it prevents "Pre" releases, wherein a release group distributes the game before the actual release date.
If that's their concern, maybe they should implement strict controls on their employees and business partners (i.e. game reviewers), not on their customers. Without an internal leak of some kind, how else does a game get distributed prior to the release data? It's like when screener copies of a movie end up on torrent sites; the MPAA's problem there is with their own people.
Except Ubisoft doesn't know whether you illegally download their game or not, so pirating it and not playing it at all have the same effect, that is: Ubisoft will assume piracy.
Did you miss the part where he said "do not use this game and tell them why?" Reading comprehension is a very useful skill.
I can't see how anyone could be a tyrant with 5 mod points. I've certainly seen political threads where liberals and conservatives both upmod their POV, but even then you're trying to find your most reasonable, convincing arguments rather than just upmodding talking points. Most of the time, I can influence a political conversation far more by commenting than by moderating.
Using "Troll" and "Flamebait" as synonyms for "I hold a different viewpoint" is a form of tyranny. It's probably unintentional in the sense that a lot of rather childish people are genuinely offended by contradictory points of view and are merely acting out of that offense rather than any deliberate scheme to censor.
The interesting thing about Slashdot is that you can see these little character traits in microcosmic form. Here, they don't matter. Here, they don't do any real damage. It's nothing like what happens when such petty individuals achieve real political power in various governments. Yet if you look, you can see how the only difference between here and there is scale.
The design goal of the system is that you can browse at 4 or 5 and see relatively interesting comments, and at 2 or 3 and see a fairly in depth discussion. You're looking for justice and trying to banish hypocrisy, but all the designers were looking for was decent conversation and trying to filter out garbage.
You can observe quite a bit about people by watching the way they do just about anything at all. Driving is a great example, but moderation on Slashdot is a decent one. If you are observant, you will begin after some time to notice certain patterns that cannot be coincidence. They must instead reflect some kind of shared values or attitudes even though these things are usually subtle and unstated. If you have no natural curiosity about what makes people tick, then maybe you can think of it as a mental exercise.
As you point out, the moderation system includes a human component. Humans can do injustice anywhere, whether modding Slashdot or not. That is what I point out. I have no attachment to the activity they happened to be doing at the time. That's why the design and intent of the moderation system is immaterial to me. If someone drives in a very dangerous manner, should I ignore that because he's in a car? If someone exhibits rather inconsiderate traits while modding Slashdot, should I discuss the mod system or the person's traits? That's why I don't see your point here.
In this particular case, I wasn't even talking about injustice or hypocrisy (and once again I wonder what your point was with those). Nope. The way this thread was originally modded was plain old carelessness. As in, if you're going to moderate, at least read and understand the comment before you click that little box. That can't be too much to ask. I assume everyone who visits this site is literate, so that rules out everything except laziness as an explanation for why someone wouldn't do this. When a very easy thing is frequently screwed up, and for no good reason, does it seem exceptional or noteworthy if someone calls it out?
Ubisoft has brought this upon themselves and now they'll use the fact that their "unbreakable" DRM has been broken to justify their further efforts. Asshats!
The reasonable approach would be "Unbreakable? Yeah we've heard THAT before, no thanks, let's not waste money bothering with this. Lets use the programmers who would be designing complex DRM systems and have them join the team that's actually creating the game." Unfortunately I think that what you said will come to pass. They won't recognize that "try harder" is not the correct way to deal with a failed idea.
What made you think they'd like to do a thing like that? The might do it eventually, when they get around to it, maybe, if they are in the mood for it.
Ever have someone deconstruct a very obvious strawman based on things you plainly never claimed, and then congratulate himself? Ever make a generalization, an obvious generalization, and then have someone pipe up with an instance of an exception while thinking he's really told you a thing or two? Like it never occurred to you that exceptions are normal components of any general observation, so some new ground is broken by mentioning an exception? Like he thinks he made a slam-dunk victory against you in some sort of pissing contest you never intended to play?
