Posted yet again, since this "no right to privacy" crowd reposts the same thing over and over, too... For this case, replace "government" with "nosy private interest groups" and "GPS tracker" with "license scanning technology".
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You don't get to be "private" in public, per se, but I do feel it is important that you be able to be "anonymous" in many cases.
"So, how can you be anonymous when you have a license plate?" you might ask.
Simple, there are 300 million people in the country and, at any given time, no one -cares- to read your plate and track where you are. If you commit a crime, or if someone with a similar car committed a crime, then sure, a police officer might see your car and check your plates. But, if they don't match, the officer will move on. The event is eventually forgotten and there is no "proof" that the event ever happened.
Automatic location tracking changes that. 25 years from now, someone can go back to a GPS database and see where you were last night. This where anonymity is lost.
Let's assume you buy pr0n from a shop. Your license plate is visible to all who care to look, but again, -no one cares-. Now add a GPS tracker, and, at a later date, the names of every person who ever visited the store can be retrieved. There goes your political career.
Let's assume you go to church. Again, outside of the church itself -no one cares-. But, add a tracker, and the government knows everyone who visted a certain mosque, ever. Or, they know everyone who attended mass last weekend.
In summary, yes, if there is reason to care, the government can already track you in public. But this takes the efforts of a human, which means it is rare, costly, and, most importantly, not permanent. Eliminate human involvement from the monitoring and it becomes routine, pervasive, and, worst of all, permanent.
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In late 2004 a judge agreed with me!
On election day, some people were copying down the license plate numbers of people voting (in Ohio IIRC). A judge ordered them to stop. Although they were driving on public roads to polling places on public property open to the public, a judge recognized that they had the right not be tracked.
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(This same post has been modded +5: Insightful before. No need to moderate again unless someone else mods me down.)
If I could draw, there'd be a political cartoon here.
Air Marshal says "I need to hit my quota... let's report that old lady with the knitting needles!" In the picture, there would be the marshal, the old lady a few rows away, and every other (filled) seat would be have a Far Side-styled snake looking suspicous...
The following is SARCASTIC JEST meant to show how this can be abused:
"Dude, I'm just gonna wire this up outside of the local adult video store, and post a real-time list of people who visit, with their name and address. I could probably make this a for-profit service, where folks sign up their spouses' tags and I message them when they visit. Or I can link it to public official records, and snap a photo or video if a politician's car shows up."
The Constitution needs to be updated if the Electoral College is removed or replaced. However - states are allowed to choose how they allocate their Electoral College votes. It may *seem* more complicated, but it is easier to implement.
Basically, this is a deal among states that fixes something the Federal government is unable to touch. I have no complaints about states getting together outside the bureaucracy of the Feds and working out their own solutions.
And NO, this will never happen. Well, maybe if the states that join are exactly paired (red/blue) so as to match the results of an agreed-upon past election. Otherwise, this just hands votes to the side that *your* state didn't vote for, which I doubt any state on either side would approve.
Not every movie I watch has to be Casablanca. I appreciate watching bad movies as an indulgence. I own (via gift) the Horrible Horrors Collection, volumes 1 and 2. Lately I've been watching The Greatest American Hero on DVD, of which no one would claim that the production values are top-notch.
I don't sit down with a bag of popcorn, dim the lights, and take these in with the full "movie experience". As you state - they aren't good enough to be worth the effort. However, they have a "quality" to them that can be appreciated while I also read slashdot, or add ID3 tags to my ripped music, or read the local paper. I can't define this "quality"; I certainly don't watch them just for laughs, even though many are (unintentionally) humorous. Maybe I'm more willing to use my imagination to improve and escape into worlds that are poorly presented on screen, compared to the average viewer today that demands a level of "realism" even in special effects.
>> One positive thing that I have noticed since I started Netflix is that I watch a lot less movies that I *don't* care about much.
I, on the other hand, have been watching *more* movies that I really don't care about. With rentals, it's hard to pay good money for crap movies like "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (currently at the top of my queue). With NetFlix, though, assuming I watch and turn it relatively quickly, I'm only paying $0.80 or so for the rental - and that money is hidden away in a monthly fee that I pay anyway. Given that my tastes wander enough to appreciate B, C, and D-grade science fiction, this is a good deal.
