've got that backwards - good supply would mean lower price.
Old Macs have a high price precisely because there were fewer of them made, compared with PCs where there were so many of them, you can't give them away.
Same thing applies to the Amiga and other non-PC computers - smaller numbers of machines were made, so the ones that survived are more likely to fetch a higher price.
If you mean you're making a distinction between home and business use - well, the Mac doesn't do so well there, as much of its sales were still in business. That explanation would work much better for the Amiga: very popular as a home machine, but overall the sales were less than the large number of PCs that were sold to businesses.
Whether or not an allegation amounts to libel depends upon whether you can substantiate it.
The question is, what burden of proof is required as to whether an allegation amounts to libel? (In particular, regarding whether the statement is true or not.)
Slashdot Mirror
How does Facebook show up in a Google? I thought you needed an account, so presumably that is enough to block their search spiders?
Now sure, what you say applies to many other websites on the web. Slashdot included.
If someone tags a non-FB member its just a name attached to a photo. It doesn't really go anywhere. Its true that someone could see it or read a note mentioning you and connect it to you, or do sophisticated data mining to link all those references together and assemble a profile... but if you tag someone who is a fb member (the way they want you to) it creates a link back to that account, making it utterly TRIVIAL to connect it back to you.
Not on my account, it doesn't. You can set it as an option, and make it so that mentions of you don't show a link to your profile.
In fact, my situation is better than you: by being on Facebook, I'm notified everytime someone uploads a photo of me that they tag me, so I can at least check it out in case it's something I might not want (Facebook also has the advantage of not being public - even if it's open to all, you still need an account, thus blocking search engine spiders, so this is much better than the days when people would upload photos of you to public search-indexed pages, without you even knowing). But I still don't have links back to my profile.
its idiotic that anyone would participate
As opposed to making criticisms of something you haven't even participated in? If you had, you might have known that what you said doesn't have to be true.
Well that reminds me of another point - how do these researchers find out someone's friends in the first place?
Facebook is very good with this - you can set whether you're listed in people's friends lists. I don't show up at all, and I believe there are other settings too (I forget what the default is). So all of us can join you in the "I'm not on Facebook" smugness, as we also would be immune to this "research".
Slashdot OTOH has no such options.
Because you list them here:
http://slashdot.org/~laron/friends - friends with hobo sapiens. Fans of hobo sapiens and angstorm.
Now you're probably going to say they're not really friends, but the same is true of other online networks like Facebook. Sure, it might be more extensive on Facebook, but don't try to pretend that you're completely immune, or somehow superior to Facebook users. If they can infer information just from online connections, why should the fact that you post to Slashdot be any different?
Indeed, even without your "friends", the fact that someone posts to Slashdot gives us plenty of information about the sort of person they are likely to be: almost certain to be a male geek, likes computers, probably more likely to have liberal views (in the not-conservative, anti-authoritarianism sense; not necessarily Liberal or whatever connotations other people like to put on the word). Opposes censorship, patents, and the RIAA. I bet you that assessment is at least as accurate as anything they could get from looking at Facebook friends.
To be honest, whilst the data may be useful, I'm not sure that anyone risks being outed, as there will be a large number of false positives. This is simply a more rigorous version of the bleeding obvious "people mix in circles with people similar to them" - but with sexuality, religion, political views or whatever else, there will be enough false positives to provide plausible deniability to anyone who doesn't want to be outed. So in other words, please save your "I'm not on Facebook" smugness for another article :)
Well indeed - now that "Macs" are just PCs, and run an Intel processor, it's interesting how only now they start becoming a little bit more popular.
There simply isn't a Mac available in the price range that many if not most people are now buying laptops, that are more than powerful for most people's needs.
I love it how elsewhere in the thread, people are ridiculing the idea of spending loads of money on the latest quadcore processor just to surf the web, yet for some reason things are different when it's a Mac, and any other laptop is branded "shitty" (it's especially hilarious when the one reason an average person might need a high end computers - games - is something that Mac OS is far less of a suitable choice for, anyway).
It's particularly ironic hearing all the praise when you remember that, yes that's right, it's an Intel processor. Not PowerPC that we heard was so great for all those years. I bet Apple could drop OS X for Windows (hell, they ditched their "Mac" OS once before), and we'd then be hearing how much better Macs are than PCs, "because they can run the latest Windows".
Indeed. Btw, I hope you make exactly the same criticisms to every company that advertises, right?
Most open source solutions are terribly documented It's software where you need to *just know* what's going or hit the forums or wikis.
I can't remember the last time I got an actual manual with a closed source software product - they stopped doing that in most cases years ago. Even for hardware products like cameras, often you now just get a PDF on the software disc.
And yes, having to look up how to do things on the web, when things aren't going right, is commonplace, for closed or open software.
What's so great about free software? It's free? Is Open Office better then MS Office? No? Is GIMP better than Photoshop or PSP or anything? No? Is Linux easier to use than OEM Windows or Mac? Absolutely not?
Even if your straw man argument was accurate, you have provided the answer: if all things are equal, surely people most certainly would be better off with the cheaper (free, in this case), version?
I'm a Windows user btw, but some of the responses in this thread are ridiculous.
How stupid of AOL! If only you had been around to tell them how pointless their stategy was, they would have saved wasting all those disks and CDs they gave away. Heaven knows how they managed to get millions of customers, because obviously everyone behaves just like you do.
Clearly no one else would ever dare run a piece of software they don't trust. That's why viruses are never effective.
Beats making those "I'm a PC" adverts in the first place.
