I don't think you 'get' COPPA. It doesn't say an internet service needs to monitor your children. It is saying in essence the exact opposite. It says that they have to disclose what data they collect, who they share it with, limit the data collected to only what is necessary to use the service, can't collect any information about the child unless the parent gives explicit permission. If the parent gives permission to collect the data, it allows the parents to tell the service to stop and to delete the child's data. It also lists other rules on what data can be collected and how it is shared... but read it yourself I'm not going to list it all here. The only thing that pisses me off is that I can't stipulate the same conditions to Google for myself.
COPPA is a tool to aid the parent and COPPA is anathema to everything Google is about: collecting data. Data is the life blood of the company; literally. It is easier for them to just say no to those under 13 than to spend a ton of money to set up the required controls. Especially, as I think, most parents are likely to chose not to allow their child's data to be collected nor shared (and I can't blame them one bit). And it is the data that is important to Google, not the child. It is with the data that they generate their revenue. So in a nutshell, they have two choices: 1) spend a ton of money to create and maintain the controls to meet the COPPA requirements and keep children using GMail and other services (which also eat up bandwidth and disk space, both of which also cost money) without gaining any revenue generating data from them in return, or 2) simply bar children from using Google services. Option 2 is way cheaper. Remember in a business the number one rule is that money coming in MUST be greater than money going out. Google is just following their number one rule. You libertarians and neocons can't possibly argue Google's position in this respect, can you? Hell, even business friendly liberals.. yes they exist... can't argue either.
Financially the choice they made makes much more sense for their business (and they are a business, not your cuddly free email provider). Remember, the only reason Google cares at all about the child or anyone else who puts their personal data on a Google server is because they put their personal data on a Google server.
You can try and say it is up to the parent to monitor the child which is a good starting point, but what are you going to do when the biggest services tell you they are going to store and possibly share (at their discretion not yours) your child's data and there is nothing you can do about it? Tell your child not to use the internet? Good luck with that. Seriously... good luck. The rest of us understand that you can say no, but if they can get access to the internet, anywhere, they are going to start using it. The library, a friends house, wherever. Especially if all their friends are using it, and then it will happen no matter what you say or do (unless you are one of those who chose to live in the backwoods of Idaho because 'the government is out to get you'... but if that's the case, you have more serious problems, and it ain't the government). So you might as well have them use it at home. And it would be nice to know who knows their name and where they live, and better yet, tell them to mind their own business.
As to how to verify the parent:
Access Verification At a parent's request, operators must disclose the general kinds of personal information they collect online from children (for example, name, address, telephone number, email address, hobbies), as well as the specific information collected from children who visit their sites. Operators must use reasonable procedures to ensure they are dealing with the child's parent before they provide access to the child's specific information.
I insult the politically correct with great reason. They're idiots. I'm not conservative by the way. I thought George W. Bush was an idiot and that Scalia performed a judicial coup by legislating Bush's win in Florida. But I can't stand politically correct fucktards and will is I am particularly ornery on a given day use any opportunity to slag them when I think one is in the room. I think anyone who isn't politically correct can appreciate this sentiment. And from the sounds of it you must be politically correct since you are whining about me dissing these extremest thought police. When you get modded down, you probably cry to show your sensitivity, blame your parents for raising you bad and say you were probably abused but don't remember it please give me regression therapy so I can get some fake memories to charge my father for abusing me which is why I posted something that got modded down, it wasn't my fault it was societies fault. Whatever dude. Go somewhere else and hug a tree.
There are no bonus points at the end of the ride for doing things the hard way. Research is research. You are being silly if you think it is noble not to ask questions or survey groups of people. Would you chastise a Business/Systems Analyst if they asked questions about how the business worked from SMEs and users? Of course not, it is part of researching. A very good research technique is interviewing and/or surveying others who are experts or who have more knowledge on the topic than you do. This is what this guy is doing. So don't get all uppity because this guy is exploiting an avenue of research that you didn't. And no he is not asking you or anyone here to write the story, so people here need to stop exaggerating this. He is trying to get help in creating a believable context. If you could prove that this is his only form of research you might have a case. In any case, good luck on your writing anyway.
