Just remember everything, I mean EVERYTHING Facebook knows about you, those 800 pages of details, was input by either you or one of your "friends" - if you didn't want Facebook to have the info, you shouldn't have given it to them in the first place.
Did I really "input" the information, if all I did was open a webpage containing a Facebook "Like" button?
Does a reasonable person think they're leaving Facebook information when they "Delete" a message or "Remove" an event invitation?
When a friend chooses to "Import contacts/friends from Hotmail" (or whatever), and I reject the invitation to Facebook, should Facebook keep a record of that?
If I buy a cinema ticket online, from a company with Facebook integration, should Facebook store that data? What if I've ticked the box to prevent this -- does it really prevent it, or does it just hide it from me?
This is a freedom that people have always had. You can't stop other people from talking about you, and you shouldn't be ABLE to stop them.
And a "freedom" (if one wants to call it that) that we've had in Europe since various points in the 20th century is that a company shouldn't be able to store or process personal data without the individual's consent, or store the data for longer than necessary, or store more data than strictly necessary, or prevent an individual from updating incorrect information or requiring the deletion of the information.
I can't stop people talking about me, but if they give my email address to ACME Ltd I can stop them from using it.
Storing a Joe Bloggs tag against a photo seems to fall into the former case. Joining together some combination of all the Joe Bloggs tags on my photo albums, my friends' photo albums, the time I added joe.bloggs@example.com to an event, and my friend importing joe.bloggs@example.com from Hotmail is no longer people talking -- that's a company processing data.
Complaint 02 is about shadow profiles for non-users.
I don't see why you couldn't request it, except that you (going by your journal) are American, so the Irish/European data protection laws don't apply.
(It's interesting that the data is provided for free. British companies are allowed to make a "reasonable charge" for providing the personal data, which is almost always £10.)
I noticed an article on BBC news ("neutral"), and several more in the Guardian (left wing). I didn't try and look for any more information (but I live in a different country).
But, I've checked, and there is an article about this pepper spray incident in the Telegraph (right wing) and one about the protests in the Financial Times.
There's been more coverage of the execution in Georgia, but that's over now.
I use Facebook for events, and pretty much nothing else. Plenty of people do this. Friends invite me to stuff, so the invite is either an easy way to give 15 people an time and address (and in many cases have it appear on smartphone calendars), or else it lets me see who else is going to a gig/concert/etc that I'm interested in.
It's easy enough to ignore inane posts. There are two options: 1) Don't have inane friends. 2) Don't bother reading the latest newsfeed (whatever it's called) I do both, but there are some exceptions. (About two people, plus I sometimes read the newsfeed on the train home after an evening out.)
If it wasn't for the events I wouldn't have much reason to use Facebook.
About 5 people I know have signed up to Google+ since the recent Facebook updates. However, none of them seem to be using it. I think the main problem is there's no events functionality, which is the most important feature of Facebook.
Is a programmer who is writing the internal controls to a car in the IT industry or the car industry?
Both, but he probably thinks of one as more important that the other. Does his skill transfer to working on the internal controls for a train, or designing the engine? Compare with IBM's company chauffeur.
I work in IT, but the organisation does science. 95% of my skills are IT, but I have learnt some of the science, so I might be useful in that respect to a "competitor" (not that charities really have competitors, as such).
(My job title is "Applications Developer", and I'm in the "IT Department", along with the CIO and the guy who fixes printers.)
if you report the card stolen then you'll get the money back.
Thats not really the point is it, when I go out with cash, I carry what I need to use and thats it, which normally means £20-30.
But the credit card based paywave stuff as far as I know pretty much lets you have up to your card limit so long as the payments were small without ever challenging for authentication.
No, it prompts for a PIN "sometimes" for security. I expect if there are too many Paywave transactions in succession.
The maximum transaction is £15 (for Visa Paywave in the UK), and the retailers who use it accept the fraud risk (they pay back the bank, I think), so it's likely to stay as takeaway food and drinks, newsagents, etc. I think the criminal is likely to get more profit more easily by simply taking your cash.
If science is important to you, why do you support this organisation [sic]?
"Organisation" is the correct spelling in British English, TYVM;-)
Because to a Catholic ascribing those beliefs that would be tantamount to performing medical tests on prisoners or raising children as an organ farm.
Is it that so unimaginable to you that the definition of what is and is not human and when that occurs is not 100% clear-cut?
