Thanks to the DMCA, none of this matters. You don't actually have to be infringing on any copyright to be accused of it. Being accused is enough to force you to remove said content until a resolution is reached.
This spurs me to a question regarding a post I made awhile back regarding copyright and Universal Records which contacted me and wanted me to remove an auction in which one of my users were apparently selling bootlegged material of GodSmack.
The question is, where would my responsibility fall as this legal precedent stands now? Where would it fall after it is upheld or denied? Furthermore, what responsibility befalls me (and others in my position) with a mix of the DMCA binding and this law? They seem to lend to contradiction of one another.
Any ideas would be welcomed. Thanks. --- seumas.com
turned off by technical careers that they view as full of geeky guys
The problem, then, is that we're the same guys that they didn't want to go out with in highschool and didn't want to sit next to at lunch.
Assuming the line of this statement, I am lead to understand that if the industry was full of handsome, athletic jock guys, they would have no problem?
Further, what does 'geeky guys' have to do with a career? Either you like the technical side of life or you don't. What next? "Gee, I don't want to work in the technical fields because of all those foreigners..."?
If anyone is so nearsighted that they'd give up something they're interested in because they don't like the class of people that are already in that field, then maybe they should stay far away in the first place and go find a job where they can gawk at men with firm white asses as they walk by the Sam Goody's in the mall.
I'm a bit geeky. I was also a very successful jock. I'm a young white male. I work with great people. I work with a lot of talented men and women of all ages, backgrounds, educations and ethnicities. If nothing else, the people in this industry are a reason to want to work in it, not shy away from it.
It is much easier for Corporate America to pit genders and classes against each other so that they're too pre-occupied with pointing fingers back and forth to bother doing anything about the general, broad-stroaked shaft that everyone get's hit with in technical careers.
BoyGeeks and GirlGeeks are not the enemies. Ask any male in a technical field and he'll tell you that he wishes there were more women in his line of work. If a finger has to be pointed anywhere, point it at the people who make choices and actually have impact on the hiring and encouragement of women in these careers (and classes in school). Further, do something about it.
I don't fall for the statistical bullshit. Men and women are different creatures and there are obvious reasons why there are such rifts between careers paths. It's natural. More women stay at home to be mothers. More women take maternity leave. More women work only part time instead of full-time, to take care of their children. This is just the tip of the ice-berg of differences and we haven't even touched the inherent trend of differences that cause is to find our interests in various fields and areas of life.
So do we just shrug and say "well, that's life and we're different -- I guess we'll just have to live with it".
No. When an industry needs more people to populate its positions, it advertises, reaches out to schools, conducts press-releases, gets as much air-time and play as possible, to attract people.
So if we're so interested in bringing more women "into the fold", then lets do something about it. Offer to help children of all ages, genders and nationalities to learn about technical careers. Some will get bored to tears and give up, but others will sink their teeth into what you have to offer and either run with it as a career or enjoy it as a hobby. Don't focus on males or females, just put the information, encouragement and assistance out there and let it affect as many people as possible. You can't force people into anything, but you can offer them a chance that they didn't have before.
And for businesses -- reach out to a younger crowd. Screw gender; just offer more itnernships, employment or outreach programs to the communities that you are 'a part of' and teach skills to people who want to learn. You tend to offer jobs and careers to people who have had the privelage and oppertunity to attend four year colleges and universities, but what happens to the sixteen-year-old boy or girl who pounds away on coding or other engineering projects in his or her bedroom day and night, but can't afford schooling or certificates to catch your attention? You're exhausting your pool of potential employees, because you're failing to help out. It's cheaper to hire out to other countries and bring people in on visas (not that there is anything at all wrong with that, but then you turn around and complain about it -- citing lack of employable people in this country! God, you're such hypocrits!).
Just because the pay-off isn't within your immediate future doesn't mean the investment isn't worth your time and money. If nothing else, the publicity and good-standing with communities for your efforts to help people who want to learn and get a toe-hold in the business will be worth the cash and time. --- seumas.com
One of the major problems with this robot (I've seen it before, several times over the last few years) is that it requires a massive amount of power. You can only fit so much juice on the machine before the container of said power itself becomes too much of a physical burden on the robot to reasonably pack. --- seumas.com
AOL/ICQ requires all users of the service to be over the age of 12, regardless of geography. Possibly, because AOL is based in Virginia and subject to US Law.
This seems strange, however, as the 'victims' of any privacy invasion would not be located within the jurisdiction of the United States and, in fact, wouldn't even be an American citizen, which means that the government here has no obligation nor any right to enforce legal 'protection' upon citizens of other countries. --- seumas.com
When I moved out of my parents' house and into my own apartment, it took more than three weeks for USWEST to get around to putting my first phone line in.
It took them more than three months to put my second line in, for data.
Further, they have one of the worst statistical reputations for customer service in the entire industry. So much so that the public utilities commission in Oregon decided to fine them as long as they continued to fail miserably at achieving customers service levels and installation/repair levels. The PUC has threatened USWEST so many times, that it's become a routine front-page story and often is the topic of radio talk-shows local to the area.
