What would be even better than disposable credit card numbers would be disposable credit cards. I want to be able to walk to 7-11 and pay $51 for a $50 debit card (that can be used like a credit card.)
If we're ever going to move into e-cash, we have to have a system that is as anonymous as cash. This seems like the best way to assure that.
That might be why they didn't take the case -- we don't know. They turn down 99% of cases without explaining why. Too bad -- it would have been a good test case. Not idea, but good. I guess all of these questions are what make the case interesting, and I sure would feel better if the Supreme Court would rule on curfews, or at least cases like them related to youth rights.
Though curfew cases are usually pushed as first-amendment issues, they really are more about the fourth. It may be years until we get clear guidance on youth rights. Organizations like Peacefire and ASFAR are helping push the envelope, so maybe we'll get something sooner. Who knows?
Your slippery slope argument doesn't hold, because all the other cases you mention (the elderly, blacks, etc.) are all full citizens under the law, unlike minors.
Minors *are* full citizens -- see Tinker vs. Des Moines. The ruling stated "First Amendment rights are available...students...Students in school as well as out of school are 'persons' under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State."
That pretty well settles it for me. Where's James Tyre when you need him?:)
I live in Charlottesville. I've been out at all hours. I've even said hello to cops at 3:00 a.m. As long as you're not being loud, walking like you're drunk, or doing anything else terribly rude, they don't do anything. I don't think anyone has ever been brought in on it, either, though they've given a few warnings.
Welcome, fellow Charlottesvillian!:)
They bring in a few dozen people a year. You know who they bring in? Black kids. This was the plan, as stated by former Police Chief Wolford (forced out of his job a few years ago) before City Council before the law passed. White kids make up a very small percentage of those snagged. As Wolford said, "those kids from Garrett Square [public housing development] are the troublemakers."
To be honest, I find that much worse than the constitutionality of it. You raise a good point, which we used in our lawsuit:
They ordinance has been very carefully constructed so that basically anyone who knows how to say the words "first amendment" can go merrily about their way without harassment. I know this was not the case with the original incarnation of the ordinance proposed, but it is true of the version finally passed.
That's absolutely the case. Essentially, anybody with enough education (middle-class and up) is OK, but people less educated (poor, lower-class) get snagged. I don't know if you remember, but I printed up and sold (for the cost of printing) hundreds of "I'm Exercising My First Amendment Rights" t-shirts. Simply wearing this t-shirt exempted kids. I wish I could have given more away to poor kids, but I didn't have the money to do that myself.:)
I guess it's not too late -- there's still a curfew. I may even have a few of them left...
I never lipped off, and I never got arrested. At the time that the law was passed, I was just over the required age. But I didn't have a driver's license or any sort of identification, meaning that I had no way of proving my age. I knew most every cop in downtown Charlottesville by their first name. I am always extremely polite and friendly with police offers. It was the officers that I didn't know that were the problem, the ones that thought that I might be young enough to be arrested. (In fact, that was the basis for my involvement in the ACLU lawsuit.)
The fourth amendment shows that we don't need to provide ID in order to pass freely through the streets of America. Suddenly, I needed one. My parents have no money. I was not defending myself. I was defending freedom in Charlottesville, and that's no exaggeration. You've got some nerve to state that I'm "pretending to be a defender of the Constitution." My motives are exactly as I've stated, nothing more and nothing less. To say that I abused the courts is bizarre. The ACLU backed the case, and I've seldom seen them abuse the courts. Defending the extremely basic right of the freedom to assemble is hardly irresponsible.
If youth curfews aren't offensive to you, what are? How about black curfews? You know, since, statistically, the majority of violent crimes in Charlottesville are committed by African-Americans. Or is that OK too? How about curfews for the elderly -- you know, to protect them from nighttime crime? Or curfews for programmers. Because what need do they have to be outside so late? They should be at the office, or sleeping at home. Or, hell, a curfew for everybody from, say, 1am - 5am. Who needs to be outside then? There's really no good reason, right?
The line has to be drawn somewhere. I draw it at youth curfews.
Seeing movie that started at 9:30 could easily have gotten me arrested. Seeing John D'earth at Miller's on Thursday night could have gotten me arrested. Failing to carry ID could have gotten me arrested.