I was replying to a comment from a Catholic who "[hopes] religious bigotry won't keep us from using medicine to benefit humanity for too long." He was replying to a comment about stem cell research, so my assumption is that he supports such research. In my opinion he shouldn't describe himself as Catholic -- especially if, as you say, avoiding stem cell research is of such high moral importance.
I think you'd be looking at $1000 for the flight (assuming you can't reasonably wait 4 months for the really cheap ones), and another $1000-$2000 for the abortion.
Abortion price list (though it's cheaper for Irish women, somehow. Presumably you could shop around.)
Given these prices (the first I found), I don't think you'd be anywhere near $13k for a simple procedure and three days of care here.
It would be interesting to see something similar from a US private hospital.
From here (Catholic Church of England and Wales, though it cites the Vatican directly):
Embryos (Human) 2274 Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.
Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit, "if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human foetus and is directed toward its safe guarding or healing as an individual.... It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence."
If science is important to you, why do you support this organisation?
I think there are plenty of reasons (not just science) for Catholics to reject their Church, and I wish more of it's Western supporters would leave it.
(For an analogy, I agree with a few of the policies of the British National Party, who are essentially Nazis. But there's no way I'd join.)
We played "find the fact" with articles from The Star ("this newspaper is targeted at men, as can be seen from the many pictures of topless big-breasted women on every page").
You were not only permitted to look at topless big breasted women in books in school, but they were given to you? I have my doubts.
Not books, they were photocopies of newspapers bought by the teacher on the way to school. Most of the pictures were only as wide as a column, dotted around the main story.
A child can buy these papers (there's no age restriction). We were all at least 14. It really wasn't a big deal.
(If you care (and assuming you're in the US, when you're not at work) look at the websites for The Sun, The Daily Star and the Daily Sport -- in order of decreasing 'news' quality.)
Children in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland are different) make choices about what they want to study at the end of the school year in which they turn 14 (year 9). They study for GCSEs in years 10 and 11.
This course will probably be optional, and the existing IT course remains.
(Whether its a good idea to make choices like "no more art/music/geography/french/PE" aged 14 is for a different discussion. For years 12 and 13 most students choose three, four or five subjects, and there are no restrictions as they're beyond compulsory school age.)
There are the 85% of kids who will do this and benefit from logical thinking as well as a real skill. Then there are the 15% who won't cope, and might be better off learning how to use a word processor, or even just that smashing shop windows and stealing is not the best way to get a happy and fulfilling life.
The article says this is in addition to, rather than instead of, the existing IT GCSE.
Force every class in existence on them because it might teach them other skills.
I doubt they will make everyone take it, although virtually everyone will have to use a computer, so maybe they should.
Non-core GCSEs (taken in the year the student turns 16e) are generally optional, but perhaps the ideas will trickle down into compulsory IT lessons for younger students.
But will they continue it when they notice that those pupils are then able to think not only about algorithms, but also about the stuff politicians tell?
They're already taught that, for example in History (detecting bias, reliability of a source), English (reading newspapers and finding 'weasel words', determining the intended audience of a newspaper), and probably that subject that was introduced after I finished school (politics/society/culture, I can't remember the name).
In English we were given articles from the Daily Mail, where the teacher asked us to highlight every "may", and then cross out the whole sentence. What were we left with? Not much. We played "find the fact" with articles from The Star ("this newspaper is targeted at men, as can be seen from the many pictures of topless big-breasted women on every page").
The second is the more interesting one, and it's well worth reading, at least for anyone interested enough to comment on this story. Although most of the situations it covers are more general (offending large groups of people, like Welsh / Muslims, rather than individuals).
Because I have yet to find their music for sale here in the USA on a store shelf. If I do, it will be an immediate purchase. Physical CD copies only, please, I don't buy "music store" MP3s, nor do I do mail order.
I don't buy MP3s, but I do buy via mail order.
It's difficult enough to find shops selling industrial music in the UK, so I can believe it's just as difficult in the USA. I'm not old enough to know about the "old days", I first went in a music store in about 2000, but what I understand used to be the large music stores now dedicate most of their floor space to films and video games. Last time I looked round the UK's main HMV store on Oxford Street, London, it had a single 1m-wide shelf for "Electronic synth" music, hidden under the stairs up from the basement, which contained three Kraftwerk albums and 15 copies of something by Depeche Mode. But mostly it had Harry Potter on Bluray.
