In my mind, it is highly unlikely. Things are never as bad as the cynics say and never as good as the optimists believe; besides governments are becoming less and less important in the world.
You're 100% right, they won't enter into a contract for the data as they would have to pay for that. They will just claim it's to track a terrorist cell and take the information under the guise of National Security.
It's far more devious this way as the American Public might never hear about it as it's illegal to announce that an investigation is happening.
We have no longer have protections of anonymoys sources to the press, we no longer have protections of our privacy from repressive regimes, and we have people that continue to go around thinking that it is all right because "they have nothing to hide".
Stop creating the means to make it easier for the corporations and the government to do what they have been trying to do for decades.
there's no reason to assume that it's going to be used for some nefarious purpose.
he openly admits that there are privacy implications and that he's starting up a company (TBF it is benign right now) that's going to track social networks via mobile phones. As I stated above, that technology will likely be bought out by some corporation and used for their own records. It's not even so much the corporations or the government that worries me. It's intrusions via inappropriate third parties (ala T-mobile) that might get access to this data that worry me.
The horrible thing about "Big Brother" wasn't that he knows what you're doing, it's that he stops you from doing what you want to do.
What do you mean it's not stopping you. You wouldn't even give it a second's thought if you knew someone might be watching what you are doing? It certainly makes me think twice before I leave my mobile phone on while I make my daily rounds.
All this privacy nonsense really has to stop. It really doesn't matter who knows what you're doing, and chances are a lot of people know a lot about you just by looking. I don't think it has any negative impact on my life if people know what I'm doing as long as I can still do whatever I want. Of course, dishonest people might think otherwise.
You are a direct product of this time period. "I have nothing to hide. I don't care." That's what's wrong. People *should* care and *should* be questioning that idea.
It's so scary that people don't. I just hope you are trolling.
"We want to have our life choreographed, cataloged, witnessed and archived," Stakutis said. "Now we are heading to a world where this is possible without effort."
Do we? It's one thing to have a personal diary or blog that you opt-in to submit information to daily. Hell, I have even expanded on my mobile pics to include a "blog" of what I did during any particular day... That's my *choice* to put that information out there for people to see. It's not mandated by my cell phone to take pictures of what I'm doing and throw them into a database that I have no control over.
While Eagle "acknowledges that the project raises some important questions about privacy and about the ownership of data, and says people should feel empowered, not scared, by his cell-phone applications," I just can't get passed his statement earlier in the article:
The Media Lab behavior is beautifully regular, but the lab lives and dies by sponsors' meetings," Eagle said. "So the weeks leading up to sponsors' meetings, people are pulling all-nighters and people are going crazy trying to get their demo working.
Is this another demo for one of your sponsors that might end up buying the rights of this technology from you and then creating their own spyware network of their mobile users' daily habits? Tracking when, where, and how they communicate to "better" serve them with advertisements and the selling/stealing of their data to other institutions and data thieves?
He has already founded a company called MetroSpark that in September will launch a Bluetooth-powered social-introduction service. After filling out a personal profile, MetroSpark will attempt to be a gracious, ubiquitous host that connects people with common interests, whether they are technology conference goers who share an interest in motorcycles or barhopping singles who love long walks on the beach at sunset.
Oh, so you started this company -- got it advertised on Wired and now Slashdot -- and it's never going to get bought out by someone else (i.e. Dodgeball) and they aren't going to use this huge database of customer data that was originally meant to be benign?
I predict that even more corporations are going to have a field day with this data than what they originally intended (i.e. when/where you have your cell phone on and how many days a week you are sitting at home letting the CATV wash over you). If the corporations (and then obviously the government) can track social networks and trends via software on the phones you can bet your ass they are going to include it "free of charge" while still restricting your "free" access to any other programs you might want to run.
I predict that people will fall for this invasion just like any other. We're seriously one step closer to the "Big Brother" that everyone used to fear... Now we are welcoming him with open arms!
It's amazing that "women in software" (of any kind) should raise a comment like "oh my fucking god." and "whoa. just whoa". You wonder why they shy away... A bunch of horny geeks getting excited over something completely mundane.