I am absolutely amazed that the PUC wasn't able to step in and step this merger. When a company performs as poorly as USWEST and treats the government and the citizens with such careless disregard, how can they be rewarded with an affirmitive merger? This is rediculous. --- seumas.com
This is what I was speaking about and have been keeping a distant eye on for awhile. However, it is my understanding that Jabber has a seperate client and server which means that there are still issues of being globally connected (I assume you can only access other users who are logged into the same system?). This also doesn't remove the liability far enough, since there are still identifiable 'servers' as opposed to 'hey, we're all clients here'.
Jabber is a great idea and I hope it becomes a success, but I think that a larger 'distributed' model is called for -- or will be, eventually. With the current model for 'distributed' networks, a reliable system probably is not wholly feasible, but there must be a way with some modifications to make such a system, altered from the current Gnutella-like service. --- seumas.com
ICQ and AIM are centralized. They have servers that all globally connected clients must go through. But what if someone created a 'Gnutella-like' messaging system with as much popularity? I haven't checked on the Jabber project in quite some time, so I'm not sure if that falls into this category. I don't believe it does; it still requires servers, but they aren't quite as centralized and controlled.
No, what I'm looking forward to is a fully distributed system of communication where every client is also a sort of server. De-centralize the control and operation of such a system and you also shrug off the responsibility and legal implications of it. How do you stop 60,000,000 freely distributed and connected clients?
There would also be less interest in such a sytem, for tracking personal data for demographic databases. I don't believe COPPA refers to any information provided where a person says "I am 12 years old and my email address is haxorboy@hotmail.com". It applies, if I read it correctly, to the collection of this information. Thus, on a distributed system, there would be no centralized databse with a collection of this information. If the user is connected to the network and has entered their age or email address or other information into their 'profile', that profile remains on their system and cannot be searched, archived or otherwised gathered and manipulated. Once they disconnect, all about them is removed from availability until they connect once again.
Maybe that's dumb. I dunno. It just seems like a better solution. --- seumas.com
the similarly-acronymed COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which regulates what websites can do to invade the privacy of children under 13, and which has not been struck down nor even challenged.
The ICQ program is not a website. And the icq.com website itself doesn't require any personal information. I don't see how COPPA is any more related, then, than COPA.
COPPA states that a website may not KNOWINGLY require or track personal information (age, name, address, email address, etc) of anyone underage. All ICQ has to do to remove itself from any concern is take the age category out of their demographic marketing information gathering registration section. Suddenly, they'll no longer knowingly be tracking anything from a child under 13. To them, everyone will simply be a 'user' or a 'member'.
In fact, removal of an age section is the solution many sites and services have used. The only problem is that a lot of companies grasp onto their precious marketing-machine to gather data on every aspect of their users and they find it more valuable to track ages than to allow the younger set to enjoy the use of ICQ (and other services) too.
Also, if I recall, doesn't this only apply to commercial services? Does ICQ (since it provides a free service without advertisements) even fall under the commercial service regulation? I suppose it probably does... Still, this whole thing is rediculous. --- seumas.com
I really hope you're being sarcastic, and perhaps I just missed it. Either way, I'll ante-up the point:
<sarc> Yeah, exactly! I mean... All of those women and African-Americans and Chinese a century ago. I mean, what in the hell were they complaining about? They weren't allowed to (and thus could not) vote, so they should have kept their mouths shut, huh! </sarc> --- seumas.com
The article linked to a page on ICQ that stated the same thing. I also linked to a second instance of that page in this post.
Further more, yes there are (at least, there WERE) ICQ numbers beneath 1,000. They were reserved for a number of friends of the software originators and the staff when it was wholly owned by Mirabilis. I'm not sure whether these still exist, but I imagine they do. --- seumas.com
Why did you just receive an ICQ message about this, considering the TOS was updated with this new requirement on June 7th according to both the cited page in the article (and the page I provided below in another post -- odd that they'd place their TOS in two entirely seperate places)?
June 7th! More than three weeks ago! --- seumas.com
Please note that the ICQ service is not for use by children under 13 years of age. If it comes to ICQ's attention through reliable means that a registered user is a child under 13 years of age, ICQ will cancel that user's account.
Could have been CmdrTaco trolling ICQ under the innocent guise of a 12 year old. Heh.
Also, it isn't 13. It's 12. The law (last I read it) was specifically with regard to children UNDER the age of 13. Teenagers are not part of the age-group this law deals with. --- seumas.com
Like the message said, the PROFILE stated the person was under 13. ICQ offers you the option of opting out of providing any information about yourself, including your age on the profile section of the installation (or new account creation).
COPA (which I understood had been repealed) only required that places which REQUIRE or SOLICIT personal data from children under the age of 13 acquire parental permission.
ICQ does not require this data. Thus, don't provide it and ICQ won't have any compelling reason to remove your account. This is not 'circumventing' anything by proving no (or fake) information, since it is never required to begin with.
Also, I have to wonder how this effects users outside of United States jurisdiction. --- seumas.com
I remember when Jurassic Park came out and my family wanted me to go see it with them. I had been suffering a head-cold (or something) for several weeks. More than a month, at least. My ears were all stuffy and clogged and everything sounded so far away. It sucked. Other than that, I felt just fine.
Went to see Jurassic Park and as soon as the first footsteps of the giant T-Rex boomed over the THX system, my ears suddenly 'popped' and the world was completely audible again. I could hear everything! Whoo! After over a month of this, it just took one movie to fix me up. Sweeeet.