A lot of moderators mod like that. They'll get upset at you if you suggest there's something wrong with it, and feel totally justfied. The real world has some petty tyrants who might not even know that they're tyrannical, and so does Slashdot.
If one had flown and crashed, everyone would have blamed the governments involved for not stopping all the traffic. While I am no fan of the government, this is one where they could not win.
I have what you may call a different value system. If they did what needed to be done and had solid reasons for their actions, and took those actions even if people bitched about it because they were truly necessary, then that's a "win" to me. It's a refreshing one since I don't see many wins I could attribute to government decision-making. I'm not a fan of government either but this seems like a good example for them.
While I know next to nothing about planes or volcanoes, I do know that volcanoes erupt along the pacific rim all the time, without the airspace of an entire continent having to be closed for a week. Apparently the authorities in the US just issue an advisory, and airlines just fly around the worst affected parts. Branson isn't the only airline director who went to the media saying that the flight ban went on far longer than was necessary, and that they fly through some levels of volcanic ash or desert dust every day.
I think the "explosive" type of volcano that can hurl concentrations of ash into the air is just one specific type. I would guess that it's like Mt. St. Helens in that a magma flow encounters significant resistance, pressure behind it continues to build, and eventually the pressure reaches a point where the resistance is overcome suddenly and catestrophically, causing a huge explosion. By comparison, volcanoes like those in Hawaii tend to erupt frequently, and when they do, quantities of liquid lava well up from the ground and no sudden explosions or launches of ash take place.
I am definitely not a volcanologist or a geologist. Having said that, it's possible that the kind of eruption that causes problems for airplanes is only one possible event of several or many possible events and may be a rarity.
well, not everyone who wants to run an Internet server is a programmer, or has skills in security or OS management. If you follow the lead of many in the community, you will say that if they don't know what they are doing, they shouldn't be doing it. Well, that's close to telling people that it is not safe, so don't. This makes the Internet a different place than the creators intended, but it may in the end be unavoidable.
I personally intrepret that a different way. To me, it means "another person taught himself how to do these things because the information is freely available. That means I can do the same and only my own laziness would stop me." If I don't know what I am doing, that doesn't mean I should never attempt it. It means I should learn and then do it. I like learning (whatever the subject may be) so this is no problem for me. If it's worthwhile enough for me to be involved in it, it's worthwhile enough for me to learn about it. I wouldn't want it any other way.
Depends on your level of skills. I submit it requires more skills to do so in a Linux environment. Of course, in a windows environment, you can buy a lot of stuff, so it is more expensive. And still not good assurances that you are meeting your goals, despite the price tag.
The only security I recognize is verifiable security. As in, I know what it would take to break into this, and it's incredibly non-trivial. I could spend a lot of money and never have that, so yes it does boil down to skill whether it's Windows or *nix. The difference is that on *nix there are very few who would tell you otherwise, while in Windows, there are many who have something they'd like to sell you.
Your entire post is a non-sequitur. Bait and switch is still illegal, and immoral.
Thanks. I doubt I would have been so brief and succinct so you have probably saved me some time.
Isn't it amazing how a company can get caught red-handed violating the good faith of its users or customers, and still people come out of the woodwork to make excuses for them? I thought it was just Microsoft and Apple but apparently any famous brand enjoys this dubious service.
Not true. The Constitution lays out a number of things that the government is permitted to do. It is also permitted to do things not explicitly laid out that are necessary to carry out its enumerated powers. In other words, it grants quite a few *implicit* powers. While I wouldn't dispute that the Constitution is not obeyed as completely as I'd like, it's really not as badly abused as people would have you believe.
How can there be such confusion about such a simple matter?
The US Constitution is like a default-deny firewall. The federal government has NO POWERS WHATSOEVER except what the Constitution grants it, full-stop. Please research this yourself if you do not believe me.