If he is the one doing this and then reporting, he can always fudge it to show that they are doing a great job but are severely understaffed. i.e. To show that there is no room to trim things from their group without hurting the company.
That was what I was originally getting at about two or or three posts up.:) But really, if a lot of people are patenting ideas with no physical implementation (really algorithms which many think is bullshit), why can't another idea be prior art? I know people wouldn't go for it because it is ridiculous, but what I was trying to get at was it is no more ridiculous than what they doing now.
If we were dumb enough to turn it all over to bean counters and business grads, we deserve what we got. Now how do we change it. Because that's the only other alternative to a system you don't like living in. Bitching about it won't get you, me, or anyone else anywhere. Of course we could help the bean counters by living with it and chewing our own tails when it gets to us. Kind of like these kinds of stories and the reactions we see here.
I can file a vaguely worded patent now (it happen all the time and we see it), and it will be accepted. In reality business method patents are just ideas with no physical implementation (they're algorithms). So why can't this be used in reverse? Use an idea with no implementation (like where something exists in a story) to shoot it down? How can you patent that idea when someone already had it?
Even in this patent they are saying 'this is an example of a landing strip apparatus'. They aren't saying, *this* is what we are patenting. It looks like they are trying to set it up so that if someone builds their own landing strip apparatus they will have defined it loosely enough that they can sue them for patent infringement. To me this patenting an idea, not something really concrete (at best it is squishy). A story is an idea as well. If the patent office is going to continue to allow people to patent ideas like they have been doing, as opposed to a specific tightly designed and physically produced example, then why can't ideas that have been documented previously be used to shoot stuff down as well; regardless of where that idea originated (it is still an idea)?
Wouldn't it make it something that was obvious though? And isn't something that is obvious un-patentable? How can you patent an idea that was broadcast on TV 30 years ago? (and really all these patents are just trying to restrict you from building a better mousetrap by patenting the idea not the implementation).
And the OP was saying make sure to read up on the concept so that the person going on jury duty doesn't do something nullify the jury. Having unnecessary retrials is also a bad thing, both in terms of justice and as waste of a lot of people's time and money. Doing the kinds of things that nullify a jury is anathema to justice. For example, like making and receiving tweets about a trial you are on the jury for. YOU are the one who is supposed to listen and make the verdict based on the fact of the case in front of you, not your twitter followers and their opinions (which have the possibility of influencing you). But we already know that nullification can be good or bad depending on how it is used. Just about everything we talk about depends on how 'it' is used, it is generally implied. So to argue 'it depends' all the time is pointless.
Are you one of those guys who argues about everything so you can say "it depends" when that is implied in just about everything we state? Is life just one big set of edge cases to you? Some people generalize because generalizations work most of the time, let us get on with our lives, and don't make us look like putzes by arguing about everything with "it depends." Should I look both ways before crossing a busy street? Uhhhhh, let's see, it depends. Stop talking like you're 'tarded enough to need to wear depends.
Because humans have politically correct liberals that lately seem to be the dominant form of life... that has to be the complete opposite of extreme. Mind you, they can be classified as extremely bland white bread afraid of having their own flavour for fear of offending the other bread. Never mind, that is just a full circle since that just describes a bunch of whiny pussies. My first statement stands.
So we grew up on a nice soft cushy earth. We all know from articles posted on Slashdot that life can live in some of the most extreme places, radiation, heavy metal polluted ex-pit mines, around scalding vents five miles below the ocean surface, etc etc etc. But humans, we're pussies by comparison. We have to live in this nice 'goldilocks' zone. Oh not too hot, not too cold, not too much radiation, juuuuuust right. If and when we do finally meet extraterrestrials who never had the soft life we have, they'll be so fucking tough we'll have to be real nice to them; because if it came to a scrap, we could probably nuke them but they would shrug it off like it was only a mildly hot day. All hail our tough as nails mean motherfuckin' alien overlords. Hrrgghuph... I think there was something funny in that hippie.
