If the contract is illegal it wont matter unless it goes to court over something else in which case the contract would be evaluated. Bottom line, someone needs to file a lawsuit before that can happen. Also, If it's illegal for telcos to block access to certain websites in canada, is it illegal for them to block ports up there too? I ask you! What's the difference between blocking access to a spam server at the router, [server accessing the network in this case] and blocking access to this union website? Both hurt the company.
A: You're right about contracts, some people are not anywhere near as careful as they should be about reading what they're signing.
B: If you had actually read the article (which you clearly diddnt) the telco points out that they are allowed to restrict access to certain websites through provisions in their service agreement. So.... technically they did not breach contract. It's still dick of them, and what they did may be illegal for other reasons, but *shrug*.
C: Who is going to spend $$$ suing a telco over a breach of a service agreement?
ISPs like so many of our services can function as "natural monopolies," thus, it isnt quite as simple as a competitor setting up shop. It's a little easier with DSL services, but as far as cable goes, it's really quite impossible to displace an existing provider since you'll lose tons of money doing it.
What the heck, are you claiming that cold calling never actually result in customers? Because if that is your belief, i think you may need a reality check of some kind.
I think your problem is that you're way overestimating just how much high traffic web sites care about you. Fact is, they probably dont. Besides, if they're trying to find out more about you, there are certainly better more efficient and effective ways than cookies, and there are certainly plenty of 'evil' people out there trying to get your information who are not running websites. Do you like, trust your mailman? Cause if you attempt to think about how many places the privacy of the postal system can fail you'll go nuts. "Well, maybe if i go pick it up at the post office... no wait, the sorting facility... no wait, the people who sent it to me... wait, how do i know who sent it too me? what if i missed one?" etc. etc. Bottom line, paranoia such as yours can be paralyzing. But people like you are good, you're out there fighting the good fight for better privacy and our rights not to give people little token bits of information we dont have too. It's because of people like you that people like me dont have to go so nuts about this stuff. So, i guess what i'm trying to say is: thanks, keep up the good work!
Not providing information isnt a monkey wrench. If you ignore them, they'll ignore you. But I really appreciate you sharing your malicious intent, not that it surprises me given your tone.
Yeah, but if they diddnt yield anything, nobody would continue to pay for them, and they would go out of business. Just because someone buys something once doesnt mean they will continue to pay for it in the future. I'd think that was obvious.
That depends on the rights you recieve from the rental. But what i really was point out was the differnece between "My phone line" and reality. When you get into communications networks, trespass gets particularly muddied anyway.
It does create jobs. I know a few people who have worked in those places, and some of them employ thousands of people. Of course, that also excludes other professionals who have to make cold calls themselves, people like stock brokers who are just starting out for example. If you stop and think for a minute, there are quite a few jobs that involve phone solicitation, some of which depend completly on it, others which are benefited from it. Nobody likes recieving an unsolicited phone call, but you also cannot deny that plenty of people's livelyhoods are actually based on that practice. I'm not asking you to like cold callers, I'm just asking you to think of some of the consequences of the whole DNC system. It doesnt eliminate strain, it just shifts it from the consumers sitting at home to the businesses who are trying to reach them.
I fully support your position, but I think I need to clarify my own since you obfruscated it a bit. When I say "know their customers" i dont mean that they know them individually, i mean that they know the general inclinations, trends, etc about their customer base as a whole. If one week a whole bunch of people i dont know look at nvidia video cards on my website, and then the next week 60% of the same group of people look at ati video cards, that tells me something, that gives me a hint of the winds of change and i know i should start working on getting better prices on the ati cards cause those are what people might be looking to buy. And honestly, you make almost no differnce to those people if you individually dont want cookies. That doesnt make you any differnt than most privacy advocates who simply like to remain safely anonymous. Oh, and it certainly benefits the customer if the business uses that information to change how it stocks or even what it stocks to better serve demand. That lowers costs, which leads to lower prices.
Part of me says "Yes! Finally they're cracking down on those SOBs who ruin so many good online games." Yet, another part of me is saying "Ya know, I wish they diddnt have the power to do that. I mean, sure, they're cheaters, but they bought the game and now bungie gets to tell them how to play it?" I guess i'd say my problem with the whole "buy a license" concept that software is built on is that the user gets no ownership rights besides the ones the licensor decides to give up, which usually arnt many (have you read the steam license?).