Get a grip and grow up.
For those of you that don't want to download the video: It's the opening slide for "Women in Debian and Free Open Source Sofware" by Magni Onsoien and Erin Clark (7/15/05).
Just like the coming ice age of 40 years ago. In summary, don't be dazzled by the flashing powerpoint slides.
So, the Government shouldn't be dazzled by those opposing viewpoint presentations either and they certainly shouldn't be going after science because they don't agree w/the findings due to their political beliefs.
It comes down to an interesting question. If personal and professional finances are off-limits, how else can politicians determine whether a complex statistical report has been "paid for" by an interested party?
What if that interested party is the Federal government's current ruling group is financially tied to the results of these negative studies and the results of their own "studies"?
Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman rejects the existence of climate change, demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion.
I was lucky to recently attend Al Gore's presentation on Global Climate Change. While I don't care about Global Warming at all (I see it as an eventual end of society and part of the Earth's history) but I did find that Al Gore's excellent multimedia presentation to be full of the very evidence that proves Global Climate Change is occurring and increasing in speed.
Why are these leaders creating issues for scientists unless they are trying to strongarm them? Were they seriously thinking that this data was created from false research? Antarctica is losing large slabs of ice at an alarming rate but it has nothing to do w/temperatures rising?
Again, Global Warming is something that's going to happen and it's inevitable, but we don't need to be harassing science because our political survival depends on it.
The government wants those additional tax dollars from the Microsofts and EAs and 20th Century Foxes and Capitol records of the world.
It seems to even out in the end to me. Wasting billions of dollars in the short term to get back billions later (at a possible loss) via taxes doesn't make sense.
To give billions in cash, weapons, and training to people that might later use those same weapons and training back on us just doesn't make sense.
Drug trafficking is a major problem around the world. We believe that it is costing U.S. businesses and citizens about $250 billion in tax dollars and wages," some random talking head told Reuters in an interview with reporters and editors.
The party currently running the country, tapped the resources of a random individual that is currently an up-in-coming member of the political party, to head up the administration's anti-drug efforts. A random South American Country, along with Afghanistan -- where 90 percent of cocaine and heroine originate-- will be a chief priority, this random government official said.
"Frankly, our goal is to reduce (South America and Afghanistan's drug trade) to zero," he said. This government official declined to specify a timetable, but acknowledged it could be a lengthy effort which will waste just as much tax money and resources as the users did before it while actually not eliminating anything.
He got a personal glimpse of rampant drug harvesting during visits earlier this month, when he was offered the chance to buy drugs and sell them to his own citizens, an aide said.
The United States will closely monitor a long list of anti-drug pledges these two countries made after the US government offered them huge aid packages at this month's high-level Joint Commission on Drug Trade meeting, including a promise to increase criminal prosecutions, he said.
Sounds awfully familiar doesn't it? Why do the rest of the American public sit there and refuse to acknowledge that this Anti-Piracy bullshit is nothing but a rehashed attempt to increase protections for Big Business under the guise of protecting *our* interests?
BTW - When are we going to start standing up against "lengthy wars" that have no real returns? Does no one remember that hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted on this unending war?
"I'm surprised to see just how much Mac OS X has captured the interest of potential Linux switchers," said Wilcox. "Companies that were considering Linux are now buying Mac OS X instead."
Why? They run MS Office products without having to have an additional layer in between the OS and the software (i.e. Wine, VMWare, or any of the various other solutions).
The only thing that surprises me about this statement is that companies are willing to spend 2x as much on the hardware and the additional money on the OS. Yeah, in corporate environments it's probably not as big of a deal but when you are talking 25+ of 10k+ machines that's a lot of cash you could have saved by going w/cheaper hardware and a free OS.
But, once you add some sex into the game there are congressional hearings. Stupid America, when will you ever learn?!
I was having this discussion last night... America obviously didn't learn when we ended legal rascism during the 1960s because we are now trying to legally stop insurance coverage for homosexual couples.
Not only didn't the government learn but the American public didn't either.
