I record everything I see and hear..using organic video and audio sensors, onto a storage medium consisting of neurons and synapses. Does this mean they would throw me out, too?
Perception and memory are notoriously unreliable.
You leave McDonald's with no clear picture of what happened there.
From the simplest of magic tricks, parlor games and puzzles, to elaborately staged classroom exercises in law and psychology, the basic principles have been known and understood for generations.
I can't help but think that the geek's ever-recording electronic eye is an obscene intrusion into the life of others. When augmented reality meets the real world expect "the almighty augmented" to take some hits --- from this direction at least.
Last time I looked at one of these Linux laptops, the price was higher than the $350 Windows laptop I saw at staples.
Product that sits on the shelves costs money. Successfully marketing the "Other OS" has always been a problem --- even Walmart couldn't crack that one. Dual inventory and support structures cost money. After-market sales in the Windows market are golden. The return is always better on the mass market product.
It'd be nicer to see a MS licence rebate for doing a clean linux install, now a model program like that would be news.
I am betting Dell sees a better return for its investment from the Home Shopping Network then from sales to the lone geek shopping for Ubuntu laptop online.
Talk of a rebate is nonsense when retailers won't stock bare bones because bare bones doesn't sell worth shit.
The US bribed someone to get him out of the way so they can get a more acquiescent judge who won't give a damn about what the law says
The geek's instinctive --- and utterly lame ---- excuse for everything that goes wrong for him in law and politics is bribery. It is lazy and, worse, it is stupid. But always worth a quick mod up to +5.
I remember the U.S. jigsaw puzzle maps I played with as a kid.
Each state puzzle piece decorated with colorful icons representing their economic base, population, geographical features, travel and tourism, principal cities, historical events and so on.
You could see political alignments and policy decisions falling neatly into place.
There was more political maturity and good sense in these grade school geographic puzzles then anything I have seen here.
I would think the combination of a cheap tablet with an HTML5 based OS on it is a decent alternative to laptops and netbooks for elementary education purposes.
How many times have we been down this road only to see it dead-end?
The browser ballot isn't aimed at people like us. It's aimed at the kind of people who think that "the big blue E" is "the internet".
Chrome. Firefox. Opera.
They live and die by the add click.
Opera --- the weakest of the lot --- pushed hardest for the ballot.
It is at the very least disingenuous, I think, to claim that the only purpose of the ballot was to serve the interests of the people and not to give a leg up to Microsoft's political rivals and competitors,
The AOL client of the nineties shoved all the technical complexities of the Internet behind a single easy-to-use graphical interface that encouraged tens of millions of people to go online.
The "Internet Suite" of apps --- a half dozen or more --- disappears. The geek may cling to his stand-alone clients for FTP, USENET and the rest, but the masses move on.
The growing sophistication and capabilities of the web browser simply accelerates the process.
Time to wake up, The Humble Bundle statistics [humblebundle.com] prove that DRM-free games are indeed wanted.
The Humble Bundle (eight games in Bundle V) can expect to see $8 from the Windows gamer and $12 from the Linux gamer --- for games which have already had broad exposure and sales on the Windows platform.
The Indie game with a solid reputation (Amnesia, Limbo, Machinarium) sold for five percent of their retail price.
Who holds the design and patent rights to the keys? I am betting that they are legally protected in some way.
There is only one set of legitimate buyers for these handcuffs.
Which means that being caught with one of these copycat keys in your possession is going to be hell of a thing to explain to an unsympathetic and skeptical cop,
Sorry, your entire highlighting doesn't work in such a case. There is ZERO expectation of privacy.
Spy cam software secretly put in place by a third party.
Installed for the purpose of capturing candid close-up images of customers using demo machines.
Not part of the legitimate and expected in-store surveillance system.
Not so gross a conceit as placing cameras behind the bathroom mirrors --- but not so very different a conception either.
Shots to be Instantly uploaded to the web as "art "or "entertainment ---"
without the consent of the participants to their possible public humiliation and with a very real potential for commercial exploitation and other abuses.
