sure, but if you've signed a contract that has such vague terms in it (so that the judge doesn't summarily rule in your favour) that they *might* legally be able to cap you, turn you over to the MAFIAA, disconnected you, kill you with bogus surcharges, or whatever, then the burden will be on you to take them and possibly the MAFIAA on in court. Are you really going to spend that kinda money just to lose and switch to another carrier that will do exactly the same thing?
United we stand, divided we fall, etc, etc, but the little guys don't even get any real satisfaction if the actually manage to win a class action suit, only the lawyers do.
How can a company amend/break their contract with a customer based solely on the word of some third party? With no due process, or anything of the sort?
Because they're not breaking their contract with you if they have some vaguely worded clause to the effect they can throttle you at their discretion for "better network management" or somesuch.
For the "greater good" of their network, all those greedy bandwidth hogs who have the nerve to make full use of the pipeline they paid for will be blacklisted; if that just "happens" to appease the MAFIAA for alleged IP violations, well isn't that a happy coincidence?
sure, unless they have a somewhat sketchy cease & desist from the RIAA/MPAA...or if they simply don't want to piss off the feds (wikileaks anyone?). I'm sure they'll apologize later if they were wrong...as long as you can afford the lawyers to prove you were wrong...
gawker lost all credibility with me when they blamed easyDNS for pulling the plug on Wikileaks (actual culprit was everyDNS). Shit happens, it's an easily made typo. My problem is when they basically told the easyDNS owner that they would edit the original press release without acknolwedging that any edit had been made, let alone apologize. They basically told easyDNS to fuck off and quit whining after gawkers error almost got easyDNS DDOS'd into oblivion. Even the National Enquirer has more spine (at least when they admit fault)
To sum a few threads posted above with a merging of riffs from Chris Rock: What we need is the tossed salad man "Toss his salad? Nooooooo!!!! I'ma gonna learn, I'ma gonna read, I'ma gonna get a job!"
granted the article is all the way back in early May, but it was clearly an opt-in feature. Whether through ignorance or informed consent, if you want your real life details splattered all over the net, doesn't matter to me, I won't be affected because I won't opt-in.
Quite different from this week's announcement that it's all public and non-discretional. In fact, IMO, the implied subtext was that they anticipated this backlash (as an obvious and reasonable reaction) and (it went without saying) wouldn't have dreamed of making Real-ID mandatory.
Culturally, I think we have become more and more accepting of social networking in the context of your real identity and Facebook
Really? Sadly,/. crowd is atypically informed on the ramifications of losing anonymity on the net. We would certainly be the percentage that is more opposed than ever to losing control over our privacy.
So what we are doing is we are introducing this feature called Real ID, an optional layer of identity So what changed in just 6 weeks?
not ranting at you, thanks for the article that summarizes exactly what we're all pissy about...I'm not sure I trust their about-face when I find it so hard to believe that they only got to that place in just 6 weeks. Perhaps they'll wait until we've all sunk our money into the new starcraft and the wow expansions then change back again?
Stop me if you've heard this one: Innocent until proven guilty. That's the Golden Rule of the Rules of Law in most of western civilisation...except when governments and/or corporations find the rules inconvenient. Us little people have no such option.
now picture this argument being brought to the US where the FBI gets a button, each of the 50 states gets a button, every county, town, city PD gets a button, etc. etc....the internet would collapse under the weight of all the buttons, none of which would ever get used for a useful purpose...
20 ga-jillion websites in the world, why should facebook and a select few others bear the burden? Australian police want a "report crime" button on a website, put it on their own...you know, where I'd look for one...if i was looking in the first place...whatever the aussie equivalent of dialling 911 is still going to be faster than typing a report into a website...which, in the unlikely event it actually worked, would instantly generate a phone call from the police to the submitter anyway...
can't see the website button getting abused in any way, no siree...
This will assist you in deciding whether it's a good idea to post those hilarious drunken half-naked pictures of you groping that dude dressed up in a Grimace costume.
