It would be interesting if there are any unions that actually work and survive like that.
The only equivalent that I can think of is what's happening at Barnes and Noble.
Barnes and Noble has no union, but its employees have a bulletin board. Barnes and Noble, not knowing how the internet really works, has tried to very stupidly shut it down, but of course that didn't work.
So there is something to be said for giving employees a protected way to communicate with each other, share stories, support each other, and air out the dirty laundry that its management would rather keep secret. So in that sense, a loose semi-anonymous internet union like that can indeed work and survive, it's just that it doesn't have the type of coercive leverage a real union has, and so in that one instance -- it hasn't really affected the wages of its low-level workers -- but at least it seems to have helped put a stop to the more gregarious management abuses.
That having the company's personal information crown jewels on a laptop, unprotected would be an automatic, stop, don't pass go firing offense at any self-respecting corporation today.
Yes, at least for a low-level employee, or may be for an employee nobody liked.
However if it's an executive who was responsible for the laptop, or if it's an executive who borrowed the laptop, then most corporations wouldn't fire such a person. Firing someone in the abstract is really easy. Firing a friend/colleague in real life is actually much harder.
In any case, if you ask me, the laptop never had any work-related stuff on it, that's how they know it wasn't compromised. It was probably used as a gaming computer since its first day. Sometimes the primary reason laptops get purchased, or VCRs get purchased, is because of some end-of-year overflow budget (if you don't spend it, you lose it next year).
Hmm...I pretty much think they need a SS number to run a credit check on you...
I'm pretty sure they don't need your SSN to run a credit report check on you. See the article titled "Confessions of a Car Salesman" on edmunds.com or fool.com. They should have that old article on both sites, thought edmunds.com probably won't require you to register with them.
Also more recently just to prove a point, some privacy activists got the social security numbers of legislators from a legal online reseller and published the last three or four digits of their social security numbers online. I think they said it cost them $15 to get each one, but that if a business that does it in bulk -- it will cost them much less because they pay a set monthly fee.
Also, if your driver license is from Hawaii, the last time I saw one -- its license number *was* the same as its social security number (this may have changed thought, I don't know). And also, if you have a student id number or an employee id number, it most likely contains your social security number in its magnetic stripe in plain text format to anyone who has a card reader. And last but not least, because of a recent Federal law, now all the State DMVs require you to give them your SSN in order for you to have a valid driver license, thought currently the social security numbers are not stored in their magnetic stripe (at least) and not all States have finished complying yet.
Ok...do you have any links to back this one up? I've never heard this one before. I find that when I change dentists, I have to request that my records are transferred from old to new...I've never had a dentist go to the central back up, to get my records...
No, this bit of info comes from a friend who sat on a cross-industry security committee (that's ok if you don't believe me thought, I'm too lazy to google around for corroborating evidence and I don't wish to ask him -- or even give you his name). As far as I know these dental records are not for the benefit of the dentists, or their clients, they're for the benefit of the authorities.
For instance, I know that my dentist in the US has an old X-ray machine, so I'm guessing that he must have those X-rays scanned/archived into a machine at a separate time -- because my friend told me that the centralization of the records were done on DVDs. My dentist in France on the other hand has state-of-the-art equipment, she can look at the X-ray directly from her computer, and she'll burn me a copy of it on a CD/DVD every time. No doubt, many American dentists probably have the same modern equipment as my French dentist, it's just that the dentist I'm used to going to in the US hasn't upgraded yet.
Nope, it hasn't. Orkut is the number one social networking site in Brazil and India...
I can't be sure because the article is not that quite straightforward, but I don't think they counted India as part of Asia.
:)
Besides, they're not claiming to have the most traffic in Asia, they're claiming to have the third largest traffic figures in Asia -- whatever that is supposed to mean. But to be fair, this article offers very little of substance in terms of statistics -- it reads more like a badly written press release. Only a press release would brag about deploying text messaging nowadays.
I thought that medical records were confidential in the US as well
They're confidential as in so far, your doctor really doesn't like to give them to *YOU* personally, but giving them to everyone else -- then that's ok.
All joking aside, I do not work in a medical field, and I'm not a lawyer -- so I can only give you bits and pieces of information on this. I believe that in the US there are many laws criss-crossing each other -- both at the Federal level and at the State level.
For instance, doctors (especially eye doctors) are mandated by law to report you to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicle) once they suspect you can't drive anymore (otherwise, they may be liable for your accidents). Doctors and emergency personnel are also mandated by law to report suspected child abuse/domestic violence. All our dental records are centralized on DVDs for identifying human remains. All the DNA of military personnel, both combat and non-combat personnel, is kept in a database. Military personnel basically has no rights in the US. This DNA information is used in catching (or obtaining warrants) for even indirect relatives of such military personnel that are suspected of crimes. The DNA of Felons is usually indexed in different databases at the State level, although they've been talking about centralizing that information for a while now. One or two States, may be more, now allow the DNA information to be collected from anyone who is now arrested (not even convicted) by the police.