There can be a non-zero expectation of privacy even within a public place. The bolded examples are relevant. Photo Attorney's warnings are relevant.
Yes, I do photography and film. Yes, I attended school for it.
But were you sleeping in class?
In general, when people are in public, you may photograph them. The use of the photographs can be restricted due to certain privacy rights. The rights for a person to certain kinds of privacy are recognized in most states, but differently for each one. It is, therefore, tricky to know what you can do. The safest approach is to follow the most restrictive one. Privacy rights can be subdivided into four areas.
The first is "invasion of privacy" or "intrusion upon another's seclusion." It happens when someone actually intrudes a person's private domain that would be considered offensive to the average person. As a photographer, the act of going on someone's land without permission would violate this privacy. You don't have to take the photo or publish the photo for the action to be unlawful. Some courts have found an invasion of privacy even when photographing someone in public. In those cases, the photographers harass their subjects, use hidden cameras, or wait for a woman's skirt to be blown at a fun house. It also is unlawful to view and photograph people inside of residences or other places where privacy is expected (businesses are ok), even when the photographer is standing in public.
The second is the public disclosure of private facts.
The third right of privacy is the portrayal of a person in false light. This happens often with photographs, but usually because of the caption. It requires someone to be publicly portrayed in a false manner in which an ordinary person would find the portrayal offensive. To be liable, the publisher of the photograph must have known or recklessly disregarded the probably falsity of what is represented. It is similar to defamation, when someone's reputation is damaged by a statement that is known or should be known to be false. False light does not require that the person was damaged.
The fourth right of privacy is very different from the other three. It is the commercial appropriation of someone's name or likeness without permission, or misappropriation. It also is known as the right of publicity. It happens when someone uses the name or likeness of another without consent to gain some commercial benefit. It usually occurs when a photograph of a person is used in an advertisement without the person's permission. That is why model releases are so important-they show that you have the person's permission to use the person's name or likeness. Permission is not required for editorial or newsworthy publications.
Be sure to consider other's rights of privacy before you click the shutter.
Take my advice; get professional help.
PhotoAttorney
People are totally in denial about the death of privacy, and they're just itching to shoot the messenger, because there's nothing else that can be done about it at this point.
But someone did do something about it.
Which is why the Secret Service was knocking on his door.
On October 26, 2001, President Bush signed into law H.R. 3162, the USA PATRIOT Act. The U.S. Secret Service was mandated by this Act to establish a nationwide network of Electronic Crimes Task Forces (ECTFs). The concept of the ECTF network is to bring together not only federal, state and local law enforcement, but also prosecutors, private industry and academia. The common purpose is the prevention, detection, mitigation and aggressive investigation of attacks on the nation's financial and critical infrastructures.
The Secret Service's ECTF and Electronic Crimes Working Group initiatives prioritize investigative cases that involve electronic crimes. These initiatives provide necessary support and resources to field investigations that meet any one of the following criteria:
Significant economic or community impact
Participation of organized criminal groups involving multiple districts or transnational organizations
Use of schemes involving new technology
Identity Crimes - Identity crimes are defined as the misuse of personal or financial identifiers in order to gain something of value and/or facilitate other criminal activity. The Secret Service is the primary federal agency tasked with investigating identity theft/fraud and its related activities under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1028. Identity crimes are some of the fastest growing and most serious economic crimes in the United States for both financial institutions and persons whose identifying information has been illegally used. The Secret Service records criminal complaints, assists victims in contacting other relevant investigative and consumer protection agencies and works with other federal, state and local law enforcement and reporting agencies to identify perpetrators.
Identity crimes investigated by the Secret Service include, but are not limited to, the following:
Computer Fraud - Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1030, authorizes the Secret Service to investigate computer crimes. Violations enforced under this statute include unauthorized access to protected computers, theft of data such as personal identification used to commit identity theft, denial of service attacks used for extortion or disruption of e-commerce and malware (malicious software) distribution to include viruses intended for financial gain.
The "spy camera" project that exposes kids can cast you into very deep water.