Some of those enumerated powers are very specific. However, some of those powers were deliberately made broad and open to interpretation. The intention here is for the concept of "separation of powers" to decide how those will be used. Specifically, it is intended that the judiciary branch (i.e. Supreme Court) will decide just what the "regulation of interstate commerce" does and does not allow Congress (the Legislative branch) and the President (the Executive Branch) and their respective subordinates to do.
Look back to my initial post in this thread. It's like I already told you: the Commerce Clause is often (ab)used to justify some seriously questionable things and this might be one of them.
In case there's confusion about another seemingly unrelated issue, the Constitution does *NOT* grant anyone civil rights. The Constitution recognizes and protects those rights, and forbids government from infringing them without due process. But they are *inalienable rights* that we have because we are human beings. They are not granted by government, by law, or even by the highest law which is the Constitution. That's because the rights law grants can also be taken away by laws.
Sorry if this sounds harsh but the signal-to-noise ratio here is terrible. Anyone who does not fully understand the concepts of "enumerated powers" and "inalienable rights" has no business talking about the US Constitution except to ask a question.
Actually in my experience, in meeting people from all over the world, and visiting many other places, it's not Americans that are dumb. It's most people in general. Stereotypes do fit some people, because they are created from a subset of a culture.
By categorizing Americans as dumb, you therefore categorize the general population of the whole world as dumb. Only approximately 1.5% of the United States population is Native American. The remainder migrated here, and their "American" ancestry spans one to a few dozen generations.
I don't consider it important who migrated where, because that's more of a racial/ethnic issue. I don't think that's what this is about. I think it's our culture. That's something we have been exporting for some time now, and just about the only thing we still seem to massively export these days.
I spoke specifically of Americans because that's who is around me for handy observation. The Slashdot crowd seems slow to realize that making a claim about Americans is not the same thing as making the claim that everyone else is exempt. There's a difference between saying "Americans don't want to use their minds" versus saying "Americans don't want to use their minds, unlike everyone else." I said the former and did not say the latter, for a reason, yet I suppose people think that's all a big coincidence. I've all but given up explaining basic things like this, figuring that the people who don't notice or appreciate the difference have chosen not to, and there's nothing I can do for that. I suppose it makes them feel clever to point out such things as though they've made a grand discovery.
At any rate, I have observed during my lifetime a dumbing down of Western culture in general. According to John Taylor Gatto, middle and high schools a few generations ago would cover reading materials that are usually considered college-level today. And on and on it goes, countless examples of same.
It's amusing that you think of it as a "snide remark", when I intended it as merely factual.
I'd mod you up except that I have already posted in this discussion. I am an American and I strongly agree with you. Being honest about this and not trying to cover it up would be this country's first step towards recognizing and dealing with this problem.
Yeah well, it's better than being anything else.;)
I love when jealous people post snide remarks on American web sites, it just makes it all so clear how inferior they feel.:)
I am an American and I have to admit that the USA's general public is dumb. Not in the sense that they don't have intellectual capacity, but in the sense that they seem quite unwilling to use it. They'd generally rather play follow-the-leader and go whichever way the wind blows. They seem to want someone to do their thinking for them, the same way that the aristocracy of old wanted someone (domestic servants) to do their cooking and cleaning for them. This is bad, very bad.
If I thought they were truly stupid and just couldn't help it, then there'd be no point in saying anything. It would be in very poor taste, sort of like asking a paraplegic why he isn't getting up and walking. But the truth is, they can help it, they can do much better, they can value things like logic and critical thinking. They just refuse.
I'm just sayin'. It has all the hallmarks of a IT grad student behavioral study experiment or perhaps a prank or a hoax. Are people really that stupid?
"Dihydrogen monoxide can even be lethal if inhaled!" Dihydrogen monoxide is, of course, water. Their link that says it's "for the press" will explain the intent behind the site. It aims to do for critical thinking what this phishing education site does for phishing.