And in California, we have laws protecting both our financial records and our medical records from employers, but there are exceptions to it. For instance, if an employee is about to be hired for a job where he's going to make more than $75,000 a year for instance (there may be one additional condition such as working in Finance or handling the petty cash), I believe your employer is allowed to get your credit report (with your written permission of course, which is part of the boiler plate job application). In California, this is basically good news for most people, because most people aren't going to be making $75,000. But the truth is, if you apply for a job in a real estate brokerage firm, or a car dealership, those guys are going to check your credit report, because it's so easy for them to do it at the push of a button -- and they won't get penalized for breaching your financial privacy (in California, most car dealership will check your credit report without your permission if you take a test drive -- they use your driver license to get it. That's technically illegal, but they all do it anyway -- so if you take too many test drives -- you'll be dinged on your credit report). In California, same goes for Medical records, it's generally private unless you operate a large truck or heavy machinery or something, and it's supposed to be private otherwise, but if your health plan is with your employer, your HR department is bound to find out lots of confidential medical information about you. Technically, the HR person in charge of the health plans is not supposed to divulge your information to anyone else in the company -- even to your boss -- but if that HR person is your boss -- or if that HR person goes on vacation and your boss replaces him or her -- that's technically ok.
Also before 9/11, in California they made a law giving police enforcement complete database access to all the prescription drugs we might be taking (that database also includes names of non-addictive meds and non-relevant meds, so if you're dating a cop in California and have a yeast infection for example, you can be sure the cop will know about it -- cops of all levels run complete background checks on all the women they date -- there are basically no controls -- a recent court case in San Francisco proves that -- and that was even before the cops had access to our information on the meds we were taking).
Also after 9/11, all hospitals and all doctors are making us sign what seems to be a one page med
I wonder what the impacts would be of blog-disclosures being retracted or edited after the fact, Ministry of Truth-style?
Very likely. That's why for instance, most lawyers have their staff run diff programs between digital copies of contracts that are emailed back and forth between parties.
It's also very likely, that a few companies get caught doing this type of retroactive editing for their financial disclosures. It's trivial to catch, and given enough eyes -- someone is bound to catch discrepancies.
For instance, this firefox extension updatescanner will scan urls at regular intervals, alerting you when there is a change and giving you a particular diff for each change, all the while not relying on the official header information -- which is often incorrect. I suspect that given the recent news, both the McCain camp and the Obama camp have been using this kind of tool to track each others' unofficial campaign retractions and additions.
Obviously, all of this could have been avoided if he had just included a EULA mandating the giving up of sovereignty and naming an arbitrator/jurisdiction of his choice.
They don't have to (and by the way, I didn't say that). They only have to release their own pirated software to individuals. Those individuals get used to their software, and then they use it in their company.
You don't make money suing individuals.
In any case, right now the RIAA is making money from some individuals. I know at least three University students that have paid or will pay $3,000 to settle their copyright infringement cases.
Right now, it seems they're mostly going after University students and University department laser printers, but it's just a matter of times before they get to everybody and sue everyone. Now it's really just a matter of refining, building up, scaling up, and lobbying up their legal threatening infrastructure.
Are you serious? Why in the hell should he have to -- IT'S HIS NAME. It's on his birth certificate, his Social Security card, his drivers license.
So is my name, but somehow someone with the same full name I have beat me to a gmail address with my name on it. Am I crying about it? Am I yelling BLOODY CAPITALIZED MURDER? No, I got over it. I moved on. I got a slightly different email address. And I'm fine now.
At least, services like Compuserve (or was it Prodigy, I forget) have stopped requiring you to use some 10-digit number as the first part of your email address, those email addresses were way too difficult to remember.
And, what, he can't use it because somewhere, somehow there might be some handful of insanely moralistic wackos who would be offended by it?
No, I think you're attributing far too much malice to something that was probably just some minor programming/validation/usability error.
Probably some programmer/web monkey/contractor got overzealous in the form validation he implemented. You know, some people do enter bogus information on web forms. And some people will register an email address that says eatshit@verizon. And sometimes, if you call customer service or whomever, they may have no idea who to contact within their company to have their web forms changed (most likely, either their customer service call center is outsourced or their web work is outsourced).
And it's not like having an exact email address with a full name is a necessity. If it were such a necessity, there would be a law forbidding duplicate full names right from birth.