First thought that came to my mind was 'which one uses agile programming the most, Java or COBOL?' Specifically I thought about many of the proponents of agile I talk to who use the term evolving architecture or discovered architecture and how it seems absurd to think you can build solid apps on a moving (ahem evolving) target. A lot of agile methodologies that I've seen think that doing up front architecture is the wrong thing to do (and woe to those who use requirements and documentation!!!). Why is agile and architecture considered mutually exclusive (this is a rhetorical question). And when it comes to the 'software built using up front architecture is bad' types of people (including a bunch of 'agile coaches' I've encountered), once it gets into maintenance mode and a few years go by, the effects of the evolving architecture are compounded by fact these people are also 'the code is self documenting, documentation and requirements are bad' people. I feel sorry for the people who will have to maintain the code years down the line. On the other hand, most COBOL programs were built using documentation and architecture. Something that provides stable foundations. Slag away in 4, 3, 2, 1, go...
Yeah, I noticed that too, and the more he talked about Watson and what they are doing with it, the more I got a kind of clenching knot in my gut with a feeling that the 'overlord' jokes on Slashdot might be getting a little less funny in the not too distant future. Corporations are legally individuals, are run by people in group mode; which for some reason tends to make the corporations act like sociopathic individuals, understanding feelings etc. but just not really caring about them in others, and only looking after themselves. Now IBM has potentially a huge leg up on a LOT of others. If they turn to the dark side with it, let's hope they capitalize on it as well as they did with DOS, the PC, and O/S2. If they don't use it to crush the little guys trying to start new companies with ideas they have, then good on them.
That makes it way to much of a pain in the butt to administer. Being proactive is better. We use computers to make things easier and more manageable. Probably one of the reasons they want to use a computer as a test station was to not have to monitor crap like this. I wouldn't doubt he could have figured out how to do what you say if that's what he wanted. Even better, have someone walk around the room looking over their shoulder... and give the students pens and paper not a computer so they won't even have any opportunity.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think you 'get' COPPA. It doesn't say an internet service needs to monitor your children. It is saying in essence the exact opposite. It says that they have to disclose what data they collect, who they share it with, limit the data collected to only what is necessary to use the service, can't collect any information about the child unless the parent gives explicit permission. If the parent gives permission to collect the data, it allows the parents to tell the service to stop and to delete the child's data. It also lists other rules on what data can be collected and how it is shared... but read it yourself I'm not going to list it all here. The only thing that pisses me off is that I can't stipulate the same conditions to Google for myself.
COPPA is a tool to aid the parent and COPPA is anathema to everything Google is about: collecting data. Data is the life blood of the company; literally. It is easier for them to just say no to those under 13 than to spend a ton of money to set up the required controls. Especially, as I think, most parents are likely to chose not to allow their child's data to be collected nor shared (and I can't blame them one bit). And it is the data that is important to Google, not the child. It is with the data that they generate their revenue. So in a nutshell, they have two choices: 1) spend a ton of money to create and maintain the controls to meet the COPPA requirements and keep children using GMail and other services (which also eat up bandwidth and disk space, both of which also cost money) without gaining any revenue generating data from them in return, or 2) simply bar children from using Google services. Option 2 is way cheaper. Remember in a business the number one rule is that money coming in MUST be greater than money going out. Google is just following their number one rule. You libertarians and neocons can't possibly argue Google's position in this respect, can you? Hell, even business friendly liberals.. yes they exist... can't argue either.
Financially the choice they made makes much more sense for their business (and they are a business, not your cuddly free email provider). Remember, the only reason Google cares at all about the child or anyone else who puts their personal data on a Google server is because they put their personal data on a Google server.
You can try and say it is up to the parent to monitor the child which is a good starting point, but what are you going to do when the biggest services tell you they are going to store and possibly share (at their discretion not yours) your child's data and there is nothing you can do about it? Tell your child not to use the internet? Good luck with that. Seriously... good luck. The rest of us understand that you can say no, but if they can get access to the internet, anywhere, they are going to start using it. The library, a friends house, wherever. Especially if all their friends are using it, and then it will happen no matter what you say or do (unless you are one of those who chose to live in the backwoods of Idaho because 'the government is out to get you'... but if that's the case, you have more serious problems, and it ain't the government). So you might as well have them use it at home. And it would be nice to know who knows their name and where they live, and better yet, tell them to mind their own business.
As to how to verify the parent:
How about a programmable sybian?
