In the UK, and therefore probably the USA too, there is a Common Law expectation of privacy in this situation.
If I tell my neighbour over the garden fence that I am going in for a prostate examination tomorrow, there is not necessarily a legal duty on the part of my neighbour to keep this confidential,If a different neighbour is my doctor it is very different. I can reasonably expect that they will not blab about it at a party.
That common law duty extends to keeping the matter private as best they can. They should not leave printed notes on display. They should not send it around by insecure fax, unencrypted email or put it on Twitter.
They should, in fact, take every reasonable precaution to ensure that this matter stays secret until I choose to let it be known. Reasonable precautions include things like having firewalls and controlled access to my data.
If a doctor, hospital or any other medical organisation, does not take suitable actions to protect such patient information, there are specific laws in developed countries (and most undeveloped ones) which will penalise them even if no information leaks out. My earlier comments on Common Law are because we don't even need written laws to deal with this. Common law is the effect of all those books full of legal precedents that lawyers have on their walls.
If the doctors don't even have firewalls and a patient finds out lawyers could get busy...
No. Protecting the weak would be allowed. You can even plan for emergencies where ordinary people suddenly become needy, less powerful and weak.
Or do you mean where they plan to take all the 'important' people underground in case of invasion/nuclear war. That is very dubious. Why should the taxpayer fund that?
What I said was a law should be passed to stop the powerful being protected in ways that harm those who need protection.
Already illegal is it? That is precisely what is at the top of this article. Yes it is illegal in the UK and presumably Australia. Someone feels that it is legal to do this in the USA. I would look to your constitution about that...
Sure it needs time limit but 30 years is ridiculous though. It should be months for most things a couple of years for some and perhaps 5-10 years for a very few exceptional things.
The police do not hide things from the electorate. They have to tell us what they have been up to in the past - just not minute by minute. Police informants deserve anonymity. We need to know what the police are doing - personal information should be confidential.
The same applies to the military. We need to know what they have done - not what soldiers are doing this afternoon. If an operation is in progress, they can tell the public when it is finished and the matter is dealt with.
The only thing that deserves permanent privacy is personal information. This may be where politicians seem to deserve something better than they already have. If it does not affect his job, I do not care who my prime minister/secretary of state/chancellor/etc is sleeping with. If it comes out in the divorce courts that is the same as it would be if you or I was in that situation. If I expect my personal information to be kept secret, it is fair that the same information is private for them. No more and no less.
Government activities need to be scrutinised while people still actually care about them. Who cares what our leaders did in 1981? What happened in 2006 is relevant to most of us and if we knew what the finance departments were doing 6 months ago, we could consider making them answer for it...
I mentioned the word corporate. Individuals would still have their right to free speech.
It is a legal fiction that corporations should be treated like people. They are not. Neither are other corporate bodies like pressure groups and 'think tanks'.
Bills should be introduced in the USA, UK, Australia and lots more places saying things like
It is a crime to hide things from the electorate. (This should not be mixed up with "Freedom of Information acts" that rarely work.)
It is a crime to govern by misdirection of public attention.
It is a crime to protect the powerful to the detriment of the weak or less powerful.
It is a crime to take away civil rights, whatever the state of the nation
It is a crime to introduce 'knee jerk' legislation.
It is a crime to retrospectively criminalise something. It can only be criminalised from the introduction of the law
It is a crime to give or accept identifiable corporate campaign donations
That last one would be the one that would upset many politicians and large companies.
There will need to be some other way for them to network than through ISPs. They are the bottleneck. Perhaps, some sort of mesh network?
Otherwise, Your ISP takes exception to a server running on your domestic network - despite the fact that a large amount of people on/. do just that. Even if they allow that, they can limit what goes across their wires - in times of emergency perhaps no encrypted traffic or HTTPS.
You are going to either have to live in high density housing or figure out how to fit microwave relays all over the suburbs.
That phrase barely makes sense to programmers here. It will make no sense at all to non-geeks.
To most people out there, an "ecosystem" is something like they have seen on Discovery. It is sunny,hot, green and has a lot of insects. WTF has that got to do with a phone?
I know the difference, but I work/play/dream in IT...
You could try "your stuff won't be held by a large corporation". That might get some reaction, but mostly from people who have android already. The rest don't even care about that. They just want something shinyer than what their friends have.
Western governments, from the USA to Poland and Spain to Finland are all very heavily controlled by big business. They would not tolerate the internet being "turned off".
They would be more than happy with increased censorship - where else do you thing that idea comes from? They might even allow some people to be kept off it. There is too much money/profit in all their customers being connected.
