Um. True, I don't have to use it. I don't have to drive a car to work, either, but that doesn't mean that I therefore shouldn't discuss the merits of whether I should drive a car to work.
And, yes, I imagine that if I was, say, negotiating a business contract or buyout deal with Google as so many companies hope to, I think that Google might actually find my files reasonably interesting.
The thing that really still stops me from wanting to adopt these is the fact that Google content-scans the files. Even if they say they're not doing anything other than indexing my own content for my own use, it gives me the heebie jeebies to think of my private content that far out of my control.
To: Library Journal BackTalk <fialkoff at reedbusiness.com>
From: ertdredge
Dear BackTalk,
Michael Gorman's piece ("Revenge of the Blog People!", February 15) is one of the most acerbic, defensive, and unpleasant bits of commentary I have read this century. The "Blog People," as he kindly dubs the millions of people who now publish their thoughts online without the benefit of editors, have a name for people who post comments as needlessly combative as his: Troll.
While I agree with many of Mr. Gorman's points, I also agree with many of the points made by his detractors, and his attempts to disarm their arguments by sarcastically parroting them is childish at best. Blogs are indeed full of mindless nattering, but there is plenty of worthwhile content published there as well. If Mr. Gorman considers the points raised in such forums worthy of any response at all, they should be worthy of being addressed civilly.
immune systems attack anything remotely suspicious and sometimes even things that they shouldnt, like ones own cells. thats what an allergic response is.
To clarify, immune systems attacking one's own cells is an autoimmune response. An allergic response is an excessive immune reaction to typically nonimmunogenic substances.
Personally, I'm finally switching from postgres to mysql after 8 years of happy use of the former because it's finally let me down.
Re:Not to mention unraveling the military hierarch
on
Guilty By Association
·
· Score: 1
Classmates.com and similar sites require people to register for their information to be included
Not exactly. You can enter information about your class/company/troop-mates, not just yourself. It just takes one bored member of your seventh grade homeroom to enter the fact that you and, say, Timothy McVeigh went to school together. They've amassed information covering a decent percentage of the US population that way. You can opt-out, but it begs the question of who owns the information of where you went to school: You? Your school? Your classmates? All of the above?
should hope our top ranking officials aren't so dim as to put themselves out there like that. The same information is available via public record anyway, it simply isn't collected in one nice easily searchable web portal available to anyone with a computer.
I'm not so concerned about the upper echelons of the organizations that are already easily mappable -- I believe that during the cold war the US figured out other countries' military structures just from wedding photos in newspapers, along with other public information.
I'm more worried about this kind of information being used to fill in the details on a massive scale at the lower levels of social, corporate, and military structures. Knowing that Ms. XYZ used to be the CEO of XYZ Corp. is old hat. Knowing that Mr. ABC used to sleep with the disgruntled coworker of the janitor at some facility that you're interested in...that could be new.
If they did, its hello 1984 with random retinal scanners a la Minority Report.
I'm sure the Parts Order has already been submitted.
Not to mention unraveling the military hierarchy
on
Guilty By Association
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I began to get concerned about things like this when I realized how easy it would be for someone to start piecing together parts of the U.S. military hierarchy from classmates.com's "who did X serve with?" information collection.
I can't wait until 10 (or 2) years from now these companies start buying each other and consolidating the network information, along with everything available publicly from, say, livejournal.
I bought my iBook (12" 800mhz) in January '02. [...] Apple came through and started the Logic Board replacement program exactly 1 year from the day I bought my computer.
Hm, wait a minute. Apple says that the program covers iBooks manufactured between May 2002 and April 2003, and I thought this program started in January 2004.
Am I missing something? I have a not-covered January '02 iBook with the same problems, so I'm pretty interested in this one.
Re:Maybe it's not about money, but about convenien
on
.Mac Alternatives?
·
· Score: 1
Yup. My two biggest concerns about.Mac are security of my data (both in transit and in storage) and not wanting to bother syncing over the Internet if I'm already running a file server in my home.
Perhaps they'll start offering AirPort base stations with hard drives in them...
iTunes 4 does allow music streaming between machines, but it has restrictions about adding non-local music files to your playlists and editing their IDv3 tags. I still prefer mounting a shared music folder.
I've been waiting on this myself. I talked to someone at the Apple store back when 10.2.4 was setting everyone on edge with the battery issue and was told "Apple's well aware of it, I expect them to be releasing something soon."
[...] but if I'm willing to spend any money on an artist, I'm willing to spend a lot more than 50 cents [...]
Not that I agree with the original 6-step assessment of how simple the situation should be, but that suggestion was 45 cents per song per user. $4.50 for a 10-song album. That's a lot more than all but the most famous artists can currently get from record companies.