I insult the politically correct with great reason. They're idiots. I'm not conservative by the way. I thought George W. Bush was an idiot and that Scalia performed a judicial coup by legislating Bush's win in Florida. But I can't stand politically correct fucktards and will is I am particularly ornery on a given day use any opportunity to slag them when I think one is in the room. I think anyone who isn't politically correct can appreciate this sentiment. And from the sounds of it you must be politically correct since you are whining about me dissing these extremest thought police. When you get modded down, you probably cry to show your sensitivity, blame your parents for raising you bad and say you were probably abused but don't remember it please give me regression therapy so I can get some fake memories to charge my father for abusing me which is why I posted something that got modded down, it wasn't my fault it was societies fault. Whatever dude. Go somewhere else and hug a tree.
There are no bonus points at the end of the ride for doing things the hard way. Research is research. You are being silly if you think it is noble not to ask questions or survey groups of people. Would you chastise a Business/Systems Analyst if they asked questions about how the business worked from SMEs and users? Of course not, it is part of researching. A very good research technique is interviewing and/or surveying others who are experts or who have more knowledge on the topic than you do. This is what this guy is doing. So don't get all uppity because this guy is exploiting an avenue of research that you didn't. And no he is not asking you or anyone here to write the story, so people here need to stop exaggerating this. He is trying to get help in creating a believable context. If you could prove that this is his only form of research you might have a case. In any case, good luck on your writing anyway.
If he is the one doing this and then reporting, he can always fudge it to show that they are doing a great job but are severely understaffed. i.e. To show that there is no room to trim things from their group without hurting the company.
That was what I was originally getting at about two or or three posts up. :) But really, if a lot of people are patenting ideas with no physical implementation (really algorithms which many think is bullshit), why can't another idea be prior art? I know people wouldn't go for it because it is ridiculous, but what I was trying to get at was it is no more ridiculous than what they doing now.
If we were dumb enough to turn it all over to bean counters and business grads, we deserve what we got. Now how do we change it. Because that's the only other alternative to a system you don't like living in. Bitching about it won't get you, me, or anyone else anywhere. Of course we could help the bean counters by living with it and chewing our own tails when it gets to us. Kind of like these kinds of stories and the reactions we see here.
I can file a vaguely worded patent now (it happen all the time and we see it), and it will be accepted. In reality business method patents are just ideas with no physical implementation (they're algorithms). So why can't this be used in reverse? Use an idea with no implementation (like where something exists in a story) to shoot it down? How can you patent that idea when someone already had it?
Even in this patent they are saying 'this is an example of a landing strip apparatus'. They aren't saying, *this* is what we are patenting. It looks like they are trying to set it up so that if someone builds their own landing strip apparatus they will have defined it loosely enough that they can sue them for patent infringement. To me this patenting an idea, not something really concrete (at best it is squishy). A story is an idea as well. If the patent office is going to continue to allow people to patent ideas like they have been doing, as opposed to a specific tightly designed and physically produced example, then why can't ideas that have been documented previously be used to shoot stuff down as well; regardless of where that idea originated (it is still an idea)?
Two news anchors sitting at the news desk, one male one female, smiling in a news anchor kind of way cameras running:
--------------
Male Anchor yelling at the top of his lungs: So Jane, what do you think about our new theme music on the intro?
Female Anchor yelling back: Whaaat?
Male Anchor yelling louder: I said, what * do * you * think * of * our * new * theme * music? It's * by * Motorhead!
Female Anchor nods as if she heard him but really she didn't, starts yelling herself: It sure is Bob. In our first story...
--------------
They'll find a way around this.
Wouldn't it make it something that was obvious though? And isn't something that is obvious un-patentable? How can you patent an idea that was broadcast on TV 30 years ago? (and really all these patents are just trying to restrict you from building a better mousetrap by patenting the idea not the implementation).
I still don't want to run into a guy who grew up breathing fluorine.
And the OP was saying make sure to read up on the concept so that the person going on jury duty doesn't do something nullify the jury. Having unnecessary retrials is also a bad thing, both in terms of justice and as waste of a lot of people's time and money. Doing the kinds of things that nullify a jury is anathema to justice. For example, like making and receiving tweets about a trial you are on the jury for. YOU are the one who is supposed to listen and make the verdict based on the fact of the case in front of you, not your twitter followers and their opinions (which have the possibility of influencing you). But we already know that nullification can be good or bad depending on how it is used. Just about everything we talk about depends on how 'it' is used, it is generally implied. So to argue 'it depends' all the time is pointless.
