It may mean that you are an unreliable and irresponsible person and therefore the unelected-yet-very-powerful credit reporting agencies have determined that you are not to be trusted with loans of large sums of money.
It's far more likely, though, that it means you simply don't have large sums of money at your disposal, and therefore the almighty CRAs are simply noting that you would not have the means to repay such loans.
The former is a matter of character. The latter is a matter of circumstance. Credit scores are not designed to distinguish between the two, yet increasingly they are being used as though they were solely a measure of character...
Part of what's going on here seems to be what Alfred North Whitehead called the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." Your credit score is just that -- a score, a number, a measurable quantity. If you present people with a precise enough figure, based on complicated and precise calculations, they think that you're offering something with the kind of mathematical, empirical-law-of-nature authority that physicists used to claim.... To a certain kind of person -- the kind of person who is intimidated by the authority of math and science, but doesn't really understand them -- the quantitative data provided by a credit score seems rock solid.
The referenced article talks about a study done to check for a credit score vs job performance correlation it found none.
"The problem, experts say, is that many factors that can affect a credit report have nothing to with an individual's character. "It's going to reflect things like divorce, sickness, loss of one's job, possibly even identity theft... so as a measure of conscientiousness or attention to detail, it's not very good," says Jerry Palmer, a professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.
Dr. Palmer should know. Recent research he conducted with colleague Laura Koppes tested whether there is any correlation between employees' credit reports and job performance. Though the study was limited to one industry - financial services - the answer they got was a resounding "no." "
Brad Templeton writes "This Saturday marks the
25th anniversary of the first spam I was able to find, and one month ago was the 10th anniversary of the first time a USENET posting was called a spam and the birth of the term (at least beyond mudds)." Templeton was also cited in the American Scientist article featured last Sunday.
That said, I'm glad that the article highlights the damage spam did to Usenet.
It turned the largest and most vibrant public space into a perceived sleazy and "can't recommend you go there" backwater of the internet.
It hurt the future development of the internet: there are many "walled garden" discussion sites on the WWW which could have been better located on a open, fast and worldwide Usenet.
Similar coworker anecdote...
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A few years ago a 42 year old coworker of mine was doing an energy audit at a medical facility. Towards the end of the day he sat down to rest, feeling a bit tired, as he had been on his feet all day.
A nurse walking by looked at him and said something like "You look like you're having a heart attack- I'm calling a doctor over..." She did and he was. He had no idea anything was wrong until then, but his body was obviously giving off enough signals that an experienced nurse or good equipment could tell.
I love ebooks- I've got Eastern Standard Tribe, several other novels, and many shorter texts on my Treo. Nothing is better for interstitial time: grocery lines, red lights, airplane trips, stretches of empty interstate like 50 across Nevada...
Electronic text formats that try to make e-pages look just like paper pages don't help. You'll often be much better off reading small chunks of text with big fonts and very wide margins.
As a side note, those guidelines, almost word for word, ended up in the US Congresses' recent bill on Molecular manufacturing / nanontechnology studies.
If science fiction is the literature of how people cause or react to scientific change, then Crichton is the literature of how people react to virtual change. Like virtual particles that show up then cancel away, the scientific change in MC's novels isn't really a permanent change. You end up back where you started, albeit with the threat that it might come back.
Plus, of course, the expectation in SF is both that the writer gets all current science right, and that extrapolations are (as much as possible) plausible. MC doesn't have to care about that, and it shows (warning: spoilers for Prey): he isn't writing for a science fiction audience.
Back in 1999 the Foresight Institute released the first version of the Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology. MC's "nano" researchers followed none of the major principles of molecular nanotechnology safety. Had they done so, the novel wouldn't exist.
That the WaPo article itself didn't mention the Foresight Institute is a mistake: it makes it seem like scientists haven't been thinking about this, when in fact they've been thinking about and writing about these issues for years.
Adam Smith's invisible hand doesn't necessarily fit with a-national multinational corporations:
As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital
in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
"The DMA is a membership organization." Interesting fact.
"We are here to help you." Good, because I need help right now- my blood pressure is up after reading this article.
