While it is certain that Facebook sells the information they collect to advertisers, I was wondering if *governments* were some of Facebook's customers? By 'customer', I mean beyond the type of legal demand for information on a specific person, in relationship to a specific event.
I wonder - is it possible that some of the information collected by Facebook is collected at the request of one or more governments?
I'd wager that even if none of it is currently collected at the request of governments, that someday - probably in the not too far future - it will be...
Of course, that leads me to wonder if the fees that Facebook collects when it complies with information requests from governments are profitable to Facebook? *That* would be an interesting line item to add to their annual report!
Because you sound grumpy!
Yes, 'great' SF movies are hard to come by - as is great written SF - as is anything else - all of which is otherwise known as Sturgeon's Law.
I'd love to see my SF favorites made into movies, but I also know doing so would loose much of what I like about a story. For example, while I loved the imagery in the LOTR movies, I cringed at what had happened to the story and the characters. Still, the movies have a place on my shelf.
So be it. Enjoy what is worthwhile, ignore what is not, and don't get your panties in a twist because not every SF movie is great.
And lay off the caffeine for a while...
I don't think the issue is necessarily 'military hardware'. I believe the issue that the article addressed are the commercial chips *inside* hardware - military or commercial, used for military purposes. A grid of commercial servers used for military purposes is 'military hardware', despite it's commercial origins.
I would not be surprised if -- for example, and I'm making this up -- the latest Intel processors had a hidden RFID capability supplied by the DoD that would cripple the processor if it received a particular coded signal. With a chip budget of billions of transistors, who could ever find something like that *if* it existed?
Or maybe a Chinese-made motherboard with the same capability. Or a controller chip made fabricated in Eastern Europe. Or a software device driver with hidden military functionality. Or whatever. The point the article tried to make is that today's chips, motherboards, and software are so complicated, and are designed and produced by so many countries (not all of whom are necessarily on the same side) that hidden functionality could be built into them and nobody would ever notice them -- until they were activated.
There is even the possibility that multiple kill functions exist in a single computer - each controlled by a different organization.
Military hardware or not, imagine the havoc you could unleash if you had the capability to cripple all the Wintel computers in a given country...
Well, Ubuntu worked for me. I recently sent my last Windows PC off with my daughter to college, and built my own PC. Taking a leap of faith, the new PC got 64-bit Ubuntu from the start -- no Windows -- and everything is, and has been working since I first powered it up. This, with no real *nix experience.
I understand that Ubuntu might be considered a Linux for neophytes, but that's OK with me. I needed to be successful with *nix since I was starting with bare iron and zilch experience, and Ubuntu delivered that. If at some point I may choose to go with another distro, and I know that much of what I learn with Ubuntu will apply to any *nix distro. But for now, I'm content.
Have I had issues? Yup. But there is a lot of help for Ubuntu around. There might be a lot of help for the other distros, too, but I knew there was a lot of help for new Ubuntu users before I even started. I knew a lot of people have been successful with Ubuntu. I knew that my hardware was compatible. Basically, I had a -- maybe unjustified, and maybe myopic -- warm and fuzzy feeling about Ubuntu.
If I recall correctly, the number of differences between all the earlier versions of the Biblical texts we *have* is greater than the number of words in the Bible... The reasons for the changes are many and varied, which fall into a number of broad categories, which are covered in the book.
It's a fascinating story for anyone interested in this subject -- believer or non-believer.
Instead of just an ad blocker, how about creating a modified 'ad blocker' that still *does not* display the ads, but also feeds ad 'clicks' (user adjustable from 1 - 1000) for every ad on the page back to the advertiser. If necessary, it can also fill out subsequent forms with user-configurable garbage data.
This way, everybody wins!
The website gets lots of ad revenue.
The person who actually wants to view the content can do so without any intrusive/annoying/distracting ads
The company sponsoring the ad will be pleased by how 'effective' their ad campaign is.
A few years ago I was in Osijek, Croatia on business. While the city still had obvious artillery damage from the war, my business contact paid for downtown parking with his mobile phone. When the time he had paid for was about up, he would get an automated call, and could pay for more time during that call.
I know I still can't do this in the US.
The problem is a lack of standards, so that you need multiple sets of towers to cover a single area. That redundant equipment makes things expensive. Add to that 'vendor lock-in', because you can't take your phone to another carrier, and you end up with higher prices, and the high price discourages use of the features the phone companies want us to use so much.
