The repercussions of a system where insurance companies have access to individuals' DNA would be profound in a negative sense. No one is perfect - not even slashdotters. We *all* have our own unique "predispositions" to hundreds if not thousands of "flaws", many of which have yet to be "discovered". The definition of what even constitutes a genetic flaw may be unclear as well. Is having the gene for sickle cell anemia in parts of the globe where malaria is common a desired trait (increased immunity to malaria) or is it a flaw? Is it better to have the gene for the disorder and be more immune to malaria or is it better to not have the gene and be more likely to contract the disease someday?
Many of the comments in this thread come across as arrogant and naive. Can we all be sure of how the dice have been rolled for us? How many of you have actually ever had your DNA scanned for genetic flaws? Just because you may "think" you are "healthy" today does not mean that the hypothetical analysis of your DNA tomorrow won't allow the world to label you as a potential colon cancer and diabetes risk or worse for the rest of your lives. I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to be subject to that and I don't think anyone has much to gain by allowing insurance companies access to this type of information. It's a dangerous can of worms best avoided at all costs.
One thing that has crossed my mind regarding "blogging" and such is where does one's privacy end? What a person saves to his or her computer should be their own business. After all a blog is often nothing more than a bunch of text files in a directory on an individual's private harddrive.
If someone decides to produce disagreeable content and save it in their public_html directory, then that should be their own business. If third parties do not like it then perhaps they should not be snooping though the files on that person's harddrive?
I am curious as to why e-voting (however it is spelled) is such a problem? Is the basic technology that different from ATMs which have been around for over 30 years now? Why can't the industry get things straight?
1) Don't send email in HTML format.
2) Don't send email as.doc attachments that need to be opened by third party applications to be viewed.
3) Plain text is usually sufficient.
My apologies to be slightly off topic. But I foresee many end users entering their Administrator passwords in just about any legitimate looking dialog box that would appear on their screens that ask for it. How hard would it be for spyware or a popup to request an administrator password every now and then?
Once the user gets used to entering his/her password on a regular basis it could become easy for the ill intentioned to steal it by simply asking for it. I can imagine that many people use the same passwords for many things, such as online bank accounts and VPN access. I wonder if it really is possible to effectively save people from themselves?
"Can you imagine the security council having say over censorship on the internet?"
Sure, it's easy to imagine how things would be. In that case there wouldn't be any censorship of the Internet at all, since the security council members will never be able agree on a [new] definition of "censorship".
What if she had simply encrypted the entire partition?(This is trivial to do with many Linux distributions) In such a case could she have simply given up the hard drive and not give the password. In such a case all the data would be intact. It would just be up to the authorities to decipher it. Would having to give up the password amount to self encryption? Another question is, would she even have to give up the password in such a case? IIRC the the up-and-coming Windows Vista OS will support encryption as well, and I am sure many people will use it. I think it will be interesting to see what the US government's response to this type of thing will be.
I believe that equating smut with the world "adult" is far worse. Even when I was a child I found this rather frightening. I used to wonder is all adults spend their time watchting porn and reading dirty magazines. Using the word "adult" in this way sends the wrong message to children about what it really means to be an adult. It doesn't take a conservative person understand this and I don't know why it has not be addressed yet. Or maybe it has?
Just my two cents.
If someone places a text file in ~/home/public_html/ is it really "out there in cyberspace" or is it just a file in a directory on the person's computer? Why should the private content on a person's computer be subject to this kind of scrutiny any more than something a person writes in a *private* diary should be. Should a person be punished just because of how they decide to chmod a file on their own hard drive? It is ridiculously easy for just about anyone with a computer running any OS and an IP address to run an HTTP server, uncompress some PHP based blog software in a local directory and begin "publishing" with in minutes. I think most people are under the impression that putting things "out on the Internet" implies actually "uploading" content to some big cool server with lots of blinkenlights at IBM corp where it will be judged by the masses and subjet to government, RIAA or [insert favorite evil acronym here] approval. This is simply not usually the case. People should realize that "censoring the Internet" or those who use it, really DOES infringe on people's civil liberties.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see it now; telemarketers soliciting cheap v|@gr4 while asking asking for to help out rich Nigerian generals.