Cookies are fine for storing login information. If a user wants to keep a persistent cookie to make their visits to my site easier they are free to click the box. If they only want a session ID then they can login, use the site, and leave w/o a cookie.
Why do companies think that it is important to not tell a user up front that they are going to get a cookie w/o logging in?
Yeah, they might have been paying your wages and you were just doing your job but I don't see how aggregating statistics need to be done via cookies. Can't you do it through your logs?
If you really don't want anyone calling you throw out your busted old landline.
Tough shit if the only acceptable broadband Internet option is DSL, right?
While I use my mobile phone for long distance calling and only have the landline as required for DSL service I should still have to suffer with telemarketing calls because they whined to the FCC?
The American public whined far longer to get the DNC lists enacted. Now that we are comfortable we should lose them and have to move to mobile phones and no broadband?
The issue revolves around some states whose Do Not Call laws are more strict than Federal law and which prohibit telemarketers from calling anyone on a Do Not Call, regardless of an existing business relationship.
Wah! I can't bother people and piss them off during dinner, quiet evenings, and fill up their answering machines with partial recordings not knowing how long the machine's message was.
Businesses are busy scrambling to create new and interesting ways to get your phone number so that they, and their subsidiaries and sister companies, can contact you with their telemarketers. Companies telling me that they cannot process an order without my telephone number, companies telling their employees that they must take a telephone number down for pickup orders placed over the phone, and requiring a phone number to ship a package. Most employees are doing their job and refuse you service (which is a company's right to do at any time) but I find it increasingly annoying. I'll do anything to not give out my phone number including asking for a supervisor, giving out a phone number with the area code and all zeroes, or just giving the switch board number out at work.
I really have no sympathy for companies that are crying to the FCC about this. The public had been whining to the FCC for how many years to get telemarketers to stop? They finally did, creating a list that the telemarketers can reference to narrow their endless search of a customer to people that might be interested in their products, and they still complain?
And how do you know that the child won't receive appropriate care?
What is the percetage of men over the age of 80 that can care for themselves? What is the percentage of those men that can care for a newborn daily? What is the percentage of those men that will be able to effectively care for that newborn until it is old enough to care for itself?
Let me tell you, it's a lot lower than the percentage of appropriately aged individuals that can't.
Because of this the symbol for eachelement is written so small that it is hard to read and the other information is relegated to a list on the side.
Ahh but see there is an alterior motive in all of that! Secondary teachers are not going to have to cover up the table when they give exams:)
(I have less than fond memories of my 11th grade Chemistry teacher covering the Periodic Table and then giving us tests -- it's probably because I received more hours of detention from him in on year then all combined before him)
Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to.
You mean like literature and educational messages on how to be a better parent and not government funded studies and unnecessary hardware requirements, right? Parents don't need to have the government pushing for senseless hardware integrated into televisions to help them be better parents... What they need is to be at home with their kids or come up with their own way to stop their kids from watching "indecency" (which only really comes on after 9/10pm).
I've tried to encourage the cable industry to provide some kind of a family package or family tier for parents to subscribe to. I think there are a variety of tools that can help empower parents.
How about teaching parents how to turn off the TV 90% of the week themselves and not worry about empowering the Cable monopolies to make even more money by stupid parents thinking that by purchasing a "family package" they won't have to pay attention to what their kids see on TV?
Oh wait, that wouldn't benefit your image or the Cable monopoly's pockets. Sorry.
Re:Why haven't I heard of the 5th most popular sit
on
Fox to Purchase Myspace
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe, just maybe it's not 'nothing but bullshit'? Perhaps there are sites out there that offer services that you don't like. Imagine that.
You would think that Google, Yahoo, MSN, CNN, and any other major news site would attract a TON more traffic than myspace.com.
I would also think that you would somehow be linked there frequently by friends, search engines, or news stories. It surprises me that as the 5th most viewed site on the web I have never had Google tell me to go there when searching for "foo".
This is the very reason software patents are bullshit.
So what? IP issues are a real problem these days and IBM has enough bullshit to deal with regarding SCO. Do they really need to get into a tiff w/other IP owners because the OSS community wants free access to software they spent millions of dollars and hours creating?
