Yes, because they are legitimate business records.
Best Buy is allowed to keep all your credit card purchases on file, and use those records however they see fit in the course of business - including selling your purchasing habits to a marketing firm for analysis.
If you don't like it, tough titties. Move to a developing nation that doesn't have technology yet.
Here's another atrocity in government. I've been informed that postal employees aren't allowed to install hilarious dilbert screensavers on their workstations!
You, and people like you, saying it's "futile" and third party votes are "wasted" are the cause of the two party problem. You've helped brainwash the american voter into thinking it's a coin toss, and he should pick the "lesser of two evils".
Then on election day, we see some bullshit like "49% people favor John Kerry and 51% people favor George Bush". Which we all know is wrong. Nearly everybody, in the last election, thought both candidates sucked.
Vote for who you want to vote for. They may not win, but we won't be sending some assclown to the whitehouse with some bullshit "51% american support" argument. The next time the republicrats win, I want to see the number say "7%", followed by maybe Greens or Libertarians with 4% and 5% type numbers. I want the numbers to clearly demonstrate what the people want.
If that were to happen, and the two parties will realize just how tenuous their connection to the voters are, and things will start to change.
But instead, all of the apathetic slugs out there contribute the the problem by saying "I really like blah-blahs positions but I dont want to waste my vote so I dunno, Hillary Clinton I guess".
Vote for the Pirate Party if you like them. They don't have to win to send a message.
The state can block whatever they want on their own computers, it doesn't affect YRO until they start blocking it on your computers.
In fact, to say that an organization or individual (government, business, or regular Joe) doesn't have the right to block whatever they want on their own private computers, certainly does directly interfere with my right to set my firewall and spam filters up however the fuck I want.
True enough. "Copyright Reform Party", or "Intellectual Property Reform Party" or, I dunno, I'm not one of those political campaign managers, but almost anything would be better.
Actually, "Privateer" evokes a revolutionary-era image of our forefathers fighting for freedom from the (still) hated British.
But, these guys cant seriously expect votes, it's just a publicity stunt to get people to notice them and get some press. Unfortunately, they'll likely make a joke of the whole issue and hurt the cause more than help it, like when some elitist hollywood jackass get's all political and drags the party image into the mud.
My biggest complaint is people who wrote some software to display text on an LED sign think the rest of the world should format their data for him.
It's like the people who start whining "but I use lynx from a console to browse the web! Stoppit with all the frames and java and flash and pictures!"
The web is, and was intended to be, graphical, and RSS by extension is the same way.
Modify your code to strip out the URLS and display only the data you want. You can wait for the rest of the world to do it for you, but it's not going to happen.
I don't know, RSS is more descriptive of the online community of people who keep their diaries on the web (I don't use the b word or the b-sphere word because they are the stupidest contrived words ever).
In that situation, I just mentally redescribe RSS as "Really Shitty Stories", or "Retarded Stupid Slapnuts", or variations thereof.
Lets face it, with few exceptions, there's no "news" coming out of the average jerks web browser based journal of daily minutia.
I propose "Perpetually backed up Digital Sewer Line" or PBUESL.
Is there anything worthwhile to ask you, other than "Why did you invent CSS?" or "Why do you like OSS?", which wont ellicit the same canned responses we've all seen a thousand times before?
Water cooling was pretty neat when guys were repurposing aquarium pumps and heater cores from old plymouths, and grinding out their own blocks, and so on.
Ordering a kit from newegg and installing it... Yawn..
Guess what, I installed a zalman heatsink when the fan died on the old one. All bow down to my mad hacking skillzorz.
Hardware hacking went the same route as software hacking where kids running a script they downloaded get all the attention.
"Water", or even "mineral oil" doesn't sound as sciency as "glycol" or "isopropynol".
I think it's just the trying make the whole thing sound more technical than what it is - a little bit of plumbing with plastic tubes and an aquarium pump.
I'm so tired of all the wannabes who case mod their PC with a hundred extra fans and a bling bling paint job and post about all their computer expertise and how much they could overclock it.
It's just boring, and it's not computer science. A 5% overclock is pretty much insignifigant. Wake me up when somebody comes up with some cool new algortithm that improves a process by at least an order of magnitude - thats where the real performance gains come in.