Right but all they have done is create an unsecured form where they are entering in a clear text credit card number. It is just an unnecessary risk regardless if it is a legit site or not. What if they have malware that is collecting form field entries? They just made a nice clear text form for that malicious software to extract from.
If they already have malware installed that is collecting and transmitting their data, then they already have bigger problems. It's sort of like worrying about dirty windows when the whole house has already been swallowed by a sinkhole.
Now that you know Google can provide sources, you can choose the ones you consider good-quality to your own satisfaction based on your own objective criteria (the Flat Earth Society would fail this test). That's the important part. Oh, you can also be sure that someone hasn't cherry-picked only the credible sources that agree with his position, something you can't do when you keep asking others to do the legwork for you. That's important too.
Isn't it great not to be so lazy that you cannot type a few terms into a Google search?
They can't buy them from third parties (i.e. facebook) but there's nothing to say they can't buy it from fourth parties, which is what they do. Company A that sells user data to Company B which is then utterly free to sell it to the government.
My point was not how many proxies or middlemen they must go through. My point was, where in the Constitution does it say they can buy personal data about anyone? Where in the enumerated powers given to the Federal Government is there such a statement?
That's why I am guessing it must be an interpretation of the Commerce Clause. That's a nice catch-all that basically lets them do whatever they want so long as a friendly judge will sign off on it.
The CERT Advistory history shows us that when the majority of systems on the internet were *nix, there were lots of exploits for *nix systems......and that over time, as more and more home users started populating the net with Windows system, the exploits for Windows grew in number......and towards the end of the history, when Windows systems vastly outnumbered everything else on the internet, the great majority of exploits were for Windows systems.
Every time there is a discussion like this, somebody pipes up with what you just said as though it were novel, as though he were mentioning something new that wasn't already well-known (but apparently not well-understood).
You are talking decades ago if you refer to a time when the Internet was mostly Unix systems. That Unix throughout the decades has had many attacks and the security issues that go with them, and has had this amount of time to evolve ways of dealing with them was precisely my point. Read my post again if you missed that. The other part of my point was that this experience has made Unix more resistant and easier to lock down than a modern Windows machine, even though both can be made fairly secure.
To make that more clear, someone who is highly skilled and highly experienced with Windows can secure a Windows server. Someone who is highly skilled and highly experienced with Unix can secure a Unix server. in that sense they're nearly equal. Where they are not equal is the fact that the Unix admin can do it in less time, with standard system utilities, in a more transparent fashion, and often with simpler tools.
I'm amused by the constant uproars people make every time facebook changes something. what the hell do they think the whole point of facebook is? that they are just providing this service for free? this is a classic case of people wanting their cake and eating it too.
meanwhile, government already has complete access to everyone's communication. you don't hear nearly so much about that anymore. I'm a lot more worried about law enforcement abuse than marketing products I might actually want at some point.
In this case, particular bits of data were disclosed to Facebook with the written understanding that they would remain private. That was according to Facebook's own privacy policy. Later, Facebook reneged on this understanding and unilaterally decided to made them retroactively public. They did this without giving anyone a chance to opt-out and there was no period of notice (between announcing this and actually doing it) to give users a chance to remove or edit that data. This is your classic bait-and-switch. They said one thing, got people to accept what they said on good faith, and then they did another thing.
I understand that Facebook wants to make money. Every for-profit corporation wants to make money. However, that doesn't give them the right to use deception and that's what happened here. Reputable companies manage to make profit without making promises they refuse to keep to their users or customers. What Facebook did is like moving the goalposts or changing the rules while the game is being played. Can you understand now why saying "did you think they were providing you a free service" is a strawman and fails to address the actual issue here?
Except that there is no way to insure that this data doesn't go to the government. They buy a lot of data on citizens from private companies and knowing friendship networks actually is quite valuable information for Big Brother. Take a look at how Pakistan is fighting the Taliban there, it has a lot to do with knowing family networks. As someone with hippy friends, I don't want to be investigated if they join Sea Shepherd.