"You can reach us by mail, phone, fax or e-mail at the following addresses:"
And then follows a list of over 30 contacts. I wonder who could help... "Consumer assistance"? No, I never consume their products (although they try to force feed everyone) so that isn't me. Privacy? That probably goes to an overfilled voicemail. How about "Direct Marketing Educational Foundation"? That could work- I certainly think that Direct Marketing needs more education.
Their definition of spam is simultaneously too narrow and too wide. Too narrow in that they say only commercial speech is spam. Political or religious or not-obviously-commercial bulk email will use the same resources and clog the same inboxes are the (currently) more common obviously commercial bulk email. (I'm shocked that they didn't ban themselves from spamming.) Too wide in that they say that an individually written email is spam. Because individually written emails, however annoying, don't (and can't) cause the same damage as bulk email, courts might not uphold laws that stop single emails.
To survive the courts, you want a definition that maximizes the damage of spam while minimizing any overlap between spam and free speech issues. This is why I like a definition of "bulk email from a stranger." Bulk is what fills inboxes and servers, bulk clogs up pipelines, bulk requires hijacked resources and stolen credit cards to send out. 'Stranger' = tens of millions of businesses = even 1 email per year from each of them would be too much to handle, let alone try to opt-out from. I think courts can see that the burden and damage from bulk email from strangers is extremely large.
In contrast, courts might not like a law that lets Bob sue Sue for sending a "Hi Bob, Fred said you're starting a Foo business. Do you need a consultant with 10 years Foo experience?" Certainly its unlikely that Bob would sue because of this commercial email from a stranger, but the law as written will allow it. As this particular message would be legal in other formats, the courts might not like banning it simply because it is email, absent any other damage. (And a related argument would apply to bulk emails from people/businesses to which you voluntarily gave an email address.)
How many Treo users don't use it handsfree style?
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W.M. likes the new design that looks more like a phone if you hold it up to your ear. But why would anyone want to? The Treo will never be a lightweight, sleek phone, so why waste design time trying to make it that way? With my Treo I hate using it like a cell phone- holding a box up against your ear seems so... so... 20th century. I like being able to write notes as I speak, or otherwise not having to hold my hand by my ear for a whole conversation.
Its like trying to make an RV more like a sports car: all you do is lose the benefits of an RV.
That said, the Treo has been a joy to use. Sprint's network upgrades have made for great phone quality and reasonable data quality. The only drawback is the 'dial-up' time for making data connections- it feels like going back to a modem.
"...If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it -- and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered. But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy -- the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us -- is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.
If someone intrudes on our privacy -- by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation -- we feel uncomfortable, even violated.
Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do..."
"... The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others.... The right not to be known against our will -- indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves -- is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.
"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.
But there also will be tangible, specific harm.
"The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life...
"... The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free.That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada.
Again, this essay is well worth reading and sending on to others. Other than to Ashcroft and the TSA- don't send it to them, as they'd use it as an antiblueprint. "Don't track everyone all the time? OK, lets track everyone all the time." "Don't allow unsubstantiated data to influence how we treat people? OK, lets use any data available, true or not..."
Hi Spider, thanks for your writing and activities in fandom.
A couple of suggestions (the first based on when I've seen other writers / famous people Slashdotted):
1. Don't give into the temptation to respond to anyone who hasn't been moderated to 2 or more. First of all, few will read it-- there just isn't time to read threads that never get moderated above the baseline. Second, the conversation will be much more interesting if you write back to good writers: writing back to the (score: 1) people usually ends in a dead thread. Third, this place has trolls and flamers: people who write simply and only for provoking emotion, not for provoking thought- you want to ignore them rather than giving them what they want.
2. A couple of your paragraphs are too long for easy reading- more carriage returns would be easier on the eyes.
One indicator of the current state of Speculative Fiction fandom is the list of books and stories nominated for the Hugo. This gives you an idea of what is the best popular SF. Conveniently, the most recent list exists online. (Not a good indicator is current TV or movie SF: Media SF is 30 years behind written SF.)
This is my quick and dirty list of characteristics to categorize SF stories:
Near vs. Far future science fiction- people like us reacting to one major science change vs. people in a significantly different or distant future society.
Standard future vs. Singularity future science fiction: whether or not a singularity exists or is coming.
Fantasy (standard) vs. science fiction.
Alternate histories (contrafactuals), and 'Other fantasy' (magic realism and other non-traditional fantasy).