I am going to go out on a limb and state that the Segway has almost no real legitimate use.
The first cars were pretty useless too. They were just difficult-to-use steam powered locomotives with wheels bolted on. If the Segway and its clones can evolve to become anything halfway decent fifty years from now, then the more power to them.
That being said, aside from the gadget-allure of this smaller Segway-clone, it might be something that's allowed on subway lines. In my neck of the woods, bicycles are not allowed on the subway during rush hours, and even then, they're a pain to get through -- because they don't fit through the smaller subway turn-tables. And these Winglets, based on the videos I saw on TV, they seem like they might fit through them. The main problem is that they're just too slow right now, hopefully they can resolve this issue and bump up their speed by next year.
Clever legal arguments aside, does it really matter in the bigger scheme of things? Countless numbers of songs and software are released in this way by their own copyright owners. And yet, only a tiny fraction of those copyright owners are caught doing it (or will admit to doing it).
By releasing their materials in this way, they're effectively putting their "intellectual property" in legal limbo. They probably won't enforce their rights to this one particular track they just released (but I can assure you they'll release every other track they own, if they haven't done so already, they won't get caught in those other instances, and then they'll be sure to play both sides of the law).
Microsoft has done this. Macromedia has done this. It pays to release your stuff through the back door, and then yell bloody murder afterward, especially because the civil damages are not awarded based on actual real damages.
Dear Britain: I've heard you have a royal family you're not using, and I know they've got better sense than our politicos. So how about this: We'll take 'em off your hands, you won't have to subsidize them anymore, and we'll get someone with a modicum of common sense in charge. Thank you.
Dear Americans,
We accept your proposal. We'll give you our Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip) and our Prince Harry in exchange for your Rush Limbaugh and your David Dukes. Fear not about their upkeep and stipends, commoners with American accents do phenomenally well on Talk Radio in the UK (your American accent is so cute).
A country is about a lot of things and one of the most important things is about keeping the majority of the people happy. Honestly? The vast majority of Windows users are quite happy. We, here, probably wish that they weren't but they are.
Then, I'd suggest we go straight to the top of happiness, Steve Jobs.
We may not like the guy, but one thing we know for sure is that Apple users are much more colorful and happier on average than Windows users (and also much happier than most grumpy Linux users. Sorry guys, don't deny it, you Linux guys all know I'm speaking the truth).
Leavenworth is a federal prison. I don't know where you get the idea that Federal prison is soft or how you managed to get modded informative for that patently false nonsense. I can only assume that you are confused by Alcatraz being a recreational area now.
The thing is. Ted Stevens is not going to Leavenworth. If the case of Michael Milken was any indication, and by the way Milken was much much younger when he was sent to Federal Prison than Ted Stevens is now, Milken was sent to a minimum security work camp in Pleasanton -- California. There it is rumored he was housed in a full apartment and the prison guards supplied him with any prostitutes he wanted. I take it you didn't ask for a special tour of that Pleasanton Federal facility the last time you were in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I totally disagree with what you just said; further more I would like to add that you smell.
Damn, you're good! We may not agree on that one previous point, but at least you got one thing right. I do smell!
My calculator sucks, or may be I should say is "quite limited", and I haven't taken a shower in about two days. These two statements are a bit harsh, but they are basically true. There is nothing I can do to explain, justify, excuse, argue, seek your agreement, seek your approval, or defend myself, against what you're saying.
Not to mention that my employers have started (without any process of considering implications whatsoever) started to use Google services for all their meeting arrangements, annual leave sheets, some internal email communications. I imagine some other places are doing the same. I wonder if it will get to the point where having your Google account suspended will be cause for a dismissal. At any rate, not everyone has the option of not using Google. I imagine the number of such people will increase.
I'm not sure I'm understanding the problem you're having. I use google apps for everything, and I often send private invites for editing my calendar and my documents to people without gmail addresses (and to people outside my google apps domain) -- and those invitees don't seem to have any problem using those tools. When I invite someone with a non-gmail address, I believe it just sends them a link with a long uuid, so they don't need to log in -- they just need to click on that link -- that's it.
If they run over a pedestrian with anything it's still going to cause a lot of damage. You seem to be only thinking of the driver.
I'm thinking of the higher profiles incidents I've seen in the media. For instance, one case I'm thinking of, the old guy killed sixteen people. I think he was driving one of those old Suburban SUVs, and he broke through barriers before actually hitting anyone. The street he was going down had been closed because of some street fair or some market. And when he first hit the barrier, he panicked and kept on pressing on the accelerator pedal thinking it was the brake pedal. This is a case where his kids had already taken the keys away from him, because they didn't want to him to drive anymore, but apparently the wife had given them back to him.
