They took it away for a time, but apparently now it's back. The only difference I can see between the old Virtual Debit Card and the new one is the random account number generator.
You're working for the government. India cannot be trusted, and even American owned companies cannot be trusted not to outsource to India. At least some part of your data is going to be data about your constituent citzens. Do you really want the front page of whatever paper your Bureaucrats and Legislative body respects to have a headline about you losing data to identity thieves in India?
That alone should argue for you keeping all data in-house and relatively under control.
For me, and it might just be due to my Asperger's syndrome, bright orange is not the best color in the world, no matter what. In fact, just about anything brighter than the forest green of the front page can trigger migraines.....
And if you have a TI 99/4A with the Terminal Emulator Cartridge, here's the Speak'n'Spell's basic operating system in TI BASIC: 10 Open #1:"SPEECH", Output 20 Input A$ 30 Print #1:A$ 40 Goto 20
Even more entertaining, type all that in and then type LIST "SPEECH", and the computer will read you the program.
Ditto on the TI99/4A. For Christmas, my mother (a semi-retired grade school teacher) set up a mini TI99/4A computer lab in the basement of her house- it was a real hit with the grandkids, 4 computers and 4 kids. Surprising since most of these computers are 25 years older than the kids who were playing on them.
In the end though, the little kids went back to playing Thomas the Tank Engine and setting up track- while my brother and I challenged each other to a two-player coopertative game of Hangman on the TIs. He won...leading my father to come downstairs and say "All my little boys are playing trains, and my big boys are playing computers".
At which point you start getting into different sizes of infinity, and different rates at which various equations reach infinity. A descrete point is a descrete point regardless- no matter what your scale is.
Not a good analogy. Neither inflation nor ordinary non-accelerating expansion adds new points of space; it just changes the distances between existing points. Think of a NxN array which gives the distance between point i and point j; expansion just increases the magnitudes of the values in the array. It doesn't increase the size of the array.
But what about when the distance is expressed in points of a given size? What does it do then? Unless you increase the size of the array, there's no way to account for the new increase in magnitude. Point i is expressed by it's position in the array (x,y) and point j is expressed by it's position in the array (x1,y1) and thus the distance between them is (x1-x, y1-y). Increase the magnitude so that the distance between them is now (2x1-x, 2y1-y) and you've effectively added points in space between them.
I like the other answer better, which is more like cell division than actual expansion- the value in point x,y becomes divided into points x1,y1 and x2,y2 and the value in point x,y ceases to exist.
It's possible. Generic speech recognition for decision trees may be a long way off, but speech-to-text engines with 80% accuracy have been around since the mid 1990s. It is entirely possible for an IP telephony company to record all conversations into text files and index them. It's also perfectly legal- as ISPs have evaded, so far, becoming common carriers under FCC rules.
When I got an FCC radio license, one of the things I was supposed to know was that if a communication was not sent to me or parties that I was an agent for, I was not allowed to disclose it. The law didn't make an exception for disclosure to government employees. And that was with a technology that everybody understood could be overheard by anyone who was listening. Should email be different?
According to the ISPs it should be- in fact, Google's business model for G-Mail practically depends upon it. Don't like it? Do what I did- write your congress critter to get ISPs regulated as common carriers under the FCC (right now they're not).
Now that's an explaination I can believe. Thank you very much. Too bad slashdot doesn't let me give brief answers where appropriate- this additional sentence brought to you by the 20 second thought requirement.
If ISPs do not fit this definition and it is in fact okay for the government without any warrant to look at your communications (as stored by ISPs in the process of transporting them), then it is also okay for your ISP to sell your communications to the highest bidder or just post it publicly for all to see.
And thus the basic business model behind GMail- give you a ton of space on THEIR servers so that they can mine YOUR data and target you for advertising. That's why- if you read the whole article- ISPs have been fighting against becoming common carriers, so that they can sell your communications to the highest bidder (or at least, the information therin that is relevant to that highest bidder).
After all, you have no expectation of privacy when sending your email message through an ISP, right? I, like most people, do expect privacy when sending my email through an ISP. An ISP is, after all, acting as a common carrier. Even if the FCC, which is not empowered by congress to make such a determination, would not agree.