The independent stores are much better, but the ones I know are smaller and cater for particular genres. It's Resurrection Records in Camden Town for industrial, goth, ebm, black metal, pagan metal, etc. I only know of two brick-and-mortar stores selling industrial music in the UK, but there's probably a few more. 5?
Anyway, I get CDs from, in order: - mail order, from UK Amazon/Play/etc - gigs - festivals (labels tend to turn up with all their CDs, not just the bands that are playing) - my nearest specialist independent music store - any of the above, but while I'm on holiday abroad somewhere.
I'm not sure how I feel about record shops. I'm too young to have spent much time in them -- I bought my first three albums in them, but the fourth was given to me on CD-R by a friend. I like browsing the CDs at a stall at a festival, and I much prefer CDs to downloading MP3s, but I'm not sure where the shop comes in. I buy gig tickets there anyway, just to give it some support.
The people who make such lame music these days that I don't even want to pirate it, that's who. That basically leaves me with one Wierd Al disc every few years, though I do buy used CDs from time to time.
When I download music, it's mostly from JASRAC artists, and a bit of whatever Germany's group is. (I love me some Eisbrescher.)
I like Eisbrecher ("Icebreaker") a little (I don't have any of their music, it's a bit too rock/metally but if they play in London I'll go and watch). Until August 2010 they were with independent labels (in August 2010 they signed with Sony, but don't seem to have released anything yet). So, what justifies you copying their music?
Note also that "One of Lauren’s friends was unfairly blamed for the hate campaign and took a drug overdose." Still think it's wrong to punish this guy? I certainly don't.
You might be interested in this, a speech "Free Expression and the Rule of Law" by the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008.
Slashdot Mirror
Just remember everything, I mean EVERYTHING Facebook knows about you, those 800 pages of details, was input by either you or one of your "friends" - if you didn't want Facebook to have the info, you shouldn't have given it to them in the first place.
Did I really "input" the information, if all I did was open a webpage containing a Facebook "Like" button?
Does a reasonable person think they're leaving Facebook information when they "Delete" a message or "Remove" an event invitation?
When a friend chooses to "Import contacts/friends from Hotmail" (or whatever), and I reject the invitation to Facebook, should Facebook keep a record of that?
If I buy a cinema ticket online, from a company with Facebook integration, should Facebook store that data? What if I've ticked the box to prevent this -- does it really prevent it, or does it just hide it from me?
So?
This is a freedom that people have always had. You can't stop other people from talking about you, and you shouldn't be ABLE to stop them.
And a "freedom" (if one wants to call it that) that we've had in Europe since various points in the 20th century is that a company shouldn't be able to store or process personal data without the individual's consent, or store the data for longer than necessary, or store more data than strictly necessary, or prevent an individual from updating incorrect information or requiring the deletion of the information.
I can't stop people talking about me, but if they give my email address to ACME Ltd I can stop them from using it.
Storing a Joe Bloggs tag against a photo seems to fall into the former case. Joining together some combination of all the Joe Bloggs tags on my photo albums, my friends' photo albums, the time I added joe.bloggs@example.com to an event, and my friend importing joe.bloggs@example.com from Hotmail is no longer people talking -- that's a company processing data.
You are correct, in the UK the fee is "up to £10". See here.
Complaint 02 is about shadow profiles for non-users.
I don't see why you couldn't request it, except that you (going by your journal) are American, so the Irish/European data protection laws don't apply.
(It's interesting that the data is provided for free. British companies are allowed to make a "reasonable charge" for providing the personal data, which is almost always £10.)
Ahh, but surely you're aware that Christians follow the New Testament, in which Jesus states that he who is without sin should cast the first stone.
Since the point was about censoring the book, it's not relevant which page it's on.
I noticed an article on BBC news ("neutral"), and several more in the Guardian (left wing). I didn't try and look for any more information (but I live in a different country).
But, I've checked, and there is an article about this pepper spray incident in the Telegraph (right wing) and one about the protests in the Financial Times.
There's been more coverage of the execution in Georgia, but that's over now.
I use Facebook for events, and pretty much nothing else. Plenty of people do this. Friends invite me to stuff, so the invite is either an easy way to give 15 people an time and address (and in many cases have it appear on smartphone calendars), or else it lets me see who else is going to a gig/concert/etc that I'm interested in.