- Ert
It's been immediately obvious to everyone that, after downloading an album from Apple and burning it to CD, you can rip your purchased songs back to MP3 and then distribute wildly.
I wonder if Apple thought of that and put in any rights management to ensure that a ripped MP3 so generated is of an audibly lower quality than the original AAC. They could alter either their ripping or burning code...
- Ert
Slashdot Mirror
Um. True, I don't have to use it. I don't have to drive a car to work, either, but that doesn't mean that I therefore shouldn't discuss the merits of whether I should drive a car to work. And, yes, I imagine that if I was, say, negotiating a business contract or buyout deal with Google as so many companies hope to, I think that Google might actually find my files reasonably interesting.
The thing that really still stops me from wanting to adopt these is the fact that Google content-scans the files. Even if they say they're not doing anything other than indexing my own content for my own use, it gives me the heebie jeebies to think of my private content that far out of my control.
From: ertdredge
Dear BackTalk,
Michael Gorman's piece ("Revenge of the Blog People!", February 15) is one of the most acerbic, defensive, and unpleasant bits of commentary I have read this century. The "Blog People," as he kindly dubs the millions of people who now publish their thoughts online without the benefit of editors, have a name for people who post comments as needlessly combative as his: Troll.
While I agree with many of Mr. Gorman's points, I also agree with many of the points made by his detractors, and his attempts to disarm their arguments by sarcastically parroting them is childish at best. Blogs are indeed full of mindless nattering, but there is plenty of worthwhile content published there as well. If Mr. Gorman considers the points raised in such forums worthy of any response at all, they should be worthy of being addressed civilly.
To clarify, immune systems attacking one's own cells is an autoimmune response. An allergic response is an excessive immune reaction to typically nonimmunogenic substances.
In all, I fear martian microbial infection about as much as I fear the uprising of the penguins. Dude. That's already in progress.
Personally, I'm finally switching from postgres to mysql after 8 years of happy use of the former because it's finally let me down.
Not exactly. You can enter information about your class/company/troop-mates, not just yourself. It just takes one bored member of your seventh grade homeroom to enter the fact that you and, say, Timothy McVeigh went to school together. They've amassed information covering a decent percentage of the US population that way. You can opt-out, but it begs the question of who owns the information of where you went to school: You? Your school? Your classmates? All of the above?
should hope our top ranking officials aren't so dim as to put themselves out there like that. The same information is available via public record anyway, it simply isn't collected in one nice easily searchable web portal available to anyone with a computer.
I'm not so concerned about the upper echelons of the organizations that are already easily mappable -- I believe that during the cold war the US figured out other countries' military structures just from wedding photos in newspapers, along with other public information.
I'm more worried about this kind of information being used to fill in the details on a massive scale at the lower levels of social, corporate, and military structures. Knowing that Ms. XYZ used to be the CEO of XYZ Corp. is old hat. Knowing that Mr. ABC used to sleep with the disgruntled coworker of the janitor at some facility that you're interested in...that could be new.
If they did, its hello 1984 with random retinal scanners a la Minority Report.
I'm sure the Parts Order has already been submitted.
I can't wait until 10 (or 2) years from now these companies start buying each other and consolidating the network information, along with everything available publicly from, say, livejournal.
Hm, wait a minute. Apple says that the program covers iBooks manufactured between May 2002 and April 2003, and I thought this program started in January 2004.
Am I missing something? I have a not-covered January '02 iBook with the same problems, so I'm pretty interested in this one.
Yup. My two biggest concerns about .Mac are security of my data (both in transit and in storage) and not wanting to bother syncing over the Internet if I'm already running a file server in my home.
Perhaps they'll start offering AirPort base stations with hard drives in them...
- Ert
iTunes 4 does allow music streaming between machines, but it has restrictions about adding non-local music files to your playlists and editing their IDv3 tags. I still prefer mounting a shared music folder.
I suppose the answer made me go away.
- Ert
Not that I agree with the original 6-step assessment of how simple the situation should be, but that suggestion was 45 cents per song per user. $4.50 for a 10-song album. That's a lot more than all but the most famous artists can currently get from record companies. - Ert
It's been immediately obvious to everyone that, after downloading an album from Apple and burning it to CD, you can rip your purchased songs back to MP3 and then distribute wildly. I wonder if Apple thought of that and put in any rights management to ensure that a ripped MP3 so generated is of an audibly lower quality than the original AAC. They could alter either their ripping or burning code... - Ert
There's always fairtunes (now musiclink).
Also tipjar.com, and there were others that I can't think of off hand.
- Ert