The other thing I remember about the flick was that these kids behind us (little kids, I don't know what the hell they were doing at a movie like this) screamed several times when the dinosaurs would come out of nowhere and attack or chase. It was great. These were full-throated, scared-to-death screams of terror! It really warmed my heart. --- seumas.com
I don't go to the movies very often. Last movie I saw was Star Wars and that was over a year ago.
While you can eventually download movies over the Internet and watch them on your computer screen (or perhaps pipe them to your home entertainment system), it will never replace some of the things people have grown to expect and, in some ways, enjoy about the experience of going to a real theater.
I like going to the ticket booth, telling them I want two tickets for a movie, handing over a few bucks, walking to the concession stand for a bag of Chocolate Covered Raisins and some black licorice (or just sneaking a bunch of grub in on my own), finding a seat in the theater well before the flick starts, watching the goofy advertisements and 'Movie Facts' that are projected on to the screens in the dimly lit auditorium, listening to faint conversations from the people that are already in the theater, hearing that nice lick "shlap-shlap!" of feet sticking to the floor as they walk. Hearing the crunch of pop-corn and the jiggle of ice in drink cups. I like the sudden hush when the lights go down and the previews come up. The always fun THX introductions (which used to be better when they blew out your ear drums) and then, depending on what part of the country you're in (being from Portland, Oregon, it's a pretty quiet crowd) and what kind of movie you're watching, the crowd laughing with you at the film. And, after a really good movie, everyone clapping at a film... An inanimate object. Weird.
But the whole experience is fun. I'd rather have that than to always pay a few bucks to download a gigabyte of data over the 'net and sitting on my couch alone watching a film by myself or with a friend or two. The theater/cinema is one of those experiences that is best enjoyed with other human beings, even if you don't know 99% of the people in the building watching it with you. --- seumas.com
I'm curious to know what the pollution level is there. My former manager went there for a week, on business. He was sick the entire time and spent most of a week recovering when he returned.
Apparently, if L.A. was bad, smog-wise, it looked like a freaking EPA dream-land compared to the quality of air in India (not certain what part he visited). --- seumas.com
I'm not sure how 'tech friendly' any Australian city is when said techie risks having any website he comes to be involved with shut down at the most miniscule of whims.
But, other than that and a few minor other impasses of freedom, I'm sure it's a great place! (No, that last bit wasn't intended to be sarcastic.) --- seumas.com
As others have pointed out, the FTC feels obligated to step-in not because it shouldn't be obvious that a free PC isn't really 'free', but because the mass of consumers are overwhelmingly gullible, idiotic sheep.
It isn't too difficult to buffer my statement, either. I can point to a couple immediate things, such as the number of times people drop $17 to buy a formulae pop CD from N'Sync or Brittney Spears or the number of idiots who really thought that if they flew to the Publisher's Clearing House headquarters, they were going to become multi-millionaires, because Ed McMahon had said they might have already won on the envelope they receieved in the mail. Then there are the thousands of idiots who fall prey to telephone scams. They willingly hand out $10,000, $20,000 -- even $100,000 with the promise of securing a million-dollar lottery that you've already won!.
What's funnier is that, in the last scenerio, these people usually end up falling for the same scam a second or even a third time! We hear them on 20/20 and 60 Minutes blabbering their sob stories to half of the televised world, expecting us to sympathize with their gullability.
So, while I think this is stupid that the FTC should have to step in considering how rediculous it is to actually expect that the PC's were without attached strings (who cares what the advertisements failed to mention, you don't need more than a handful of IQ points to figure this stuff out), it is nonetheless their duty to look for obvious exploitation of consumers. And, in this case, I think it's safe to assume that stepping in to defend the lowest common denomonator may have been appropriate. --- seumas.com
Damn it. My DSL won't be ready for anotehr four weeks, at least. And the network at the office blocks UDP. God damn, I feel left out! --- seumas.com
Re:HGP - The Tool For The Human Race To Prove Itse
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That's a point I argued quite a couple months ago. Everyone here seemed to be of the opinion that "depression is horrible! you don't know what it's like! There's nothing good about it!"
Of course, my thinking was "Hey, better being in a foul and depressed mood most of your life, but still being yourself, rather than being prozac-happy."
As for "there's nothing good about it!" -- look at how much of our art has come from depressed people. I do a lot of writing and I used to also paint often. I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say that, when I'm content (good relationships, good job, things are looking up), my writing suffers. I either write without conviction or I simply have nothing to write about.
But man, when life sucks -- or your mind has the perception that it does, there's suddenly lots of stuff to write about, and with conviction! Even if it's apathetic conviction, to coin an oxymoronic phrase. --- seumas.com
HGP - The Tool For The Human Race To Prove Itself.
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God, I can't believe I'm about to sink to the "let's nit-pick Jon Katz" level, but I'm tired and cranky this morning, so . ..
It's hard to imagine many societies more arrogant, thoughtless or poorly equipped to deal with the fascinating, even miraculous Human Genome Project that the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. Is it really that hard to imagine a society less equipped and more dangerous than America to deal with the HGP? Have you heard of a little place called Iraq? How about Iran? North Vietnam? How about, with their horrible record for human rights, China?
Headlines all over the country announced that a cure for cancer, heart disease, aging, depression and aging may well be imminent.