It's easy enough to ignore inane posts. There are two options:
1) Don't have inane friends.
2) Don't bother reading the latest newsfeed (whatever it's called)
I do both, but there are some exceptions. (About two people, plus I sometimes read the newsfeed on the train home after an evening out.)
If it wasn't for the events I wouldn't have much reason to use Facebook.
About 5 people I know have signed up to Google+ since the recent Facebook updates. However, none of them seem to be using it. I think the main problem is there's no events functionality, which is the most important feature of Facebook.
Is a programmer who is writing the internal controls to a car in the IT industry or the car industry?
Both, but he probably thinks of one as more important that the other. Does his skill transfer to working on the internal controls for a train, or designing the engine? Compare with IBM's company chauffeur.
I work in IT, but the organisation does science. 95% of my skills are IT, but I have learnt some of the science, so I might be useful in that respect to a "competitor" (not that charities really have competitors, as such).
(My job title is "Applications Developer", and I'm in the "IT Department", along with the CIO and the guy who fixes printers.)
A cheap Android phone is as little as £75 upfront. That's presumably firmly within birthday present cost.
Thats not really the point is it, when I go out with cash, I carry what I need to use and thats it, which normally means £20-30.
But the credit card based paywave stuff as far as I know pretty much lets you have up to your card limit so long as the payments were small without ever challenging for authentication.
No, it prompts for a PIN "sometimes" for security. I expect if there are too many Paywave transactions in succession.
The maximum transaction is £15 (for Visa Paywave in the UK), and the retailers who use it accept the fraud risk (they pay back the bank, I think), so it's likely to stay as takeaway food and drinks, newsagents, etc. I think the criminal is likely to get more profit more easily by simply taking your cash.
If science is important to you, why do you support this organisation [sic]?
"Organisation" is the correct spelling in British English, TYVM ;-)
Because to a Catholic ascribing those beliefs that would be tantamount to performing medical tests on prisoners or raising children as an organ farm.
Is it that so unimaginable to you that the definition of what is and is not human and when that occurs is not 100% clear-cut?
I was replying to a comment from a Catholic who "[hopes] religious bigotry won't keep us from using medicine to benefit humanity for too long." He was replying to a comment about stem cell research, so my assumption is that he supports such research. In my opinion he shouldn't describe himself as Catholic -- especially if, as you say, avoiding stem cell research is of such high moral importance.
For a couple of hundred bucks you can get a cheap flight plus an abortion in Amsterdam or London.
Please tell me where I can fly from London to the US and back for a couple of hundred bucks! I don't need the abortion, but I fancy a cheap holiday :-)
I think you'd be looking at $1000 for the flight (assuming you can't reasonably wait 4 months for the really cheap ones), and another $1000-$2000 for the abortion.
Abortion price list (though it's cheaper for Irish women, somehow. Presumably you could shop around.)
Given these prices (the first I found), I don't think you'd be anywhere near $13k for a simple procedure and three days of care here.
It would be interesting to see something similar from a US private hospital.
From here (Catholic Church of England and Wales, though it cites the Vatican directly):
Embryos (Human)
2274 Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.
Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit, "if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human foetus and is directed toward its safe guarding or healing as an individual....
It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence."
If science is important to you, why do you support this organisation?
I think there are plenty of reasons (not just science) for Catholics to reject their Church, and I wish more of it's Western supporters would leave it.
(For an analogy, I agree with a few of the policies of the British National Party, who are essentially Nazis. But there's no way I'd join.)
We played "find the fact" with articles from The Star ("this newspaper is targeted at men, as can be seen from the many pictures of topless big-breasted women on every page").
You were not only permitted to look at topless big breasted women in books in school, but they were given to you? I have my doubts.
Not books, they were photocopies of newspapers bought by the teacher on the way to school. Most of the pictures were only as wide as a column, dotted around the main story.
A child can buy these papers (there's no age restriction). We were all at least 14. It really wasn't a big deal.
(If you care (and assuming you're in the US, when you're not at work) look at the websites for The Sun, The Daily Star and the Daily Sport -- in order of decreasing 'news' quality.)
Children in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland are different) make choices about what they want to study at the end of the school year in which they turn 14 (year 9). They study for GCSEs in years 10 and 11.
This course will probably be optional, and the existing IT course remains.