A side effect of the "Dr Nick Riviera will perform any operation for 99.99" mentality that the US seems to be adopting.
You would think common sense would dictate that one would check out the guy who's going to blast their eyeballs with laserbeams, but, they dont.
My wife had it done, we did a lot of research into clinics and doctors and so on beforehand, and she was ecstatic with the results. She still has glasses she uses only for night driving, but the freedom from contacts and glasses was worth the risk in her mind.
I guarantee the Navy isn't using the 399.99 lasik guys. The best hospitals in the US are probably military.
I never whine about getting fragged in an online deathmatch because someone reheated a cup of coffee in the microwave, or the phone rang, or the channel 5 news van ran a remote feed too close to my house.
I whine because the guy was CAMPING AND THATS LIKE TOTALLY GHEY MAN STFU N00B kekekekekeke
Are you actually worried that a terrorist is going to kill you?
I live just outside of DC, and watched the pentagon burn, and as a matter of fact - if not for a scheduling fuckup, I very well could have not only been in the building, but in the newly rebuilt com center (where the plane hit). I spend most of my time on site in government buildings or police departments, which are probably the target for attacks.. So, kinda.
Are you really concerned about the dealers on the corner selling drugs
Yes, they carry guns and every night theres a report of some kid being shot in a drug deal gone bad, or someone caught in the crossfire. If you're so cavalier about it, I can show you some real cheap real estate in DC or Baltimore. The police are afraid to go there at night, for fuck sakes.
or the kids next door smoking pot?
Pretty tricky combining the two into one question. The kids next door smoking pot? Nah. Invite me over. The meth addict next door? Yeah. I've seen what that does to peoples brains.
What is it you are afraid of and why?
Sharks! They eat people.
Does the government need personal information on millions of americans to fight what you are most afraid of?
Those millions of americans people are the government, it's a democracy, remember?
If you want to register to vote, you give that information to them.
This article, in as much as it is news, and it's about individuals - who happen to be employed by the government - obtaining personal info. Nothing you or I couldn't do. The connection to the government seems tenuous, at best it's about some people abusing their positions. A problem as old as time itself.
Well we know where the link goes, I'm just saying it should read "According to an article by the Associated Press"
You know, cite the actual *source* of the article. It's just a pet peeve of mine. I see other sites saying equally stupid things like "according to an article on slashdot", which in turn refers to an article on Yahoo, and eventually if you want to find out the source of the information, you have to follow the chain upstream until you do.
IMO, the source of the news is every bit as important as the news itself, if not more.
And yes, I'm aware its a complete non sequitor.
According to an article on google Microsoft is bad and linux is super fantastic!
Ok first off, this is an AP story - not a Yahoo! News story, because Yahoo! News doesn't write or report news any more than slashdot does, they just cut and paste.
But lets look down the bulleted list:
_A U.S. Labor Department employee who used her government e-mail address and phone number to buy two months of personal cellular phone records of a woman in New Jersey.
_A buyer who received credit card information about the father of murder victim Jon Benet Ramsey.
_A buyer who obtained 20 printed pages of phone calls by pro basketball player Damon Jones of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
OK, so these are individual people who happen to work for the Government - not the government itself, ie; it's not like theres the "department of buying phone records" set up somewhere.
I was watching MSNBC's "to catch a predator", the sting operation where they lure pedophiles to a house thinking there's a 13 year old waiting, and then bust them. One guy they busted was some sort of government official, but nobody started reporting the news that "Government is now molesting children!"
Blah, reactionary clap-trap "arrr we hate bush arrr".
As far as the NSA - they don't need to buy your personal information. They already have it.
Slashdot Mirror
If the EFF would add Union to their name, then they'd be the "EFF U" which is catchy and marketable.
Just saying.
Yes, because they are legitimate business records.
Best Buy is allowed to keep all your credit card purchases on file, and use those records however they see fit in the course of business - including selling your purchasing habits to a marketing firm for analysis.
If you don't like it, tough titties. Move to a developing nation that doesn't have technology yet.
When did I do that?
Here's another atrocity in government. I've been informed that postal employees aren't allowed to install hilarious dilbert screensavers on their workstations!