I see . . . So what you're broaching is the view that "We'll start changing people so they aren't different anymore. Geeks won't be geeks anymore (and that means no more stories benefiting off of to oppressed masses of brainy outcasts! oh no!). Not only that, but those individualistic types will no longer have cancer or heart disease -- just another attempt to normalize everyone into a single massive stereotypical American! Egads!"
In the Corporate Republic, every new bit of science and technology goes into mass-marketing, hype, and product development.
Yes. This is called "capitalism". Not always a bad thing; sometimes a very terrible thing. Nevertheless, capitalism provides the fuel for these projects to be undertaken. The shear manpower and resources for this project would not ever be available unless those directly involved were to somehow benifit. Certainly, no scientist involved would have offered his or work wholly pro-bono! It would be nice, albeit impossibly Utopian, if some government agency or big corporation, out of the goodness of their heart, offered to setup and maintain a massive storage database of data from the HGP, free to all who wished to use it, but someone has to be responsible for providing services. As long as there is some public consensus and watchdog association formed to watch over these commercial entities and their use of the HGP information, then things should work out well. Let the HGP information be widely and cheaply available (sort of like putting freeware on a CD and charging a minimal cost so that you don't go broke paying for the media on which the software is provided) and let people and companies, within reason, do with that data as they wish.
might it also eliminate other problems and diseases that aren't clear -cut or horrendous, such as depression and some forms of retardation?
What the...? What isn't clear-cut about depression and retardation? These aren't things people look forward to their children having. Nobody says "Gee, I want to have a daughter who suffers from life-long clinical depression and cuts on her forearms with razor-blades, gets involved in abusive relationships to satisfy some masochistic thirst and get hooked on prescription pills!". Likewise, nobody ever hopes that their child will be born with mental retardation. 'Retardation' is not at all an uncertain word. It has a very clearly understood negative connotation. You certainly wouldn't (shouldn't) terminate a pregnancy because of retardation, but what if you had the means to prevent that from occuring and you could bring your child into the world healthy?
There is no connection between bringing physically "perfect" people and mentally "enhanced" people into the world through means of genetic alteration -- and bringing someone into this world who doesn't have heart-disease, cancer, retardation, clinical-depression or even psychopathic tendencies (although the last one may be stickier when you really think about it, in depth).
Anyway, the point being that there are alterations in genetics which are very certainly just to enhance a person -- others are to bring them into the world healthy so that they can have the same right to a life that anyone else should. The limit I see a need to place (if we do need to place any kind of limit on anything?) would be on enhancements to make you stronger, faster, smarter, prettier, more outgoing, than you otherwise would have been. In other words, if you were going to be born with a geekish personality, there should be no alteration before birth that would lead you to, instead, be some popular jock that everyone will fall in love with. However, if you were going to be born with a geekish personality and you were going to have severe asthma, chronic-depression, alchoholism, and (perhaps because your mother smoked, drank or did some narcotic during pregnancy) a major deformation, such as no right arm -- I think it should be an absolute right, if not moral obligation, to provide you the "medical attention" pre-birth (or even pre-conception?) to alleviate these things.
I know, some of what I'm saying sounds a little freakish and too much like social-engineering. I'm not sure that I couldn't or wouldn't change my mind on many related issues, but to me, these seem to be very valid and reasonable suggestions or concerns.
Allowing someone to be brought into the world in sound physical and mental health is unrelated to bringing a "perfect child" into the world. We need to shrug off these seemingly religiously imposed concerns that make us feel as if any change we offer goes directly against nature or 'god'. We have to do what we have to do and if nature or 'god' sees fit to bring a child into this world with major limitations, there is no reason we should not afford the service to remove those unfair limitations. Again, we're talking major things like sight, hearing, walking. A far cry from changing hair color, eye color or voice.
In a nation that has already surrendered many privacy rights to invasive new software technologies
What about a nation that has surrended absolutely all personal traits and deficiencies to being "Gods whim" or "the way nature intended it"? I say fuck nature. We have the power and the tools in our grasp to help people. To help the world. Yes, there are risks of exploitation, as there are with everything. But that should be no reason to completely avoid this, like some kind of ethical plague. HGP does have the potential to be the greatest salvation of (and by) mankind. We risk people who will use it to make the perfect blonde-haired, blue-eyed model, but we also have the ability to alter our species to the point where much of the ocean, high altitudes, other planetary atmospheres and such are compeltely tolerable. There is nearly nothing that we will not have the power to do, so long as we have the judgement to prevent the instances of obvious misuse. Nonetheless, it is out there and if someone whether or not it is ever misused or how we control it, it cannot be put back in the back. The mapping exists and will forever be available.
it's reasonable to assume that the genetic characteristics of most citizens won't stay a secret for long once they're screened.
Well, gee, because privacy laws suck and more rights are given to corporations than individual humans, let's just do away with anything that we can not afford to give privacy to? The problem then, isn't the mapping -- it's the privacy. Point the gun at the right target!
As a society, we may soon be able to get rid of obnoxious, anger and dissent along with cancer and heart disease.
Bah. As a society, we've been trying to do this forever. Where has it gotten us? Look at the variety of geeks, jocks, super models and what have you. There's more variety in people and personalities than ever before. Besides, just because we can genetically alter people, don't you think that there has to be some way that nature -- should we screw up too much -- will fight back? Chaos is a funny thing. Genetically weed dissent and anger out of the human being and I bet it reappears, like a fungus between your toes that you can't quite scrub away.