I doubt it.
Re:Why haven't I heard of the 5th most popular sit
on
Fox to Purchase Myspace
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
OMG! I don't know about something. How is this possible? I am garcia! Knower of all there is to be knowed.
Why would a site that's nothing but bullshit be the 5th most viewed site on the web? I would think that as a regular Internet surfer I would be able to easily rattle the top 5 sites off w/o hestitation.
If anything, I wasn't bragging, I was surprised that some apparently crappy site was so popular.
Thanks for the troll though.
Why haven't I heard of the 5th most popular site?
on
Fox to Purchase Myspace
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It has bought Intermix Media, owner of Myspace.com, the fifth most-viewed internet domain in the US and owner of other sites for $580m.
When I saw this on Google News this morning, I was shocked to know that there was a domain out there that I have never visited yet it's the fifth most popular out there.
Why would other people be going to such a large site but not me? When I checked it out this morning I realized that it's nothing more than a "good looking" spam webportal.
They could re-code the parts that are from other parties.
No they can't. The "new" codebase would be tainted by previous exposure to IP owned by other companies.
Or just strip those parts out and open it up for the OSS community to redo the missing parts (with IBM letting people know how the interfaces were used).
a) too much work/money with too little end benefit for IBM.
b) see my first point -- they cannot "let people know how the interfaces were used" as it would be tainted and thus open them up to legal issues.
When parents use their televisions and consoles as nanny and babysitter, they shouldn't be too surprised when their children begin using them as role models.
When parents use their televisions and consoles as nany and babysitter they also tend to use the Government as head of the household which is just wrong.
Putting pressure on the Government for more invasive control is not only wrong it is not what this country was founded on... Yet, each and every day, more and more people want to do less and less parenting and regress back to being a child themselves with the "fatherland" leading their lives.
Slashdot Mirror
In my mind, it is highly unlikely. Things are never as bad as the cynics say and never as good as the optimists believe; besides governments are becoming less and less important in the world.
You're 100% right, they won't enter into a contract for the data as they would have to pay for that. They will just claim it's to track a terrorist cell and take the information under the guise of National Security.
It's far more devious this way as the American Public might never hear about it as it's illegal to announce that an investigation is happening.
We have no longer have protections of anonymoys sources to the press, we no longer have protections of our privacy from repressive regimes, and we have people that continue to go around thinking that it is all right because "they have nothing to hide".
Stop creating the means to make it easier for the corporations and the government to do what they have been trying to do for decades.
there's no reason to assume that it's going to be used for some nefarious purpose.
he openly admits that there are privacy implications and that he's starting up a company (TBF it is benign right now) that's going to track social networks via mobile phones. As I stated above, that technology will likely be bought out by some corporation and used for their own records. It's not even so much the corporations or the government that worries me. It's intrusions via inappropriate third parties (ala T-mobile) that might get access to this data that worry me.
The horrible thing about "Big Brother" wasn't that he knows what you're doing, it's that he stops you from doing what you want to do.
What do you mean it's not stopping you. You wouldn't even give it a second's thought if you knew someone might be watching what you are doing? It certainly makes me think twice before I leave my mobile phone on while I make my daily rounds.
All this privacy nonsense really has to stop. It really doesn't matter who knows what you're doing, and chances are a lot of people know a lot about you just by looking. I don't think it has any negative impact on my life if people know what I'm doing as long as I can still do whatever I want. Of course, dishonest people might think otherwise.
You are a direct product of this time period. "I have nothing to hide. I don't care." That's what's wrong. People *should* care and *should* be questioning that idea.
It's so scary that people don't. I just hope you are trolling.
"We want to have our life choreographed, cataloged, witnessed and archived," Stakutis said. "Now we are heading to a world where this is possible without effort."
Do we? It's one thing to have a personal diary or blog that you opt-in to submit information to daily. Hell, I have even expanded on my mobile pics to include a "blog" of what I did during any particular day... That's my *choice* to put that information out there for people to see. It's not mandated by my cell phone to take pictures of what I'm doing and throw them into a database that I have no control over.