Forensic Services
As part of the 1994 Crime Bill, Congress mandated the U.S. Secret Service to provide forensic/technical assistance in matters involving missing and exploited children. On April 30, 2003, President George W. Bush signed the PROTECT Act of 2003, known as the "Amber Alert Bill," which gave full authorization to the U.S. Secret Service in this area.
What is objectionable about existing toilet paper from an "open source" point of view? And patents only last about 20 years while toilet paper has been manufactured for much longer than that, so any patents on the manufacturing process or the paper itself would have expired some time ago.
This assumes that the composition and manufacturing of toilet paper hasn't changed in twenty years.
Toilet paper products vary greatly in the distinguishing technical factors: sizes, weights, roughness, softness, chemical residues, "finger-breakthrough" resistance, water-absorption, etc. The larger companies have very detailed, scientific market surveys to determine which marketing sectors require/demand which of the many technical qualities. Modern toilet paper may have a light coating of aloe or lotion or wax worked into the paper to reduce roughness.
In order to advance decomposition of the paper in septic tanks or drainage, the paper used has shorter fibres than facial tissue or writing paper. The manufacturer tries to reach an optimal balance between rapid decomposition (which requires shorter fibres) and sturdiness (which requires longer fibres).
We've recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.
The mistake was in ignoring the needs and values of institutional, enterprise, and governmental markets where Apple had been finally making some headway.
Organizations which have policies to require EPEAT compliance include Ford Motor Co., KPMG and Kaiser Permanente, in the private sector, as well as several universities and federal, state and municipal agencies. The U.S. government requires that 95% of the electronics purchased by its agencies be certified by EPEAT.
According to the DOE, environmental benefits of EPEAT purchasing in FY11 included an energy savings of 50 million kilowatt hours and a projected cost savings of $4.8 million.
[David Daoud, research director, PCs and Green IT, at IDC] said Apple is bound to find some resistance from buyers who aren't happy about the decision, but believes it needs only to have "a PR discussion" as to "why they're not being environmental. If you're Apple you have to look at the implications of certifying every single product. As much as I'd love to say it's a bad move, the financial guys are looking at it differently."
If you want to enforce privacy of information you do two simple things.
YOU DON"T F*CKING ALLOW IT TO WALK OUT THE FRONT DOOR.
That doesn't solve the needs of the EMT who arrives to find you on the floor and responsive. You'll have privacy a-plenty when you're dead.
Mobile access to confidential information is not a problem you can simply wish away. There are two many situations in which it is useful, too many situations in which it is vital.
As a former enterprise-grade desktop support staffer, I know there have always been ways to disable the Windows Gadget platform. If not through GPO, at least through most other alternative rights-management schemes.
For a single user in Win 7 it is as simple as this:
Search > Windows Features > Turn Windows Features On or Off > Windows Gadget Platform
Slashdot Mirror
MacDonald's hostility to photography, like that of Starbucks, is ridiculous.
It may not be ridiculous to their patrons.
The geek's sense of entitlement is bottomless --- if he has the tech he can do whatever he wants with it.
I don't know how to get the message across that this is a very bad attitude to take and wins him no friends.
This is a PR nightmare for McDonald's and they're only making it worse.
To the geek, its a PR nightmare.
For McDonald's patrons, perhaps, a reason to celebrate. The geek has --- no --- idea of how others perceive him.
But then again, what can you expect from McDonalds staff? If they were so smart, they'd have my job.
I record everything I see and hear..using organic video and audio sensors, onto a storage medium consisting of neurons and synapses. Does this mean they would throw me out, too?
Perception and memory are notoriously unreliable.
You leave McDonald's with no clear picture of what happened there.
From the simplest of magic tricks, parlor games and puzzles, to elaborately staged classroom exercises in law and psychology, the basic principles have been known and understood for generations.
Eyewitness: How Accurate Is Visual Memory?
I can't help but think that the geek's ever-recording electronic eye is an obscene intrusion into the life of others. When augmented reality meets the real world expect "the almighty augmented" to take some hits --- from this direction at least.