I take it that the buying of citizens' personal data from privately held corporations is yet another thing they excuse by citing the Commerce Clause? Otherwise I'm having a hard time finding where the Constitution authorizes them to do anything like this.
Slashdot Mirror
If that's their concern, maybe they should implement strict controls on their employees and business partners (i.e. game reviewers), not on their customers. Without an internal leak of some kind, how else does a game get distributed prior to the release data? It's like when screener copies of a movie end up on torrent sites; the MPAA's problem there is with their own people.
Except Ubisoft doesn't know whether you illegally download their game or not, so pirating it and not playing it at all have the same effect, that is: Ubisoft will assume piracy.
Did you miss the part where he said "do not use this game and tell them why?" Reading comprehension is a very useful skill.
Using "Troll" and "Flamebait" as synonyms for "I hold a different viewpoint" is a form of tyranny. It's probably unintentional in the sense that a lot of rather childish people are genuinely offended by contradictory points of view and are merely acting out of that offense rather than any deliberate scheme to censor.
The interesting thing about Slashdot is that you can see these little character traits in microcosmic form. Here, they don't matter. Here, they don't do any real damage. It's nothing like what happens when such petty individuals achieve real political power in various governments. Yet if you look, you can see how the only difference between here and there is scale.
You can observe quite a bit about people by watching the way they do just about anything at all. Driving is a great example, but moderation on Slashdot is a decent one. If you are observant, you will begin after some time to notice certain patterns that cannot be coincidence. They must instead reflect some kind of shared values or attitudes even though these things are usually subtle and unstated. If you have no natural curiosity about what makes people tick, then maybe you can think of it as a mental exercise.
As you point out, the moderation system includes a human component. Humans can do injustice anywhere, whether modding Slashdot or not. That is what I point out. I have no attachment to the activity they happened to be doing at the time. That's why the design and intent of the moderation system is immaterial to me. If someone drives in a very dangerous manner, should I ignore that because he's in a car? If someone exhibits rather inconsiderate traits while modding Slashdot, should I discuss the mod system or the person's traits? That's why I don't see your point here.
In this particular case, I wasn't even talking about injustice or hypocrisy (and once again I wonder what your point was with those). Nope. The way this thread was originally modded was plain old carelessness. As in, if you're going to moderate, at least read and understand the comment before you click that little box. That can't be too much to ask. I assume everyone who visits this site is literate, so that rules out everything except laziness as an explanation for why someone wouldn't do this. When a very easy thing is frequently screwed up, and for no good reason, does it seem exceptional or noteworthy if someone calls it out?
The reasonable approach would be "Unbreakable? Yeah we've heard THAT before, no thanks, let's not waste money bothering with this. Lets use the programmers who would be designing complex DRM systems and have them join the team that's actually creating the game." Unfortunately I think that what you said will come to pass. They won't recognize that "try harder" is not the correct way to deal with a failed idea.
if the blather is so bad, why did you add to it with your own useless post?
Because it's that bad, and/or he's finally given up all hope.
What made you think they'd like to do a thing like that? The might do it eventually, when they get around to it, maybe, if they are in the mood for it.
Ever have someone deconstruct a very obvious strawman based on things you plainly never claimed, and then congratulate himself? Ever make a generalization, an obvious generalization, and then have someone pipe up with an instance of an exception while thinking he's really told you a thing or two? Like it never occurred to you that exceptions are normal components of any general observation, so some new ground is broken by mentioning an exception? Like he thinks he made a slam-dunk victory against you in some sort of pissing contest you never intended to play?
A lot of moderators mod like that. They'll get upset at you if you suggest there's something wrong with it, and feel totally justfied. The real world has some petty tyrants who might not even know that they're tyrannical, and so does Slashdot.
However there have been examples of planes loosing several (or all) engines at onces when flying trough volcanic ash.
Aren't there regulations on how tight the engines have to be so that they don't come loose during flight?