Leaders may talk about it, but they will not be allowed to use a Kill switch.
I watched a colleague of mine hand a receptionist a Ububtu CD, show her how to boot from CD on his own PC and that was it. After the weekend she came back in saying how fantastic it was. She emails, surfs and plays games. What more are computers at home for?
The lady apparently got no help from anyone else in her house and did it while husband & kids were watching TV.
From my childhood, I have lived in various parts of the world. I have no problem believing that our culture has got a LOT right. I mean things like our continued aim of universal suffrage, the same laws applying to rich and poor, womens rights, universal education, human rights and so on.
I don't feel I am ignorant about the world. Have you ever seen a revolution? Have you seen one go wrong and crazies take over? I have. It does not leave me with a very utopian view of the world. In fact, it has left me with a pretty negative view of most figures of authority.
So a tiny fraction of government money is sent to other countries - if they act in ways that our corporately controlled leaders tell them to.
I don't think any jobs should be "given away" but Global Free Trade means that if we want those cheap banannas from one country causing poor pay to workers there and fish from waters off Africa so that there is not enough for the locals, we have to play by the rules. Companies decide anyway, not the government. How dare we say that freedom only works one way...
Nationalism is not the same as saying "I think that my society is better than the Chinese one". It is the same as saying "You deserve to live on $1 a day because you come from a horrible country." National boundaries are good. They limit authority to fixed places. Until we improve human nature to not misuse power, they need to be here. I am not holding my breath.
FYI I am very happy that I was born in what I call a free country. I want to make other countries like it, not just rub their noses in the fact that they have the wrong ancestors and I don't.
Most people in my country are not my friends. Why should I be any more inclined to do right by them than a different bunch of strangers somewhere else?
I will do right by my friends wherever I am. Maybe keeping a company from around here profitable, by working for it abroad, will keep them in work here.
It is ethical for someone to take an offered job - if they agree that the output of the potential employer is ehtical.
In Other words, I feel it woule ethical for me to take a job in another country for a company that made low power lightbulbs, but I would not feel it ethical for me to take a job with a company in my own town that made its money from gambling. (Examples picked randomly)
There are, of course, other matters to consider. Would it be ethical for me to move my kids education to another country? Would it be ethical for me to move so far from elderly relatives?
Ethics is only part of it anyway. Would I have to learn another language? Am I going to be safe from an ignorant tax authority that feels it owns me wherever on the planet I go? And lots more.
It may actually be unethical for me to chose to withhold my potential labour from a company just because it would be in another country. Some of the biggest problems in the world today are caused by people who say "my country right or wrong". That is unethical.
They have some things in common
A lot of engineers and artists are decently educated. Some of them even went to college.
The big thing they have in common is that very few of them are proud of being ignorant. If they come accross something they don't know, they will either try and find it out or decide that it does not matter to them.
A lot of people - especially those in charge feel that they are superior to creative and technical people specifically because they are not. Some of them run newspapers, others run businesses and others become politicans.
CO2 and methane are gasses that prevent thermal energy from escaping into space
The CO2 and methane levels have been RISING
Human activity generates CO2 and methane
Once upon a time 100% was not made by human technology. That CO2 is still there and we have put more into the air.
Look up the figures for the proportion of CO2 in the air. A quick Google says 389 parts per million now and 315 in 1960. There is a nice graph at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ but there are plenty more if you look around.
CO2 is not poisonous. If there was none, we would die. The same could be said about a lot of things. It is the change that is bad.
Most of the anti-AGW scam is not political. It is finanially motivated.
Money is used to "persuade" politicians to do their masters bidding. Right-wing politicians are more likely to do the bidding of big oil etc.
Trying to push AGW does not look like it always helps your career nowadays. Scientists have our swelling conservative press attacking them. They have politicians throwing fake legal cases at them - like in UVA.
It would probably be simpler to shut up and let it happen. Only a genuine belief by the majority of experts would cause them to continue...
Slashdot Mirror
In the UK, and therefore probably the USA too, there is a Common Law expectation of privacy in this situation.
If I tell my neighbour over the garden fence that I am going in for a prostate examination tomorrow, there is not necessarily a legal duty on the part of my neighbour to keep this confidential,If a different neighbour is my doctor it is very different. I can reasonably expect that they will not blab about it at a party.
That common law duty extends to keeping the matter private as best they can. They should not leave printed notes on display. They should not send it around by insecure fax, unencrypted email or put it on Twitter.
They should, in fact, take every reasonable precaution to ensure that this matter stays secret until I choose to let it be known. Reasonable precautions include things like having firewalls and controlled access to my data.