The lack of standards also make it hard to develop *useful* applications like the parking application I encountered in Croatia.
Europe selected a single standard, and things have turned out much better there than it has in the US, where we 'let a thousand flowers bloom' and ended up with a mish-mash of incompatible network and phone standards, phones that have to cover multiple standards, phones that are locked into a single network, and high prices. Coverage is poor even in some populated areas, including stores and shopping malls.
So... People in the US don't use their phones much compared to other places on the globe. The carriers are all building the infrastructure to deliver lots of new and proprietary features, but because they are so expensive, few use them.
On top of that, the network providers have a poor reputation among their customers, so that does not encourage customers to even stay with the same carrier, let alone make them want to spend more with them.
Two recent new items that underscore that: 1. In the 'Red Tape Chronicles' on MSNBC, there is a story of a family that called their mobile provider to check to see if their Sprint contract was up. They were told that it was. When they changed carriers and canceled their existing phones, they were hit with a $300+ early cancellation bill, because -- according to the carrier -- their contract was NOT up, despite being told by customer service it was. Apparently making even minor changes to your service can result in the contract being extended. 2. Mobile customers who make a lot of calls to customer service (usually over billing issues) were being dropped because they were calling customer service too much. Huh? Talk about blaming the victim.
On a more personal note, one of my daughters has been caught in a 'trap' used by the carriers. Her initial contract was longer than the life of the battery in the cell phone. When the battery went bad, she found that the replacement battery from her carrier was priced high, so it cost almost as much as a new, fancier phone from the carrier -- which also came with an additional contract extension (at the same rate, while rates have been declining), which resulted in her being placed in the same position a couple of years later. I just bought her a new battery off of eBay, ($.99+ shipping) and we're going to let this contract expire.
So... Mobile phones and mobile phone service in the US is more expensive but yet lower quality than in many other parts of the world, so the networks are used less, and the phones have fewer features than in other places. A lack of standards results in fewer useful applications, and the applications that the carriers want us to use are proprietary, expensive, and not very useful.
Advertising is visual pollution. It is meant to catch your attention i.e., distract you from what you were looking at. I don't have enough time already to do the things I want without being interrupted by advertising.
If I want to research something, I will. If I want to buy something, I will. But I am going to buy something, I will choose the product I want, based on the results of my research. I deliberately ignore advertising because it is inherently biased. It's the visual equivalent of propaganda, and I do not listen to, nor watch, nor read, propaganda. If you like to watch propaganda, please feel free, but it's not for me.
I watch -- maybe -- about 3 hours of television a week, and it's never the same show. And I still find the ads repetitive, repugnant, and counter-productive -- I find that I actively dislike the companies that try to grab my attention to sell me something that I either already have, don't want, or don't need.
I also don't listen to radio and I rarely notice the ads in newspapers and magazines. I block ads in my browsers, and keep my computers adware-free.
If you feel the need to buy the latest of a never-ending stream of 'gotta-have' (not!) gadgets, please feel free to let marketers manipulate your emotions so you feel you cannot live without their product. And, by the way, has owning any of those 'gotta-haves' *really* make you happier after the initial warm and fuzzy feelings leave?
FWIW, I once spent a few hours working with the Amazon recommendation system to try to get it to recommend something that I was actually interested in. I entered a fair number of the books I own, the DVDs that I own, and other things that they sell. End result: it never came up with a recommendation that I thought was worthwhile, or I didn't already own. Then I went back, and removed all my ratings, and never looked at the recommendations again. I'm a complex person. My wife -- despite trying for many years -- could never find a gift for me that I really liked. No computer-based system will ever be as good as she was, which wasn't very good.
I recognize that my values and attitudes are not held by many. However, they are *my* values and attitudes, and I will stick with them. If M$ thinks I will *ever* buy a system with crapware like they are trying to patent in it, they are wrong.
Looks like Linus, OS X, and Google (if they are planning to build an OS) will be picking up lots of market share.