The repercussions of a system where insurance companies have access to individuals' DNA would be profound in a negative sense. No one is perfect - not even slashdotters. We *all* have our own unique "predispositions" to hundreds if not thousands of "flaws", many of which have yet to be "discovered". The definition of what even constitutes a genetic flaw may be unclear as well. Is having the gene for sickle cell anemia in parts of the globe where malaria is common a desired trait (increased immunity to malaria) or is it a flaw? Is it better to have the gene for the disorder and be more immune to malaria or is it better to not have the gene and be more likely to contract the disease someday? Many of the comments in this thread come across as arrogant and naive. Can we all be sure of how the dice have been rolled for us? How many of you have actually ever had your DNA scanned for genetic flaws? Just because you may "think" you are "healthy" today does not mean that the hypothetical analysis of your DNA tomorrow won't allow the world to label you as a potential colon cancer and diabetes risk or worse for the rest of your lives. I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to be subject to that and I don't think anyone has much to gain by allowing insurance companies access to this type of information. It's a dangerous can of worms best avoided at all costs.
One thing that has crossed my mind regarding "blogging" and such is where does one's privacy end? What a person saves to his or her computer should be their own business. After all a blog is often nothing more than a bunch of text files in a directory on an individual's private harddrive. If someone decides to produce disagreeable content and save it in their public_html directory, then that should be their own business. If third parties do not like it then perhaps they should not be snooping though the files on that person's harddrive?
I am curious as to why e-voting (however it is spelled) is such a problem? Is the basic technology that different from ATMs which have been around for over 30 years now? Why can't the industry get things straight?
In most users' minds, a computer without and OS is "broken". They are not able to differentiate between the OS and the physical machine itself.
1) Don't send email in HTML format. 2) Don't send email as .doc attachments that need to be opened by third party applications to be viewed.
3) Plain text is usually sufficient.
Didn't God create humans from monkeys?
My apologies to be slightly off topic. But I foresee many end users entering their Administrator passwords in just about any legitimate looking dialog box that would appear on their screens that ask for it. How hard would it be for spyware or a popup to request an administrator password every now and then? Once the user gets used to entering his/her password on a regular basis it could become easy for the ill intentioned to steal it by simply asking for it. I can imagine that many people use the same passwords for many things, such as online bank accounts and VPN access. I wonder if it really is possible to effectively save people from themselves?
"Can you imagine the security council having say over censorship on the internet?" Sure, it's easy to imagine how things would be. In that case there wouldn't be any censorship of the Internet at all, since the security council members will never be able agree on a [new] definition of "censorship".
What if she had simply encrypted the entire partition?(This is trivial to do with many Linux distributions) In such a case could she have simply given up the hard drive and not give the password. In such a case all the data would be intact. It would just be up to the authorities to decipher it. Would having to give up the password amount to self encryption? Another question is, would she even have to give up the password in such a case? IIRC the the up-and-coming Windows Vista OS will support encryption as well, and I am sure many people will use it. I think it will be interesting to see what the US government's response to this type of thing will be.
I believe that equating smut with the world "adult" is far worse. Even when I was a child I found this rather frightening. I used to wonder is all adults spend their time watchting porn and reading dirty magazines. Using the word "adult" in this way sends the wrong message to children about what it really means to be an adult. It doesn't take a conservative person understand this and I don't know why it has not be addressed yet. Or maybe it has? Just my two cents.
If someone places a text file in ~/home/public_html/ is it really "out there in cyberspace" or is it just a file in a directory on the person's computer? Why should the private content on a person's computer be subject to this kind of scrutiny any more than something a person writes in a *private* diary should be. Should a person be punished just because of how they decide to chmod a file on their own hard drive? It is ridiculously easy for just about anyone with a computer running any OS and an IP address to run an HTTP server, uncompress some PHP based blog software in a local directory and begin "publishing" with in minutes. I think most people are under the impression that putting things "out on the Internet" implies actually "uploading" content to some big cool server with lots of blinkenlights at IBM corp where it will be judged by the masses and subjet to government, RIAA or [insert favorite evil acronym here] approval. This is simply not usually the case. People should realize that "censoring the Internet" or those who use it, really DOES infringe on people's civil liberties.