I think that by SR's standards, standard fantasy is bad, "standard near future" science fiction is neutral, and far-future or singularity fiction is good. i.e. if a piece of SF writing has far-future (Vinge, Reed, Egan) or singularity (Egan, Stross, Doctorow) elements, then it isn't what Robinson is complaining about. So, looking at the top stories I count that:
Of the novel finalists, 3 were science fiction, 1 was alternate history, 1 (The Scar) is hard to categorize (slightly fantasy, but could also be far-future earth). Of these 3 science fiction novels, one was standard near future (Hominids), but two had either far future or singularity elements.
Of the top 15 nominated novels, only one was traditional fantasy (by Pratchett). Six had far future and five had singularity elements.
Of the 15 short stories, there were 2 far-future and 2 singularity stories. There were 3 fantasies- all non-traditional (magic realism or similar)
The winning novella was fantasy, but it was the only fantasy. Of the 15 novellas 5 had far future and 3 or 4 had singularity elements.
With the 15 novelettes, there were no fantasies and 2 singularity and 2 far-future stories.
Based on the Hugo nominations I'm not too worried about the future of SF. The numbers for far-future or pre/post-singularity stories are much, much larger than the numbers for traditional fantasy.
If it is bulk email from a stranger, then it is spam. You want a definition that relies entirely on method, not content, because content based rules will push you into 'regulation of speech' issues, and you don't want to go there.
(As to the "Consent, not method" definition: I think this definition is less useful than "bulk email from a stranger" because currently you do have a right to other forms of non-consent based communications, so courts might not look kindly on laws that take that right away. Especially any rules that prevent individual emails from one person to another)
You have a right to free speech. You don't have a right to free free speech. Just because you can't afford a billboard doesn't give you the right to substitute inexpensive spraypaint grafitti instead. Just because you can't afford a radio commercial doesn't give you the right to use a bullhorn in a high-school football game crowd. Just because you can't afford printing costs for a mail campaign doesn't give you the right to steal a stamp machine. Just because you don't want to work to get an opted-in email list doesn't give you the right to hijack relays, fake return addresses, and do the other 'take resources without any payment' that spammers do.
California has a law requiring the same sort of warning in the subject line. It became the law January 1, 1999.
In the first months after the law went into effect the percentage of spam attacks with "ADV" or ADV:Adult" in the subject line was a full 5% on average. This compared to the months before it became law, where only 1 out of 20 spam attacks contained these in the subject line.
This in the state with over 1/10th of the U.S.'s population.
It would do about as much good, given how rarely they read the signature or compare it to the slip. With your SEE ID, how often has anyone asked for it? I agree with the other respondents- you should still have a signature. IDs are easy to fake.
When you only have 40-45 working years you don't have time to be wrong because you don't have time to start over. (Assuming that starting over = 4-8 years of college or its equivalent.) You don't want to look back and say you were wrong, or chose the wrong career, because that means you wasted your years on that.
If instead you expect that you'll be starting over a few times- you'll have no choice but to start over- then you might not be as attached to any one particular idea or style. Getting into the wrong career for a decade will be no worse than taking one or two wrong classes in college. Not that a mistaken career will be easy to deal with, but it won't be a threat to our fundamental sense of self like bad choices are now.
As others have pointed out, science fiction writers have riffed on this topic for years.
For two downloadable examples, check out this moving short story about a week in the life of an immortal. Note how we can still empathize with the losses immortals must have. (And note that unlike this story, immortality is usually just background in Egan's stories (just like contemporary writing doesn't focus on how our average age is 70).) Or for a great read, download or buy Cory Doctorow's novel 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.' Day to day struggles of people who just happen to be in the starting centuries of immortality.
But what really interests me are the motivations of people who hate the idea of immortality or longevity. Now, if these people were like the Amish ("go on ahead with your tech, but we're going to hang out here for a while") that'd be one thing. But George Bush's chief bioethicist is one of them. Geoge Bush's decisions will be made^hhhInfluenced by someone who has been said to think:
'According to Kass,
it is a deeply fundamental aspect of life to suffer and die. When we try to fix this natural order, we lose our soul, our essential humanity.'
Or, as he has been quoted as saying "The finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not."