And therein lies the real problem, of which Facebook is merely the grand-daddy of monetized symptoms: I should have the right to post a compromising picture or story of myself (or an innocent picture or story that is only compromising out of context) to have a private chuckle at my own expense with a few friends and family and suffer no immediate or future consequences. We've all got embarrassing pictures of ourselves and others, and they of us, but it never used to cost us a future job except in the rarest of deliberate & vindictive betrayals by a friend/family member.
Now, the internet is forever and you never know when your privacy might be breached over something you no longer remember. As long as simple cut and paste exists, this risk doesn't go away even with opensource solutions where you control your information exactly the way you want. It's too easy & common for someone to innocently put their copy of that picture on their website or e-mail or whatever, and you can never put that embarrassing genie back in the bottle, just pray that no one stumbles along the wild internet and connects the "whatever" back to you.
Maybe Facebook et al. need to be reigned in, but they are merely taking advantage of (& are a symptom of) the real problem. Society will either have to learn to go back to sharing risque items via "sneakernet" or society & the corporate world will have to learn to disregard anything found on the 'tubes as heresay and unfounded rumour, even when it consists of actual proof.
whoever said I was ok with what corporations are doing with my data, nevermind the government?
of course, the government isn't in a hurry to set limits on what companies can do because then the government can ask companies to "volunteer" to hand over your personal information that the government couldn't collect on its own without a pesky warrant...
can't wean the wife and kids off the tube, but by the time we empty nest we'll be gone. Personally I watch only one show, never catch it live because the timeslot is inconvenient to my work schedule, so I have watched every episode online.
I might miss live sports but I don't watch regular season games unless my teams are contenders. I'm betting that by the time I cut the cable, most pro sports will be available live with ads like tv episodes.
Heads up to advertisers: I'm more likely to watch your ads when it's 30-60 seconds online than I do when it's 2-5 mins on TV and I can channel hop and get interested in something else or grab a snack in the kitchen, etc...
In other words, if you think you're getting your money's worth on broadcast TV, then you'd definitely get more than twice the value from showing half the commercials online at twice the price.
Now three Republican lawmakers are asking what's being done to prosecute those hosting the document
Why don't you ask what steps are being taken to make us trust our politicians and corporations so that sites like Wikileaks become moot?
Hint: Going after Wikileaks et al. ain't one of those steps and shows a shocking lack of understanding of the purpose of the first amendment or the ephemeral nature of the internet...
except in real life, generally speaking, once a moment is gone, it's gone. Did you see me rake my lawn this morning? Prove that it was me and not someone else that did it, prove that it happened this morning. Without technology, the only way that raking my lawn becomes a searchable fact is if someone is staking out my property and recording the details and publishing them in some way. And that's called stalking.
Life used to be full of public moments that were anonymous because you could essentially hide in plain sight. Ever spot someone in public that you were avoiding and duck into a store to not be seen? Lots of good and bad reasons to avoid certain other people, and it's no one's business as to your motivation for being evasive. Going out in public but taking care who sees you is an analogue version of protecting your privacy. More and more though, we are losing the digitally equivalent methods of controlling who knows what about us as these moments are all recorded and searchable and aggregated by anyone and everyone. Maybe facebook et al. aren't making your details anymore public than they used to be before the internet, but the very definition & implications of anything being public is worlds apart from what it used to be, the most significant of which is the fact that being public about something didn't used to be something you had to worry about because it was typically an ephemeral fact that didn't exist once the instant was gone.
I get mad at you, buy a gun, walk around with it loaded for a few days, never seriously intending to do anything to you or anyone else...and I'm guilty of attempted murder instead of just some degree of weapons charge?
Not at all. I merely imply that it is currently predicted that the population will retreat from it's 2050 maximum and state that extending lifespan may be desirable and/or necessary to stabilize that trend whenever we retreat back to whatever population level is desirable, whether it's 1 billion, 5 billion or merely a few 100 million.
The ridiculous extreme interpretation of the reports I've seen would be that 2050 marks the beginning of our march towards extinction from insufficient reproduction...but no one is claiming that will happen, nor have I seen predictions of any sort for life beyond 2050 when the population is presumed to start shrinking./ramble
The point is that extended lifespans may be desirable by themselves and are not automatically incompatible with sustainability models.