I'm not in favor of the possibilities of wiping out human emotions -- any of them. In fact, but for extreme chronic and deadly depressions, I'm even greatly against any chemical/drug treatment of it. So you can see how I feel elsewise.
On a side note, genetic modification could sometimes be a good thing, Jon. Perhaps a little more tendancy toward 'perfection' would have given you the natural urge to run a spell-check on this article to catch all of the double-words, typos and miswordings (it's Human Genome Project, isn't it? Not Humane Genome Project?). I thought you were a professional writer?!
I agree with much of what you've stated here. There are great risks and dangers and potentials for exploitation of this information. This is not a limitation of science, the information itself or of right and wrong -- or even of nature or religion. Any harmful or, likewise benificial, results of how the HGP data is used will reflect the quality of the human race. If we have a propensity to destroy ourselves, HGP will serve to do that for us. If we have the overwhelming desire to create a "perfect race" that self-destructs, that too will happen. If we have the want to build bio-engineered humans that can go terraform planets, we will. And if we want to rid the world of disease and offer humanity greater chances in life, we will also do that.
Whatever is done, will be a marker of the wisdom and need for humankind. What we do with this will determine what our value is and ever was -- as well as whether or not we deserve, as a whole, a future in this world. It might turn out wonderful or it might become a disaster, but it certainly isn't going to "go away".
And yes, the whole thing makes me as 'uneasy' as it probably makes most people. As cool as this is, there are so many unknowns and areas open to abuse. We'll have to wait and see what happens . ..
(Sorry, like I said, I was in a nit-picking mood. I can't believe I sunk so low as to be so critical to Katz... Hell, I usually like the guy and think everyone else is being a perpetual dick to him... Oh well. I'm a bad, bad boy... Maybe I need some genetic alteration...) --- seumas.com
Slashdot Mirror
This spurs me to a question regarding a post I made awhile back regarding copyright and Universal Records which contacted me and wanted me to remove an auction in which one of my users were apparently selling bootlegged material of GodSmack.
The question is, where would my responsibility fall as this legal precedent stands now? Where would it fall after it is upheld or denied? Furthermore, what responsibility befalls me (and others in my position) with a mix of the DMCA binding and this law? They seem to lend to contradiction of one another.
Any ideas would be welcomed. Thanks.
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seumas.com
The problem, then, is that we're the same guys that they didn't want to go out with in highschool and didn't want to sit next to at lunch.
Assuming the line of this statement, I am lead to understand that if the industry was full of handsome, athletic jock guys, they would have no problem?
Further, what does 'geeky guys' have to do with a career? Either you like the technical side of life or you don't. What next? "Gee, I don't want to work in the technical fields because of all those foreigners..."?
If anyone is so nearsighted that they'd give up something they're interested in because they don't like the class of people that are already in that field, then maybe they should stay far away in the first place and go find a job where they can gawk at men with firm white asses as they walk by the Sam Goody's in the mall.
I'm a bit geeky. I was also a very successful jock. I'm a young white male. I work with great people. I work with a lot of talented men and women of all ages, backgrounds, educations and ethnicities. If nothing else, the people in this industry are a reason to want to work in it, not shy away from it.
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seumas.com
BoyGeeks and GirlGeeks are not the enemies. Ask any male in a technical field and he'll tell you that he wishes there were more women in his line of work. If a finger has to be pointed anywhere, point it at the people who make choices and actually have impact on the hiring and encouragement of women in these careers (and classes in school). Further, do something about it.
I don't fall for the statistical bullshit. Men and women are different creatures and there are obvious reasons why there are such rifts between careers paths. It's natural. More women stay at home to be mothers. More women take maternity leave. More women work only part time instead of full-time, to take care of their children. This is just the tip of the ice-berg of differences and we haven't even touched the inherent trend of differences that cause is to find our interests in various fields and areas of life.
So do we just shrug and say "well, that's life and we're different -- I guess we'll just have to live with it".
No. When an industry needs more people to populate its positions, it advertises, reaches out to schools, conducts press-releases, gets as much air-time and play as possible, to attract people.
So if we're so interested in bringing more women "into the fold", then lets do something about it. Offer to help children of all ages, genders and nationalities to learn about technical careers. Some will get bored to tears and give up, but others will sink their teeth into what you have to offer and either run with it as a career or enjoy it as a hobby. Don't focus on males or females, just put the information, encouragement and assistance out there and let it affect as many people as possible. You can't force people into anything, but you can offer them a chance that they didn't have before.
And for businesses -- reach out to a younger crowd. Screw gender; just offer more itnernships, employment or outreach programs to the communities that you are 'a part of' and teach skills to people who want to learn. You tend to offer jobs and careers to people who have had the privelage and oppertunity to attend four year colleges and universities, but what happens to the sixteen-year-old boy or girl who pounds away on coding or other engineering projects in his or her bedroom day and night, but can't afford schooling or certificates to catch your attention? You're exhausting your pool of potential employees, because you're failing to help out. It's cheaper to hire out to other countries and bring people in on visas (not that there is anything at all wrong with that, but then you turn around and complain about it -- citing lack of employable people in this country! God, you're such hypocrits!).
Just because the pay-off isn't within your immediate future doesn't mean the investment isn't worth your time and money. If nothing else, the publicity and good-standing with communities for your efforts to help people who want to learn and get a toe-hold in the business will be worth the cash and time.