Last time I looked at one of these Linux laptops, the price was higher than the $350 Windows laptop I saw at staples.
Product that sits on the shelves costs money. Successfully marketing the "Other OS" has always been a problem --- even Walmart couldn't crack that one. Dual inventory and support structures cost money. After-market sales in the Windows market are golden. The return is always better on the mass market product.
It'd be nicer to see a MS licence rebate for doing a clean linux install, now a model program like that would be news.
I am betting Dell sees a better return for its investment from the Home Shopping Network then from sales to the lone geek shopping for Ubuntu laptop online.
Talk of a rebate is nonsense when retailers won't stock bare bones because bare bones doesn't sell worth shit.
The US bribed someone to get him out of the way so they can get a more acquiescent judge who won't give a damn about what the law says
The geek's instinctive --- and utterly lame ---- excuse for everything that goes wrong for him in law and politics is bribery. It is lazy and, worse, it is stupid. But always worth a quick mod up to +5.
I remember the U.S. jigsaw puzzle maps I played with as a kid.
Each state puzzle piece decorated with colorful icons representing their economic base, population, geographical features, travel and tourism, principal cities, historical events and so on.
You could see political alignments and policy decisions falling neatly into place.
There was more political maturity and good sense in these grade school geographic puzzles then anything I have seen here.
But that was well over a decade ago, how is that relevant today?
For one answer:
Top 5 Browsers from Jun 2011 to Jun 2012 --- Europe
Top 9 Mobile Browsers In Europe From Jun 2011 to Jun 2012
Mobile vs. Desktop --- Europe
The mainstream desktop browsers are competitive running under Windows. The mobile browser is bound to the OS.
I would think the combination of a cheap tablet with an HTML5 based OS on it is a decent alternative to laptops and netbooks for elementary education purposes.
How many times have we been down this road only to see it dead-end?
Grading the Digital School ---- In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores
The browser ballot isn't aimed at people like us. It's aimed at the kind of people who think that "the big blue E" is "the internet".
Chrome. Firefox. Opera.
They live and die by the add click.
Opera --- the weakest of the lot --- pushed hardest for the ballot.
It is at the very least disingenuous, I think, to claim that the only purpose of the ballot was to serve the interests of the people and not to give a leg up to Microsoft's political rivals and competitors,
28 million PCs sold ---
and no one notices or gives a damn about the missing browser ballot.
Not a word.
Not a whisper from Opera.
Google. Mozilla...
Until today, Slashdot, Ars Technica, The Register and all the rest have been as silent as the grave.
The AOL client of the nineties shoved all the technical complexities of the Internet behind a single easy-to-use graphical interface that encouraged tens of millions of people to go online.
The "Internet Suite" of apps --- a half dozen or more --- disappears. The geek may cling to his stand-alone clients for FTP, USENET and the rest, but the masses move on.
The growing sophistication and capabilities of the web browser simply accelerates the process.
Time to wake up, The Humble Bundle statistics [humblebundle.com] prove that DRM-free games are indeed wanted.
The Humble Bundle (eight games in Bundle V) can expect to see $8 from the Windows gamer and $12 from the Linux gamer --- for games which have already had broad exposure and sales on the Windows platform.
The Indie game with a solid reputation (Amnesia, Limbo, Machinarium) sold for five percent of their retail price.
Who holds the design and patent rights to the keys? I am betting that they are legally protected in some way.
There is only one set of legitimate buyers for these handcuffs.
Which means that being caught with one of these copycat keys in your possession is going to be hell of a thing to explain to an unsympathetic and skeptical cop,
Gee, what if apps were skinnable and people could make them look like whatever they want?
This is hell at work. Change of shifts. Temps and volunteers. You need to have people who can sit down at any desk at any time and be productive,
Sorry, your entire highlighting doesn't work in such a case. There is ZERO expectation of privacy.
Spy cam software secretly put in place by a third party.
Installed for the purpose of capturing candid close-up images of customers using demo machines.
Not part of the legitimate and expected in-store surveillance system.