I was reading somewhere (probably/. ) last week that the western world birth rate is below 2.1%, which is the needed replacement rate. Third World countries are gaining access to technology, birth control and nutrition such that they are expected to hit that rate around 2050. In other words the world population maxes out in 2050 and possibly begins declining.
The point is that it's very possible (in the long long term) that extending lifespans might eventually be necessary to maintain a certain global population level once the world declines back to whatever level we feel is most sustainable. Equilibrium itself poses challenges because our consumption cultures are geared towards expansion and growth.
The other key factor is that, eventually, long lives don't mean spending the last 100 years of your 150 year lifespan as a feeble withered husk; it means taking 25 years to grow into a 25 year old body and mind (prime mental and physical maturity) and staying that way indefinitely. Aging is a now-almost-redundant/obsolete evolutionary path to protect against overconsumption of local resources.
It seems like there ought to be a word for that -- obvious good ideas that nevertheless few politicians are willing to consider, because they are aware of how the opposition would deliberately misconstrue the idea if given a chance to do so.
Not a word but there is a term: (political) business-as-usual
Led Zepellin, Pink Floyd & the Doors are my parents generation, most of my generation's music did suck, my kid's music even more so. I don't see it as a case of "things were better in my day now get off my lawn you damn kids," just evidence of the RIAA label cartel & ClearChannel station cartel killing the industry with short sighted policies.
It's been 15 years since I could live in a major market and still listen to a DJ who had significant say in the playlist, had personality that wasn't a gimmick, and had intelligent, insightful, interesting things to say about music, artists & the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
sure, but if you've signed a contract that has such vague terms in it (so that the judge doesn't summarily rule in your favour) that they *might* legally be able to cap you, turn you over to the MAFIAA, disconnected you, kill you with bogus surcharges, or whatever, then the burden will be on you to take them and possibly the MAFIAA on in court. Are you really going to spend that kinda money just to lose and switch to another carrier that will do exactly the same thing?
United we stand, divided we fall, etc, etc, but the little guys don't even get any real satisfaction if the actually manage to win a class action suit, only the lawyers do.
How can a company amend/break their contract with a customer based solely on the word of some third party? With no due process, or anything of the sort?
Because they're not breaking their contract with you if they have some vaguely worded clause to the effect they can throttle you at their discretion for "better network management" or somesuch.
For the "greater good" of their network, all those greedy bandwidth hogs who have the nerve to make full use of the pipeline they paid for will be blacklisted; if that just "happens" to appease the MAFIAA for alleged IP violations, well isn't that a happy coincidence?
500 postings linked to crime out of how many? This just in: paper is also used to write ransom notes, stationery stores to be outlawed
sure, unless they have a somewhat sketchy cease & desist from the RIAA/MPAA...or if they simply don't want to piss off the feds (wikileaks anyone?). I'm sure they'll apologize later if they were wrong...as long as you can afford the lawyers to prove you were wrong...
gawker lost all credibility with me when they blamed easyDNS for pulling the plug on Wikileaks (actual culprit was everyDNS). Shit happens, it's an easily made typo. My problem is when they basically told the easyDNS owner that they would edit the original press release without acknolwedging that any edit had been made, let alone apologize. They basically told easyDNS to fuck off and quit whining after gawkers error almost got easyDNS DDOS'd into oblivion. Even the National Enquirer has more spine (at least when they admit fault)
To sum a few threads posted above with a merging of riffs from Chris Rock: What we need is the tossed salad man "Toss his salad? Nooooooo!!!! I'ma gonna learn, I'ma gonna read, I'ma gonna get a job!"
granted the article is all the way back in early May, but it was clearly an opt-in feature. Whether through ignorance or informed consent, if you want your real life details splattered all over the net, doesn't matter to me, I won't be affected because I won't opt-in.
/. crowd is atypically informed on the ramifications of losing anonymity on the net. We would certainly be the percentage that is more opposed than ever to losing control over our privacy.