I think that given the opportunity for longevity treatments (antibiotics, heart transplants) he'd take them, saying that the particular treatment isn't terrible (like Bennett on gambling). But meanwhile he causes lots of damage, because as treatments are introduced, you cannot easily separate longevity treatments from quality of life treatments. If Kass thinks one of these (longevity/immortality) is ultimately evil, then he might well be willing to sacrifice the other (q of l) in order to prevent the former. To stop reproductive cloning (because delayed twinning is evil, you know?) we also have to stop theraputic cloning, for example.
Me, I want both longevity and quality of life. Of course I'd like to try for 160, just like a person who could only expect to make 40 would love to try for 80. But if not, I'd love to have a much better time in my last decades. I don't see the necessity or beauty of strokes, dementia, arthritis... I don't see this virtue of suffering that Kass sees, and I doubt that he voluntarily skips anti-suffering treatments as they become available. However, I think he will work hard to delay when they become available. That's scary.
As a thought experiment, imagine a world where all arts- books, symphonies, photos, movies, plays, scuptures- had an average lifespan of 70 years, then they start to crumble away, 99% gone by 100, all gone by 120 years. So all we knew about Murasaki Shikibu, Michelangelo, W. Shakespeare, and Beethoven were that they existed; and jazz fans were already losing Louis Armstrong's works. Imagine people in that world saying "Its great we lose these works: unless they disappear no new works will be created. It is unethical to try to extend these creations to survive to 140 or 500 years..." Humanity survived our average lifespan going from 25 to 40 and 40 to 75: I think we're perfectly capable of working out the logistics of 120 or 160 or 300.
I like ebooks and the ideal of ebooks. I've got that 1994 science fiction CD with the annotated Fire Upon the Deep. I've always got magazines and short stories on my Palm. They fill in those timegaps- lines at Costco, waiting rooms, airports and airplanes (although evidently some airlines won't let you use combo Palm / phones even with wireless off), long stoplights, straight stretches of interstate...
But ebooks still have one fatal flaw for me: paper reads 10%-30% faster. (Two flaws if you count vulnerability to jacuzzis.) I'd found this out on my own at work. If I needed to read 200 pages of reports I was better off sending print-jobs to every printer in the building (splitting reports to prevent irritated coworkers). My time saved was worth the additional printing costs.
That speed difference is like driving 45 instead of 60... ok for short distances, dreadful on roadtrips. As a dedicated (nee addicted) reader, this could mean 100 fewer books read per year. Ouch.
If you must read on a monitor, this advice helps. But until they get electronic paper right, the crushed tree system is the way for me.
Some info on what types of info Acxiom helps you with:
"Transactional data permits companies to segment their customer base into best, worst, and average customers. This permits much more focused marketing expenditures. But it doesn't provide any clues as to who your customers are as individuals. How old are they? What's their income and family status? Do they own a home or autos? What are their lifestyle preferences?"
"InfoBase List--the largest collection of U.S. consumer and business data available in one source for list rental. As a comprehensive resource for marketing data, InfoBase provides accurate and effective information to better direct your marketing efforts. With access to more than 176 million consumer records and thousands of demographic, lifestyle and behavioral selectors, no other list source can match the combination of accuracy and coverage of InfoBase data..."
In the comments I haven't seen too much talk about Axciom itself: this is the company that combines every possible bit of information about people into one database, then usable for marketing / fatherland security research. They're the ones who get all the data from warranty cards, mix it with magazine subscriptions, combine that with census data, sprinkle with available political and healthcare data, blend with credit info and filter through post office change-of-address forms... As privacy articles have pointed out, the intersection of sets of 'non-personal' information can easily be a single, identifiable person.
You have a new lifestyle magazine designed for the 30-40 year old programmer, making between $40k and $60k, and owning at least one ferret? Axciom will get you a list with most every one of those living in the geographical region you want.
Where I live (SF Bay Area), you have no right to control who parks in front of your house. And I doubt the city will allow the OP to paint a red "no parking" strip on his curb. So the postmaster telling the mailbox owner that the box was blocked will help the owner how? (Unless the mailbox owner wants to become a crotchety person waving sticks at whoever tries to park there)
Well, assuming in this case that he had access to a lawyer to tell him about Alford [something Padilla hasn't had access to: talking with a lawyer'd ruin his Stockholm-syndrome dependence on his interrogators- really, the gov't admitted this], the lawyer'd only tell him to do this if the lawyer was incompetent. He does have a lawyer, who probably told M.H. that he didn't have a choice. Why would the government allow Alford here? It would make the gov't look bad, and that isn't acceptable.
