Well since the company can't afford to train and assign a corporate harpy to each and every player, they instead put restrictive software that calls home and says, "yup, this guy's still ok". Should the software not be able to call home, like a spy under strict orders to lie low, the game will refuse to operate until given an Internet connection by which to phone home to command.
The funny thing about this is that most of their market will happily and quickly buy their games, but when they put in the screws, those same customers will refuse. However, being avid gamers and fans, when presented with the ability and opportunity to download a cracked copy, they are much more likely to do so since they will still want to play the game.
SO… Adding restrictive software to prevent piracy actually causes piracy. Too bad they don't understand that.
A not-so-suprising reaction from the gaming community:
The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database.
If you are found innocent, you can't be treated like a criminal. Duh.
What is happening at the FBI that they can violate our privacy and rights over and over and over?
Some marketing research firms are working with ISPs to track all data transmitted over your Internet connection to build profiles of you by which to advertise more junk. On the question of how they'll protect your privacy, the companies said:
First, every user in the NebuAd system is identified by a number that the company assigns rather than an Internet address, which in theory could be traced to a person. The number NebuAd assigns cannot be tracked to a specific address. That way, if the company's data is stolen or leaked, no one could identify customers or the Web sites they've visited, Dykes said.
TJX has settled under charges that they had insufficient computer security protecting their systems, but the only thing TJX must do under the settlement is upgrade their security. Woo.
And this:
"By now, the message should be clear: companies that collect sensitive consumer information have a responsibility to keep it secure," said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras. "Information security is a priority for the FTC, as it should be for every business in America."
B.S.. Here's a clear message for you Chairwoman Platt Majoras, those words coming out of your mouth are nothing but hipocrasy.
Much love to my UK bretheren, but how the hell did you end up with such bad leadership?! (I know, pot, keddle and all that)…
Currently they're planning to add children to the DNA database:
Home Office officials said plans to include primary school children on the DNA record would be kept 'under review'. The DNA database includes 4.5 million samples of genetic material, many taken from people who have been arrested but never charged with a crime.
By next year, it is expected that 1.5 million of the samples will be from youngsters aged between ten and 18.
Can and would they use your DNA results against you? Do credit card companies raise your rates according to unrelated things on your credit report? Do insurance companies raise your rates due to traffic tickets that have little to do with telling how good or safe a driver you are?
Like I said, avoiding a record of your DNA is a smart idea.
Vast computer databases give curious employees the ability to look up sensitive information on people with the click of a mouse. The WE Energies database includes credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and energy usage. In some cases, it even includes income and medical information.
Experts say some companies do little to stop such abuses even though they could lead to identity theft, stalking and other privacy invasions. And companies that uncover violations can keep them quiet because in many cases it is not illegal to snoop, only to use the data for crimes.
But of course, if they didn't store all that unecessary data, this would be far less of an issue.
Data breaches are common, but shouldn't be. They could easily stem the flow by putting better security in place, taking personal data offline, stop sending employees home with laptops that have personal data on them, and, above all stop storing our data once you no longer have need of it (you can't lose my credit card number if you don't have it).
…it was likely more than most consumers who filed class-action lawsuits ever received (after attorney fees are paid) and it would be received much more quickly.
Good point. The next time I see any kind of data breach notification that affects me, I'll give it a try and see what happens.
I've built several bears with my kids, but I always balk at the part where they're supposed to put in their information. They just don't need that much personal data about my kid. Instead, I put in MY personal e-mail address so that if it did get "lost" and recovered, they would be able to e-mail me at the least, though we'd probably just replace it anyway…
Embarassed that they got caught, Facebook is now offering a worthless Opt-out policy that will help only the users who know about the problem and manage to find out about the policy and then take the trouble to do it.
Their new ad software broadcasts your current activities to your facebook friends. If you just bought a ticket to a concert, your friends might see an alert to that effect. If you just bought medication for your embarassing personal issue, they might see that too. But it gets worse:
Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.
In an attempt to remove all doubt that AT&T is a evil-infested, garbage-brained, scum-sucking, low-life, mucus-eating sot of a company, it has been recently discovered that they built a custom algorithm to: "crunch through tens of millions of long distance phone records a night to draw up what AT&T calls "communities of interest" — i.e., calling circles that show who is talking to whom".
1) TJX is the parent company of several other companies including TJ Maxx. Each of those companies shared data with TJX creating a massive database (and a single target for the hackers).
2) TJX (and others) shouldn't have stored the credit card data in the first place.
Seriously, what right does this company have for storing people's credit card numbers? What they hell are they going to do with my credit card number anyway? Show it to me on a web form the next time I buy something? It's my card! I know what the freaking number is, you don't need to store it for me!
Anyway. I hope something drastically negative happens to TJX because of this and I hope it encourages other companies to stop data-raping people.
I have long said that data rape is the second leading cause of identity theft problems. Most companies have no legitimate need to store your credit card numbers at all after the transaction is completed which may be why Minnesota is now banning the practice of storing credit card information. The only problem here is that they put an arbitrary date on it instead of having it be "after the transaction is complete". This is a problem for some retailers that may not be able to process the transactions in 2 days or less, but it's still a pretty good start.
If we could freeze our credit reports, this wouldn't be a problem and if they didn't rape us for our data, this wouldn't have happened (oversimplified, yes, but it's the basic idea).
When we think about our personal data, what bothers us most is generally not the initial collection and use, but the secondary uses. I personally appreciate it when Amazon.com suggests books that might interest me, based on books I have already bought. I like it that my airline knows what type of seat and meal I prefer, and my hotel chain keeps records of my room preferences. I don't mind that my automatic road-toll collection tag is tied to my credit card, and that I get billed automatically. I even like the detailed summary of my purchases that my credit card company sends me at the end of every year. What I don't want, though, is any of these companies selling that data to brokers, or for law enforcement to be allowed to paw through those records without a warrant.
He goes on to say that the two dangers of data rape (a.k.a data mining or data brokering) are that when people aren't certain that their data is private, they become less willing to provide it or give false information. The second is the risk of errors in the data which can cause different kinds of headaches alltogether (think of the no-fly list snafus).
Most of us who complain about the systems and laws that are changing for the worse over time (and especially during the regime of emperor Bush and our flacid Congress) are those who can clearly see how they can be used for more than intended. But you don't have to be a visionary to see what can happen. Look into history instead.