Quite different from this week's announcement that it's all public and non-discretional. In fact, IMO, the implied subtext was that they anticipated this backlash (as an obvious and reasonable reaction) and (it went without saying) wouldn't have dreamed of making Real-ID mandatory.
Culturally, I think we have become more and more accepting of social networking in the context of your real identity and Facebook
Really? Sadly,
So what we are doing is we are introducing this feature called Real ID, an optional layer of identity
So what changed in just 6 weeks?
not ranting at you, thanks for the article that summarizes exactly what we're all pissy about...I'm not sure I trust their about-face when I find it so hard to believe that they only got to that place in just 6 weeks. Perhaps they'll wait until we've all sunk our money into the new starcraft and the wow expansions then change back again?
Can they seriously not notice the weekly Facebook privacy dramas and not connect the dots as to how this scheme would blow back on them?
I haven't seen the issue addressed, but I can't see that this measure wouldn't violate EU privacy regulations in some way
Stop me if you've heard this one: Innocent until proven guilty. That's the Golden Rule of the Rules of Law in most of western civilisation...except when governments and/or corporations find the rules inconvenient. Us little people have no such option.
rule of law is dead
Hate to reply to my own comment but...
now picture this argument being brought to the US where the FBI gets a button, each of the 50 states gets a button, every county, town, city PD gets a button, etc. etc....the internet would collapse under the weight of all the buttons, none of which would ever get used for a useful purpose...
20 ga-jillion websites in the world, why should facebook and a select few others bear the burden? Australian police want a "report crime" button on a website, put it on their own...you know, where I'd look for one...if i was looking in the first place...whatever the aussie equivalent of dialling 911 is still going to be faster than typing a report into a website...which, in the unlikely event it actually worked, would instantly generate a phone call from the police to the submitter anyway...
can't see the website button getting abused in any way, no siree...
This will assist you in deciding whether it's a good idea to post those hilarious drunken half-naked pictures of you groping that dude dressed up in a Grimace costume.
And therein lies the real problem, of which Facebook is merely the grand-daddy of monetized symptoms: I should have the right to post a compromising picture or story of myself (or an innocent picture or story that is only compromising out of context) to have a private chuckle at my own expense with a few friends and family and suffer no immediate or future consequences. We've all got embarrassing pictures of ourselves and others, and they of us, but it never used to cost us a future job except in the rarest of deliberate & vindictive betrayals by a friend/family member.
Now, the internet is forever and you never know when your privacy might be breached over something you no longer remember. As long as simple cut and paste exists, this risk doesn't go away even with opensource solutions where you control your information exactly the way you want. It's too easy & common for someone to innocently put their copy of that picture on their website or e-mail or whatever, and you can never put that embarrassing genie back in the bottle, just pray that no one stumbles along the wild internet and connects the "whatever" back to you.
Maybe Facebook et al. need to be reigned in, but they are merely taking advantage of (& are a symptom of) the real problem. Society will either have to learn to go back to sharing risque items via "sneakernet" or society & the corporate world will have to learn to disregard anything found on the 'tubes as heresay and unfounded rumour, even when it consists of actual proof.
whoever said I was ok with what corporations are doing with my data, nevermind the government?
of course, the government isn't in a hurry to set limits on what companies can do because then the government can ask companies to "volunteer" to hand over your personal information that the government couldn't collect on its own without a pesky warrant...
can't wean the wife and kids off the tube, but by the time we empty nest we'll be gone. Personally I watch only one show, never catch it live because the timeslot is inconvenient to my work schedule, so I have watched every episode online. I might miss live sports but I don't watch regular season games unless my teams are contenders. I'm betting that by the time I cut the cable, most pro sports will be available live with ads like tv episodes. Heads up to advertisers: I'm more likely to watch your ads when it's 30-60 seconds online than I do when it's 2-5 mins on TV and I can channel hop and get interested in something else or grab a snack in the kitchen, etc... In other words, if you think you're getting your money's worth on broadcast TV, then you'd definitely get more than twice the value from showing half the commercials online at twice the price.