Also, you have to keep in mind that now some cars are being manufactured to decrease the amount of damage it will inflict on a pedestrian it hits. But of course, very old people are not known to drive newer cars anyway, so any technological gain made in that area may take years to be used by them.
In the US, you have to realize this issue of driver licenses for older people is a political third rail. Old people vote. Old people are organized. Old people are our most powerful Senators, Judges, and Congressmen. And for many old people, because of the way our Suburban landscape is organized, losing a driver license is tantamount to the end of the World.
You may not like it. And I may not like it. But the more stringent a solution is, the less likely it's ever going to pass. That's why I am proposing a solution that is both more stringent, and also much more gradual -- to make it less seem like the end of the World. By the way, I live in California, and because of my mother who still has her driver license -- I've seen the new requirements for older drivers -- but I do not think they go far enough.
Because you can be a less than perfect driver and still be good enough that it's not justified to take away your license.
The US should make its requirements more stringent and have a more gradual driver license.
So if you start losing some of your faculties, you're no longer allowed to drive your old Plymouth tank -- but still can drive a compact car. And if you lose more of your faculties, then you're no longer allowed to drive your compact car, and only allowed to drive an electrical golf cart car. You could make the system more gradual still. You'd basically base the system on the overall poundage of the car, and the maximum speed of the vehicle (should you lose consciousness and press on the gas pedal continuously).
By making the system more gradual, you'd make the system easier and less dreadful to implement. Plus, this would encourage car manufacturers to develop cars that are even smaller and safer for older drivers to operate.
It was tried to have a reserved numbering scheme to identify cell phones and charge the caller more for calling a cell phone. The market overwhelmingly rejected it.
No, it wasn't tried (unless you're speaking of 900 numbers). And no, the market didn't reject it, it was the Congress that did. I remember this specifically. At the time the US law passed, the only person I knew who had a cell phone was a Consul from a European Country, and his cell phone was a phone handle connected to a heavy briefcase with an antenna (and no, that phone wasn't even a satellite phone, it used cell towers, that Consul lived and worked in San Francisco).
People said, "You want me to pay more to call you on your cell phone? Get a real phone you piece of [censored] yuppie!" and refused to call. For market acceptance, the caller could not be charged extra to call a cell phone.
Like I said, this is completely false, and it's even missing one key insight.
In Europe, in the UK specifically since that's the example I'm most familiar with, all the poor people had cell phones. And cell phones didn't gain wide acceptance just because landlines were crappy and difficult to get (although that's certainly true), cell phones gained wide acceptance because they were almost completely subsidized by this pay-extra-to-call-a-cell-phone scheme. So in the UK, if an inmate was released out of prison, or if a bum needed a phone, they could get themselves such a phone at little to no cost, because all the true cost of the phone would be paid by the people calling it.
Most of the world has taken the view that the caller should pay more when calling a cell phone, and that the cell phone recipient shouldn't pay for the call.
Not true, I have a family member in the UK. He has two cell phones. He has one cell phone number he gives out to everyone, his creditors, marketers, strangers, etc. He has one cell phone number he gives out only to a few select people. Of course, his second cell phone is much more expensive for him personally, because he has to bear its true cost -- but basically people have a choice.
So I would say that the rest of the World has taken the view to allow both schemes and just let the market decide. The US on the other hand, has remarkably been controlling in that respect. And that's the one of the reasons the US has been so far behind in wide-scale cell phone adoption.
Frankly, many of you non-USians are getting screwed on calls. I once called my friend on her mobile in Sydney, Australia. My call had to cross the entire Pacific ocean, but I still paid less to talk to her than her mother (located in Sydney, Australia) does to call her on her mobile. Why? Competition and not having to deal with the local oligopoly.
That's true, but this has nothing to do with cell phones specifically.
Further, cellphone calls are getting very cheap in the US. Many carriers have unlimited plans for $100 USD or less - unlimited incoming & outgoing local calls, domestic long distance, data, and SMS.
When it comes to mobile phones, the US is still five to ten years behind Europe and Asia in terms of price and number of options available.
You can't leave, because that would be trespassing.
Legal trespass has many exceptions
For instance, it's not trespass if a surveyor is going through your land. And it's not trespass if you're not home and your neighbors come on your property to fight a fire.
Many rules have exceptions. Advocating the Libertarian position doesn't mean that you'd throw common sense out of the window, on the contrary.
The problem with your logic here is that "white" people don't have barriers to entry and advancement in the fields you're talking about.
I was having this same discussion with an African-American friend, the son of a neuro-surgeon who grew up in Orange County. He was telling me how an high school teacher had clearly discriminated against him by giving him the first "B" he ever got. And then, he told me about all the instances he or his family had been stopped by the police.