Bah, this made me laugh and that's more than I can say for tired old Slashdot memes. Am I alone in thinking this should be +5 Funny?
Only when it's to banks. Or car companies. Or anyone else who puts money in politician's pockets.
This one is "Flamebait" because it's true.
If one had flown and crashed, everyone would have blamed the governments involved for not stopping all the traffic. While I am no fan of the government, this is one where they could not win.
I have what you may call a different value system. If they did what needed to be done and had solid reasons for their actions, and took those actions even if people bitched about it because they were truly necessary, then that's a "win" to me. It's a refreshing one since I don't see many wins I could attribute to government decision-making. I'm not a fan of government either but this seems like a good example for them.
While I know next to nothing about planes or volcanoes, I do know that volcanoes erupt along the pacific rim all the time, without the airspace of an entire continent having to be closed for a week. Apparently the authorities in the US just issue an advisory, and airlines just fly around the worst affected parts. Branson isn't the only airline director who went to the media saying that the flight ban went on far longer than was necessary, and that they fly through some levels of volcanic ash or desert dust every day.
I think the "explosive" type of volcano that can hurl concentrations of ash into the air is just one specific type. I would guess that it's like Mt. St. Helens in that a magma flow encounters significant resistance, pressure behind it continues to build, and eventually the pressure reaches a point where the resistance is overcome suddenly and catestrophically, causing a huge explosion. By comparison, volcanoes like those in Hawaii tend to erupt frequently, and when they do, quantities of liquid lava well up from the ground and no sudden explosions or launches of ash take place.
I am definitely not a volcanologist or a geologist. Having said that, it's possible that the kind of eruption that causes problems for airplanes is only one possible event of several or many possible events and may be a rarity.
I personally intrepret that a different way. To me, it means "another person taught himself how to do these things because the information is freely available. That means I can do the same and only my own laziness would stop me." If I don't know what I am doing, that doesn't mean I should never attempt it. It means I should learn and then do it. I like learning (whatever the subject may be) so this is no problem for me. If it's worthwhile enough for me to be involved in it, it's worthwhile enough for me to learn about it. I wouldn't want it any other way.
The only security I recognize is verifiable security. As in, I know what it would take to break into this, and it's incredibly non-trivial. I could spend a lot of money and never have that, so yes it does boil down to skill whether it's Windows or *nix. The difference is that on *nix there are very few who would tell you otherwise, while in Windows, there are many who have something they'd like to sell you.
Your entire post is a non-sequitur. Bait and switch is still illegal, and immoral.
Thanks. I doubt I would have been so brief and succinct so you have probably saved me some time.
Isn't it amazing how a company can get caught red-handed violating the good faith of its users or customers, and still people come out of the woodwork to make excuses for them? I thought it was just Microsoft and Apple but apparently any famous brand enjoys this dubious service.
Not true. The Constitution lays out a number of things that the government is permitted to do. It is also permitted to do things not explicitly laid out that are necessary to carry out its enumerated powers. In other words, it grants quite a few *implicit* powers. While I wouldn't dispute that the Constitution is not obeyed as completely as I'd like, it's really not as badly abused as people would have you believe.
How can there be such confusion about such a simple matter?
The US Constitution is like a default-deny firewall. The federal government has NO POWERS WHATSOEVER except what the Constitution grants it, full-stop. Please research this yourself if you do not believe me.
Some of those enumerated powers are very specific. However, some of those powers were deliberately made broad and open to interpretation. The intention here is for the concept of "separation of powers" to decide how those will be used. Specifically, it is intended that the judiciary branch (i.e. Supreme Court) will decide just what the "regulation of interstate commerce" does and does not allow Congress (the Legislative branch) and the President (the Executive Branch) and their respective subordinates to do.
Look back to my initial post in this thread. It's like I already told you: the Commerce Clause is often (ab)used to justify some seriously questionable things and this might be one of them.