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seumas.com
One of the major problems with this robot (I've seen it before, several times over the last few years) is that it requires a massive amount of power. You can only fit so much juice on the machine before the container of said power itself becomes too much of a physical burden on the robot to reasonably pack.
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seumas.com
This seems strange, however, as the 'victims' of any privacy invasion would not be located within the jurisdiction of the United States and, in fact, wouldn't even be an American citizen, which means that the government here has no obligation nor any right to enforce legal 'protection' upon citizens of other countries.
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seumas.com
It took them more than three months to put my second line in, for data.
Further, they have one of the worst statistical reputations for customer service in the entire industry. So much so that the public utilities commission in Oregon decided to fine them as long as they continued to fail miserably at achieving customers service levels and installation/repair levels. The PUC has threatened USWEST so many times, that it's become a routine front-page story and often is the topic of radio talk-shows local to the area.
I am absolutely amazed that the PUC wasn't able to step in and step this merger. When a company performs as poorly as USWEST and treats the government and the citizens with such careless disregard, how can they be rewarded with an affirmitive merger? This is rediculous.
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Jabber is a great idea and I hope it becomes a success, but I think that a larger 'distributed' model is called for -- or will be, eventually. With the current model for 'distributed' networks, a reliable system probably is not wholly feasible, but there must be a way with some modifications to make such a system, altered from the current Gnutella-like service.
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No, what I'm looking forward to is a fully distributed system of communication where every client is also a sort of server. De-centralize the control and operation of such a system and you also shrug off the responsibility and legal implications of it. How do you stop 60,000,000 freely distributed and connected clients?
There would also be less interest in such a sytem, for tracking personal data for demographic databases. I don't believe COPPA refers to any information provided where a person says "I am 12 years old and my email address is haxorboy@hotmail.com". It applies, if I read it correctly, to the collection of this information. Thus, on a distributed system, there would be no centralized databse with a collection of this information. If the user is connected to the network and has entered their age or email address or other information into their 'profile', that profile remains on their system and cannot be searched, archived or otherwised gathered and manipulated. Once they disconnect, all about them is removed from availability until they connect once again.
Maybe that's dumb. I dunno. It just seems like a better solution.
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The ICQ program is not a website. And the icq.com website itself doesn't require any personal information. I don't see how COPPA is any more related, then, than COPA.
COPPA states that a website may not KNOWINGLY require or track personal information (age, name, address, email address, etc) of anyone underage. All ICQ has to do to remove itself from any concern is take the age category out of their demographic marketing information gathering registration section. Suddenly, they'll no longer knowingly be tracking anything from a child under 13. To them, everyone will simply be a 'user' or a 'member'.
In fact, removal of an age section is the solution many sites and services have used. The only problem is that a lot of companies grasp onto their precious marketing-machine to gather data on every aspect of their users and they find it more valuable to track ages than to allow the younger set to enjoy the use of ICQ (and other services) too.
Also, if I recall, doesn't this only apply to commercial services? Does ICQ (since it provides a free service without advertisements) even fall under the commercial service regulation? I suppose it probably does... Still, this whole thing is rediculous.
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<sarc>
Yeah, exactly! I mean... All of those women and African-Americans and Chinese a century ago. I mean, what in the hell were they complaining about? They weren't allowed to (and thus could not) vote, so they should have kept their mouths shut, huh!
</sarc>
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Further more, yes there are (at least, there WERE) ICQ numbers beneath 1,000. They were reserved for a number of friends of the software originators and the staff when it was wholly owned by Mirabilis. I'm not sure whether these still exist, but I imagine they do.
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June 7th! More than three weeks ago!
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http://www.icq.com/legal/usenote.html
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Also, it isn't 13. It's 12. The law (last I read it) was specifically with regard to children UNDER the age of 13. Teenagers are not part of the age-group this law deals with.
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COPA (which I understood had been repealed) only required that places which REQUIRE or SOLICIT personal data from children under the age of 13 acquire parental permission.
ICQ does not require this data. Thus, don't provide it and ICQ won't have any compelling reason to remove your account. This is not 'circumventing' anything by proving no (or fake) information, since it is never required to begin with.
Also, I have to wonder how this effects users outside of United States jurisdiction.
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Went to see Jurassic Park and as soon as the first footsteps of the giant T-Rex boomed over the THX system, my ears suddenly 'popped' and the world was completely audible again. I could hear everything! Whoo! After over a month of this, it just took one movie to fix me up. Sweeeet.
The other thing I remember about the flick was that these kids behind us (little kids, I don't know what the hell they were doing at a movie like this) screamed several times when the dinosaurs would come out of nowhere and attack or chase. It was great. These were full-throated, scared-to-death screams of terror! It really warmed my heart.
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While you can eventually download movies over the Internet and watch them on your computer screen (or perhaps pipe them to your home entertainment system), it will never replace some of the things people have grown to expect and, in some ways, enjoy about the experience of going to a real theater.