Bothering somebody isn't required. Playing loud music isn't required. Simply taking a walk, sitting outside and watching shooting stars, or walking to the 7-11 to get a Slurpee -- all illegal under youth curfew laws.
There are lots of violations of liberties, and battles against all of them are important. I've chosen youth curfews as a cause. The First Amendment guarantees Americans the right to freely assemble. Curfew laws take that away.
Your suggestion that this particular battle is "wasted" is offensive, at best. At worst, your belief that my anger is portable, and can simply be carted to some other offensive law, is ludicrous.
I see, so there's nothing wrong with government privacy violations if you're a law-abiding citizen.
I was a plaintiff in Schleifer vs. City of Charlottesville -- we sued our city over the youth curfew. What we heard over and over from the lawmakers and judges was "what would a law-abiding kid be doing outside after midnight?" The answer, of course, was "whatever the hell we see fit."
The innocent need not be concerned with their privacy? That's rich.
Who's for starting a religion on SourceForge? The OpenReligion project should be able to have GnuMysticism v0.1 out within a few weeks if we start now!
Don't miss Peacefire's Bennett Haselton on CNN tonight. Everybody's favorite youth-rights advocate will be on around 10:30PM EST, live, arguing against this new policy.
From: Waldo L. Jaquith <waldo@waldo.net>
Date: Tuesday, June 6, 2000 3:59 PM
To: peacefire-technical@iain.com
Subject: Results of Meeting With Senator Emily Couric Re: UCITA
I thought you'd be interested to know how my meeting with VA Senator Emily Couric went. I sat down with her and Josh Chernila of the VPTC and Colin Learmonth from BNSI and talked for about an hour this afternoon.
Essentially, Emily was wholly unfamiliar with UCITA. This is not a criticism -- she has 3,000 bills put before her every year. This is a fairly esoteric one, although it obviously impacts all of us strongly.
She'd done her homework the previous night, and had a thick packet of pages she'd printed out from various UCITA-related websites. We explained to her some of UCITA's impacts, but tried to keep things simple. Our message was basic: UCITA makes digital contracts binding while offering no real limitations as to what the contents of that contract can be. It forces consumers to become attorneys. Almost everything else that UCITA does is a by-product of that portion of UCITA.
Another important message to get across is that UCITA is not an incentive for software companies to move to Virginia. They can take advantage of UCITA from any state, possible other countries, if they specify that in the contract.
Those two main points (bad for consumers and businesses, not beneficial to Virginia) were the ones worth driving home. Although you and I may live and breathe OS software, that's not a useful topic when talking to a senator. (In fact, it's confusing.)
Emily felt strongly, at the end of our meeting, that UCITA is bad for consumers. She suggested that we get more people to talk to their representatives, and suggested that we start some sort of an awareness campaign to get people in Central Virginia, and even beyond, to know more about what UCITA could do.
She's right: that would be the most effective path. It also happens to be the one that requires the most work. She promised to keep her eyes open for UCITA-related news and bills, and asked that we keep her informed. But her conclusion was telling: UCITA isn't going anywhere. No matter what we do, it's not going to go away. We need to assemble a list of amendments that can be introduced as a bill to modify the way that UCITA works. Complaining that we don't want to have our computer hijacked by Microsoft works on a publicity front, but it doesn't get far in the legal world.
I'm hoping that the VPTC will adopt this project, because I know that I don't have the energy or the time to make this happen. Now that the geeks of the world are opposed to UCITA, we have to get businesses and everyday Virginians. It'll be a lot of work, but I think that we can pull it off.
I think it's fair to say that most of us geeks are much in need of college. Knowing a few languages hardly means that one's education can safely grind to a halt. I mean, if all you want to do for the remainder of your life is a little Perl and SQL, that's cool, but that's really not a great approach.
I think that there's a big difference between "saying no to college" for now, and "saying no" for good. I'm skipping it for now. There's too much gold to be mined in the tech industry for me to hold off right now. I'm sure that lots of others feel the same. Anybody that says that there's absolutely nothing to be learned from college is a liar or a fool.
However, there are plenty of geeks here that learned little or nothing in college. And that's quite possible. But you could learn things if you went back and re-focused your work.
I still think that going to college for the purpose of furthering your programming knowledge borders oon foolish. Again -- possible, but generally unlikely. Some people float through their teenage years, and don't really focus until college. I like to think that I had a hell of a productive time in high school. I did more in those four years than most people do in high school, college and grad school combined.