It doesn't get any better than this:
You mean, it doesn't get any better than you picking the most popular from one, and biasedly comparing to the least popular from another? Here, let me try:
Novel Linux commercial - half a million.
IMB Linux commercial - 670,000.
And remember the comparison was open to closed source, not Linux versus Windows, so:
video on Google Chrome - over a million.
And let's compare that to:
Windows 7 Security Overview - 15 views. Including me.
Now sure yes, I can't find something beating 2 million - given that Microsoft are the largest software company in the world, by far, that's hardly surprising. But your biased comparison is misleading and unfair. Even a trivial search receives large numbers of videos about open source software, easily hitting several 10,000s and 100,000s.
And if you meant to say how companies can get higher view counts than individuals - well firstly, that's hardly surprising, secondly, try this Windows and Linux video at 5.6 million views.
Yes that's why everyone is using OS X and not Windows. Oh wait - sales figures suggest otherwise.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying their stategy for adverising open source is good or not, but please let's not the RDF confuse the matter. The validity of their argument against closed source solutions in general - be it from a freedom point of view, or lower cost - is not affected by a niche of users preferring OS X to Windows.
That's the problem with FOSS advocates, they keep coming up with these wacky ideas, and each time they put them into action the public sees.... err, a wacky idea, associated with FOSS.
Yeah, next thing you know they'll be suggesting people have "FOSS house parties" or throwing butterflies around the place. Or maybe they'll come up with an advertising campaign where they use childish and outdated stereotypes of the competition, portraying them as dumb boring businessmen, whilst FOSS is represented by the cool trendy hipster.
If you want to really promote FOSS set up a business based on FOSS and make it work and grow.
Oh I see - if a business does these things instead of a group of people, that makes it okay then.
"Go away" is my reaction to most adverts full stop. However, it would be rather foolish to conclude that therefore advertising has no effect at all.
But showing up at someone's door isn't the same as giving stuff out in the street. And the criticism is also about disputing the claims that Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses etc make.
If you're going to claim that anyone advertising anything is as bad as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses turning up at your door, then perhaps you should criticise companies (including software companies) that spend millions on shoving adverts everywhere, rather than a handful of volunteers in the street?
As a workaround, note that you can delete the "idle." in the URL when replying, and it takes you to the same page but without the abysmal idle formatting.
Do you have a (non Daily Mail) source for this?
So let me get this straight:
1. Intentionally committing a criminal offence to illegal spy on someone, using malicious spyware - $100.
2. Being the victim of a crime, and being tricked into running an email attachment - $50,000.
3. Being the victim of a crime - $1,000,000.
Did the guy intend to spy on the medical procedures of those patients? No!
Did he intend to spy on whatever was on the computer that he sent the spyware too? Yes.
So you shoot a picture which say captures some trade secret. Now do you get thrown in jail for industrial espionage?
Last time I looked, taking photos wasn't illegal. If you broke into somewhere, took photos of the place, then yes, I'd say that "But I didn't mean to take a picture of that" isn't much of a defence.
Well there's a point - did he have permission to use the spyware application, or did he steal it? If he stole it, then the $33,000 will be nothing compared to the millions that the spyware author will be entitled to.
Won't somebody think of the poor spyware authors?
In which case, if the gf ran Linux, the hospital would have been better off using Windows. There's nothing special about Linux there.
Um, always? Most crimes require intent. Some require merely negligence. If you're charged with a crime that requires intent, and intent cannot be proven, then you cannot be sentenced for it.
But there is intent - he clearly intended to commit the crime of installing spyware.
Now, should someone's punishment take into account the effects, including things he didn't intended? In general, my understand is that this does happen. In fact, in some cases you can be charged for more serious crimes, even if you didn't intended that, on the grounds that you intended to commit a less serious crime. The obvious example is murder, where if you intended to harm someone, and they die as a result, that's still murder even if you didn't intend them to die.
This makes sense if you think about it, otherwise someone could just claim they when they shot someone in the stomach, they didn't intended them to die. The point is that if you intended to commit a crime, you take responsibility for the consequences.
In this case, it's not unreasonable to realise that installing something like spyware might have knock on unintentional effects.
Graphic designers, schools, and people who were given one by Apple for free.
Indeed - if anything, if we're going to stereotype, I'd argue that geeks are more likely to value privacy, at least when it comes to technology, and they ought to be more likely to be aware of the consequences of these sorts of things.
then yes, we probably would hold recipients accountable for not taking appropriate precautions when opening their mail.
They might get in trouble with their work if their work has trained their employees to do this (we don't know if that's the case). But it would never be a criminal offence - and we would still be charge the guy responsible.
The guy's an idiot. Maybe he doesn't deserve years in prison, but he's stupid to even try such a thing. I don't understand why this is a "lesson" to geeks, as TFS suggests - as a geek, the idea of using technology to invade privacy is the sort of thing I would oppose on principle.
the first personal computer for /so/ many people, hence have value.
You've got that backwards - good supply would mean lower price.
Old Macs have a high price precisely because there were fewer of them made, compared with PCs where there were so many of them, you can't give them away.
Same thing applies to the Amiga and other non-PC computers - smaller numbers of machines were made, so the ones that survived are more likely to fetch a higher price.
If you mean you're making a distinction between home and business use - well, the Mac doesn't do so well there, as much of its sales were still in business. That explanation would work much better for the Amiga: very popular as a home machine, but overall the sales were less than the large number of PCs that were sold to businesses.
I don't understand what you are saying?
Whether or not an allegation amounts to libel depends upon whether you can substantiate it.
The question is, what burden of proof is required as to whether an allegation amounts to libel? (In particular, regarding whether the statement is true or not.)