I mean, who'd believe linux, or bsd, or asterix, or postgresql, or apache, ... were all free
They aren't, they're just part of the most subtle pyramid scheme ever...they've even hooked you!
you and every other woman (all three of 'em) on /.
Now three Republican lawmakers are asking what's being done to prosecute those hosting the document
Why don't you ask what steps are being taken to make us trust our politicians and corporations so that sites like Wikileaks become moot?
Hint: Going after Wikileaks et al. ain't one of those steps and shows a shocking lack of understanding of the purpose of the first amendment or the ephemeral nature of the internet...
except in real life, generally speaking, once a moment is gone, it's gone. Did you see me rake my lawn this morning? Prove that it was me and not someone else that did it, prove that it happened this morning. Without technology, the only way that raking my lawn becomes a searchable fact is if someone is staking out my property and recording the details and publishing them in some way. And that's called stalking.
Life used to be full of public moments that were anonymous because you could essentially hide in plain sight. Ever spot someone in public that you were avoiding and duck into a store to not be seen? Lots of good and bad reasons to avoid certain other people, and it's no one's business as to your motivation for being evasive. Going out in public but taking care who sees you is an analogue version of protecting your privacy. More and more though, we are losing the digitally equivalent methods of controlling who knows what about us as these moments are all recorded and searchable and aggregated by anyone and everyone. Maybe facebook et al. aren't making your details anymore public than they used to be before the internet, but the very definition & implications of anything being public is worlds apart from what it used to be, the most significant of which is the fact that being public about something didn't used to be something you had to worry about because it was typically an ephemeral fact that didn't exist once the instant was gone.
I get mad at you, buy a gun, walk around with it loaded for a few days, never seriously intending to do anything to you or anyone else...and I'm guilty of attempted murder instead of just some degree of weapons charge?
You say that like it's a bad thing.
/ramble
Not at all. I merely imply that it is currently predicted that the population will retreat from it's 2050 maximum and state that extending lifespan may be desirable and/or necessary to stabilize that trend whenever we retreat back to whatever population level is desirable, whether it's 1 billion, 5 billion or merely a few 100 million.
The ridiculous extreme interpretation of the reports I've seen would be that 2050 marks the beginning of our march towards extinction from insufficient reproduction...but no one is claiming that will happen, nor have I seen predictions of any sort for life beyond 2050 when the population is presumed to start shrinking.
The point is that extended lifespans may be desirable by themselves and are not automatically incompatible with sustainability models.
I was reading somewhere (probably /. ) last week that the western world birth rate is below 2.1%, which is the needed replacement rate. Third World countries are gaining access to technology, birth control and nutrition such that they are expected to hit that rate around 2050. In other words the world population maxes out in 2050 and possibly begins declining.
The point is that it's very possible (in the long long term) that extending lifespans might eventually be necessary to maintain a certain global population level once the world declines back to whatever level we feel is most sustainable. Equilibrium itself poses challenges because our consumption cultures are geared towards expansion and growth.
The other key factor is that, eventually, long lives don't mean spending the last 100 years of your 150 year lifespan as a feeble withered husk; it means taking 25 years to grow into a 25 year old body and mind (prime mental and physical maturity) and staying that way indefinitely. Aging is a now-almost-redundant/obsolete evolutionary path to protect against overconsumption of local resources.
or that anyone in the government reads at all :)
[insert obligatory Sarah Palin/Katie Couric punchline here]
*ducks*
It seems like there ought to be a word for that -- obvious good ideas that nevertheless few politicians are willing to consider, because they are aware of how the opposition would deliberately misconstrue the idea if given a chance to do so.
Not a word but there is a term: (political) business-as-usual
Led Zepellin, Pink Floyd & the Doors are my parents generation, most of my generation's music did suck, my kid's music even more so. I don't see it as a case of "things were better in my day now get off my lawn you damn kids," just evidence of the RIAA label cartel & ClearChannel station cartel killing the industry with short sighted policies.
It's been 15 years since I could live in a major market and still listen to a DJ who had significant say in the playlist, had personality that wasn't a gimmick, and had intelligent, insightful, interesting things to say about music, artists & the industry.
Why do you suppose that is?