I'm sorry man, but as a white guy, as someone who has never even met my own father, as someone who grew up at the bottom of the economic ladder, there is simply no comparison between the barriers my friend faced and the barriers I faced. There is simply no fucking comparison.
Your implied universal statement that "[ALL] 'white' people don't have barriers" is just as fallacious as what some of the David Duke racists are thinking. It comes out of tribal thinking. My tribe is better than your tribe. My tribe is more deserving than your tribe. The problem with this thinking is that we're not tribes anymore. We're far from being homogeneous entities.
So let me get mind around this, California bans cellphones while behind the wheel but will possibly tie this to cellphones or even a confusing screen on your dashboard?
When will the madness end?
The article you linked to is designed to shock you and sell papers/get click-throughs.
For one thing, there was a "grace period" before the law went into effect. It's just that the grace period ended on July 1st. Most of us in California have known about this law for at least 10 months -- if not longer.
You can still use your cell phone with your bluetooth headset (the device doesn't have to be bluetooth, it just needs to be handsfree). You can still dial your cell phone with voice recognition. And you can still dial a number manually, and/or not use a headset, if you pull over to the side of the road.
The handfree technology is pretty good these days and it's become mainstream. So it's not like this law is as inconvenient or as "mad" as you think it is.
Also, California has much better government data-disclosure (due to some recent court decisions) than many other States, so you can be sure that this parking meter data will be published, integrated, and rebroadcasted in real-time by many services like Tom Tom directly into people's GPS units.
Slashdot Mirror
The only equivalent that I can think of is what's happening at Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble has no union, but its employees have a bulletin board. Barnes and Noble, not knowing how the internet really works, has tried to very stupidly shut it down, but of course that didn't work.
So there is something to be said for giving employees a protected way to communicate with each other, share stories, support each other, and air out the dirty laundry that its management would rather keep secret. So in that sense, a loose semi-anonymous internet union like that can indeed work and survive, it's just that it doesn't have the type of coercive leverage a real union has, and so in that one instance -- it hasn't really affected the wages of its low-level workers -- but at least it seems to have helped put a stop to the more gregarious management abuses.
Yes, at least for a low-level employee, or may be for an employee nobody liked.
However if it's an executive who was responsible for the laptop, or if it's an executive who borrowed the laptop, then most corporations wouldn't fire such a person. Firing someone in the abstract is really easy. Firing a friend/colleague in real life is actually much harder.
In any case, if you ask me, the laptop never had any work-related stuff on it, that's how they know it wasn't compromised. It was probably used as a gaming computer since its first day. Sometimes the primary reason laptops get purchased, or VCRs get purchased, is because of some end-of-year overflow budget (if you don't spend it, you lose it next year).
I'm pretty sure they don't need your SSN to run a credit report check on you. See the article titled "Confessions of a Car Salesman" on edmunds.com or fool.com. They should have that old article on both sites, thought edmunds.com probably won't require you to register with them.
Also more recently just to prove a point, some privacy activists got the social security numbers of legislators from a legal online reseller and published the last three or four digits of their social security numbers online. I think they said it cost them $15 to get each one, but that if a business that does it in bulk -- it will cost them much less because they pay a set monthly fee.
Also, if your driver license is from Hawaii, the last time I saw one -- its license number *was* the same as its social security number (this may have changed thought, I don't know). And also, if you have a student id number or an employee id number, it most likely contains your social security number in its magnetic stripe in plain text format to anyone who has a card reader. And last but not least, because of a recent Federal law, now all the State DMVs require you to give them your SSN in order for you to have a valid driver license, thought currently the social security numbers are not stored in their magnetic stripe (at least) and not all States have finished complying yet.
No, this bit of info comes from a friend who sat on a cross-industry security committee (that's ok if you don't believe me thought, I'm too lazy to google around for corroborating evidence and I don't wish to ask him -- or even give you his name). As far as I know these dental records are not for the benefit of the dentists, or their clients, they're for the benefit of the authorities.
For instance, I know that my dentist in the US has an old X-ray machine, so I'm guessing that he must have those X-rays scanned/archived into a machine at a separate time -- because my friend told me that the centralization of the records were done on DVDs. My dentist in France on the other hand has state-of-the-art equipment, she can look at the X-ray directly from her computer, and she'll burn me a copy of it on a CD/DVD every time. No doubt, many American dentists probably have the same modern equipment as my French dentist, it's just that the dentist I'm used to going to in the US hasn't upgraded yet.
I can't be sure because the article is not that quite straightforward, but I don't think they counted India as part of Asia.