It really does work better than local rental places for me. As soon as we signed up and I realized this, I bought a lot of Netflix stock. That's doing pretty well for me so far, too, so I think I'm not alone.
Even if I don't like EA as a company, everything I hear makes me feel that a Wii (and neither a 360 or PS3) is the way for us to go for this next generation, in terms of games options, fun, innovation, and of course cost. And this comes from a family that now has just a PS2 + PC games.
Other than the "poorer" graphics (intentional quotation marks), what bad stuff *has* come out about the Wii? Anything?
Yes, as the rest of my post that you clearly didn't read says.
But that is not going to happen. The government doesn't work that way, at least not right now. We have to settle for the best we can get, because we can't get the best there is. That's how government works - everyone compromises and no one is 100% happy, but most people are satisfied enough.
Green Mountain Energy in Texas now offers Pollution Free energy, generated from wind and water, that is priced the same as the major local provider's product (from natural gas, coal, and nuclear). Same price, renewable pollution free, you just have to switch. They also offer 100% wind that is a bit more expensive, and long-term contracts to lower the price a little.
This is not a comparative description. For each copy of the movie these companies sell, they buy one from Hollywood. Thus, if they sell 1984 copies of Gladiator with the naughty bits omitted, then they buy 1984 copies from the movie production company first. Thus, it can be said they are only reselling the copy of the book that they themselves purchased and from which they ripped out naughty pages.
Right. And if Cleanflixxx, etc., were simply blotting out specific bits on the original DVD with a high-power laser (or a very small black marker), I bet it would be perfectly legal.
But they aren't. They are "retyping" the movie, effectively, which turns it into a derivative work.
There are legal ways to achieve the same thing. The company could sell special DVD players that take a disk and have an internet connection, or a flash slot, etc. When a disk is inserted, the player goes to the company's website (or the flash), learns what parts are "naughty", and just auto skips them. If a disk isn't recognized, it could pop up a warning and require an override code to play it uncut.
In this way, consumers are buying unedited DVDs from the local store. Selling lists that say "45 minutes 13 seconds into the movie there is a breast for 2 seconds, 57 minutes into the movie blank the sound for 1.5 seconds while someone cusses" is perfectly legal, as are sites that tell you where to skip to in movies to see the naked bits. (Actually, I guess those are the same services!)
1. Have all the pipes owned by a neutral, non-profit or closely-regulated third party (or worst-case the government itself in the form of local municipalities or even states). 2. Then, all service providers for any web content can compete in an equal, thriving space. This is very similar to how most roads work in the US (government owned), and almost exactly how the deregulated electricity market in Texas works (TXU Electric Deliver owns the lines, anyone may sell services on them). 3. Profit for competing businesses and consumers???
Barring that, and assuming that the lines remain owned by private companies despite many of them having been granted monopolies (or duopolies in terms of cable/phone) to build and maintain them, then there is no possible way for the free market to work out something already limited by the government.
Thus, government-mandated Net Neutrality is the best we can get, and I'll live with it.
Then why does the article summary say that witness protection records were available to this guy? Is that just inventive summarizing? (It's been known to happen.)
Yeah, sort of like how mp3.com let everyone stream any music that they already own on CD, just by "registering" the CD with your account by putting it in your computer once.
That went over really well with the music industry.
What if Microsoft is just looking at some sort of hash of your music songs to identify them? I don't think there is any law that stops you from trading files that just happen to have the same hash as the latest hit song, and oh, look, Microsoft is giving me a copy of the song for free!
Although, ideally, you ought to wait until 2009 for 9/9/9
Late 2009 sounds just about right for the release of the next-generation Nintendo console. This follow-up to the Nintendo Wii will feature dual-screen support (like their award-winning Nintendo DS) further revolutionized for innovative gameplay in a home-console setting.
FBI director deals with all kinds of sensitive data all the time. Making him walk to a room would be a waste.