You, and people like you, saying it's "futile" and third party votes are "wasted" are the cause of the two party problem. You've helped brainwash the american voter into thinking it's a coin toss, and he should pick the "lesser of two evils".
Then on election day, we see some bullshit like "49% people favor John Kerry and 51% people favor George Bush". Which we all know is wrong. Nearly everybody, in the last election, thought both candidates sucked.
Vote for who you want to vote for. They may not win, but we won't be sending some assclown to the whitehouse with some bullshit "51% american support" argument. The next time the republicrats win, I want to see the number say "7%", followed by maybe Greens or Libertarians with 4% and 5% type numbers. I want the numbers to clearly demonstrate what the people want.
If that were to happen, and the two parties will realize just how tenuous their connection to the voters are, and things will start to change.
But instead, all of the apathetic slugs out there contribute the the problem by saying "I really like blah-blahs positions but I dont want to waste my vote so I dunno, Hillary Clinton I guess".
Vote for the Pirate Party if you like them. They don't have to win to send a message.
The state can block whatever they want on their own computers, it doesn't affect YRO until they start blocking it on your computers.
In fact, to say that an organization or individual (government, business, or regular Joe) doesn't have the right to block whatever they want on their own private computers, certainly does directly interfere with my right to set my firewall and spam filters up however the fuck I want.
Go back to China, Commie.
True enough. "Copyright Reform Party", or "Intellectual Property Reform Party" or, I dunno, I'm not one of those political campaign managers, but almost anything would be better.
Actually, "Privateer" evokes a revolutionary-era image of our forefathers fighting for freedom from the (still) hated British.
But, these guys cant seriously expect votes, it's just a publicity stunt to get people to notice them and get some press. Unfortunately, they'll likely make a joke of the whole issue and hurt the cause more than help it, like when some elitist hollywood jackass get's all political and drags the party image into the mud.
Most people would vote GNAA before Pirate.
My biggest complaint is people who wrote some software to display text on an LED sign think the rest of the world should format their data for him.
It's like the people who start whining "but I use lynx from a console to browse the web! Stoppit with all the frames and java and flash and pictures!"
The web is, and was intended to be, graphical, and RSS by extension is the same way.
Modify your code to strip out the URLS and display only the data you want. You can wait for the rest of the world to do it for you, but it's not going to happen.
I don't know, RSS is more descriptive of the online community of people who keep their diaries on the web (I don't use the b word or the b-sphere word because they are the stupidest contrived words ever).
In that situation, I just mentally redescribe RSS as "Really Shitty Stories", or "Retarded Stupid Slapnuts", or variations thereof.
Lets face it, with few exceptions, there's no "news" coming out of the average jerks web browser based journal of daily minutia.
I propose "Perpetually backed up Digital Sewer Line" or PBUESL.
Stop saying "blog". It's by far the stupidest pseudo-word ever.
Is there anything worthwhile to ask you, other than "Why did you invent CSS?" or "Why do you like OSS?", which wont ellicit the same canned responses we've all seen a thousand times before?
Do you have anything interesting to say?
I agree.
Water cooling was pretty neat when guys were repurposing aquarium pumps and heater cores from old plymouths, and grinding out their own blocks, and so on.
Ordering a kit from newegg and installing it... Yawn..
Guess what, I installed a zalman heatsink when the fan died on the old one. All bow down to my mad hacking skillzorz.
Hardware hacking went the same route as software hacking where kids running a script they downloaded get all the attention.
My PC works. And trust me, my buddies don't think it's "cool".
Dunno why you Mac guys have so many problems running Windows, but I bet it's user error.
Oh yeah, Apple uses intel now too.. So in the future, just bash "Win", leave the "tel" part out of it - MacTel has the same "flaws" now.
"Water", or even "mineral oil" doesn't sound as sciency as "glycol" or "isopropynol".
I think it's just the trying make the whole thing sound more technical than what it is - a little bit of plumbing with plastic tubes and an aquarium pump.
No but it blinks and has a kick ass R-Type sticker on it!
I'm so tired of all the wannabes who case mod their PC with a hundred extra fans and a bling bling paint job and post about all their computer expertise and how much they could overclock it.
It's just boring, and it's not computer science. A 5% overclock is pretty much insignifigant. Wake me up when somebody comes up with some cool new algortithm that improves a process by at least an order of magnitude - thats where the real performance gains come in.