While Eagle "acknowledges that the project raises some important questions about privacy and about the ownership of data, and says people should feel empowered, not scared, by his cell-phone applications," I just can't get passed his statement earlier in the article:
The Media Lab behavior is beautifully regular, but the lab lives and dies by sponsors' meetings," Eagle said. "So the weeks leading up to sponsors' meetings, people are pulling all-nighters and people are going crazy trying to get their demo working.
Is this another demo for one of your sponsors that might end up buying the rights of this technology from you and then creating their own spyware network of their mobile users' daily habits? Tracking when, where, and how they communicate to "better" serve them with advertisements and the selling/stealing of their data to other institutions and data thieves?
He has already founded a company called MetroSpark that in September will launch a Bluetooth-powered social-introduction service.
After filling out a personal profile, MetroSpark will attempt to be a gracious, ubiquitous host that connects people with common interests, whether they are technology conference goers who share an interest in motorcycles or barhopping singles who love long walks on the beach at sunset.
Oh, so you started this company -- got it advertised on Wired and now Slashdot -- and it's never going to get bought out by someone else (i.e. Dodgeball) and they aren't going to use this huge database of customer data that was originally meant to be benign?
I predict that even more corporations are going to have a field day with this data than what they originally intended (i.e. when/where you have your cell phone on and how many days a week you are sitting at home letting the CATV wash over you). If the corporations (and then obviously the government) can track social networks and trends via software on the phones you can bet your ass they are going to include it "free of charge" while still restricting your "free" access to any other programs you might want to run.
I predict that people will fall for this invasion just like any other. We're seriously one step closer to the "Big Brother" that everyone used to fear... Now we are welcoming him with open arms!
It's amazing that "women in software" (of any kind) should raise a comment like "oh my fucking god." and "whoa. just whoa". You wonder why they shy away... A bunch of horny geeks getting excited over something completely mundane.
Get a grip and grow up.
For those of you that don't want to download the video: It's the opening slide for "Women in Debian and Free Open Source Sofware" by Magni Onsoien and Erin Clark (7/15/05).
Just like the coming ice age of 40 years ago. In summary, don't be dazzled by the flashing powerpoint slides.
So, the Government shouldn't be dazzled by those opposing viewpoint presentations either and they certainly shouldn't be going after science because they don't agree w/the findings due to their political beliefs.
It comes down to an interesting question. If personal and professional finances are off-limits, how else can politicians determine whether a complex statistical report has been "paid for" by an interested party?
What if that interested party is the Federal government's current ruling group is financially tied to the results of these negative studies and the results of their own "studies"?
Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman rejects the existence of climate change, demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion.
I was lucky to recently attend Al Gore's presentation on Global Climate Change. While I don't care about Global Warming at all (I see it as an eventual end of society and part of the Earth's history) but I did find that Al Gore's excellent multimedia presentation to be full of the very evidence that proves Global Climate Change is occurring and increasing in speed.
Why are these leaders creating issues for scientists unless they are trying to strongarm them? Were they seriously thinking that this data was created from false research? Antarctica is losing large slabs of ice at an alarming rate but it has nothing to do w/temperatures rising?
Again, Global Warming is something that's going to happen and it's inevitable, but we don't need to be harassing science because our political survival depends on it.
The government wants those additional tax dollars from the Microsofts and EAs and 20th Century Foxes and Capitol records of the world.
It seems to even out in the end to me. Wasting billions of dollars in the short term to get back billions later (at a possible loss) via taxes doesn't make sense.
To give billions in cash, weapons, and training to people that might later use those same weapons and training back on us just doesn't make sense.
Does it?
Drug trafficking is a major problem around the world. We believe that it is costing U.S. businesses and citizens about $250 billion in tax dollars and wages," some random talking head told Reuters in an interview with reporters and editors.
The party currently running the country, tapped the resources of a random individual that is currently an up-in-coming member of the political party, to head up the administration's anti-drug efforts. A random South American Country, along with Afghanistan -- where 90 percent of cocaine and heroine originate-- will be a chief priority, this random government official said.