Quoting from the [oft referenced here but should be re-read. If you can read it without fear, why?] article on Why the Lackawanna 6 pled guilty:
"The federal government implicitly threatened to toss the defendants into a secret military prison without trial, where they could languish indefinitely without access to courts or lawyers.
That prospect terrified the men. They accepted prison terms of 6 1/2 to 9 years.
"We had to worry about the defendants being whisked out of the courtroom and declared enemy combatants if the case started going well for us," said attorney Patrick J. Brown, who defended one of the accused. "So we just ran up the white flag and folded. Most of us wish we'd never been associated with this case."
Yup, thats the system I learned about in civics class:
The government can choose to give you access to the Bill of Rights unless it really need you to be guilty. In that case the Posse'll just come on by to take you away. Oh, and when the BoR says that "persons" get these rights they really meant "upstanding uncriminal citizens-by-birth and taxpayers" so it doesn't apply to YOU.
Can some biologist please, PLEASE gene-mod a frog so that it'll actually hang out in ever-warming water so that I can use that cliched, false but I still want to use it proverbial frog in a pot analogy now?
'Terrorism prosecution' cases have analogous characteristics of the DirectTV sues smartcard reader owners cases or the BSA Grace Period Letter Offers. They are similar in that an actually innocent person is probably better off going with whatever the prosecuting group offers. You can't fight if you can't afford to lose.
A company that has never copied software might still pay the BSA rather than lose many person-days and computer uptime to the BSA's audits. A person that has a legit reason to own a smartcard reader might still want to pay $3,500 to DirectTV rather than pay $5,000 for a lawyer to fight it (and risk having to pay for 10 DirectTV lawyers at $300/hour/each if DTV wins). A person who wasn't planning or supporting terrorism (whether or not he was guilty of gross stupidity) might take 7 years instead of the possibility of being Padilla'd.
He very well might be guilty- I'd have liked to see an honest trial to prove it. But in today's anti-terrorism legal environment I'm afraid that I can imagine actually innocent people pleading guilty (they won't give you a plea bargain unless you plead guilty) to avoid the risk of much worse. I'll wait until the evidence comes out in the trials of the others.
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting and well-researched article last year...
In short, the Taliban / Mullah Omar was getting annoyed and tired of Bin Laden in 1998, so much so that they were getting ready to kick him out. And then Clinton launched missile attacks against Al Quaeda training camps. This caused Mullah Omar to change his mind (if the enemy of your enemy attacks you yourself...) and stick up for Bin Laden.
Some claim the missile attack was a diversionary tactic by Clinton to take attention away from the Monica stories just coming out. Although, in retrospect we do now know that Bin Laden was a very worthy target- too bad the missiles missed. Regardless, in an alternate world where Omar did kick him out, Bin Laden might not have had the base to launch his 2001 attack. Instead of 'for the want of a nail, the battle was lost,' it could be that 'for the want of a blow job the WTC was lost,' alternate-historywise.
Slashdot Mirror
"The problem, experts say, is that many factors that can affect a credit report have nothing to with an individual's character. "It's going to reflect things like divorce, sickness, loss of one's job, possibly even identity theft ... so as a measure of conscientiousness or attention to detail, it's not very good," says Jerry Palmer, a professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.
Dr. Palmer should know. Recent research he conducted with colleague Laura Koppes tested whether there is any correlation between employees' credit reports and job performance. Though the study was limited to one industry - financial services - the answer they got was a resounding "no." "
A nurse walking by looked at him and said something like "You look like you're having a heart attack- I'm calling a doctor over..." She did and he was. He had no idea anything was wrong until then, but his body was obviously giving off enough signals that an experienced nurse or good equipment could tell.
But if you have to read a lot of text at once- for either work or personal use- paper still wins, because paper isn't just a little bit faster: reading speeds are significantly faster for paper.
Electronic text formats that try to make e-pages look just like paper pages don't help. You'll often be much better off reading small chunks of text with big fonts and very wide margins.