At worst, then, he should have a separate terminal, hard-wired to the private network with the most sensitive data. Again, he could review and pass on one record at any time as he needed it, but the whole database wouldn't be available to the internet or anywhere else.
Whatever efficiency the FBI enjoys due to this combined database system is lost if just two or three people refuse to testify for the government, because they know the witness protection program can be hacked and they'd be found and killed.
Because the director uses the same password in multiple systems.
Ok, that would actually make sense if it was true. But from the article it sounds like all this data is stored together in the FBI's "Trilogy" system, not in separate systems.
So one hash file gives him access to all FBI records, including the most sensitive? No offense, but why aren't the most sensitive of services protected by isolating them in a separate system? Compromising the witness protection program could endanger the lives of everyone protected by it, and just the ideas that it might be compromised could reduce the chances of people helping the FBI and testifying.
Isn't witness protection data Need To Know? Why would the FBI director Need To Know anything at all at a moment's notice from his desktop PC? It would make much more sense to have a separate system, and have him walk down the hall, ask someone to retrieve what he needs, and maybe get ONE record made available for a limited time.
I'm not trolling or anything. Seriously, can someone suggest scenarios whereby immediate, free access to that data is valuable, especially by people who don't already know whether you or I are in the program?
It's not like it's difficult to explain. "Thanks for the warning, officer, but I'm keeping it open deliberately as kind of a public service for my neighbors. I've spent a long time making sure my own data is secure. Thanks for stopping by."
You are assuming that those technical enough to choose to leave an open WiFi port intentionally are also eloquent enough to explain it in a way that diffuses an always-tense police officer, instead of building the tension. Any situation where a citizen is correcting or disagreeing with a cop is potentially trouble.
I realize living in Bush's America has made us all a little paranoid about this, but come on, let's not immediately jump to the worst possible case.
This has nothing to do with it. Local cops have been friendly in situations they control, and unfriendly when someone is acting like they are smarter than them, for a long time.
Internet Shorthand is acceptable in one place, and only one place. Online games. MMORPGs are an exception to this. There's no easier way to get yourself kicked from a group (besides telling everyone else how to play their class).
Your point that you've spend money on music when you never have before is valid. But would you have spent as much if the full albums were $4? $8? $10? What if $2 isn't enough to sustain the current production models for music? I realize that there's this desire to say "change your business model, then!" or "they'll make up for it in volume, since this is electronic distribution!" But what if they DON'T WANT to sell it for $2? Isn't that their choice, and your choice to not buy it? Do you think AllOfMP3.com, aside from your PERSONAL opinions on the RIAA, BPI, etc., could exist in the US or EU legally? If not, why should people in those places be able to buy from it?
While this might not at all be true to others who read Slashdot, I find things like allofmp3.com acceptable contortions of the intended copyright model because of how contorted copyright durations have become in favor of content creators. No person who created content in 1924 had any expectation that it would still be protected in 2006, and yet it is, and its current owners continue to fight for it. (See both Disney and Mickey Mouse, et al., and the recent Winnie the Pooh debacle, as well as hundreds of other films and books from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.) A. A. Milne's descendent somehow claimed that she had a right to control and earn money from content created by her grandmother 75 years ago. No moral right exists to do such a thing, even if the law written today keeps those items under lock and key from the public.
If copyrights were still perhaps 50 years MAXIMUM, then things created up through the 1950s would now be in the public domain, free to be shared, modified, built upon, and used as the shared cultural base of humanity that they are meant to be. In such a world, I would not mind signficantly more strict limitations of what could be done with material that was still copyrighted. (I realize that most pirated music is very recent, but that's other people, not me.)
Because the pact between the true owners of any intellectual work (All of Humanity) and those who created it is twisted too far towards the creators to humanity's detriment, twists and deviations in humanity's favor cause me no worry.
Slashdot Mirror
Teach a man to send an "internet," and he can be a senator!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DClkE64nFDY
Fast forward to about 2:00.
Posted yet again, since this "no right to privacy" crowd reposts the same thing over and over, too... For this case, replace "government" with "nosy private interest groups" and "GPS tracker" with "license scanning technology".
d =11341658
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You don't get to be "private" in public, per se, but I do feel it is important that you be able to be "anonymous" in many cases.