Does this mean that I don't need college? Hell no. I want to major in everything, learn everything that they have to teach, and die at 99 with a dozen degrees. But right now I shouldn't be in college, as I'm sure that many of you aren't for the same reasons. There's too much life to live, tech will change too much in the next four years while you're pursuing that philosophy major.
Anybody with ½ a brain, and even two nanoseconds of a real college education knows this guy is full of crap either because he's completely moronic, or hasn't been to a real school.
His picture looks like he spends his time sitting in front of a sticky keyboard looking at alt.binaries.erotica.* and 'coding' HTML. Another fine candidate for the "Why Couldn't Social Darwinism Take This One" award.
But really... If you seriously think you're going to get anywhere significant in this world, without that piece of paper, you're going to end up nothing but a bench-drone or a tech somewhere useless, fixing a useless piece of hardware, broken by a worthless collegeless geek, just like you.
I'm not so personally insulted by this as I am by the implication that all of us that aren't in college are "worthless" to the world, and would be better off dead.
Last time we discussed this was in January of '99, when we all argued over the relative merits of my existence. (One of the more nerve-wracking experiences I've ever had.) Adam Penenberg (who has since quit after Forbes wanted him to expose a source in a hacking story) did a story on me called "Quit School. Join the web." I guess I'm a better example now -- I've got my own company that's actually doing very well. So I guess you can still chalk me up as an advocate of "joining the web."
You seem to think that this doesn't include you, and that "lots of people" [besides yourself, obviously] will handle it.
I could've sworn that I submitted comments. I'm generally just about obnoxious enough to stick my nose into every discussion that it'll fit into. I figured that they just weren't good enough to be included. Clearly, I did not actually submit a damned thing.
Your submission, on the other hand, was vapor (actually not even that), so I don't think you have earned the right to criticize.
Maybe we're reading different posts? I didn't criticise anything or anybody. I wanted some perspective on how the selection process worked. Turns out that there is none. Thanks to all that explained this.
Who are these people, like Michael A. Rolenz, Paul Fenimore and Walter Charles Becktel? How is it that they've been chosen to be included in this? Didn't lots of people submit comments?
Becktel describes himself as "Primary (Senior) Oracle, Lyricist and Artist." Brian Taylor describes himself as "a private individual." Paul Fenimore's comments just come out as a series of Braille-like dots on xpdf. Arnold Reinhold describes himself, simply, as a resident of Cambridge.
Damn, that had to hurt. I wish that Slashdot would post something about this, at least something in the FAQ. This is frustrating, but I feel like we have to discuss this in weird little threads like this in order to get an idea of what's going on. Not cool.
My karma went down from the karma-frozen 122 to 121 two days ago because I had a post go from a 3 to a 2 (and then up to a 5). Yet, at other times, the karma freeze has prevented my karma from going down. I don't get it.
So I'm a dork, and I'm tracking my "theoretical" karma, which would be 143.:) The only thing lamer than obsessing about karma is obsessing about theoretical karma.
Especially now that they've classified your data as a saleable asset belonging to them, it's doubtful they will actually delete it from their database.
It disgusts me how right you are. I wonder what else we can do, short of suing them? I guess, when in doubt, call ZDNet. They'll turn anything into a front-page story.;)
I looked high and low on their site, trying to determine how to erase my (long unused) account. Finally, I had to e-mail them, and they got back to me yesterday. To remove your account, simply e-mail:
There were no further instructions, so I assume that the removal is done manually by an Amazonling. I used this:
To Whom It May Concern,
Please remove my account from your system. I haven't purchased anything
from you since your 1-click & referral patents, but now that you've modified
your privacy statement to permit the sale of my private information, it's
time to remove my account. Please remove any data that you have under
waldo@waldo.net and waldo@munkandphyber.com, and notify me when you have
done so. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Waldo L. Jaquith
I guess that's sufficient. I encourage all of you to close your accounts, though you'd do well to cite today's news in addition to the modification of their privacy statement.
I actually sent a fan letter to Tobias Ratschiller, I love this book so much. I must confess that I'm only halfway through, but it's really get to see a guide to programming style in PHP, my favorite language. I recommend it highly to anybody that's looking to do PHP professionally.