Why does the RIAA want to look at the son's computer? It will have a different IP address. To me, this sounds like a fishing expedition, and they simply want to look at his computer because he may fit the demographic that the RIAA feels is typical of a file sharer. As it is, they have no evidence that he had anything to do with this issue. The alleged violation occurred at the mother's IP address, but the expert says that her computer shows no evidence of file sharing. So... instead of admitting there was an error in their approach, they want to look at everyone that the mother knows who might have hooked up their computer at the mother's house. They also might want to check her neighbors, her friends and acquaintances, siblings, parents, etc.
However, they have not made any claims about file sharing from the son's IP address...
It is possible for the son to have brought his computer over to the mothers house, but file sharing takes time, and unless he was living at the mother's house at the time, he would be out the use of the computer during the period of file sharing. And she would have no access to her own computer during that time.
I would look at the timestamps of the mothers computer. If her computer shows activity (email, etc) during the period of the alleged file sharing, I can't see any reason to suspect the son's computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder - is it possible that some of the information collected by Facebook is collected at the request of one or more governments?
I'd wager that even if none of it is currently collected at the request of governments, that someday - probably in the not too far future - it will be...
Of course, that leads me to wonder if the fees that Facebook collects when it complies with information requests from governments are profitable to Facebook? *That* would be an interesting line item to add to their annual report!
Because you sound grumpy! Yes, 'great' SF movies are hard to come by - as is great written SF - as is anything else - all of which is otherwise known as Sturgeon's Law. I'd love to see my SF favorites made into movies, but I also know doing so would loose much of what I like about a story. For example, while I loved the imagery in the LOTR movies, I cringed at what had happened to the story and the characters. Still, the movies have a place on my shelf. So be it. Enjoy what is worthwhile, ignore what is not, and don't get your panties in a twist because not every SF movie is great. And lay off the caffeine for a while...
I would not be surprised if -- for example, and I'm making this up -- the latest Intel processors had a hidden RFID capability supplied by the DoD that would cripple the processor if it received a particular coded signal. With a chip budget of billions of transistors, who could ever find something like that *if* it existed?
Or maybe a Chinese-made motherboard with the same capability. Or a controller chip made fabricated in Eastern Europe. Or a software device driver with hidden military functionality. Or whatever. The point the article tried to make is that today's chips, motherboards, and software are so complicated, and are designed and produced by so many countries (not all of whom are necessarily on the same side) that hidden functionality could be built into them and nobody would ever notice them -- until they were activated.
There is even the possibility that multiple kill functions exist in a single computer - each controlled by a different organization.
Military hardware or not, imagine the havoc you could unleash if you had the capability to cripple all the Wintel computers in a given country...
I understand that Ubuntu might be considered a Linux for neophytes, but that's OK with me. I needed to be successful with *nix since I was starting with bare iron and zilch experience, and Ubuntu delivered that. If at some point I may choose to go with another distro, and I know that much of what I learn with Ubuntu will apply to any *nix distro. But for now, I'm content.
Have I had issues? Yup. But there is a lot of help for Ubuntu around. There might be a lot of help for the other distros, too, but I knew there was a lot of help for new Ubuntu users before I even started. I knew a lot of people have been successful with Ubuntu. I knew that my hardware was compatible. Basically, I had a -- maybe unjustified, and maybe myopic -- warm and fuzzy feeling about Ubuntu.
-- Bill
I would recommend to anyone interested in the history of the Bible as a document to read the book "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why". Available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060738170/ref=pd_ys_iyr49
If I recall correctly, the number of differences between all the earlier versions of the Biblical texts we *have* is greater than the number of words in the Bible... The reasons for the changes are many and varied, which fall into a number of broad categories, which are covered in the book.
It's a fascinating story for anyone interested in this subject -- believer or non-believer.
-- Bill
This way, everybody wins!
The website gets lots of ad revenue.
The person who actually wants to view the content can do so without any intrusive/annoying/distracting ads
The company sponsoring the ad will be pleased by how 'effective' their ad campaign is.
-- Bill
A few years ago I was in Osijek, Croatia on business. While the city still had obvious artillery damage from the war, my business contact paid for downtown parking with his mobile phone. When the time he had paid for was about up, he would get an automated call, and could pay for more time during that call.
I know I still can't do this in the US.
The problem is a lack of standards, so that you need multiple sets of towers to cover a single area. That redundant equipment makes things expensive. Add to that 'vendor lock-in', because you can't take your phone to another carrier, and you end up with higher prices, and the high price discourages use of the features the phone companies want us to use so much.