"So, how can you be anonymous when you have a license plate?" you might ask.
Simple, there are 300 million people in the country and, at any given time, no one -cares- to read your plate and track where you are. If you commit a crime, or if someone with a similar car committed a crime, then sure, a police officer might see your car and check your plates. But, if they don't match, the officer will move on. The event is eventually forgotten and there is no "proof" that the event ever happened.
Automatic location tracking changes that. 25 years from now, someone can go back to a GPS database and see where you were last night. This where anonymity is lost.
Let's assume you buy pr0n from a shop. Your license plate is visible to all who care to look, but again, -no one cares-. Now add a GPS tracker, and, at a later date, the names of every person who ever visited the store can be retrieved. There goes your political career.
Let's assume you go to church. Again, outside of the church itself -no one cares-. But, add a tracker, and the government knows everyone who visted a certain mosque, ever. Or, they know everyone who attended mass last weekend.
In summary, yes, if there is reason to care, the government can already track you in public. But this takes the efforts of a human, which means it is rare, costly, and, most importantly, not permanent. Eliminate human involvement from the monitoring and it becomes routine, pervasive, and, worst of all, permanent.
----
In late 2004 a judge agreed with me!
On election day, some people were copying down the license plate numbers of people voting (in Ohio IIRC). A judge ordered them to stop. Although they were driving on public roads to polling places on public property open to the public, a judge recognized that they had the right not be tracked.
----
(This same post has been modded +5: Insightful before. No need to moderate again unless someone else mods me down.)
Last posted here a year and a half ago: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=135845&ci
If I could draw, there'd be a political cartoon here.
Air Marshal says "I need to hit my quota... let's report that old lady with the knitting needles!" In the picture, there would be the marshal, the old lady a few rows away, and every other (filled) seat would be have a Far Side-styled snake looking suspicous...
The following is SARCASTIC JEST meant to show how this can be abused:
"Dude, I'm just gonna wire this up outside of the local adult video store, and post a real-time list of people who visit, with their name and address. I could probably make this a for-profit service, where folks sign up their spouses' tags and I message them when they visit. Or I can link it to public official records, and snap a photo or video if a politician's car shows up."
The Constitution needs to be updated if the Electoral College is removed or replaced. However - states are allowed to choose how they allocate their Electoral College votes. It may *seem* more complicated, but it is easier to implement.
Basically, this is a deal among states that fixes something the Federal government is unable to touch. I have no complaints about states getting together outside the bureaucracy of the Feds and working out their own solutions.
And NO, this will never happen. Well, maybe if the states that join are exactly paired (red/blue) so as to match the results of an agreed-upon past election. Otherwise, this just hands votes to the side that *your* state didn't vote for, which I doubt any state on either side would approve.
>>>> followed by a statement that LucasArts would be supporting every next generation system.
>> Including the Phantom?
LucasArts has acquired the license to port Duke Nuk'em Forever to the Phantom.
Not every movie I watch has to be Casablanca. I appreciate watching bad movies as an indulgence. I own (via gift) the Horrible Horrors Collection, volumes 1 and 2. Lately I've been watching The Greatest American Hero on DVD, of which no one would claim that the production values are top-notch.
I don't sit down with a bag of popcorn, dim the lights, and take these in with the full "movie experience". As you state - they aren't good enough to be worth the effort. However, they have a "quality" to them that can be appreciated while I also read slashdot, or add ID3 tags to my ripped music, or read the local paper. I can't define this "quality"; I certainly don't watch them just for laughs, even though many are (unintentionally) humorous. Maybe I'm more willing to use my imagination to improve and escape into worlds that are poorly presented on screen, compared to the average viewer today that demands a level of "realism" even in special effects.
>> One positive thing that I have noticed since I started Netflix is that I watch a lot less movies that I *don't* care about much.
I, on the other hand, have been watching *more* movies that I really don't care about. With rentals, it's hard to pay good money for crap movies like "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (currently at the top of my queue). With NetFlix, though, assuming I watch and turn it relatively quickly, I'm only paying $0.80 or so for the rental - and that money is hidden away in a monthly fee that I pay anyway. Given that my tastes wander enough to appreciate B, C, and D-grade science fiction, this is a good deal.