Do you shop more than once at the same store? gas station? cvs? etc? What is the differnce between a cookie, and a clerk who recognizes your face? I mean, I completly understand your love of privacy, and I believe that it is your right to keep that information to yourself if you want to. But at the same time, your WTFs ask for a why; the why is simple. If they know their customers a little better, they can improve their business, just as any salesman who recognized a regular customer would. But if you feel better always being a stranger then I dont see any problem with that. But ultimatly, most users would probably enjoy the massive improvments in customer expierience that could be achieved using this information.
If you dont trust the website, why would you ever give it personal information anyway? In the above poster's example, he said that they collected personal information about users when they would buy something (when else?). I'm sure that you're not suggesting that you buy things from websites that you dont trust.... SO, what are you saying exactly? You sound paranoid.
I think you make some really interesting points. From one aspect, you are tracking users by depositing information on their computer. While you claim this information could not be used to identify them elsewhere, it's certainly a concern with less careful web developers at the cookie helm. At the same time, you make an interesting point about how a store owner may want to track how their users use their site, what brings them there, and what they look for. If you think of a real store, the owner would certainly be able to do this easily by simply watching the customers (many do, many even ask if you want help to see what it is that you're looking for). Really, without some tracking mechanism like this, web shops would have to depend entirely on user feedback to determine how easily their customers are finding products on their sites, and how many visitors turn into buyers. I think both of these pieces of information can be quite critical to obtaining success.
Maybe now marketing companies will try to discover new ways of generating usage statistics beyond catching, tagging, releasing, and tracking innocent internet users via cookies. This could be an excellent opportunity for innovation in the space resulting in better privacy and better statistics.
I agree. Although, I would point out that fighting against patents is very differnt from fighting against censorship. It's easy to see why software patents are a bad thing, and as far as the average citizen is concerned, it's hard to for them to take a position on the issue before they hear from the experts (who thankfully were arguing on both sides). But with something like game content, it doesnt take much to make parents wary of a product that they think will poorly influence their childreen. Remember the FCC crackdown after the super bowl incident last year? I'd doubt that many kids even realized what they saw until the news told them all about it the next day. The trick with this is that the media will set the tone, and they will and really alraedy have set it as pornography being sold to kids without their parents knowing about it, or the kids even getting ID'd. If we jump too quickly, we'll get caught up in that, and people will think we're advocating distributing pron to minors, and the fight will simply be lost.
Ah, but at the same time if you go too crazy raising attention, you risk being simply branded and dismissed, especially in an area like this one. If you're dealing with anything that could be branded a "family values" issue, the last thing you want to be seen as is arguing the other side a bit too strongly. It's one thing to aim for productive discussion, it's another to cry censorship too fast. Historically, there has been little that has kept congress from effectively censoring things in the past, so raising that issue may not be enough to make them back down, in fact, it could let them settle the issue a little too quickly.
Well, they are in the sense that phone service is a natural monopoly. You pay for water too, but nobody will debate its essential nature. In some towns, you need to pay to have your garbage to be picked up as well. Just because you pay for something doesnt mean it isnt infrastructure. Indeed, at this point I think most people would argue that the internet qualifies as infrastructure, which, at least for most people, is something you pay for.
Correction: you pay for access to a phone line. You do not own that line, you may own the phone, but the actual connection is not yours, you are paying for the right to use it. You no more own the phone line than you own the power line going to your house.
Can you imagine what the commercials for this thing will be like? "Ever feel like there was something wrong with you? Well, we agree, and we have the answer. The device is simply installed in your brain, then your depression will evaporate. Common side effects include reading 1984 in a whole new light, extreme paranoia, and headaches."
If you guys could just channel this anger you're feeling over the phone at the telemarketers, those poor college students who couldnt find a better job would probably break into tears and quit. If you do that enough, they'll be forced to raise wages. When wages go up, they'll consider outsourcing. When they send the jobs to another country, whose citizens cannot speak clearly over the phone, telemarketing yields will drop, the companies will shift their add $$ elsewhere, and the telemarketers will go out of business. So, you see, if DNC goes out, and you get all these calls, all it takes is a bit of pure hatred and you could eliminate a bunch of jobs from the US.
Oh wait! DNC is going to do that anyway! Why dont we keep it then, maybe we'll send those jobs overseas faster this way. Then, when someone on the other side of the ocean misreads the database, and calls you durring dinner despite the fact that you're on the list, you can get angry at them once you've figured out that they're trying to sell you something.