Not so gross a conceit as placing cameras behind the bathroom mirrors --- but not so very different a conception either.
Shots to be Instantly uploaded to the web as "art "or "entertainment ---"
without the consent of the participants to their possible public humiliation and with a very real potential for commercial exploitation and other abuses.
There can be a non-zero expectation of privacy even within a public place. The bolded examples are relevant. Photo Attorney's warnings are relevant.
Yes, I do photography and film. Yes, I attended school for it.
But were you sleeping in class?
In general, when people are in public, you may photograph them. The use of the photographs can be restricted due to certain privacy rights. The rights for a person to certain kinds of privacy are recognized in most states, but differently for each one. It is, therefore, tricky to know what you can do. The safest approach is to follow the most restrictive one. Privacy rights can be subdivided into four areas.
The first is "invasion of privacy" or "intrusion upon another's seclusion." It happens when someone actually intrudes a person's private domain that would be considered offensive to the average person. As a photographer, the act of going on someone's land without permission would violate this privacy. You don't have to take the photo or publish the photo for the action to be unlawful. Some courts have found an invasion of privacy even when photographing someone in public. In those cases, the photographers harass their subjects, use hidden cameras, or wait for a woman's skirt to be blown at a fun house. It also is unlawful to view and photograph people inside of residences or other places where privacy is expected (businesses are ok), even when the photographer is standing in public.
The second is the public disclosure of private facts.
The third right of privacy is the portrayal of a person in false light. This happens often with photographs, but usually because of the caption. It requires someone to be publicly portrayed in a false manner in which an ordinary person would find the portrayal offensive. To be liable, the publisher of the photograph must have known or recklessly disregarded the probably falsity of what is represented. It is similar to defamation, when someone's reputation is damaged by a statement that is known or should be known to be false. False light does not require that the person was damaged.
The fourth right of privacy is very different from the other three. It is the commercial appropriation of someone's name or likeness without permission, or misappropriation. It also is known as the right of publicity. It happens when someone uses the name or likeness of another without consent to gain some commercial benefit. It usually occurs when a photograph of a person is used in an advertisement without the person's permission. That is why model releases are so important-they show that you have the person's permission to use the person's name or likeness. Permission is not required for editorial or newsworthy publications.
Be sure to consider other's rights of privacy before you click the shutter.
Take my advice; get professional help.
PhotoAttorney
Rights of Privacy Concerns for Photographers
The artist also could have said it was for an art project but spies don't generally tell the truth about what they are doing.
This "artist" could also be lying when he says he asked for permission to do anything. We only have his word on that.
People are totally in denial about the death of privacy, and they're just itching to shoot the messenger, because there's nothing else that can be done about it at this point.
But someone did do something about it.
Which is why the Secret Service was knocking on his door.
He asked permission and they allowed him to do this. RTFA.
Permission from who?
The store manager? Security? Apple corporate?
Permission for what?
To install spy cam software with email or wifi transmission on Macs in store ?
Electronic Crime Task Forces
On October 26, 2001, President Bush signed into law H.R. 3162, the USA PATRIOT Act. The U.S. Secret Service was mandated by this Act to establish a nationwide network of Electronic Crimes Task Forces (ECTFs). The concept of the ECTF network is to bring together not only federal, state and local law enforcement, but also prosecutors, private industry and academia. The common purpose is the prevention, detection, mitigation and aggressive investigation of attacks on the nation's financial and critical infrastructures.
The Secret Service's ECTF and Electronic Crimes Working Group initiatives prioritize investigative cases that involve electronic crimes. These initiatives provide necessary support and resources to field investigations that meet any one of the following criteria:
Significant economic or community impact
Participation of organized criminal groups involving multiple districts or transnational organizations
Use of schemes involving new technology
Electronic Crimes Task Forces and Working Groups
Criminal Investigations
Identity Crimes - Identity crimes are defined as the misuse of personal or financial identifiers in order to gain something of value and/or facilitate other criminal activity. The Secret Service is the primary federal agency tasked with investigating identity theft/fraud and its related activities under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1028. Identity crimes are some of the fastest growing and most serious economic crimes in the United States for both financial institutions and persons whose identifying information has been illegally used. The Secret Service records criminal complaints, assists victims in contacting other relevant investigative and consumer protection agencies and works with other federal, state and local law enforcement and reporting agencies to identify perpetrators.