What I *would* have liked to see in this is more background information on OOP. I've never worked with OOP, so I feel at a bit of a disadvantage. But I'll brush up elsewhere, I guess, but I wish that this would have been included.
Still, this is the #1 PHP book out there, and I can't recommend it more highly. Get it.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. It orbits at.72AU, and is 12,100km in diameter. It has a mass of 4.9^24kg. It has a day that lasts 243 Earth days. The average tempature is about 740K. Venus' surface looks a lot like the American midwest. Most of the planet is covered in lava flows. Venus has no satellites.
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and the seventh largest. It orbits at 1.5AU, and is 6,800km in diameter. It has a mass of 6.4^23kg. The average temperature is -55C, but it gets as high as 27C (80F!) during summer. Its surface area is approximately the same as the land area on Earth. Short of our planet, Mars has the most interesting terrain of any of our planets. There is excellent evidence that there was, at one point, water on Mars. It has ice caps on either end of the planet, made of carbon dioxide. It has two satellites, Deimos and Phobos.
That wasn't so hard. When people say things like "that's like comparing apples and oranges!" it makes me crazy. Apples are red, and about 90% of the size of an orange. They're covered with a thin red (or green or yellow) skin, and have white flesh. Oranges have thick flesh, orange in color, with orange flesh that's divided into sections. It generally contains more juice than an apple.
See? That worked out, too. Now, let's see if we can get a decent comparison of Linux and Win2K.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for saving me the trouble of expressing that. You did it better than I would've, anyhow.
-Waldo
I think the real point of this is to show off MPEG-4. Hell, I'm sure impressed.
-Waldo
And you could use your router as a web server if you were on crack *grin*.
If we can use IP over DNS, http over routers seems reasonable.
I'm holding out for SSH over my toaster.
-Waldo
-------------------
What would be even better than disposable credit card numbers would be disposable credit cards. I want to be able to walk to 7-11 and pay $51 for a $50 debit card (that can be used like a credit card.)
If we're ever going to move into e-cash, we have to have a system that is as anonymous as cash. This seems like the best way to assure that.
-Waldo
-------------------
That might be why they didn't take the case -- we don't know. They turn down 99% of cases without explaining why. Too bad -- it would have been a good test case. Not idea, but good. I guess all of these questions are what make the case interesting, and I sure would feel better if the Supreme Court would rule on curfews, or at least cases like them related to youth rights.
Though curfew cases are usually pushed as first-amendment issues, they really are more about the fourth. It may be years until we get clear guidance on youth rights. Organizations like Peacefire and ASFAR are helping push the envelope, so maybe we'll get something sooner. Who knows?
-Waldo
-------------------
Your slippery slope argument doesn't hold, because all the other cases you mention (the elderly, blacks, etc.) are all full citizens under the law, unlike minors.
:)
Minors *are* full citizens -- see Tinker vs. Des Moines. The ruling stated "First Amendment rights are available...students...Students in school as well as out of school are 'persons' under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State."
That pretty well settles it for me. Where's James Tyre when you need him?
-Waldo
-------------------
I live in Charlottesville. I've been out at all hours. I've even said hello to cops at 3:00 a.m. As long as you're not being loud, walking like you're drunk, or doing anything else terribly rude, they don't do anything. I don't think anyone has ever been brought in on it, either, though they've given a few warnings.
:)
:)
Welcome, fellow Charlottesvillian!
They bring in a few dozen people a year. You know who they bring in? Black kids. This was the plan, as stated by former Police Chief Wolford (forced out of his job a few years ago) before City Council before the law passed. White kids make up a very small percentage of those snagged. As Wolford said, "those kids from Garrett Square [public housing development] are the troublemakers."
To be honest, I find that much worse than the constitutionality of it. You raise a good point, which we used in our lawsuit:
They ordinance has been very carefully constructed so that basically anyone who knows how to say the words "first amendment" can go merrily about their way without harassment. I know this was not the case with the original incarnation of the ordinance proposed, but it is true of the version finally passed.
That's absolutely the case. Essentially, anybody with enough education (middle-class and up) is OK, but people less educated (poor, lower-class) get snagged. I don't know if you remember, but I printed up and sold (for the cost of printing) hundreds of "I'm Exercising My First Amendment Rights" t-shirts. Simply wearing this t-shirt exempted kids. I wish I could have given more away to poor kids, but I didn't have the money to do that myself.