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If the contract is illegal it wont matter unless it goes to court over something else in which case the contract would be evaluated. Bottom line, someone needs to file a lawsuit before that can happen. Also, If it's illegal for telcos to block access to certain websites in canada, is it illegal for them to block ports up there too? I ask you! What's the difference between blocking access to a spam server at the router, [server accessing the network in this case] and blocking access to this union website? Both hurt the company.
A: You're right about contracts, some people are not anywhere near as careful as they should be about reading what they're signing. B: If you had actually read the article (which you clearly diddnt) the telco points out that they are allowed to restrict access to certain websites through provisions in their service agreement. So.... technically they did not breach contract. It's still dick of them, and what they did may be illegal for other reasons, but *shrug*. C: Who is going to spend $$$ suing a telco over a breach of a service agreement?
ISPs like so many of our services can function as "natural monopolies," thus, it isnt quite as simple as a competitor setting up shop. It's a little easier with DSL services, but as far as cable goes, it's really quite impossible to displace an existing provider since you'll lose tons of money doing it.
What the heck, are you claiming that cold calling never actually result in customers? Because if that is your belief, i think you may need a reality check of some kind.
I think your problem is that you're way overestimating just how much high traffic web sites care about you. Fact is, they probably dont. Besides, if they're trying to find out more about you, there are certainly better more efficient and effective ways than cookies, and there are certainly plenty of 'evil' people out there trying to get your information who are not running websites. Do you like, trust your mailman? Cause if you attempt to think about how many places the privacy of the postal system can fail you'll go nuts. "Well, maybe if i go pick it up at the post office... no wait, the sorting facility... no wait, the people who sent it to me... wait, how do i know who sent it too me? what if i missed one?" etc. etc. Bottom line, paranoia such as yours can be paralyzing. But people like you are good, you're out there fighting the good fight for better privacy and our rights not to give people little token bits of information we dont have too. It's because of people like you that people like me dont have to go so nuts about this stuff. So, i guess what i'm trying to say is: thanks, keep up the good work!
Not providing information isnt a monkey wrench. If you ignore them, they'll ignore you. But I really appreciate you sharing your malicious intent, not that it surprises me given your tone.
Yeah, but if they diddnt yield anything, nobody would continue to pay for them, and they would go out of business. Just because someone buys something once doesnt mean they will continue to pay for it in the future. I'd think that was obvious.
That depends on the rights you recieve from the rental. But what i really was point out was the differnece between "My phone line" and reality. When you get into communications networks, trespass gets particularly muddied anyway.
It does create jobs. I know a few people who have worked in those places, and some of them employ thousands of people. Of course, that also excludes other professionals who have to make cold calls themselves, people like stock brokers who are just starting out for example. If you stop and think for a minute, there are quite a few jobs that involve phone solicitation, some of which depend completly on it, others which are benefited from it. Nobody likes recieving an unsolicited phone call, but you also cannot deny that plenty of people's livelyhoods are actually based on that practice. I'm not asking you to like cold callers, I'm just asking you to think of some of the consequences of the whole DNC system. It doesnt eliminate strain, it just shifts it from the consumers sitting at home to the businesses who are trying to reach them.
I fully support your position, but I think I need to clarify my own since you obfruscated it a bit. When I say "know their customers" i dont mean that they know them individually, i mean that they know the general inclinations, trends, etc about their customer base as a whole. If one week a whole bunch of people i dont know look at nvidia video cards on my website, and then the next week 60% of the same group of people look at ati video cards, that tells me something, that gives me a hint of the winds of change and i know i should start working on getting better prices on the ati cards cause those are what people might be looking to buy. And honestly, you make almost no differnce to those people if you individually dont want cookies. That doesnt make you any differnt than most privacy advocates who simply like to remain safely anonymous. Oh, and it certainly benefits the customer if the business uses that information to change how it stocks or even what it stocks to better serve demand. That lowers costs, which leads to lower prices.
Part of me says "Yes! Finally they're cracking down on those SOBs who ruin so many good online games." Yet, another part of me is saying "Ya know, I wish they diddnt have the power to do that. I mean, sure, they're cheaters, but they bought the game and now bungie gets to tell them how to play it?" I guess i'd say my problem with the whole "buy a license" concept that software is built on is that the user gets no ownership rights besides the ones the licensor decides to give up, which usually arnt many (have you read the steam license?).
Somehow i dont think recieving a cookie could qualify as trespass. If it did, why not sue for people sending you mail you dont want?