It really does work better than local rental places for me. As soon as we signed up and I realized this, I bought a lot of Netflix stock. That's doing pretty well for me so far, too, so I think I'm not alone.
*chuckle*
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
Even if I don't like EA as a company, everything I hear makes me feel that a Wii (and neither a 360 or PS3) is the way for us to go for this next generation, in terms of games options, fun, innovation, and of course cost. And this comes from a family that now has just a PS2 + PC games.
Other than the "poorer" graphics (intentional quotation marks), what bad stuff *has* come out about the Wii? Anything?
Yes, as the rest of my post that you clearly didn't read says.
But that is not going to happen. The government doesn't work that way, at least not right now. We have to settle for the best we can get, because we can't get the best there is. That's how government works - everyone compromises and no one is 100% happy, but most people are satisfied enough.
Green Mountain Energy in Texas now offers Pollution Free energy, generated from wind and water, that is priced the same as the major local provider's product (from natural gas, coal, and nuclear). Same price, renewable pollution free, you just have to switch. They also offer 100% wind that is a bit more expensive, and long-term contracts to lower the price a little.
This is not a comparative description. For each copy of the movie these companies sell, they buy one from Hollywood. Thus, if they sell 1984 copies of Gladiator with the naughty bits omitted, then they buy 1984 copies from the movie production company first. Thus, it can be said they are only reselling the copy of the book that they themselves purchased and from which they ripped out naughty pages.
Right. And if Cleanflixxx, etc., were simply blotting out specific bits on the original DVD with a high-power laser (or a very small black marker), I bet it would be perfectly legal.
But they aren't. They are "retyping" the movie, effectively, which turns it into a derivative work.
There are legal ways to achieve the same thing. The company could sell special DVD players that take a disk and have an internet connection, or a flash slot, etc. When a disk is inserted, the player goes to the company's website (or the flash), learns what parts are "naughty", and just auto skips them. If a disk isn't recognized, it could pop up a warning and require an override code to play it uncut.
In this way, consumers are buying unedited DVDs from the local store. Selling lists that say "45 minutes 13 seconds into the movie there is a breast for 2 seconds, 57 minutes into the movie blank the sound for 1.5 seconds while someone cusses" is perfectly legal, as are sites that tell you where to skip to in movies to see the naked bits. (Actually, I guess those are the same services!)
Well, ideally we'd get the third option:
1. Have all the pipes owned by a neutral, non-profit or closely-regulated third party (or worst-case the government itself in the form of local municipalities or even states).
2. Then, all service providers for any web content can compete in an equal, thriving space. This is very similar to how most roads work in the US (government owned), and almost exactly how the deregulated electricity market in Texas works (TXU Electric Deliver owns the lines, anyone may sell services on them).
3. Profit for competing businesses and consumers???
Barring that, and assuming that the lines remain owned by private companies despite many of them having been granted monopolies (or duopolies in terms of cable/phone) to build and maintain them, then there is no possible way for the free market to work out something already limited by the government.
Thus, government-mandated Net Neutrality is the best we can get, and I'll live with it.
Then why does the article summary say that witness protection records were available to this guy? Is that just inventive summarizing? (It's been known to happen.)
Yeah, sort of like how mp3.com let everyone stream any music that they already own on CD, just by "registering" the CD with your account by putting it in your computer once.
That went over really well with the music industry.
What if Microsoft is just looking at some sort of hash of your music songs to identify them? I don't think there is any law that stops you from trading files that just happen to have the same hash as the latest hit song, and oh, look, Microsoft is giving me a copy of the song for free!
Although, ideally, you ought to wait until 2009 for 9/9/9
Late 2009 sounds just about right for the release of the next-generation Nintendo console. This follow-up to the Nintendo Wii will feature dual-screen support (like their award-winning Nintendo DS) further revolutionized for innovative gameplay in a home-console setting.
They will call it the Nintendo Wii2D2.
FBI director deals with all kinds of sensitive data all the time.