Then write your congress critter to change the law so that the FCC is empowered by Congress to make a determination. Until then, you're pretty much hosed on this issue.
I agree with you that we SHOULD be able to trust ISPs as common carriers- but the fact of the matter is, we can't.
So, basically you have an expectation to privacy if you live in a home that you (and you alone) own, and you never interact with anyone except face to face, you pay for everything in cash, and don't buy any sort of utilities, insurance, or have a bank account, and you know for sure that the people you do talk to (and near) face to face are not government agents or informants. Did I just describe the Soviet Union, we did win the cold war, right? What was the point of that whole exercise if we have our own KGB?
We didn't win the cold war- we just lost it slower than the other guy.
Are you saying that the idea of a frivolous lawsuit is a myth or that governmentally or politically affiliated persons file them as disinformation?
Both. Frivolous lawsuits are rarely either frivolous or actually about the lawsuit- what they're really about is damaged communities.
I should clarify that I can envision a lawsuit as described above as being winnable. It's not an entirely frivolous suit either, as it would likely achieve the end of forcing the business owner to put down the sand in the first place. I do find it an unfair lawsuit, as failing to place sand does not rise to the level of negligence, unless there's a law stating that all business owners must salt the sidewalk when it snows.
I took it as such enough that as a homeowner, I always salt the sidewalk in front of my house when it is icy/snowy. Why should a business follow different rules than a homeowner?
Guilt is not legally the same as liability. Liability does not imply moral culpability. Perhaps if civil courts were run by the Vatican, then this would be true from your perspective. I agree with you on the wrongness of harming community relationships. Fighting a lawsuit harms both the plaintiff and the defendant, and rarely are these settled in a way that leaves amicable relationships intact. What communities need is a bit more forgiveness, and a lot less incentive for lawyers and plaintiffs to file lawsuits except as a last resort.
Totally agreed there. Which leads to one of my journals- on guilt not being permanent.
So, have you thought about playing the insurance lottery today? Trust me, people in your neighborhood have and about the only way to be safe from this is either (a) plenty of insurance or (b) zero assets.
I do both. I keep my assets low, and my insurance high.
I completely agree that the laws have dragged behind, and that something needs to be done. The correct way to get new laws passed is Congress, not the courts.
Why aren't emails considered papers and thus subject to the 4th Amendment? Who defines papers, effects, etc. Congress? The Courts? Or We The People?
A combination of Congress and the Courts. Certainly not "We the People", who signed our rights away to the corporations in 1876.
Has it ever been used for anything useful or is it just a cute decoration hanging on the Bill of Rights?
The entire bill of rights became decoration some time ago now- long before you and I were born. Oh, they trot it out from time to time- but you've got to ask the Supreme Court what it means and Congress to pass laws to try to change what it means.
so if i buy a cd and my only cd player is in my computer, then the copy the gets put into memory is mine?
Yes, under fair use- plus the fact that the memory is in your possession- unlike:
or closer to your point. how about i own part of the internet backbone and the riaa transfers music across to it, does that mean i have rights to do what i want. all because they "asked" me to transfer a copy of it?
Now this is more interesting. As long as the RIAA was doing it- and it had no other restrictions, such as DRM code- they've given you a copy of it, and since you're not a common carrier, you'd have to look to your contract with the RIAA for guidance. If you have no contract with the RIAA, then they've just screwed their own copyright.
(b) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for an
officer, employee, or agent of the Federal Communications
Commission, in the normal course of his employment and in
discharge of the monitoring responsibilities exercised by the
Commission in the enforcement of chapter 5 of title 47 of the
United States Code, to intercept a wire or electronic
communication, or oral communication transmitted by radio, or to
disclose or use the information thereby obtained.
Slashdot Mirror
Was the missing three years- just what in the hell was Microsoft doing from 1977 to 1980 anyway?
Most ADSL and/or cable modems have a "Clone MAC Address" feature which allows you to change the MAC address.
They took it away for a time, but apparently now it's back. The only difference I can see between the old Virtual Debit Card and the new one is the random account number generator.