As a side note, those guidelines, almost word for word, ended up in the US Congresses' recent bill on Molecular manufacturing / nanontechnology studies.
Plus, of course, the expectation in SF is both that the writer gets all current science right, and that extrapolations are (as much as possible) plausible. MC doesn't have to care about that, and it shows (warning: spoilers for Prey): he isn't writing for a science fiction audience.
Back in 1999 the Foresight Institute released the first version of the Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology. MC's "nano" researchers followed none of the major principles of molecular nanotechnology safety. Had they done so, the novel wouldn't exist.
That the WaPo article itself didn't mention the Foresight Institute is a mistake: it makes it seem like scientists haven't been thinking about this, when in fact they've been thinking about and writing about these issues for years.
- "The DMA is a membership organization." Interesting fact.
- "We are here to help you." Good, because I need help right now- my blood pressure is up after reading this article.
- "You can reach us by mail, phone, fax or e-mail at the following addresses:"
And then follows a list of over 30 contacts. I wonder who could help... "Consumer assistance"? No, I never consume their products (although they try to force feed everyone) so that isn't me. Privacy? That probably goes to an overfilled voicemail. How about "Direct Marketing Educational Foundation"? That could work- I certainly think that Direct Marketing needs more education.To survive the courts, you want a definition that maximizes the damage of spam while minimizing any overlap between spam and free speech issues. This is why I like a definition of "bulk email from a stranger." Bulk is what fills inboxes and servers, bulk clogs up pipelines, bulk requires hijacked resources and stolen credit cards to send out. 'Stranger' = tens of millions of businesses = even 1 email per year from each of them would be too much to handle, let alone try to opt-out from. I think courts can see that the burden and damage from bulk email from strangers is extremely large.
In contrast, courts might not like a law that lets Bob sue Sue for sending a "Hi Bob, Fred said you're starting a Foo business. Do you need a consultant with 10 years Foo experience?" Certainly its unlikely that Bob would sue because of this commercial email from a stranger, but the law as written will allow it. As this particular message would be legal in other formats, the courts might not like banning it simply because it is email, absent any other damage. (And a related argument would apply to bulk emails from people/businesses to which you voluntarily gave an email address.)
Its like trying to make an RV more like a sports car: all you do is lose the benefits of an RV.
That said, the Treo has been a joy to use. Sprint's network upgrades have made for great phone quality and reasonable data quality. The only drawback is the 'dial-up' time for making data connections- it feels like going back to a modem.
"...If Parliament and the public at large have been slow to react, it is probably because for most people, most of the time, privacy is a pretty abstract concept. Like our health, it's something we tend not to think about until we lose it -- and then discover that our lives have been very unpleasantly, and perhaps irretrievably, altered. But though we tend to take it for granted, privacy -- the right to control access to ourselves and to personal information about us -- is at the very core of our lives. It is a fundamental human right precisely because it is an innate human need, an essential condition of our freedom, our dignity and our sense of well-being.
If someone intrudes on our privacy -- by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation -- we feel uncomfortable, even violated.
Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do..."
"... The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. ... The right not to be known against our will -- indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves -- is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.
"If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.
But there also will be tangible, specific harm.
"The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life...
"... The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free.That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada.
Again, this essay is well worth reading and sending on to others. Other than to Ashcroft and the TSA- don't send it to them, as they'd use it as an antiblueprint. "Don't track everyone all the time? OK, lets track everyone all the time." "Don't allow unsubstantiated data to influence how we treat people? OK, lets use any data available, true or not..."
A couple of suggestions (the first based on when I've seen other writers / famous people Slashdotted):
1. Don't give into the temptation to respond to anyone who hasn't been moderated to 2 or more. First of all, few will read it-- there just isn't time to read threads that never get moderated above the baseline. Second, the conversation will be much more interesting if you write back to good writers: writing back to the (score: 1) people usually ends in a dead thread. Third, this place has trolls and flamers: people who write simply and only for provoking emotion, not for provoking thought- you want to ignore them rather than giving them what they want.
2. A couple of your paragraphs are too long for easy reading- more carriage returns would be easier on the eyes.
This is my quick and dirty list of characteristics to categorize SF stories:
- Near vs. Far future science fiction- people like us reacting to one major science change vs. people in a significantly different or distant future society.