I like going to the ticket booth, telling them I want two tickets for a movie, handing over a few bucks, walking to the concession stand for a bag of Chocolate Covered Raisins and some black licorice (or just sneaking a bunch of grub in on my own), finding a seat in the theater well before the flick starts, watching the goofy advertisements and 'Movie Facts' that are projected on to the screens in the dimly lit auditorium, listening to faint conversations from the people that are already in the theater, hearing that nice lick "shlap-shlap!" of feet sticking to the floor as they walk. Hearing the crunch of pop-corn and the jiggle of ice in drink cups. I like the sudden hush when the lights go down and the previews come up. The always fun THX introductions (which used to be better when they blew out your ear drums) and then, depending on what part of the country you're in (being from Portland, Oregon, it's a pretty quiet crowd) and what kind of movie you're watching, the crowd laughing with you at the film. And, after a really good movie, everyone clapping at a film... An inanimate object. Weird.
But the whole experience is fun. I'd rather have that than to always pay a few bucks to download a gigabyte of data over the 'net and sitting on my couch alone watching a film by myself or with a friend or two. The theater/cinema is one of those experiences that is best enjoyed with other human beings, even if you don't know 99% of the people in the building watching it with you.
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Apparently, if L.A. was bad, smog-wise, it looked like a freaking EPA dream-land compared to the quality of air in India (not certain what part he visited).
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But, other than that and a few minor other impasses of freedom, I'm sure it's a great place! (No, that last bit wasn't intended to be sarcastic.)
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We're talking about the consumers of stupidity. Duh.
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It isn't too difficult to buffer my statement, either. I can point to a couple immediate things, such as the number of times people drop $17 to buy a formulae pop CD from N'Sync or Brittney Spears or the number of idiots who really thought that if they flew to the Publisher's Clearing House headquarters, they were going to become multi-millionaires, because Ed McMahon had said they might have already won on the envelope they receieved in the mail. Then there are the thousands of idiots who fall prey to telephone scams. They willingly hand out $10,000, $20,000 -- even $100,000 with the promise of securing a million-dollar lottery that you've already won!.
What's funnier is that, in the last scenerio, these people usually end up falling for the same scam a second or even a third time! We hear them on 20/20 and 60 Minutes blabbering their sob stories to half of the televised world, expecting us to sympathize with their gullability.
So, while I think this is stupid that the FTC should have to step in considering how rediculous it is to actually expect that the PC's were without attached strings (who cares what the advertisements failed to mention, you don't need more than a handful of IQ points to figure this stuff out), it is nonetheless their duty to look for obvious exploitation of consumers. And, in this case, I think it's safe to assume that stepping in to defend the lowest common denomonator may have been appropriate.
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Damn it. My DSL won't be ready for anotehr four weeks, at least. And the network at the office blocks UDP. God damn, I feel left out!
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Of course, my thinking was "Hey, better being in a foul and depressed mood most of your life, but still being yourself, rather than being prozac-happy."
As for "there's nothing good about it!" -- look at how much of our art has come from depressed people. I do a lot of writing and I used to also paint often. I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say that, when I'm content (good relationships, good job, things are looking up), my writing suffers. I either write without conviction or I simply have nothing to write about.
But man, when life sucks -- or your mind has the perception that it does, there's suddenly lots of stuff to write about, and with conviction! Even if it's apathetic conviction, to coin an oxymoronic phrase.
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It's hard to imagine many societies more arrogant, thoughtless or poorly equipped to deal with the fascinating, even miraculous Human Genome Project that the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. Is it really that hard to imagine a society less equipped and more dangerous than America to deal with the HGP? Have you heard of a little place called Iraq? How about Iran? North Vietnam? How about, with their horrible record for human rights, China?
Headlines all over the country announced that a cure for cancer, heart disease, aging, depression and aging may well be imminent.
I see . . . So what you're broaching is the view that "We'll start changing people so they aren't different anymore. Geeks won't be geeks anymore (and that means no more stories benefiting off of to oppressed masses of brainy outcasts! oh no!). Not only that, but those individualistic types will no longer have cancer or heart disease -- just another attempt to normalize everyone into a single massive stereotypical American! Egads!"
In the Corporate Republic, every new bit of science and technology goes into mass-marketing, hype, and product development.
Yes. This is called "capitalism". Not always a bad thing; sometimes a very terrible thing. Nevertheless, capitalism provides the fuel for these projects to be undertaken. The shear manpower and resources for this project would not ever be available unless those directly involved were to somehow benifit. Certainly, no scientist involved would have offered his or work wholly pro-bono! It would be nice, albeit impossibly Utopian, if some government agency or big corporation, out of the goodness of their heart, offered to setup and maintain a massive storage database of data from the HGP, free to all who wished to use it, but someone has to be responsible for providing services. As long as there is some public consensus and watchdog association formed to watch over these commercial entities and their use of the HGP information, then things should work out well. Let the HGP information be widely and cheaply available (sort of like putting freeware on a CD and charging a minimal cost so that you don't go broke paying for the media on which the software is provided) and let people and companies, within reason, do with that data as they wish.
might it also eliminate other problems and diseases that aren't clear -cut or horrendous, such as depression and some forms of retardation?
What the...? What isn't clear-cut about depression and retardation? These aren't things people look forward to their children having. Nobody says "Gee, I want to have a daughter who suffers from life-long clinical depression and cuts on her forearms with razor-blades, gets involved in abusive relationships to satisfy some masochistic thirst and get hooked on prescription pills!". Likewise, nobody ever hopes that their child will be born with mental retardation. 'Retardation' is not at all an uncertain word. It has a very clearly understood negative connotation. You certainly wouldn't (shouldn't) terminate a pregnancy because of retardation, but what if you had the means to prevent that from occuring and you could bring your child into the world healthy?