You're working for the government. India cannot be trusted, and even American owned companies cannot be trusted not to outsource to India. At least some part of your data is going to be data about your constituent citzens. Do you really want the front page of whatever paper your Bureaucrats and Legislative body respects to have a headline about you losing data to identity thieves in India?
That alone should argue for you keeping all data in-house and relatively under control.
For me, and it might just be due to my Asperger's syndrome, bright orange is not the best color in the world, no matter what. In fact, just about anything brighter than the forest green of the front page can trigger migraines.....
And if you have a TI 99/4A with the Terminal Emulator Cartridge, here's the Speak'n'Spell's basic operating system in TI BASIC:
10 Open #1:"SPEECH", Output
20 Input A$
30 Print #1:A$
40 Goto 20
Even more entertaining, type all that in and then type LIST "SPEECH", and the computer will read you the program.
And gained them back (slightly at least) a few years later when we all started using Radar to cook Popcorn (thanks to Pop Weaver's 3.5 oz bags....)
As opposed to the horrible color sense of the average Your Rights Online Slashdot Page?
Ditto on the TI99/4A. For Christmas, my mother (a semi-retired grade school teacher) set up a mini TI99/4A computer lab in the basement of her house- it was a real hit with the grandkids, 4 computers and 4 kids. Surprising since most of these computers are 25 years older than the kids who were playing on them.
In the end though, the little kids went back to playing Thomas the Tank Engine and setting up track- while my brother and I challenged each other to a two-player coopertative game of Hangman on the TIs. He won...leading my father to come downstairs and say "All my little boys are playing trains, and my big boys are playing computers".
At which point you start getting into different sizes of infinity, and different rates at which various equations reach infinity. A descrete point is a descrete point regardless- no matter what your scale is.
Not a good analogy. Neither inflation nor ordinary non-accelerating expansion adds new points of space; it just changes the distances between existing points. Think of a NxN array which gives the distance between point i and point j; expansion just increases the magnitudes of the values in the array. It doesn't increase the size of the array.
But what about when the distance is expressed in points of a given size? What does it do then? Unless you increase the size of the array, there's no way to account for the new increase in magnitude. Point i is expressed by it's position in the array (x,y) and point j is expressed by it's position in the array (x1,y1) and thus the distance between them is (x1-x, y1-y). Increase the magnitude so that the distance between them is now (2x1-x, 2y1-y) and you've effectively added points in space between them.
I like the other answer better, which is more like cell division than actual expansion- the value in point x,y becomes divided into points x1,y1 and x2,y2 and the value in point x,y ceases to exist.
It's possible. Generic speech recognition for decision trees may be a long way off, but speech-to-text engines with 80% accuracy have been around since the mid 1990s. It is entirely possible for an IP telephony company to record all conversations into text files and index them. It's also perfectly legal- as ISPs have evaded, so far, becoming common carriers under FCC rules.
When I got an FCC radio license, one of the things I was supposed to know was that if a communication was not sent to me or parties that I was an agent for, I was not allowed to disclose it. The law didn't make an exception for disclosure to government employees. And that was with a technology that everybody understood could be overheard by anyone who was listening. Should email be different?
According to the ISPs it should be- in fact, Google's business model for G-Mail practically depends upon it. Don't like it? Do what I did- write your congress critter to get ISPs regulated as common carriers under the FCC (right now they're not).
Now that's an explaination I can believe. Thank you very much. Too bad slashdot doesn't let me give brief answers where appropriate- this additional sentence brought to you by the 20 second thought requirement.
If ISPs do not fit this definition and it is in fact okay for the government without any warrant to look at your communications (as stored by ISPs in the process of transporting them), then it is also okay for your ISP to sell your communications to the highest bidder or just post it publicly for all to see.
And thus the basic business model behind GMail- give you a ton of space on THEIR servers so that they can mine YOUR data and target you for advertising. That's why- if you read the whole article- ISPs have been fighting against becoming common carriers, so that they can sell your communications to the highest bidder (or at least, the information therin that is relevant to that highest bidder).
After all, you have no expectation of privacy when sending your email message through an ISP, right? I, like most people, do expect privacy when sending my email through an ISP. An ISP is, after all, acting as a common carrier. Even if the FCC, which is not empowered by congress to make such a determination, would not agree.