"Frankly, our goal is to reduce (South America and Afghanistan's drug trade) to zero," he said. This government official declined to specify a timetable, but acknowledged it could be a lengthy effort which will waste just as much tax money and resources as the users did before it while actually not eliminating anything.
He got a personal glimpse of rampant drug harvesting during visits earlier this month, when he was offered the chance to buy drugs and sell them to his own citizens, an aide said.
The United States will closely monitor a long list of anti-drug pledges these two countries made after the US government offered them huge aid packages at this month's high-level Joint Commission on Drug Trade meeting, including a promise to increase criminal prosecutions, he said.
Sounds awfully familiar doesn't it? Why do the rest of the American public sit there and refuse to acknowledge that this Anti-Piracy bullshit is nothing but a rehashed attempt to increase protections for Big Business under the guise of protecting *our* interests?
BTW - When are we going to start standing up against "lengthy wars" that have no real returns? Does no one remember that hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted on this unending war?
Sad.
"I'm surprised to see just how much Mac OS X has captured the interest of potential Linux switchers," said Wilcox. "Companies that were considering Linux are now buying Mac OS X instead."
Why? They run MS Office products without having to have an additional layer in between the OS and the software (i.e. Wine, VMWare, or any of the various other solutions).
The only thing that surprises me about this statement is that companies are willing to spend 2x as much on the hardware and the additional money on the OS. Yeah, in corporate environments it's probably not as big of a deal but when you are talking 25+ of 10k+ machines that's a lot of cash you could have saved by going w/cheaper hardware and a free OS.
But, once you add some sex into the game there are congressional hearings. Stupid America, when will you ever learn?!
I was having this discussion last night... America obviously didn't learn when we ended legal rascism during the 1960s because we are now trying to legally stop insurance coverage for homosexual couples.
Not only didn't the government learn but the American public didn't either.
It's really sad.
Cookies are fine for storing login information. If a user wants to keep a persistent cookie to make their visits to my site easier they are free to click the box. If they only want a session ID then they can login, use the site, and leave w/o a cookie.
Why do companies think that it is important to not tell a user up front that they are going to get a cookie w/o logging in?
Yeah, they might have been paying your wages and you were just doing your job but I don't see how aggregating statistics need to be done via cookies. Can't you do it through your logs?
If you really don't want anyone calling you throw out your busted old landline.
Tough shit if the only acceptable broadband Internet option is DSL, right?
While I use my mobile phone for long distance calling and only have the landline as required for DSL service I should still have to suffer with telemarketing calls because they whined to the FCC?
The American public whined far longer to get the DNC lists enacted. Now that we are comfortable we should lose them and have to move to mobile phones and no broadband?
Wrong answer.
The issue revolves around some states whose Do Not Call laws are more strict than Federal law and which prohibit telemarketers from calling anyone on a Do Not Call, regardless of an existing business relationship.
Wah! I can't bother people and piss them off during dinner, quiet evenings, and fill up their answering machines with partial recordings not knowing how long the machine's message was.
Businesses are busy scrambling to create new and interesting ways to get your phone number so that they, and their subsidiaries and sister companies, can contact you with their telemarketers. Companies telling me that they cannot process an order without my telephone number, companies telling their employees that they must take a telephone number down for pickup orders placed over the phone, and requiring a phone number to ship a package. Most employees are doing their job and refuse you service (which is a company's right to do at any time) but I find it increasingly annoying. I'll do anything to not give out my phone number including asking for a supervisor, giving out a phone number with the area code and all zeroes, or just giving the switch board number out at work.
I really have no sympathy for companies that are crying to the FCC about this. The public had been whining to the FCC for how many years to get telemarketers to stop? They finally did, creating a list that the telemarketers can reference to narrow their endless search of a customer to people that might be interested in their products, and they still complain?
Give me a break and stay off my phone.
And how do you know that the child won't receive appropriate care?
What is the percetage of men over the age of 80 that can care for themselves? What is the percentage of those men that can care for a newborn daily? What is the percentage of those men that will be able to effectively care for that newborn until it is old enough to care for itself?
Let me tell you, it's a lot lower than the percentage of appropriately aged individuals that can't.