There is no connection between bringing physically "perfect" people and mentally "enhanced" people into the world through means of genetic alteration -- and bringing someone into this world who doesn't have heart-disease, cancer, retardation, clinical-depression or even psychopathic tendencies (although the last one may be stickier when you really think about it, in depth).
Anyway, the point being that there are alterations in genetics which are very certainly just to enhance a person -- others are to bring them into the world healthy so that they can have the same right to a life that anyone else should. The limit I see a need to place (if we do need to place any kind of limit on anything?) would be on enhancements to make you stronger, faster, smarter, prettier, more outgoing, than you otherwise would have been. In other words, if you were going to be born with a geekish personality, there should be no alteration before birth that would lead you to, instead, be some popular jock that everyone will fall in love with. However, if you were going to be born with a geekish personality and you were going to have severe asthma, chronic-depression, alchoholism, and (perhaps because your mother smoked, drank or did some narcotic during pregnancy) a major deformation, such as no right arm -- I think it should be an absolute right, if not moral obligation, to provide you the "medical attention" pre-birth (or even pre-conception?) to alleviate these things.
I know, some of what I'm saying sounds a little freakish and too much like social-engineering. I'm not sure that I couldn't or wouldn't change my mind on many related issues, but to me, these seem to be very valid and reasonable suggestions or concerns.
Allowing someone to be brought into the world in sound physical and mental health is unrelated to bringing a "perfect child" into the world. We need to shrug off these seemingly religiously imposed concerns that make us feel as if any change we offer goes directly against nature or 'god'. We have to do what we have to do and if nature or 'god' sees fit to bring a child into this world with major limitations, there is no reason we should not afford the service to remove those unfair limitations. Again, we're talking major things like sight, hearing, walking. A far cry from changing hair color, eye color or voice.
In a nation that has already surrendered many privacy rights to invasive new software technologies
What about a nation that has surrended absolutely all personal traits and deficiencies to being "Gods whim" or "the way nature intended it"? I say fuck nature. We have the power and the tools in our grasp to help people. To help the world. Yes, there are risks of exploitation, as there are with everything. But that should be no reason to completely avoid this, like some kind of ethical plague. HGP does have the potential to be the greatest salvation of (and by) mankind. We risk people who will use it to make the perfect blonde-haired, blue-eyed model, but we also have the ability to alter our species to the point where much of the ocean, high altitudes, other planetary atmospheres and such are compeltely tolerable. There is nearly nothing that we will not have the power to do, so long as we have the judgement to prevent the instances of obvious misuse. Nonetheless, it is out there and if someone whether or not it is ever misused or how we control it, it cannot be put back in the back. The mapping exists and will forever be available.
it's reasonable to assume that the genetic characteristics of most citizens won't stay a secret for long once they're screened.
Well, gee, because privacy laws suck and more rights are given to corporations than individual humans, let's just do away with anything that we can not afford to give privacy to? The problem then, isn't the mapping -- it's the privacy. Point the gun at the right target!
As a society, we may soon be able to get rid of obnoxious, anger and dissent along with cancer and heart disease.
Bah. As a society, we've been trying to do this forever. Where has it gotten us? Look at the variety of geeks, jocks, super models and what have you. There's more variety in people and personalities than ever before. Besides, just because we can genetically alter people, don't you think that there has to be some way that nature -- should we screw up too much -- will fight back? Chaos is a funny thing. Genetically weed dissent and anger out of the human being and I bet it reappears, like a fungus between your toes that you can't quite scrub away.
I'm not in favor of the possibilities of wiping out human emotions -- any of them. In fact, but for extreme chronic and deadly depressions, I'm even greatly against any chemical/drug treatment of it. So you can see how I feel elsewise.
On a side note, genetic modification could sometimes be a good thing, Jon. Perhaps a little more tendancy toward 'perfection' would have given you the natural urge to run a spell-check on this article to catch all of the double-words, typos and miswordings (it's Human Genome Project, isn't it? Not Humane Genome Project?). I thought you were a professional writer?!
I agree with much of what you've stated here. There are great risks and dangers and potentials for exploitation of this information. This is not a limitation of science, the information itself or of right and wrong -- or even of nature or religion. Any harmful or, likewise benificial, results of how the HGP data is used will reflect the quality of the human race. If we have a propensity to destroy ourselves, HGP will serve to do that for us. If we have the overwhelming desire to create a "perfect race" that self-destructs, that too will happen. If we have the want to build bio-engineered humans that can go terraform planets, we will. And if we want to rid the world of disease and offer humanity greater chances in life, we will also do that.
Whatever is done, will be a marker of the wisdom and need for humankind. What we do with this will determine what our value is and ever was -- as well as whether or not we deserve, as a whole, a future in this world. It might turn out wonderful or it might become a disaster, but it certainly isn't going to "go away".
And yes, the whole thing makes me as 'uneasy' as it probably makes most people. As cool as this is, there are so many unknowns and areas open to abuse. We'll have to wait and see what happens . . .
(Sorry, like I said, I was in a nit-picking mood. I can't believe I sunk so low as to be so critical to Katz... Hell, I usually like the guy and think everyone else is being a perpetual dick to him... Oh well. I'm a bad, bad boy... Maybe I need some genetic alteration...)
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[Moderators: My juvinile humor does not deserve positive moderation. Thanks.]
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