I guess it's not too late -- there's still a curfew. I may even have a few of them left...
-Waldo
-------------------
I never lipped off, and I never got arrested. At the time that the law was passed, I was just over the required age. But I didn't have a driver's license or any sort of identification, meaning that I had no way of proving my age. I knew most every cop in downtown Charlottesville by their first name. I am always extremely polite and friendly with police offers. It was the officers that I didn't know that were the problem, the ones that thought that I might be young enough to be arrested. (In fact, that was the basis for my involvement in the ACLU lawsuit.)
The fourth amendment shows that we don't need to provide ID in order to pass freely through the streets of America. Suddenly, I needed one. My parents have no money. I was not defending myself. I was defending freedom in Charlottesville, and that's no exaggeration. You've got some nerve to state that I'm "pretending to be a defender of the Constitution." My motives are exactly as I've stated, nothing more and nothing less. To say that I abused the courts is bizarre. The ACLU backed the case, and I've seldom seen them abuse the courts. Defending the extremely basic right of the freedom to assemble is hardly irresponsible.
If youth curfews aren't offensive to you, what are? How about black curfews? You know, since, statistically, the majority of violent crimes in Charlottesville are committed by African-Americans. Or is that OK too? How about curfews for the elderly -- you know, to protect them from nighttime crime? Or curfews for programmers. Because what need do they have to be outside so late? They should be at the office, or sleeping at home. Or, hell, a curfew for everybody from, say, 1am - 5am. Who needs to be outside then? There's really no good reason, right?
The line has to be drawn somewhere. I draw it at youth curfews.
-Waldo
-------------------
Seeing movie that started at 9:30 could easily have gotten me arrested. Seeing John D'earth at Miller's on Thursday night could have gotten me arrested. Failing to carry ID could have gotten me arrested.
Bothering somebody isn't required. Playing loud music isn't required. Simply taking a walk, sitting outside and watching shooting stars, or walking to the 7-11 to get a Slurpee -- all illegal under youth curfew laws.
There are lots of violations of liberties, and battles against all of them are important. I've chosen youth curfews as a cause. The First Amendment guarantees Americans the right to freely assemble. Curfew laws take that away.
Your suggestion that this particular battle is "wasted" is offensive, at best. At worst, your belief that my anger is portable, and can simply be carted to some other offensive law, is ludicrous.
-Waldo
-------------------
I see, so there's nothing wrong with government privacy violations if you're a law-abiding citizen.
I was a plaintiff in Schleifer vs. City of Charlottesville -- we sued our city over the youth curfew. What we heard over and over from the lawmakers and judges was "what would a law-abiding kid be doing outside after midnight?" The answer, of course, was "whatever the hell we see fit."
The innocent need not be concerned with their privacy? That's rich.
-Wadlo
-------------------
Who's for starting a religion on SourceForge? The OpenReligion project should be able to have GnuMysticism v0.1 out within a few weeks if we start now!
-Waldo
-------------------
Folks,
Don't miss Peacefire's Bennett Haselton on CNN tonight. Everybody's favorite youth-rights advocate will be on around 10:30PM EST, live, arguing against this new policy.
-Waldo
-------------------
I met with Senator Emily Couric along with two other folks from the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council on June 6th. I posted a report to the peacefire-technical list afterwards. Here's what I wrote, verbatim:
From: Waldo L. Jaquith <waldo@waldo.net>
Date: Tuesday, June 6, 2000 3:59 PM
To: peacefire-technical@iain.com
Subject: Results of Meeting With Senator Emily Couric Re: UCITA
I thought you'd be interested to know how my meeting with VA Senator Emily Couric went. I sat down with her and Josh Chernila of the VPTC and Colin Learmonth from BNSI and talked for about an hour this afternoon.
Essentially, Emily was wholly unfamiliar with UCITA. This is not a criticism -- she has 3,000 bills put before her every year. This is a fairly esoteric one, although it obviously impacts all of us strongly.
She'd done her homework the previous night, and had a thick packet of pages she'd printed out from various UCITA-related websites. We explained to her some of UCITA's impacts, but tried to keep things simple. Our message was basic: UCITA makes digital contracts binding while offering no real limitations as to what the contents of that contract can be. It forces consumers to become attorneys. Almost everything else that UCITA does is a by-product of that portion of UCITA.