- Standard future vs. Singularity future science fiction: whether or not a singularity exists or is coming.
- Fantasy (standard) vs. science fiction.
- Alternate histories (contrafactuals), and 'Other fantasy' (magic realism and other non-traditional fantasy).
I think that by SR's standards, standard fantasy is bad, "standard near future" science fiction is neutral, and far-future or singularity fiction is good. i.e. if a piece of SF writing has far-future (Vinge, Reed, Egan) or singularity (Egan, Stross, Doctorow) elements, then it isn't what Robinson is complaining about. So, looking at the top stories I count that:Based on the Hugo nominations I'm not too worried about the future of SF. The numbers for far-future or pre/post-singularity stories are much, much larger than the numbers for traditional fantasy.
(As to the "Consent, not method" definition: I think this definition is less useful than "bulk email from a stranger" because currently you do have a right to other forms of non-consent based communications, so courts might not look kindly on laws that take that right away. Especially any rules that prevent individual emails from one person to another)
You have a right to free speech. You don't have a right to free free speech. Just because you can't afford a billboard doesn't give you the right to substitute inexpensive spraypaint grafitti instead. Just because you can't afford a radio commercial doesn't give you the right to use a bullhorn in a high-school football game crowd. Just because you can't afford printing costs for a mail campaign doesn't give you the right to steal a stamp machine. Just because you don't want to work to get an opted-in email list doesn't give you the right to hijack relays, fake return addresses, and do the other 'take resources without any payment' that spammers do.
In the first months after the law went into effect the percentage of spam attacks with "ADV" or ADV:Adult" in the subject line was a full 5% on average. This compared to the months before it became law, where only 1 out of 20 spam attacks contained these in the subject line.
This in the state with over 1/10th of the U.S.'s population.
Read this account of how far you'd have to go to get them to reject a signature (answer: extremely far).
If instead you expect that you'll be starting over a few times- you'll have no choice but to start over- then you might not be as attached to any one particular idea or style. Getting into the wrong career for a decade will be no worse than taking one or two wrong classes in college. Not that a mistaken career will be easy to deal with, but it won't be a threat to our fundamental sense of self like bad choices are now.
For two downloadable examples, check out this moving short story about a week in the life of an immortal. Note how we can still empathize with the losses immortals must have. (And note that unlike this story, immortality is usually just background in Egan's stories (just like contemporary writing doesn't focus on how our average age is 70).) Or for a great read, download or buy Cory Doctorow's novel 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.' Day to day struggles of people who just happen to be in the starting centuries of immortality.
But what really interests me are the motivations of people who hate the idea of immortality or longevity. Now, if these people were like the Amish ("go on ahead with your tech, but we're going to hang out here for a while") that'd be one thing. But George Bush's chief bioethicist is one of them. Geoge Bush's decisions will be made^hhhInfluenced by someone who has been said to think:
Or, as he has been quoted as saying "The finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not."I think that given the opportunity for longevity treatments (antibiotics, heart transplants) he'd take them, saying that the particular treatment isn't terrible (like Bennett on gambling). But meanwhile he causes lots of damage, because as treatments are introduced, you cannot easily separate longevity treatments from quality of life treatments. If Kass thinks one of these (longevity /immortality) is ultimately evil, then he might well be willing to sacrifice the other (q of l) in order to prevent the former. To stop reproductive cloning (because delayed twinning is evil, you know?) we also have to stop theraputic cloning, for example.
Me, I want both longevity and quality of life. Of course I'd like to try for 160, just like a person who could only expect to make 40 would love to try for 80. But if not, I'd love to have a much better time in my last decades. I don't see the necessity or beauty of strokes, dementia, arthritis... I don't see this virtue of suffering that Kass sees, and I doubt that he voluntarily skips anti-suffering treatments as they become available. However, I think he will work hard to delay when they become available. That's scary.