Then write your congress critter to change the law so that the FCC is empowered by Congress to make a determination. Until then, you're pretty much hosed on this issue.
I agree with you that we SHOULD be able to trust ISPs as common carriers- but the fact of the matter is, we can't.
So, basically you have an expectation to privacy if you live in a home that you (and you alone) own, and you never interact with anyone except face to face, you pay for everything in cash, and don't buy any sort of utilities, insurance, or have a bank account, and you know for sure that the people you do talk to (and near) face to face are not government agents or informants. Did I just describe the Soviet Union, we did win the cold war, right? What was the point of that whole exercise if we have our own KGB?
We didn't win the cold war- we just lost it slower than the other guy.
Are you saying that the idea of a frivolous lawsuit is a myth or that governmentally or politically affiliated persons file them as disinformation?
Both. Frivolous lawsuits are rarely either frivolous or actually about the lawsuit- what they're really about is damaged communities.
I should clarify that I can envision a lawsuit as described above as being winnable. It's not an entirely frivolous suit either, as it would likely achieve the end of forcing the business owner to put down the sand in the first place. I do find it an unfair lawsuit, as failing to place sand does not rise to the level of negligence, unless there's a law stating that all business owners must salt the sidewalk when it snows.
I took it as such enough that as a homeowner, I always salt the sidewalk in front of my house when it is icy/snowy. Why should a business follow different rules than a homeowner?
Guilt is not legally the same as liability. Liability does not imply moral culpability. Perhaps if civil courts were run by the Vatican, then this would be true from your perspective. I agree with you on the wrongness of harming community relationships. Fighting a lawsuit harms both the plaintiff and the defendant, and rarely are these settled in a way that leaves amicable relationships intact. What communities need is a bit more forgiveness, and a lot less incentive for lawyers and plaintiffs to file lawsuits except as a last resort.
Totally agreed there. Which leads to one of my journals- on guilt not being permanent.
Not according to wikipedia. I suggest posting under your login instead of AC and providing links
So, have you thought about playing the insurance lottery today? Trust me, people in your neighborhood have and about the only way to be safe from this is either (a) plenty of insurance or (b) zero assets.
I do both. I keep my assets low, and my insurance high.
And exactly how is the transmission medium of the internet any different in terms of expectations of privacy than my phone line?
Extra laws have been passed protecting your phone line. The same laws still need to be passed to protect the Internet. Write your congress critter!
I completely agree that the laws have dragged behind, and that something needs to be done. The correct way to get new laws passed is Congress, not the courts.
Why aren't emails considered papers and thus subject to the 4th Amendment? Who defines papers, effects, etc. Congress? The Courts? Or We The People?
A combination of Congress and the Courts. Certainly not "We the People", who signed our rights away to the corporations in 1876.
Has it ever been used for anything useful or is it just a cute decoration hanging on the Bill of Rights?
The entire bill of rights became decoration some time ago now- long before you and I were born. Oh, they trot it out from time to time- but you've got to ask the Supreme Court what it means and Congress to pass laws to try to change what it means.
so if i buy a cd and my only cd player is in my computer, then the copy the gets put into memory is mine?
Yes, under fair use- plus the fact that the memory is in your possession- unlike:
or closer to your point. how about i own part of the internet backbone and the riaa transfers music across to it, does that mean i have rights to do what i want. all because they "asked" me to transfer a copy of it?
Now this is more interesting. As long as the RIAA was doing it- and it had no other restrictions, such as DRM code- they've given you a copy of it, and since you're not a common carrier, you'd have to look to your contract with the RIAA for guidance. If you have no contract with the RIAA, then they've just screwed their own copyright.
not that i'm right, just some random thoughts.
Interesting thought all the same!
Section 2(a)(ii)(B)(b)
(b) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for an officer, employee, or agent of the Federal Communications Commission, in the normal course of his employment and in discharge of the monitoring responsibilities exercised by the Commission in the enforcement of chapter 5 of title 47 of the United States Code, to intercept a wire or electronic communication, or oral communication transmitted by radio, or to disclose or use the information thereby obtained.
Courts are to interpret current law. You need Congress to enact new law. You're using the wrong branch of government. As to the rest, I agree.