:)
Besides, they're not claiming to have the most traffic in Asia, they're claiming to have the third largest traffic figures in Asia -- whatever that is supposed to mean. But to be fair, this article offers very little of substance in terms of statistics -- it reads more like a badly written press release. Only a press release would brag about deploying text messaging nowadays.
They're confidential as in so far, your doctor really doesn't like to give them to *YOU* personally, but giving them to everyone else -- then that's ok.
All joking aside, I do not work in a medical field, and I'm not a lawyer -- so I can only give you bits and pieces of information on this. I believe that in the US there are many laws criss-crossing each other -- both at the Federal level and at the State level.
For instance, doctors (especially eye doctors) are mandated by law to report you to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicle) once they suspect you can't drive anymore (otherwise, they may be liable for your accidents). Doctors and emergency personnel are also mandated by law to report suspected child abuse/domestic violence. All our dental records are centralized on DVDs for identifying human remains. All the DNA of military personnel, both combat and non-combat personnel, is kept in a database. Military personnel basically has no rights in the US. This DNA information is used in catching (or obtaining warrants) for even indirect relatives of such military personnel that are suspected of crimes. The DNA of Felons is usually indexed in different databases at the State level, although they've been talking about centralizing that information for a while now. One or two States, may be more, now allow the DNA information to be collected from anyone who is now arrested (not even convicted) by the police.
And in California, we have laws protecting both our financial records and our medical records from employers, but there are exceptions to it. For instance, if an employee is about to be hired for a job where he's going to make more than $75,000 a year for instance (there may be one additional condition such as working in Finance or handling the petty cash), I believe your employer is allowed to get your credit report (with your written permission of course, which is part of the boiler plate job application). In California, this is basically good news for most people, because most people aren't going to be making $75,000. But the truth is, if you apply for a job in a real estate brokerage firm, or a car dealership, those guys are going to check your credit report, because it's so easy for them to do it at the push of a button -- and they won't get penalized for breaching your financial privacy (in California, most car dealership will check your credit report without your permission if you take a test drive -- they use your driver license to get it. That's technically illegal, but they all do it anyway -- so if you take too many test drives -- you'll be dinged on your credit report). In California, same goes for Medical records, it's generally private unless you operate a large truck or heavy machinery or something, and it's supposed to be private otherwise, but if your health plan is with your employer, your HR department is bound to find out lots of confidential medical information about you. Technically, the HR person in charge of the health plans is not supposed to divulge your information to anyone else in the company -- even to your boss -- but if that HR person is your boss -- or if that HR person goes on vacation and your boss replaces him or her -- that's technically ok.
Also before 9/11, in California they made a law giving police enforcement complete database access to all the prescription drugs we might be taking (that database also includes names of non-addictive meds and non-relevant meds, so if you're dating a cop in California and have a yeast infection for example, you can be sure the cop will know about it -- cops of all levels run complete background checks on all the women they date -- there are basically no controls -- a recent court case in San Francisco proves that -- and that was even before the cops had access to our information on the meds we were taking).
Also after 9/11, all hospitals and all doctors are making us sign what seems to be a one page med
Very likely. That's why for instance, most lawyers have their staff run diff programs between digital copies of contracts that are emailed back and forth between parties.
It's also very likely, that a few companies get caught doing this type of retroactive editing for their financial disclosures. It's trivial to catch, and given enough eyes -- someone is bound to catch discrepancies.
For instance, this firefox extension updatescanner will scan urls at regular intervals, alerting you when there is a change and giving you a particular diff for each change, all the while not relying on the official header information -- which is often incorrect. I suspect that given the recent news, both the McCain camp and the Obama camp have been using this kind of tool to track each others' unofficial campaign retractions and additions.
Not exactly a government "by the people for the capitalism" either,
which is even worse considering many of us had already written off "by the people for the people" part.
Obviously, all of this could have been avoided if he had just included a EULA mandating the giving up of sovereignty and naming an arbitrator/jurisdiction of his choice.
They don't have to (and by the way, I didn't say that). They only have to release their own pirated software to individuals. Those individuals get used to their software, and then they use it in their company.
In any case, right now the RIAA is making money from some individuals. I know at least three University students that have paid or will pay $3,000 to settle their copyright infringement cases. Right now, it seems they're mostly going after University students and University department laser printers, but it's just a matter of times before they get to everybody and sue everyone. Now it's really just a matter of refining, building up, scaling up, and lobbying up their legal threatening infrastructure.
So is my name, but somehow someone with the same full name I have beat me to a gmail address with my name on it. Am I crying about it? Am I yelling BLOODY CAPITALIZED MURDER? No, I got over it. I moved on. I got a slightly different email address. And I'm fine now.