Identity crimes investigated by the Secret Service include, but are not limited to, the following:
Credit Card/Access Device Fraud (Skimming)
Check Fraud
Bank Fraud
False Identification Fraud
Passport/Visa Fraud
Identity Theft
Computer Fraud - Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1030, authorizes the Secret Service to investigate computer crimes. Violations enforced under this statute include unauthorized access to protected computers, theft of data such as personal identification used to commit identity theft, denial of service attacks used for extortion or disruption of e-commerce and malware (malicious software) distribution to include viruses intended for financial gain.
Criminal Investigations
The "spy camera" project that exposes kids can cast you into very deep water.
Forensic Services
As part of the 1994 Crime Bill, Congress mandated the U.S. Secret Service to provide forensic/technical assistance in matters involving missing and exploited children. On April 30, 2003, President George W. Bush signed the PROTECT Act of 2003, known as the "Amber Alert Bill," which gave full authorization to the U.S. Secret Service in this area.
Forensic Services
What is objectionable about existing toilet paper from an "open source" point of view? And patents only last about 20 years while toilet paper has been manufactured for much longer than that, so any patents on the manufacturing process or the paper itself would have expired some time ago.
This assumes that the composition and manufacturing of toilet paper hasn't changed in twenty years.
Toilet paper products vary greatly in the distinguishing technical factors: sizes, weights, roughness, softness, chemical residues, "finger-breakthrough" resistance, water-absorption, etc. The larger companies have very detailed, scientific market surveys to determine which marketing sectors require/demand which of the many technical qualities. Modern toilet paper may have a light coating of aloe or lotion or wax worked into the paper to reduce roughness.
In order to advance decomposition of the paper in septic tanks or drainage, the paper used has shorter fibres than facial tissue or writing paper. The manufacturer tries to reach an optimal balance between rapid decomposition (which requires shorter fibres) and sturdiness (which requires longer fibres).
Toilet paper
Or maybe not so brilliant.
We've recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.
A Letter From Bob Mansfield
The mistake was in ignoring the needs and values of institutional, enterprise, and governmental markets where Apple had been finally making some headway.
Organizations which have policies to require EPEAT compliance include Ford Motor Co., KPMG and Kaiser Permanente, in the private sector, as well as several universities and federal, state and municipal agencies. The U.S. government requires that 95% of the electronics purchased by its agencies be certified by EPEAT.
According to the DOE, environmental benefits of EPEAT purchasing in FY11 included an energy savings of 50 million kilowatt hours and a projected cost savings of $4.8 million.
[David Daoud, research director, PCs and Green IT, at IDC] said Apple is bound to find some resistance from buyers who aren't happy about the decision, but believes it needs only to have "a PR discussion" as to "why they're not being environmental. If you're Apple you have to look at the implications of certifying every single product. As much as I'd love to say it's a bad move, the financial guys are looking at it differently."
EPEAT Customers React to Apple's Withdrawal
PR was not enough.
If you want to enforce privacy of information you do two simple things.
YOU DON"T F*CKING ALLOW IT TO WALK OUT THE FRONT DOOR.
That doesn't solve the needs of the EMT who arrives to find you on the floor and responsive. You'll have privacy a-plenty when you're dead.
Mobile access to confidential information is not a problem you can simply wish away. There are two many situations in which it is useful, too many situations in which it is vital.
If the state isn't doing anything wrong, it doesn't have anything to hide.
Your medical records, for example?
As a former enterprise-grade desktop support staffer, I know there have always been ways to disable the Windows Gadget platform. If not through GPO, at least through most other alternative rights-management schemes.
For a single user in Win 7 it is as simple as this:
Search > Windows Features > Turn Windows Features On or Off > Windows Gadget Platform