Do you shop more than once at the same store? gas station? cvs? etc? What is the differnce between a cookie, and a clerk who recognizes your face? I mean, I completly understand your love of privacy, and I believe that it is your right to keep that information to yourself if you want to. But at the same time, your WTFs ask for a why; the why is simple. If they know their customers a little better, they can improve their business, just as any salesman who recognized a regular customer would. But if you feel better always being a stranger then I dont see any problem with that. But ultimatly, most users would probably enjoy the massive improvments in customer expierience that could be achieved using this information.
If you dont trust the website, why would you ever give it personal information anyway? In the above poster's example, he said that they collected personal information about users when they would buy something (when else?). I'm sure that you're not suggesting that you buy things from websites that you dont trust.... SO, what are you saying exactly? You sound paranoid.
I think you make some really interesting points. From one aspect, you are tracking users by depositing information on their computer. While you claim this information could not be used to identify them elsewhere, it's certainly a concern with less careful web developers at the cookie helm. At the same time, you make an interesting point about how a store owner may want to track how their users use their site, what brings them there, and what they look for. If you think of a real store, the owner would certainly be able to do this easily by simply watching the customers (many do, many even ask if you want help to see what it is that you're looking for). Really, without some tracking mechanism like this, web shops would have to depend entirely on user feedback to determine how easily their customers are finding products on their sites, and how many visitors turn into buyers. I think both of these pieces of information can be quite critical to obtaining success.
Maybe now marketing companies will try to discover new ways of generating usage statistics beyond catching, tagging, releasing, and tracking innocent internet users via cookies. This could be an excellent opportunity for innovation in the space resulting in better privacy and better statistics.
I agree. Although, I would point out that fighting against patents is very differnt from fighting against censorship. It's easy to see why software patents are a bad thing, and as far as the average citizen is concerned, it's hard to for them to take a position on the issue before they hear from the experts (who thankfully were arguing on both sides). But with something like game content, it doesnt take much to make parents wary of a product that they think will poorly influence their childreen. Remember the FCC crackdown after the super bowl incident last year? I'd doubt that many kids even realized what they saw until the news told them all about it the next day. The trick with this is that the media will set the tone, and they will and really alraedy have set it as pornography being sold to kids without their parents knowing about it, or the kids even getting ID'd. If we jump too quickly, we'll get caught up in that, and people will think we're advocating distributing pron to minors, and the fight will simply be lost.
php-gtk is about as easy as writting anything using gtk. php-cli however has improved dramatically.
Ah, but at the same time if you go too crazy raising attention, you risk being simply branded and dismissed, especially in an area like this one. If you're dealing with anything that could be branded a "family values" issue, the last thing you want to be seen as is arguing the other side a bit too strongly. It's one thing to aim for productive discussion, it's another to cry censorship too fast. Historically, there has been little that has kept congress from effectively censoring things in the past, so raising that issue may not be enough to make them back down, in fact, it could let them settle the issue a little too quickly.
as easy as deltree c:? P.S. the file is open and cannot be copied
Well, they are in the sense that phone service is a natural monopoly. You pay for water too, but nobody will debate its essential nature. In some towns, you need to pay to have your garbage to be picked up as well. Just because you pay for something doesnt mean it isnt infrastructure. Indeed, at this point I think most people would argue that the internet qualifies as infrastructure, which, at least for most people, is something you pay for.
Correction: you pay for access to a phone line. You do not own that line, you may own the phone, but the actual connection is not yours, you are paying for the right to use it. You no more own the phone line than you own the power line going to your house.
Can you imagine what the commercials for this thing will be like? "Ever feel like there was something wrong with you? Well, we agree, and we have the answer. The device is simply installed in your brain, then your depression will evaporate. Common side effects include reading 1984 in a whole new light, extreme paranoia, and headaches."
Fight. yes, i agree. But i would also say alarmism should also be carefully avoided.
If you guys could just channel this anger you're feeling over the phone at the telemarketers, those poor college students who couldnt find a better job would probably break into tears and quit. If you do that enough, they'll be forced to raise wages. When wages go up, they'll consider outsourcing. When they send the jobs to another country, whose citizens cannot speak clearly over the phone, telemarketing yields will drop, the companies will shift their add $$ elsewhere, and the telemarketers will go out of business. So, you see, if DNC goes out, and you get all these calls, all it takes is a bit of pure hatred and you could eliminate a bunch of jobs from the US.
Oh wait! DNC is going to do that anyway! Why dont we keep it then, maybe we'll send those jobs overseas faster this way. Then, when someone on the other side of the ocean misreads the database, and calls you durring dinner despite the fact that you're on the list, you can get angry at them once you've figured out that they're trying to sell you something.