The lack of standards also make it hard to develop *useful* applications like the parking application I encountered in Croatia.
Europe selected a single standard, and things have turned out much better there than it has in the US, where we 'let a thousand flowers bloom' and ended up with a mish-mash of incompatible network and phone standards, phones that have to cover multiple standards, phones that are locked into a single network, and high prices. Coverage is poor even in some populated areas, including stores and shopping malls.
So... People in the US don't use their phones much compared to other places on the globe. The carriers are all building the infrastructure to deliver lots of new and proprietary features, but because they are so expensive, few use them.
On top of that, the network providers have a poor reputation among their customers, so that does not encourage customers to even stay with the same carrier, let alone make them want to spend more with them.
Two recent new items that underscore that:
1. In the 'Red Tape Chronicles' on MSNBC, there is a story of a family that called their mobile provider to check to see if their Sprint contract was up. They were told that it was. When they changed carriers and canceled their existing phones, they were hit with a $300+ early cancellation bill, because -- according to the carrier -- their contract was NOT up, despite being told by customer service it was. Apparently making even minor changes to your service can result in the contract being extended.
2. Mobile customers who make a lot of calls to customer service (usually over billing issues) were being dropped because they were calling customer service too much. Huh? Talk about blaming the victim.
On a more personal note, one of my daughters has been caught in a 'trap' used by the carriers. Her initial contract was longer than the life of the battery in the cell phone. When the battery went bad, she found that the replacement battery from her carrier was priced high, so it cost almost as much as a new, fancier phone from the carrier -- which also came with an additional contract extension (at the same rate, while rates have been declining), which resulted in her being placed in the same position a couple of years later. I just bought her a new battery off of eBay, ($.99+ shipping) and we're going to let this contract expire.
So... Mobile phones and mobile phone service in the US is more expensive but yet lower quality than in many other parts of the world, so the networks are used less, and the phones have fewer features than in other places. A lack of standards results in fewer useful applications, and the applications that the carriers want us to use are proprietary, expensive, and not very useful.
-- Bill
If I want to research something, I will. If I want to buy something, I will. But I am going to buy something, I will choose the product I want, based on the results of my research. I deliberately ignore advertising because it is inherently biased. It's the visual equivalent of propaganda, and I do not listen to, nor watch, nor read, propaganda. If you like to watch propaganda, please feel free, but it's not for me.
I watch -- maybe -- about 3 hours of television a week, and it's never the same show. And I still find the ads repetitive, repugnant, and counter-productive -- I find that I actively dislike the companies that try to grab my attention to sell me something that I either already have, don't want, or don't need.
I also don't listen to radio and I rarely notice the ads in newspapers and magazines. I block ads in my browsers, and keep my computers adware-free.
If you feel the need to buy the latest of a never-ending stream of 'gotta-have' (not!) gadgets, please feel free to let marketers manipulate your emotions so you feel you cannot live without their product. And, by the way, has owning any of those 'gotta-haves' *really* make you happier after the initial warm and fuzzy feelings leave?
FWIW, I once spent a few hours working with the Amazon recommendation system to try to get it to recommend something that I was actually interested in. I entered a fair number of the books I own, the DVDs that I own, and other things that they sell. End result: it never came up with a recommendation that I thought was worthwhile, or I didn't already own. Then I went back, and removed all my ratings, and never looked at the recommendations again. I'm a complex person. My wife -- despite trying for many years -- could never find a gift for me that I really liked. No computer-based system will ever be as good as she was, which wasn't very good.
I recognize that my values and attitudes are not held by many. However, they are *my* values and attitudes, and I will stick with them. If M$ thinks I will *ever* buy a system with crapware like they are trying to patent in it, they are wrong.
Looks like Linus, OS X, and Google (if they are planning to build an OS) will be picking up lots of market share.
-- Bill
However, they have not made any claims about file sharing from the son's IP address...
It is possible for the son to have brought his computer over to the mothers house, but file sharing takes time, and unless he was living at the mother's house at the time, he would be out the use of the computer during the period of file sharing. And she would have no access to her own computer during that time.
I would look at the timestamps of the mothers computer. If her computer shows activity (email, etc) during the period of the alleged file sharing, I can't see any reason to suspect the son's computer.
-- Bill