At least, services like Compuserve (or was it Prodigy, I forget) have stopped requiring you to use some 10-digit number as the first part of your email address, those email addresses were way too difficult to remember.
No, I think you're attributing far too much malice to something that was probably just some minor programming/validation/usability error.
Probably some programmer/web monkey/contractor got overzealous in the form validation he implemented. You know, some people do enter bogus information on web forms. And some people will register an email address that says eatshit@verizon. And sometimes, if you call customer service or whomever, they may have no idea who to contact within their company to have their web forms changed (most likely, either their customer service call center is outsourced or their web work is outsourced).
And it's not like having an exact email address with a full name is a necessity. If it were such a necessity, there would be a law forbidding duplicate full names right from birth.
The first cars were pretty useless too. They were just difficult-to-use steam powered locomotives with wheels bolted on. If the Segway and its clones can evolve to become anything halfway decent fifty years from now, then the more power to them.
That being said, aside from the gadget-allure of this smaller Segway-clone, it might be something that's allowed on subway lines. In my neck of the woods, bicycles are not allowed on the subway during rush hours, and even then, they're a pain to get through -- because they don't fit through the smaller subway turn-tables. And these Winglets, based on the videos I saw on TV, they seem like they might fit through them. The main problem is that they're just too slow right now, hopefully they can resolve this issue and bump up their speed by next year.
Clever legal arguments aside, does it really matter in the bigger scheme of things? Countless numbers of songs and software are released in this way by their own copyright owners. And yet, only a tiny fraction of those copyright owners are caught doing it (or will admit to doing it).
By releasing their materials in this way, they're effectively putting their "intellectual property" in legal limbo. They probably won't enforce their rights to this one particular track they just released (but I can assure you they'll release every other track they own, if they haven't done so already, they won't get caught in those other instances, and then they'll be sure to play both sides of the law).
Microsoft has done this. Macromedia has done this. It pays to release your stuff through the back door, and then yell bloody murder afterward, especially because the civil damages are not awarded based on actual real damages.
Dear Americans,
We accept your proposal. We'll give you our Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip) and our Prince Harry in exchange for your Rush Limbaugh and your David Dukes. Fear not about their upkeep and stipends, commoners with American accents do phenomenally well on Talk Radio in the UK (your American accent is so cute).
- Britain
Then, I'd suggest we go straight to the top of happiness, Steve Jobs.
We may not like the guy, but one thing we know for sure is that Apple users are much more colorful and happier on average than Windows users (and also much happier than most grumpy Linux users. Sorry guys, don't deny it, you Linux guys all know I'm speaking the truth).
The thing is. Ted Stevens is not going to Leavenworth. If the case of Michael Milken was any indication, and by the way Milken was much much younger when he was sent to Federal Prison than Ted Stevens is now, Milken was sent to a minimum security work camp in Pleasanton -- California. There it is rumored he was housed in a full apartment and the prison guards supplied him with any prostitutes he wanted. I take it you didn't ask for a special tour of that Pleasanton Federal facility the last time you were in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Damn, you're good! We may not agree on that one previous point, but at least you got one thing right. I do smell!
My calculator sucks, or may be I should say is "quite limited", and I haven't taken a shower in about two days. These two statements are a bit harsh, but they are basically true. There is nothing I can do to explain, justify, excuse, argue, seek your agreement, seek your approval, or defend myself, against what you're saying.
This being Slashdot, a technical *blog*, this must have been the shortest least disciplined boycott attempt there ever was.
I'm not sure I'm understanding the problem you're having. I use google apps for everything, and I often send private invites for editing my calendar and my documents to people without gmail addresses (and to people outside my google apps domain) -- and those invitees don't seem to have any problem using those tools. When I invite someone with a non-gmail address, I believe it just sends them a link with a long uuid, so they don't need to log in -- they just need to click on that link -- that's it.
Thanks. I like making up new words. If you like it, start using it. If you don't, that's ok too.
I'm thinking of the higher profiles incidents I've seen in the media. For instance, one case I'm thinking of, the old guy killed sixteen people. I think he was driving one of those old Suburban SUVs, and he broke through barriers before actually hitting anyone. The street he was going down had been closed because of some street fair or some market. And when he first hit the barrier, he panicked and kept on pressing on the accelerator pedal thinking it was the brake pedal. This is a case where his kids had already taken the keys away from him, because they didn't want to him to drive anymore, but apparently the wife had given them back to him.
Also, you have to keep in mind that now some cars are being manufactured to decrease the amount of damage it will inflict on a pedestrian it hits. But of course, very old people are not known to drive newer cars anyway, so any technological gain made in that area may take years to be used by them.