He had his youngest daughter in 2000, when he was 80 (!), with his wife Wende, whom he'd been married to since 1975. Way to go, James.
It's irresponsible to bring a child into this world when you are so old that you know you will not be able to give appropriate care.
Way to go!
Because of this the symbol for eachelement is written so small that it is hard to read and the other information is relegated to a list on the side.
:)
Ahh but see there is an alterior motive in all of that! Secondary teachers are not going to have to cover up the table when they give exams
(I have less than fond memories of my 11th grade Chemistry teacher covering the Periodic Table and then giving us tests -- it's probably because I received more hours of detention from him in on year then all combined before him)
Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to.
You mean like literature and educational messages on how to be a better parent and not government funded studies and unnecessary hardware requirements, right? Parents don't need to have the government pushing for senseless hardware integrated into televisions to help them be better parents... What they need is to be at home with their kids or come up with their own way to stop their kids from watching "indecency" (which only really comes on after 9/10pm).
I've tried to encourage the cable industry to provide some kind of a family package or family tier for parents to subscribe to. I think there are a variety of tools that can help empower parents.
How about teaching parents how to turn off the TV 90% of the week themselves and not worry about empowering the Cable monopolies to make even more money by stupid parents thinking that by purchasing a "family package" they won't have to pay attention to what their kids see on TV?
Oh wait, that wouldn't benefit your image or the Cable monopoly's pockets. Sorry.
Maybe, just maybe it's not 'nothing but bullshit'? Perhaps there are sites out there that offer services that you don't like. Imagine that.
You would think that Google, Yahoo, MSN, CNN, and any other major news site would attract a TON more traffic than myspace.com.
I would also think that you would somehow be linked there frequently by friends, search engines, or news stories. It surprises me that as the 5th most viewed site on the web I have never had Google tell me to go there when searching for "foo".
It has nothing to do w/me liking the site or not.
This is the very reason software patents are bullshit.
So what? IP issues are a real problem these days and IBM has enough bullshit to deal with regarding SCO. Do they really need to get into a tiff w/other IP owners because the OSS community wants free access to software they spent millions of dollars and hours creating?
I doubt it.
OMG! I don't know about something. How is this possible? I am garcia! Knower of all there is to be knowed.
Why would a site that's nothing but bullshit be the 5th most viewed site on the web? I would think that as a regular Internet surfer I would be able to easily rattle the top 5 sites off w/o hestitation.
If anything, I wasn't bragging, I was surprised that some apparently crappy site was so popular.
Thanks for the troll though.
Proper link:
It has bought Intermix Media, owner of Myspace.com, the fifth most-viewed internet domain in the US and owner of other sites for $580m.
When I saw this on Google News this morning, I was shocked to know that there was a domain out there that I have never visited yet it's the fifth most popular out there.
Why would other people be going to such a large site but not me? When I checked it out this morning I realized that it's nothing more than a "good looking" spam webportal.
They could re-code the parts that are from other parties.
No they can't. The "new" codebase would be tainted by previous exposure to IP owned by other companies.
Or just strip those parts out and open it up for the OSS community to redo the missing parts (with IBM letting people know how the interfaces were used).
a) too much work/money with too little end benefit for IBM.
b) see my first point -- they cannot "let people know how the interfaces were used" as it would be tainted and thus open them up to legal issues.
But diversity is always good, and what does IBM have to lose?
Nothing. It's all the other companies (i.e. Microsoft) that have IP bundled with OS/2 that will lose.
Thus it's pointless to dredge up this discussion again and again (yes, I believe this is at least the third time in many years).
No matter how much IBM would love to open it up to us, they just can't. Go whine to Microsoft and the 100s of other code contributers first.
When parents use their televisions and consoles as nanny and babysitter, they shouldn't be too surprised when their children begin using them as role models.
When parents use their televisions and consoles as nany and babysitter they also tend to use the Government as head of the household which is just wrong.
Putting pressure on the Government for more invasive control is not only wrong it is not what this country was founded on... Yet, each and every day, more and more people want to do less and less parenting and regress back to being a child themselves with the "fatherland" leading their lives.