As a thought experiment, imagine a world where all arts- books, symphonies, photos, movies, plays, scuptures- had an average lifespan of 70 years, then they start to crumble away, 99% gone by 100, all gone by 120 years. So all we knew about Murasaki Shikibu, Michelangelo, W. Shakespeare, and Beethoven were that they existed; and jazz fans were already losing Louis Armstrong's works. Imagine people in that world saying "Its great we lose these works: unless they disappear no new works will be created. It is unethical to try to extend these creations to survive to 140 or 500 years..." Humanity survived our average lifespan going from 25 to 40 and 40 to 75: I think we're perfectly capable of working out the logistics of 120 or 160 or 300.
But ebooks still have one fatal flaw for me: paper reads 10%-30% faster. (Two flaws if you count vulnerability to jacuzzis.) I'd found this out on my own at work. If I needed to read 200 pages of reports I was better off sending print-jobs to every printer in the building (splitting reports to prevent irritated coworkers). My time saved was worth the additional printing costs.
That speed difference is like driving 45 instead of 60... ok for short distances, dreadful on roadtrips. As a dedicated (nee addicted) reader, this could mean 100 fewer books read per year. Ouch.
If you must read on a monitor, this advice helps. But until they get electronic paper right, the crushed tree system is the way for me.
"Transactional data permits companies to segment their customer base into best, worst, and average customers. This permits much more focused marketing expenditures. But it doesn't provide any clues as to who your customers are as individuals. How old are they? What's their income and family status? Do they own a home or autos? What are their lifestyle preferences?"
"InfoBase List--the largest collection of U.S. consumer and business data available in one source for list rental. As a comprehensive resource for marketing data, InfoBase provides accurate and effective information to better direct your marketing efforts. With access to more than 176 million consumer records and thousands of demographic, lifestyle and behavioral selectors, no other list source can match the combination of accuracy and coverage of InfoBase data..."
You have a new lifestyle magazine designed for the 30-40 year old programmer, making between $40k and $60k, and owning at least one ferret? Axciom will get you a list with most every one of those living in the geographical region you want.
Where I live (SF Bay Area), you have no right to control who parks in front of your house. And I doubt the city will allow the OP to paint a red "no parking" strip on his curb. So the postmaster telling the mailbox owner that the box was blocked will help the owner how? (Unless the mailbox owner wants to become a crotchety person waving sticks at whoever tries to park there)
Quoting from the [oft referenced here but should be re-read. If you can read it without fear, why?] article on Why the Lackawanna 6 pled guilty:
Yup, thats the system I learned about in civics class:The government can choose to give you access to the Bill of Rights unless it really need you to be guilty. In that case the Posse'll just come on by to take you away. Oh, and when the BoR says that "persons" get these rights they really meant "upstanding uncriminal citizens-by-birth and taxpayers" so it doesn't apply to YOU.
Can some biologist please, PLEASE gene-mod a frog so that it'll actually hang out in ever-warming water so that I can use that cliched, false but I still want to use it proverbial frog in a pot analogy now?
A company that has never copied software might still pay the BSA rather than lose many person-days and computer uptime to the BSA's audits. A person that has a legit reason to own a smartcard reader might still want to pay $3,500 to DirectTV rather than pay $5,000 for a lawyer to fight it (and risk having to pay for 10 DirectTV lawyers at $300/hour/each if DTV wins). A person who wasn't planning or supporting terrorism (whether or not he was guilty of gross stupidity) might take 7 years instead of the possibility of being Padilla'd.
He very well might be guilty- I'd have liked to see an honest trial to prove it. But in today's anti-terrorism legal environment I'm afraid that I can imagine actually innocent people pleading guilty (they won't give you a plea bargain unless you plead guilty) to avoid the risk of much worse. I'll wait until the evidence comes out in the trials of the others.
In short, the Taliban / Mullah Omar was getting annoyed and tired of Bin Laden in 1998, so much so that they were getting ready to kick him out. And then Clinton launched missile attacks against Al Quaeda training camps. This caused Mullah Omar to change his mind (if the enemy of your enemy attacks you yourself...) and stick up for Bin Laden.
Some claim the missile attack was a diversionary tactic by Clinton to take attention away from the Monica stories just coming out. Although, in retrospect we do now know that Bin Laden was a very worthy target- too bad the missiles missed. Regardless, in an alternate world where Omar did kick him out, Bin Laden might not have had the base to launch his 2001 attack. Instead of 'for the want of a nail, the battle was lost,' it could be that 'for the want of a blow job the WTC was lost,' alternate-historywise.