Another important message to get across is that UCITA is not an incentive for software companies to move to Virginia. They can take advantage of UCITA from any state, possible other countries, if they specify that in the contract.
Those two main points (bad for consumers and businesses, not beneficial to Virginia) were the ones worth driving home. Although you and I may live and breathe OS software, that's not a useful topic when talking to a senator. (In fact, it's confusing.)
Emily felt strongly, at the end of our meeting, that UCITA is bad for consumers. She suggested that we get more people to talk to their representatives, and suggested that we start some sort of an awareness campaign to get people in Central Virginia, and even beyond, to know more about what UCITA could do.
She's right: that would be the most effective path. It also happens to be the one that requires the most work. She promised to keep her eyes open for UCITA-related news and bills, and asked that we keep her informed. But her conclusion was telling: UCITA isn't going anywhere. No matter what we do, it's not going to go away. We need to assemble a list of amendments that can be introduced as a bill to modify the way that UCITA works. Complaining that we don't want to have our computer hijacked by Microsoft works on a publicity front, but it doesn't get far in the legal world.
I'm hoping that the VPTC will adopt this project, because I know that I don't have the energy or the time to make this happen. Now that the geeks of the world are opposed to UCITA, we have to get businesses and everyday Virginians. It'll be a lot of work, but I think that we can pull it off.
Best,
Waldo
-------------------
I think it's fair to say that most of us geeks are much in need of college. Knowing a few languages hardly means that one's education can safely grind to a halt. I mean, if all you want to do for the remainder of your life is a little Perl and SQL, that's cool, but that's really not a great approach.
;)
I think that there's a big difference between "saying no to college" for now, and "saying no" for good. I'm skipping it for now. There's too much gold to be mined in the tech industry for me to hold off right now. I'm sure that lots of others feel the same. Anybody that says that there's absolutely nothing to be learned from college is a liar or a fool.
However, there are plenty of geeks here that learned little or nothing in college. And that's quite possible. But you could learn things if you went back and re-focused your work.
I still think that going to college for the purpose of furthering your programming knowledge borders oon foolish. Again -- possible, but generally unlikely. Some people float through their teenage years, and don't really focus until college. I like to think that I had a hell of a productive time in high school. I did more in those four years than most people do in high school, college and grad school combined.
Does this mean that I don't need college? Hell no. I want to major in everything, learn everything that they have to teach, and die at 99 with a dozen degrees. But right now I shouldn't be in college, as I'm sure that many of you aren't for the same reasons. There's too much life to live, tech will change too much in the next four years while you're pursuing that philosophy major.
Or maybe mwarps was right when he wrote of me (well, flamed):
Anybody with ½ a brain, and even two nanoseconds of a real college education knows this guy is full of crap either because he's completely moronic, or hasn't been to a real school.
His picture looks like he spends his time sitting in front of a sticky keyboard looking at alt.binaries.erotica.* and 'coding' HTML. Another fine candidate for the "Why Couldn't Social Darwinism Take This One" award.
But really... If you seriously think you're going to get anywhere significant in this world, without that piece of paper, you're going to end up nothing but a bench-drone or a tech somewhere useless, fixing a useless piece of hardware, broken by a worthless collegeless geek, just like you.
I'm not so personally insulted by this as I am by the implication that all of us that aren't in college are "worthless" to the world, and would be better off dead.
But what do I know? I've never been to college.
-Waldo
-------------------
Last time we discussed this was in January of '99, when we all argued over the relative merits of my existence. (One of the more nerve-wracking experiences I've ever had.) Adam Penenberg (who has since quit after Forbes wanted him to expose a source in a hacking story) did a story on me called "Quit School. Join the web." I guess I'm a better example now -- I've got my own company that's actually doing very well. So I guess you can still chalk me up as an advocate of "joining the web."
-Waldo
-------------------
You seem to think that this doesn't include you, and that "lots of people" [besides yourself, obviously] will handle it.
I could've sworn that I submitted comments. I'm generally just about obnoxious enough to stick my nose into every discussion that it'll fit into. I figured that they just weren't good enough to be included. Clearly, I did not actually submit a damned thing.
Your submission, on the other hand, was vapor (actually not even that), so I don't think you have earned the right to criticize.
Maybe we're reading different posts? I didn't criticise anything or anybody. I wanted some perspective on how the selection process worked. Turns out that there is none. Thanks to all that explained this.