If a doctor, hospital or any other medical organisation, does not take suitable actions to protect such patient information, there are specific laws in developed countries (and most undeveloped ones) which will penalise them even if no information leaks out. My earlier comments on Common Law are because we don't even need written laws to deal with this. Common law is the effect of all those books full of legal precedents that lawyers have on their walls.
If the doctors don't even have firewalls and a patient finds out lawyers could get busy...
No. Protecting the weak would be allowed. You can even plan for emergencies where ordinary people suddenly become needy, less powerful and weak.
Or do you mean where they plan to take all the 'important' people underground in case of invasion/nuclear war. That is very dubious. Why should the taxpayer fund that?
What I said was a law should be passed to stop the powerful being protected in ways that harm those who need protection.
Already illegal is it? That is precisely what is at the top of this article. Yes it is illegal in the UK and presumably Australia. Someone feels that it is legal to do this in the USA. I would look to your constitution about that...
Sure it needs time limit but 30 years is ridiculous though. It should be months for most things a couple of years for some and perhaps 5-10 years for a very few exceptional things.
The police do not hide things from the electorate. They have to tell us what they have been up to in the past - just not minute by minute. Police informants deserve anonymity. We need to know what the police are doing - personal information should be confidential.
The same applies to the military. We need to know what they have done - not what soldiers are doing this afternoon. If an operation is in progress, they can tell the public when it is finished and the matter is dealt with.
The only thing that deserves permanent privacy is personal information. This may be where politicians seem to deserve something better than they already have. If it does not affect his job, I do not care who my prime minister/secretary of state/chancellor/etc is sleeping with. If it comes out in the divorce courts that is the same as it would be if you or I was in that situation. If I expect my personal information to be kept secret, it is fair that the same information is private for them. No more and no less.
Government activities need to be scrutinised while people still actually care about them. Who cares what our leaders did in 1981? What happened in 2006 is relevant to most of us and if we knew what the finance departments were doing 6 months ago, we could consider making them answer for it...
I mentioned the word corporate. Individuals would still have their right to free speech.
It is a legal fiction that corporations should be treated like people. They are not. Neither are other corporate bodies like pressure groups and 'think tanks'.
Bills should be introduced in the USA, UK, Australia and lots more places saying things like
It is a crime to hide things from the electorate. (This should not be mixed up with "Freedom of Information acts" that rarely work.)
It is a crime to govern by misdirection of public attention.
It is a crime to protect the powerful to the detriment of the weak or less powerful.
It is a crime to take away civil rights, whatever the state of the nation
It is a crime to introduce 'knee jerk' legislation.
It is a crime to retrospectively criminalise something. It can only be criminalised from the introduction of the law
It is a crime to give or accept identifiable corporate campaign donations
That last one would be the one that would upset many politicians and large companies.
There will need to be some other way for them to network than through ISPs. They are the bottleneck. Perhaps, some sort of mesh network?
Otherwise, Your ISP takes exception to a server running on your domestic network - despite the fact that a large amount of people on /. do just that. Even if they allow that, they can limit what goes across their wires - in times of emergency perhaps no encrypted traffic or HTTPS.
You are going to either have to live in high density housing or figure out how to fit microwave relays all over the suburbs.
your data won't be captive to an "ecosystem".
That phrase barely makes sense to programmers here. It will make no sense at all to non-geeks.
To most people out there, an "ecosystem" is something like they have seen on Discovery. It is sunny,hot, green and has a lot of insects. WTF has that got to do with a phone?
I know the difference, but I work/play/dream in IT...
You could try "your stuff won't be held by a large corporation". That might get some reaction, but mostly from people who have android already. The rest don't even care about that. They just want something shinyer than what their friends have.
It goes a little wider than that.
He is an embarrassment to
And probably a lot of other groups.
This may be more proof that Nokias action to become subsumed by Microsoft (and that's what it is) is a losing course of action for them.
Then it will be interesting to see what new games get bad press - and where they are from...
Western governments, from the USA to Poland and Spain to Finland are all very heavily controlled by big business. They would not tolerate the internet being "turned off".
They would be more than happy with increased censorship - where else do you thing that idea comes from? They might even allow some people to be kept off it. There is too much money/profit in all their customers being connected.
Leaders may talk about it, but they will not be allowed to use a Kill switch.
I watched a colleague of mine hand a receptionist a Ububtu CD, show her how to boot from CD on his own PC and that was it. After the weekend she came back in saying how fantastic it was. She emails, surfs and plays games. What more are computers at home for?