As I alluded to. :) Notice as proof a politically correct moderator modded me down for pointing this out. Probably belongs to PETA too.
Are you one of those guys who argues about everything so you can say "it depends" when that is implied in just about everything we state? Is life just one big set of edge cases to you? Some people generalize because generalizations work most of the time, let us get on with our lives, and don't make us look like putzes by arguing about everything with "it depends." Should I look both ways before crossing a busy street? Uhhhhh, let's see, it depends. Stop talking like you're 'tarded enough to need to wear depends.
Because humans have politically correct liberals that lately seem to be the dominant form of life... that has to be the complete opposite of extreme. Mind you, they can be classified as extremely bland white bread afraid of having their own flavour for fear of offending the other bread. Never mind, that is just a full circle since that just describes a bunch of whiny pussies. My first statement stands.
So we grew up on a nice soft cushy earth. We all know from articles posted on Slashdot that life can live in some of the most extreme places, radiation, heavy metal polluted ex-pit mines, around scalding vents five miles below the ocean surface, etc etc etc. But humans, we're pussies by comparison. We have to live in this nice 'goldilocks' zone. Oh not too hot, not too cold, not too much radiation, juuuuuust right. If and when we do finally meet extraterrestrials who never had the soft life we have, they'll be so fucking tough we'll have to be real nice to them; because if it came to a scrap, we could probably nuke them but they would shrug it off like it was only a mildly hot day. All hail our tough as nails mean motherfuckin' alien overlords. Hrrgghuph... I think there was something funny in that hippie.
First thought that came to my mind was 'which one uses agile programming the most, Java or COBOL?' Specifically I thought about many of the proponents of agile I talk to who use the term evolving architecture or discovered architecture and how it seems absurd to think you can build solid apps on a moving (ahem evolving) target. A lot of agile methodologies that I've seen think that doing up front architecture is the wrong thing to do (and woe to those who use requirements and documentation!!!). Why is agile and architecture considered mutually exclusive (this is a rhetorical question). And when it comes to the 'software built using up front architecture is bad' types of people (including a bunch of 'agile coaches' I've encountered), once it gets into maintenance mode and a few years go by, the effects of the evolving architecture are compounded by fact these people are also 'the code is self documenting, documentation and requirements are bad' people. I feel sorry for the people who will have to maintain the code years down the line. On the other hand, most COBOL programs were built using documentation and architecture. Something that provides stable foundations. Slag away in 4, 3, 2, 1, go...
Elephants will do that to. But they had a hard time getting them in the little cages, never mind what they do to those little tiny mazes.
Yeah, I noticed that too, and the more he talked about Watson and what they are doing with it, the more I got a kind of clenching knot in my gut with a feeling that the 'overlord' jokes on Slashdot might be getting a little less funny in the not too distant future. Corporations are legally individuals, are run by people in group mode; which for some reason tends to make the corporations act like sociopathic individuals, understanding feelings etc. but just not really caring about them in others, and only looking after themselves. Now IBM has potentially a huge leg up on a LOT of others. If they turn to the dark side with it, let's hope they capitalize on it as well as they did with DOS, the PC, and O/S2. If they don't use it to crush the little guys trying to start new companies with ideas they have, then good on them.
No, but I would definitely turn in someone watching snuff porn at work. Yeah free country and all that, but people who get off on that are sick fucks.
If my TV courtroom drama legal training serves me right, "I object, asked and answered!
That makes it way to much of a pain in the butt to administer. Being proactive is better. We use computers to make things easier and more manageable. Probably one of the reasons they want to use a computer as a test station was to not have to monitor crap like this. I wouldn't doubt he could have figured out how to do what you say if that's what he wanted. Even better, have someone walk around the room looking over their shoulder... and give the students pens and paper not a computer so they won't even have any opportunity.
Too bad they didn't talk to Steve Jobs before he died, I'm sure he could have given them some ideas.
I'm just happy vegetables can do quantum physics. It means I have a chance.
Well I think so. But I'm sure there a number of people around here who would argue with you about that. :) But thanks none-the-less. ;)