Making him walk to a room would be a waste.
At worst, then, he should have a separate terminal, hard-wired to the private network with the most sensitive data. Again, he could review and pass on one record at any time as he needed it, but the whole database wouldn't be available to the internet or anywhere else.
Whatever efficiency the FBI enjoys due to this combined database system is lost if just two or three people refuse to testify for the government, because they know the witness protection program can be hacked and they'd be found and killed.
Because the director uses the same password in multiple systems.
Ok, that would actually make sense if it was true. But from the article it sounds like all this data is stored together in the FBI's "Trilogy" system, not in separate systems.
So one hash file gives him access to all FBI records, including the most sensitive? No offense, but why aren't the most sensitive of services protected by isolating them in a separate system? Compromising the witness protection program could endanger the lives of everyone protected by it, and just the ideas that it might be compromised could reduce the chances of people helping the FBI and testifying.
Isn't witness protection data Need To Know? Why would the FBI director Need To Know anything at all at a moment's notice from his desktop PC? It would make much more sense to have a separate system, and have him walk down the hall, ask someone to retrieve what he needs, and maybe get ONE record made available for a limited time.
I'm not trolling or anything. Seriously, can someone suggest scenarios whereby immediate, free access to that data is valuable, especially by people who don't already know whether you or I are in the program?
It's not like it's difficult to explain. "Thanks for the warning, officer, but I'm keeping it open deliberately as kind of a public service for my neighbors. I've spent a long time making sure my own data is secure. Thanks for stopping by."
You are assuming that those technical enough to choose to leave an open WiFi port intentionally are also eloquent enough to explain it in a way that diffuses an always-tense police officer, instead of building the tension. Any situation where a citizen is correcting or disagreeing with a cop is potentially trouble.
I realize living in Bush's America has made us all a little paranoid about this, but come on, let's not immediately jump to the worst possible case.
This has nothing to do with it. Local cops have been friendly in situations they control, and unfriendly when someone is acting like they are smarter than them, for a long time.
Yeah, though that guy was also taping audio, which is illegal.
The police probably wouldn't care about my camera that takes snapshots of my front yard and street, as that's perfectly legal.
Internet Shorthand is acceptable in one place, and only one place. Online games.
MMORPGs are an exception to this. There's no easier way to get yourself kicked from a group (besides telling everyone else how to play their class).
It was 1984, actually... he's been awake for about three years, during which time they've studied his brain to determine how he recovered.
Your point that you've spend money on music when you never have before is valid. But would you have spent as much if the full albums were $4? $8? $10? What if $2 isn't enough to sustain the current production models for music? I realize that there's this desire to say "change your business model, then!" or "they'll make up for it in volume, since this is electronic distribution!" But what if they DON'T WANT to sell it for $2? Isn't that their choice, and your choice to not buy it? Do you think AllOfMP3.com, aside from your PERSONAL opinions on the RIAA, BPI, etc., could exist in the US or EU legally? If not, why should people in those places be able to buy from it?
While this might not at all be true to others who read Slashdot, I find things like allofmp3.com acceptable contortions of the intended copyright model because of how contorted copyright durations have become in favor of content creators. No person who created content in 1924 had any expectation that it would still be protected in 2006, and yet it is, and its current owners continue to fight for it. (See both Disney and Mickey Mouse, et al., and the recent Winnie the Pooh debacle, as well as hundreds of other films and books from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.) A. A. Milne's descendent somehow claimed that she had a right to control and earn money from content created by her grandmother 75 years ago. No moral right exists to do such a thing, even if the law written today keeps those items under lock and key from the public.
If copyrights were still perhaps 50 years MAXIMUM, then things created up through the 1950s would now be in the public domain, free to be shared, modified, built upon, and used as the shared cultural base of humanity that they are meant to be. In such a world, I would not mind signficantly more strict limitations of what could be done with material that was still copyrighted. (I realize that most pirated music is very recent, but that's other people, not me.)
Because the pact between the true owners of any intellectual work (All of Humanity) and those who created it is twisted too far towards the creators to humanity's detriment, twists and deviations in humanity's favor cause me no worry.