A side effect of the "Dr Nick Riviera will perform any operation for 99.99" mentality that the US seems to be adopting.
You would think common sense would dictate that one would check out the guy who's going to blast their eyeballs with laserbeams, but, they dont.
My wife had it done, we did a lot of research into clinics and doctors and so on beforehand, and she was ecstatic with the results. She still has glasses she uses only for night driving, but the freedom from contacts and glasses was worth the risk in her mind.
I guarantee the Navy isn't using the 399.99 lasik guys. The best hospitals in the US are probably military.
Faster? Nah. More reliable? Hell yah.
I never whine about getting fragged in an online deathmatch because someone reheated a cup of coffee in the microwave, or the phone rang, or the channel 5 news van ran a remote feed too close to my house.
I whine because the guy was CAMPING AND THATS LIKE TOTALLY GHEY MAN STFU N00B kekekekekeke
Actually it's all Cat 5e, the only Cat 6 cable I have is from switch to my main desktop - and even then just because it's what I grabbed at best buy.
Wires: the new wireless!
You can analyze spectrums all day long, meanwhile me and my Cat 6 are enjoying gigabit speeds! Thats some fast, fast porn baby!
Don't let the fact that it's in Milan fool you, there won't be a single supermodel in attendance.
It's a total sausage fest, man. Count me out.
Are you actually worried that a terrorist is going to kill you?
I live just outside of DC, and watched the pentagon burn, and as a matter of fact - if not for a scheduling fuckup, I very well could have not only been in the building, but in the newly rebuilt com center (where the plane hit). I spend most of my time on site in government buildings or police departments, which are probably the target for attacks.. So, kinda.
Are you really concerned about the dealers on the corner selling drugs
Yes, they carry guns and every night theres a report of some kid being shot in a drug deal gone bad, or someone caught in the crossfire. If you're so cavalier about it, I can show you some real cheap real estate in DC or Baltimore. The police are afraid to go there at night, for fuck sakes.
or the kids next door smoking pot?
Pretty tricky combining the two into one question. The kids next door smoking pot? Nah. Invite me over. The meth addict next door? Yeah. I've seen what that does to peoples brains.
What is it you are afraid of and why?
Sharks! They eat people.
Does the government need personal information on millions of americans to fight what you are most afraid of?
Those millions of americans people are the government, it's a democracy, remember?
If you want to register to vote, you give that information to them.
This article, in as much as it is news, and it's about individuals - who happen to be employed by the government - obtaining personal info. Nothing you or I couldn't do. The connection to the government seems tenuous, at best it's about some people abusing their positions. A problem as old as time itself.
They sound like my first attempts at making sound with my Commodore 64 when I was 8.
Well we know where the link goes, I'm just saying it should read "According to an article by the Associated Press"
You know, cite the actual *source* of the article. It's just a pet peeve of mine. I see other sites saying equally stupid things like "according to an article on slashdot", which in turn refers to an article on Yahoo, and eventually if you want to find out the source of the information, you have to follow the chain upstream until you do.
IMO, the source of the news is every bit as important as the news itself, if not more.
And yes, I'm aware its a complete non sequitor.
According to an article on google Microsoft is bad and linux is super fantastic!
Ok first off, this is an AP story - not a Yahoo! News story, because Yahoo! News doesn't write or report news any more than slashdot does, they just cut and paste.
But lets look down the bulleted list:
_A U.S. Labor Department employee who used her government e-mail address and phone number to buy two months of personal cellular phone records of a woman in New Jersey.
_A buyer who received credit card information about the father of murder victim Jon Benet Ramsey.
_A buyer who obtained 20 printed pages of phone calls by pro basketball player Damon Jones of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
OK, so these are individual people who happen to work for the Government - not the government itself, ie; it's not like theres the "department of buying phone records" set up somewhere.
I was watching MSNBC's "to catch a predator", the sting operation where they lure pedophiles to a house thinking there's a 13 year old waiting, and then bust them. One guy they busted was some sort of government official, but nobody started reporting the news that "Government is now molesting children!"
Blah, reactionary clap-trap "arrr we hate bush arrr".
As far as the NSA - they don't need to buy your personal information. They already have it.