The lady apparently got no help from anyone else in her house and did it while husband & kids were watching TV.
I ask again, what learning curve?
Yes you can. A quick google pulls up plenty links. Try http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Tobacco/ETS
Anti-vacc parents will have anti-vacc children
Anti-vacc parents are more likely than me to have dead children. Who will sue them now?
From my childhood, I have lived in various parts of the world. I have no problem believing that our culture has got a LOT right. I mean things like our continued aim of universal suffrage, the same laws applying to rich and poor, womens rights, universal education, human rights and so on.
I don't feel I am ignorant about the world. Have you ever seen a revolution? Have you seen one go wrong and crazies take over? I have. It does not leave me with a very utopian view of the world. In fact, it has left me with a pretty negative view of most figures of authority.
So a tiny fraction of government money is sent to other countries - if they act in ways that our corporately controlled leaders tell them to.
I don't think any jobs should be "given away" but Global Free Trade means that if we want those cheap banannas from one country causing poor pay to workers there and fish from waters off Africa so that there is not enough for the locals, we have to play by the rules. Companies decide anyway, not the government. How dare we say that freedom only works one way...
Nationalism is not the same as saying "I think that my society is better than the Chinese one". It is the same as saying "You deserve to live on $1 a day because you come from a horrible country." National boundaries are good. They limit authority to fixed places. Until we improve human nature to not misuse power, they need to be here. I am not holding my breath.
FYI I am very happy that I was born in what I call a free country. I want to make other countries like it, not just rub their noses in the fact that they have the wrong ancestors and I don't.
Most people in my country are not my friends. Why should I be any more inclined to do right by them than a different bunch of strangers somewhere else?
I will do right by my friends wherever I am. Maybe keeping a company from around here profitable, by working for it abroad, will keep them in work here.
That sort of attitude would certainly fail the "ethical test"!
Perhaps because he feels that "his country" is superior to all others and so helping a different ones economy is helping something inferior.
This is also known as Nationalism or Tribalism. I would be interested in hearing a different possible reason.
It is ethical for someone to take an offered job - if they agree that the output of the potential employer is ehtical.
In Other words, I feel it woule ethical for me to take a job in another country for a company that made low power lightbulbs, but I would not feel it ethical for me to take a job with a company in my own town that made its money from gambling. (Examples picked randomly)
There are, of course, other matters to consider. Would it be ethical for me to move my kids education to another country? Would it be ethical for me to move so far from elderly relatives?
Ethics is only part of it anyway. Would I have to learn another language? Am I going to be safe from an ignorant tax authority that feels it owns me wherever on the planet I go? And lots more.
It may actually be unethical for me to chose to withhold my potential labour from a company just because it would be in another country. Some of the biggest problems in the world today are caused by people who say "my country right or wrong". That is unethical.
In the UK, we elected a scientifically trained leader. They did more harm to industry, art, science and education than any since - until now anyway.
Who was that? Margeret Thatcher. You may love her on your side of the Atlantic, it was not so much fun here!
Definitely, we all need artists and engineers in government. Just be very careful when you choose!
They have some things in common
A lot of engineers and artists are decently educated. Some of them even went to college.
The big thing they have in common is that very few of them are proud of being ignorant. If they come accross something they don't know, they will either try and find it out or decide that it does not matter to them.
A lot of people - especially those in charge feel that they are superior to creative and technical people specifically because they are not. Some of them run newspapers, others run businesses and others become politicans.
CO2 and methane are gasses that prevent thermal energy from escaping into space
The CO2 and methane levels have been RISING
Human activity generates CO2 and methane
Once upon a time 100% was not made by human technology. That CO2 is still there and we have put more into the air.
Look up the figures for the proportion of CO2 in the air. A quick Google says 389 parts per million now and 315 in 1960. There is a nice graph at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ but there are plenty more if you look around.
CO2 is not poisonous. If there was none, we would die. The same could be said about a lot of things. It is the change that is bad.
Most of the anti-AGW scam is not political. It is finanially motivated.
Money is used to "persuade" politicians to do their masters bidding. Right-wing politicians are more likely to do the bidding of big oil etc.
Trying to push AGW does not look like it always helps your career nowadays. Scientists have our swelling conservative press attacking them. They have politicians throwing fake legal cases at them - like in UVA.
It would probably be simpler to shut up and let it happen. Only a genuine belief by the majority of experts would cause them to continue...
The glass is not half empty or half full.
It is merely the wrong sized glass.
Shredding them - as is supposed to be done with all old public computer storage devices in the UK - and that is just part of the process.