In case there's confusion about another seemingly unrelated issue, the Constitution does *NOT* grant anyone civil rights. The Constitution recognizes and protects those rights, and forbids government from infringing them without due process. But they are *inalienable rights* that we have because we are human beings. They are not granted by government, by law, or even by the highest law which is the Constitution. That's because the rights law grants can also be taken away by laws.
Sorry if this sounds harsh but the signal-to-noise ratio here is terrible. Anyone who does not fully understand the concepts of "enumerated powers" and "inalienable rights" has no business talking about the US Constitution except to ask a question.
Actually in my experience, in meeting people from all over the world, and visiting many other places, it's not Americans that are dumb. It's most people in general. Stereotypes do fit some people, because they are created from a subset of a culture.
By categorizing Americans as dumb, you therefore categorize the general population of the whole world as dumb. Only approximately 1.5% of the United States population is Native American. The remainder migrated here, and their "American" ancestry spans one to a few dozen generations.
I don't consider it important who migrated where, because that's more of a racial/ethnic issue. I don't think that's what this is about. I think it's our culture. That's something we have been exporting for some time now, and just about the only thing we still seem to massively export these days.
I spoke specifically of Americans because that's who is around me for handy observation. The Slashdot crowd seems slow to realize that making a claim about Americans is not the same thing as making the claim that everyone else is exempt. There's a difference between saying "Americans don't want to use their minds" versus saying "Americans don't want to use their minds, unlike everyone else." I said the former and did not say the latter, for a reason, yet I suppose people think that's all a big coincidence. I've all but given up explaining basic things like this, figuring that the people who don't notice or appreciate the difference have chosen not to, and there's nothing I can do for that. I suppose it makes them feel clever to point out such things as though they've made a grand discovery.
At any rate, I have observed during my lifetime a dumbing down of Western culture in general. According to John Taylor Gatto, middle and high schools a few generations ago would cover reading materials that are usually considered college-level today. And on and on it goes, countless examples of same.
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You responded to my post. You know that what you wrote there has absolutely nothing to do with my post, right?
It's amusing that you think of it as a "snide remark", when I intended it as merely factual.
I'd mod you up except that I have already posted in this discussion. I am an American and I strongly agree with you. Being honest about this and not trying to cover it up would be this country's first step towards recognizing and dealing with this problem.
Yeah well, it's better than being anything else. ;)
I love when jealous people post snide remarks on American web sites, it just makes it all so clear how inferior they feel. :)
I am an American and I have to admit that the USA's general public is dumb. Not in the sense that they don't have intellectual capacity, but in the sense that they seem quite unwilling to use it. They'd generally rather play follow-the-leader and go whichever way the wind blows. They seem to want someone to do their thinking for them, the same way that the aristocracy of old wanted someone (domestic servants) to do their cooking and cleaning for them. This is bad, very bad.
If I thought they were truly stupid and just couldn't help it, then there'd be no point in saying anything. It would be in very poor taste, sort of like asking a paraplegic why he isn't getting up and walking. But the truth is, they can help it, they can do much better, they can value things like logic and critical thinking. They just refuse.
I'm just sayin'. It has all the hallmarks of a IT grad student behavioral study experiment or perhaps a prank or a hoax. Are people really that stupid?
Ever heard of this site about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide?
"Dihydrogen monoxide can even be lethal if inhaled!" Dihydrogen monoxide is, of course, water. Their link that says it's "for the press" will explain the intent behind the site. It aims to do for critical thinking what this phishing education site does for phishing.
Right but all they have done is create an unsecured form where they are entering in a clear text credit card number. It is just an unnecessary risk regardless if it is a legit site or not. What if they have malware that is collecting form field entries? They just made a nice clear text form for that malicious software to extract from.
If they already have malware installed that is collecting and transmitting their data, then they already have bigger problems. It's sort of like worrying about dirty windows when the whole house has already been swallowed by a sinkhole.
Google also told me that the Earth is flat.
