We have submitted a number of our client web designs to CommandShift3, we will keep you posted with an update of what the design community thinks of our web designs...
An industry whose task should be to filter out falsehood has become a conduit for propaganda and second hand news
Where once journalists were active gatherers of news, now they have generally become mere passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest. Not journalists, but churnalists. An industry whose primary task is to filter out falsehood has become so vulnerable to manipulation that it is now involved in the mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda.
There never was a time when news media were perfect. Journalists have always worked with too little time and too little certainty; with interference from owners and governments; with laws that intimidate and inhibit the search for truth. But the evidence in this new book, Flat Earth News, suggests our tendency to recycle ignorance is far worse than it was.
The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.
Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.
Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.
We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them.
Privacy is a basic human need.
Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny.
Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy.
Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.
Dont forget the free trade agreement fellow aussies... This applies to you!
If you are interested in protecting your online privacy, we recommend installing TOR (a P2P privacy network that hides your identity online, secures your online data and protects your privacy from online snoops, including your own government)
Bush goes ahead with this, this will mean that your ISP (Bigpond, iinet, unwired, optus etc) will monitor your internet usage and report what you do online to the US government.
People say if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear... but i question why the US government has the right to read our private communications!!! I say... bugger off!
PRESIDENT Bush has promised a frugal budget proposal next month, but one big-ticket item is stirring controversy: an estimated $US6 billion ($6.83 billion) to build a secretive system protecting US communication networks from attacks by terrorists, spies and hackers.
The US government has tracked, among other threats, continuing operations from China against US computer systems, according to former intelligence officials
Administration officials and lawmakers say that the prospect of cyberterrorists hacking into a nuclear-power plant or paralysing Wall Street is becoming possible, and that the US isn't prepared. This is "one area where we have significant work to do," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a recent interview.
The White House's proposal has already dismayed lawmakers concerned about civil-liberties violations. Democratic lawmakers are also frustrated by what they see as the White House's refusal to provide details of the program, and say that could threaten the fate of the initiative. Protecting private computer systems would likely require the government to install sensors on private, company networks, officials familiar with the initiative said. Amid divisiveness about other government-surveillance programs, having the government monitor internet traffic, even in the name of national security, will be a hard sell to Congress and the public.
Cybersecurity specialists say the threat ranges from terrorists hacking into nuclear-power control systems, banks or subways, to foreign governments secretly implanting software to siphon off Pentagon secrets from the government and military contractors.
Data quality is a critical issue for most web applications and databases.
For example, in an online bookstore "H.G. Wells" and "HG Wells" are the same author, but often duplicates like this in any database.
We have just finished a database cleansing solution for a client, and it has been interesting to use SQL Server's Fuzzy Lookup feature to achieve this.
If your interested in SQL Server Integration Services Fuzzy Lookup and Data Cleansing, check out this video (warning, is faitly technical)
Donald Farmer introduces the data quality features of SQL Server Integration Services with demos that show how to use the Fuzzy Lookup component for inexact matching and how to use Data Mining within the data integration process.
Apologies, it's time for rant. I know it's all the rage right now to be green. but is it really necessary to put a line at the bottom of every email telling me to consider the environment and not to print it?
It was fine when just a few people did it last year, but now a significant percentage of emails coming in every day have some variation of the "do not print this email" message. Not everyone does it, just the condescending holier-than-thou types. But it happens often enough to have become a serious annoyance. For background on the "movement," see this article.
You know what? I don't need you to tell me that I need to be a good Earth citizen. I don't print emails (no one does, you idiots), but if someone wants to I have no problem with it. Maybe they want to print out a map or something. I don't think that makes them a bad person.
The same people who insist on wearing colored rubber bracelets to show their support for the cause du jour put this crap at the bottom of emails. My suspicion is that they don't particularly care about the issue, they just want credit from everyone that they are a caring, thoughtful human being.
This isn't the way to show support for the our planet. Last week Earth defender Al Gore himself made it clear that personal choice decisions at the individual level have little to do with helping the environment. What matters is that our governments make the right policies and hold us, particularly corporations, accountable. That isn't happening yet. If you really want to change the world, start talking to your elected representatives.
Or even better, stop eating meat. Raising livestock causes more greenhouse gasses in the U.S. than all transportation combined (and, I bet, all email printing combined). So put down that hamburger and get out of my inbox.
"A democracy is nothing more than mob-rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the remaining forty-nine percent" – Thomas Jefferson
Since the start of the 21st century the entire world has witnessed a decline in freedoms and democracy..this editorial explores how this decline occurred and how people have fought back from the decline
The first ten years of the 21st century will not be remembered as great years. The birth of the new century and the new millennium will be marked in history as the uprising of great evils across the world.
Of course we have not progressed from absolute freedom to an absolute lack of it, nor have we progressed from absolute stability to an absolute lack of stability, but we have progressed into an era where human rights and democracy are in decline across the world.
Most people have already realised that these have not been the most inspiring times for democracy and human rights. 2007 was confirmed as the second year in a row during which freedom retreated in most of the world, reversing a democratic tide that had appeared to be almost unstoppable during the 1990’s following the collapse of communism and the break up of the Soviet Union.
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