(Whether its a good idea to make choices like "no more art/music/geography/french/PE" aged 14 is for a different discussion. For years 12 and 13 most students choose three, four or five subjects, and there are no restrictions as they're beyond compulsory school age.)
There are the 85% of kids who will do this and benefit from logical thinking as well as a real skill. Then there are the 15% who won't cope, and might be better off learning how to use a word processor, or even just that smashing shop windows and stealing is not the best way to get a happy and fulfilling life.
The article says this is in addition to, rather than instead of, the existing IT GCSE.
I don't think GCSE Computing existed for a while. This seems to be an effort to bring it back.
This is a pilot project for GCSE Computing.
Force every class in existence on them because it might teach them other skills.
I doubt they will make everyone take it, although virtually everyone will have to use a computer, so maybe they should.
Non-core GCSEs (taken in the year the student turns 16e) are generally optional, but perhaps the ideas will trickle down into compulsory IT lessons for younger students.
But will they continue it when they notice that those pupils are then able to think not only about algorithms, but also about the stuff politicians tell?
They're already taught that, for example in History (detecting bias, reliability of a source), English (reading newspapers and finding 'weasel words', determining the intended audience of a newspaper), and probably that subject that was introduced after I finished school (politics/society/culture, I can't remember the name).
In English we were given articles from the Daily Mail, where the teacher asked us to highlight every "may", and then cross out the whole sentence. What were we left with? Not much. We played "find the fact" with articles from The Star ("this newspaper is targeted at men, as can be seen from the many pictures of topless big-breasted women on every page").
The first link was to explain which crime it was.
The second is the more interesting one, and it's well worth reading, at least for anyone interested enough to comment on this story. Although most of the situations it covers are more general (offending large groups of people, like Welsh / Muslims, rather than individuals).
Because I have yet to find their music for sale here in the USA on a store shelf. If I do, it will be an immediate purchase. Physical CD copies only, please, I don't buy "music store" MP3s, nor do I do mail order.
I don't buy MP3s, but I do buy via mail order.
It's difficult enough to find shops selling industrial music in the UK, so I can believe it's just as difficult in the USA. I'm not old enough to know about the "old days", I first went in a music store in about 2000, but what I understand used to be the large music stores now dedicate most of their floor space to films and video games. Last time I looked round the UK's main HMV store on Oxford Street, London, it had a single 1m-wide shelf for "Electronic synth" music, hidden under the stairs up from the basement, which contained three Kraftwerk albums and 15 copies of something by Depeche Mode. But mostly it had Harry Potter on Bluray.
The independent stores are much better, but the ones I know are smaller and cater for particular genres. It's Resurrection Records in Camden Town for industrial, goth, ebm, black metal, pagan metal, etc. I only know of two brick-and-mortar stores selling industrial music in the UK, but there's probably a few more. 5?
Anyway, I get CDs from, in order:
- mail order, from UK Amazon/Play/etc
- gigs
- festivals (labels tend to turn up with all their CDs, not just the bands that are playing)
- my nearest specialist independent music store
- any of the above, but while I'm on holiday abroad somewhere.
I'm not sure how I feel about record shops. I'm too young to have spent much time in them -- I bought my first three albums in them, but the fourth was given to me on CD-R by a friend. I like browsing the CDs at a stall at a festival, and I much prefer CDs to downloading MP3s, but I'm not sure where the shop comes in. I buy gig tickets there anyway, just to give it some support.
Who is stopping you from buying RIAA music?
The people who make such lame music these days that I don't even want to pirate it, that's who. That basically leaves me with one Wierd Al disc every few years, though I do buy used CDs from time to time.
When I download music, it's mostly from JASRAC artists, and a bit of whatever Germany's group is. (I love me some Eisbrescher.)
I like Eisbrecher ("Icebreaker") a little (I don't have any of their music, it's a bit too rock/metally but if they play in London I'll go and watch). Until August 2010 they were with independent labels (in August 2010 they signed with Sony, but don't seem to have released anything yet). So, what justifies you copying their music?
The offence was "Malicious Communications". See http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/communications_offences/#p_14
Note also that "One of Lauren’s friends was unfairly blamed for the hate campaign and took a drug overdose." Still think it's wrong to punish this guy? I certainly don't.
You might be interested in this, a speech "Free Expression and the Rule of Law" by the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008.