That's why sources are important.
Now that you know Google can provide sources, you can choose the ones you consider good-quality to your own satisfaction based on your own objective criteria (the Flat Earth Society would fail this test). That's the important part. Oh, you can also be sure that someone hasn't cherry-picked only the credible sources that agree with his position, something you can't do when you keep asking others to do the legwork for you. That's important too.
Isn't it great not to be so lazy that you cannot type a few terms into a Google search?
They can't buy them from third parties (i.e. facebook) but there's nothing to say they can't buy it from fourth parties, which is what they do. Company A that sells user data to Company B which is then utterly free to sell it to the government.
My point was not how many proxies or middlemen they must go through. My point was, where in the Constitution does it say they can buy personal data about anyone? Where in the enumerated powers given to the Federal Government is there such a statement?
That's why I am guessing it must be an interpretation of the Commerce Clause. That's a nice catch-all that basically lets them do whatever they want so long as a friendly judge will sign off on it.
The CERT Advistory history shows us that when the majority of systems on the internet were *nix, there were lots of exploits for *nix systems... ...and that over time, as more and more home users started populating the net with Windows system, the exploits for Windows grew in number... ...and towards the end of the history, when Windows systems vastly outnumbered everything else on the internet, the great majority of exploits were for Windows systems.
Every time there is a discussion like this, somebody pipes up with what you just said as though it were novel, as though he were mentioning something new that wasn't already well-known (but apparently not well-understood).
You are talking decades ago if you refer to a time when the Internet was mostly Unix systems. That Unix throughout the decades has had many attacks and the security issues that go with them, and has had this amount of time to evolve ways of dealing with them was precisely my point. Read my post again if you missed that. The other part of my point was that this experience has made Unix more resistant and easier to lock down than a modern Windows machine, even though both can be made fairly secure.
To make that more clear, someone who is highly skilled and highly experienced with Windows can secure a Windows server. Someone who is highly skilled and highly experienced with Unix can secure a Unix server. in that sense they're nearly equal. Where they are not equal is the fact that the Unix admin can do it in less time, with standard system utilities, in a more transparent fashion, and often with simpler tools.
I'm amused by the constant uproars people make every time facebook changes something. what the hell do they think the whole point of facebook is? that they are just providing this service for free? this is a classic case of people wanting their cake and eating it too.
meanwhile, government already has complete access to everyone's communication. you don't hear nearly so much about that anymore. I'm a lot more worried about law enforcement abuse than marketing products I might actually want at some point.
In this case, particular bits of data were disclosed to Facebook with the written understanding that they would remain private. That was according to Facebook's own privacy policy. Later, Facebook reneged on this understanding and unilaterally decided to made them retroactively public. They did this without giving anyone a chance to opt-out and there was no period of notice (between announcing this and actually doing it) to give users a chance to remove or edit that data. This is your classic bait-and-switch. They said one thing, got people to accept what they said on good faith, and then they did another thing.
I understand that Facebook wants to make money. Every for-profit corporation wants to make money. However, that doesn't give them the right to use deception and that's what happened here. Reputable companies manage to make profit without making promises they refuse to keep to their users or customers. What Facebook did is like moving the goalposts or changing the rules while the game is being played. Can you understand now why saying "did you think they were providing you a free service" is a strawman and fails to address the actual issue here?
Except that there is no way to insure that this data doesn't go to the government. They buy a lot of data on citizens from private companies and knowing friendship networks actually is quite valuable information for Big Brother. Take a look at how Pakistan is fighting the Taliban there, it has a lot to do with knowing family networks. As someone with hippy friends, I don't want to be investigated if they join Sea Shepherd.
I take it that the buying of citizens' personal data from privately held corporations is yet another thing they excuse by citing the Commerce Clause? Otherwise I'm having a hard time finding where the Constitution authorizes them to do anything like this.
For an operating system I don't use (you did say .exe format)? Guess he's not that alpha after all...