-Waldo
-------------------
Who are these people, like Michael A. Rolenz, Paul Fenimore and Walter Charles Becktel? How is it that they've been chosen to be included in this? Didn't lots of people submit comments?
Becktel describes himself as "Primary (Senior) Oracle, Lyricist and Artist." Brian Taylor describes himself as "a private individual." Paul Fenimore's comments just come out as a series of Braille-like dots on xpdf. Arnold Reinhold describes himself, simply, as a resident of Cambridge.
What exactly are we looking at here?
-Waldo
-------------------
Damn, that had to hurt. I wish that Slashdot would post something about this, at least something in the FAQ. This is frustrating, but I feel like we have to discuss this in weird little threads like this in order to get an idea of what's going on. Not cool.
-Waldo
-------------------
My karma went down from the karma-frozen 122 to 121 two days ago because I had a post go from a 3 to a 2 (and then up to a 5). Yet, at other times, the karma freeze has prevented my karma from going down. I don't get it.
:) The only thing lamer than obsessing about karma is obsessing about theoretical karma.
So I'm a dork, and I'm tracking my "theoretical" karma, which would be 143.
-Waldo
-------------------
Especially now that they've classified your data as a saleable asset belonging to them, it's doubtful they will actually delete it from their database.
;)
It disgusts me how right you are. I wonder what else we can do, short of suing them? I guess, when in doubt, call ZDNet. They'll turn anything into a front-page story.
-Waldo
-------------------
I looked high and low on their site, trying to determine how to erase my (long unused) account. Finally, I had to e-mail them, and they got back to me yesterday. To remove your account, simply e-mail:
account-close@amazon.com
There were no further instructions, so I assume that the removal is done manually by an Amazonling. I used this:
To Whom It May Concern,
Please remove my account from your system. I haven't purchased anything
from you since your 1-click & referral patents, but now that you've modified
your privacy statement to permit the sale of my private information, it's
time to remove my account. Please remove any data that you have under
waldo@waldo.net and waldo@munkandphyber.com, and notify me when you have
done so. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Waldo L. Jaquith
I guess that's sufficient. I encourage all of you to close your accounts, though you'd do well to cite today's news in addition to the modification of their privacy statement.
-Waldo
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I actually sent a fan letter to Tobias Ratschiller, I love this book so much. I must confess that I'm only halfway through, but it's really get to see a guide to programming style in PHP, my favorite language. I recommend it highly to anybody that's looking to do PHP professionally.
What I *would* have liked to see in this is more background information on OOP. I've never worked with OOP, so I feel at a bit of a disadvantage. But I'll brush up elsewhere, I guess, but I wish that this would have been included.
Still, this is the #1 PHP book out there, and I can't recommend it more highly. Get it.
-Waldo
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I'll post a 1, the lowest that I can. I'm just incredibly psyched by this, and I've got to express it _*somehow*_!
Whoo-hoo! I'll go get me some little party hats now. (You think I'm kidding.)
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I'm hanging out in #b3eblebr0x. You know, because this way I can keep an eye on the little buggers.
Hey...where'd all my bandwidth go?
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Not really.
.72AU, and is 12,100km in diameter. It has a mass of 4.9^24kg. It has a day that lasts 243 Earth days. The average tempature is about 740K. Venus' surface looks a lot like the American midwest. Most of the planet is covered in lava flows. Venus has no satellites.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. It orbits at
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and the seventh largest. It orbits at 1.5AU, and is 6,800km in diameter. It has a mass of 6.4^23kg. The average temperature is -55C, but it gets as high as 27C (80F!) during summer. Its surface area is approximately the same as the land area on Earth. Short of our planet, Mars has the most interesting terrain of any of our planets. There is excellent evidence that there was, at one point, water on Mars. It has ice caps on either end of the planet, made of carbon dioxide. It has two satellites, Deimos and Phobos.
That wasn't so hard. When people say things like "that's like comparing apples and oranges!" it makes me crazy. Apples are red, and about 90% of the size of an orange. They're covered with a thin red (or green or yellow) skin, and have white flesh. Oranges have thick flesh, orange in color, with orange flesh that's divided into sections. It generally contains more juice than an apple.
See? That worked out, too. Now, let's see if we can get a decent comparison of Linux and Win2K.
-Waldo
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