In the US, you have to realize this issue of driver licenses for older people is a political third rail. Old people vote. Old people are organized. Old people are our most powerful Senators, Judges, and Congressmen. And for many old people, because of the way our Suburban landscape is organized, losing a driver license is tantamount to the end of the World.
You may not like it. And I may not like it. But the more stringent a solution is, the less likely it's ever going to pass. That's why I am proposing a solution that is both more stringent, and also much more gradual -- to make it less seem like the end of the World. By the way, I live in California, and because of my mother who still has her driver license -- I've seen the new requirements for older drivers -- but I do not think they go far enough.
The US should make its requirements more stringent and have a more gradual driver license.
So if you start losing some of your faculties, you're no longer allowed to drive your old Plymouth tank -- but still can drive a compact car. And if you lose more of your faculties, then you're no longer allowed to drive your compact car, and only allowed to drive an electrical golf cart car. You could make the system more gradual still. You'd basically base the system on the overall poundage of the car, and the maximum speed of the vehicle (should you lose consciousness and press on the gas pedal continuously).
By making the system more gradual, you'd make the system easier and less dreadful to implement. Plus, this would encourage car manufacturers to develop cars that are even smaller and safer for older drivers to operate.
No, it wasn't tried (unless you're speaking of 900 numbers). And no, the market didn't reject it, it was the Congress that did. I remember this specifically. At the time the US law passed, the only person I knew who had a cell phone was a Consul from a European Country, and his cell phone was a phone handle connected to a heavy briefcase with an antenna (and no, that phone wasn't even a satellite phone, it used cell towers, that Consul lived and worked in San Francisco).
Like I said, this is completely false, and it's even missing one key insight.
In Europe, in the UK specifically since that's the example I'm most familiar with, all the poor people had cell phones. And cell phones didn't gain wide acceptance just because landlines were crappy and difficult to get (although that's certainly true), cell phones gained wide acceptance because they were almost completely subsidized by this pay-extra-to-call-a-cell-phone scheme. So in the UK, if an inmate was released out of prison, or if a bum needed a phone, they could get themselves such a phone at little to no cost, because all the true cost of the phone would be paid by the people calling it.
Not true, I have a family member in the UK. He has two cell phones. He has one cell phone number he gives out to everyone, his creditors, marketers, strangers, etc. He has one cell phone number he gives out only to a few select people. Of course, his second cell phone is much more expensive for him personally, because he has to bear its true cost -- but basically people have a choice.
So I would say that the rest of the World has taken the view to allow both schemes and just let the market decide. The US on the other hand, has remarkably been controlling in that respect. And that's the one of the reasons the US has been so far behind in wide-scale cell phone adoption.
That's true, but this has nothing to do with cell phones specifically.
When it comes to mobile phones, the US is still five to ten years behind Europe and Asia in terms of price and number of options available.
Legal trespass has many exceptions
For instance, it's not trespass if a surveyor is going through your land. And it's not trespass if you're not home and your neighbors come on your property to fight a fire.
Many rules have exceptions. Advocating the Libertarian position doesn't mean that you'd throw common sense out of the window, on the contrary.
I was having this same discussion with an African-American friend, the son of a neuro-surgeon who grew up in Orange County. He was telling me how an high school teacher had clearly discriminated against him by giving him the first "B" he ever got. And then, he told me about all the instances he or his family had been stopped by the police.
I'm sorry man, but as a white guy, as someone who has never even met my own father, as someone who grew up at the bottom of the economic ladder, there is simply no comparison between the barriers my friend faced and the barriers I faced. There is simply no fucking comparison.
Your implied universal statement that "[ALL] 'white' people don't have barriers" is just as fallacious as what some of the David Duke racists are thinking. It comes out of tribal thinking. My tribe is better than your tribe. My tribe is more deserving than your tribe. The problem with this thinking is that we're not tribes anymore. We're far from being homogeneous entities.
The article you linked to is designed to shock you and sell papers/get click-throughs.
For one thing, there was a "grace period" before the law went into effect. It's just that the grace period ended on July 1st. Most of us in California have known about this law for at least 10 months -- if not longer.
You can still use your cell phone with your bluetooth headset (the device doesn't have to be bluetooth, it just needs to be handsfree). You can still dial your cell phone with voice recognition. And you can still dial a number manually, and/or not use a headset, if you pull over to the side of the road.
The handfree technology is pretty good these days and it's become mainstream. So it's not like this law is as inconvenient or as "mad" as you think it is.
Also, California has much better government data-disclosure (due to some recent court decisions) than many other States, so you can be sure that this parking meter data will be published, integrated, and rebroadcasted in real-time by many services like Tom Tom directly into people's GPS units.