Their are dedicated databases that are used for things like rental history and the like. In my case my renter was stealing from me, something that most people don't want to risk. I have a right to make sure that information is published in dedicated databases of bad renters.

In the case of the ex-colleage my point is he should not be helped. He should have had the FBI called and he should be sitting in prison, however that is another discussion. The company chose not to do so because they feared the publicity would put them out of business.

The point is that this guy still tries to work in the field and the original people that worked at the time may no longer work there. That's where you need a database to track things. That means there is a dependency to have data about the incident in a computer to make sure that any potential employer can be properly warned about the guy.

The point being that sometimes there is data out there about people that don't want out there that should still be out there.

The community seems quite interested in using his services and seeing that he beat his legal case. I think it is reasonable that the community help Kim DotCom out on this. He's trying to protect your data as much as his ass, which is more than a lot of companies do.

Instead of bitching and moaning about what's wrong, we should help him fix it. Give Kim security, consider it a mutual internet fuck you to those that deserve it.

The right to be forgotten sounds appealing, it really does. When I first heard about it it sounded like something I liked. However the more I thought about it the more I thought about the **AA's playing whackamole and the logistical nightmares of actually trying to implement such a thing. The next problem is how do you separate it from censorship? It's also next to impossible to cleanly state when and where it should be granted.

Can you demand the right to be forgotten by corporate databases? Facebook sounds easy enough, but what about credit agencies, employers and news agencies? In practice I think it would be next to impossible to implement, as the **AA's have found out time and again - the Internet never forgets.

You also have cases of legitimate needs. I had a bad renter that stayed with me last year. Should he be able to demand the right to be forgotten so that he can get out of a bad referral? How about employers that have bad employees? I worked with a guy that was fired for hosting kiddie porn from a server at work. This guy still tries to get work in the field, should he be able to demand the right to be forgotten by his employer of 20 some years so that he can put down his experience without anyone being able to conduct a background check?

What about news agencies that reported on people that were in the news? Richard Jewell was wrongly described as the bomber for Atlantic City Olympic bombing by many news agencies who did a half ass job of news coverage. Does he have a legitimate right to be forgotten? His life was ruined without cause (he was innocent) and surely he would have cause to be forgotten if anyone would. Or does the fact that he was internationally famous as the person to discover a bomb at the Olympics and then be wrongly blamed for it's placement trump his personal case?

What about the arguments against censorship of people. Hypothetical Bob has his account on Facebook and wants everything about him removed from Facebook. Susan remembers Bob before he went crazy and wants to keep his picture up from their wedding. Does Bob's desire to remove himself from Facebook trump Susan's right to remember her husband as he was before he took the crazy train out of town?

What about government records, are those something that you can demand be forgotten? Many police agencies now host open records of who has been arrested and post this information on their website. If someone is arrested do they have a right to have that information forgotten?

Even if you had a clear legal structure that could say when and where someone had the right to be forgotten, without crossing over into censorship, how on earth are you going to do it? I would lay the last dollar I had that you probably couldn't name 10% of the companies that had information on you if your in a typical first world country.

I really wish we would adopt the European standards on privacy. This is one area where I freely admit the Euro's are doing things right and we are blatantly being ass backwards about things.

/rant off

This doesn't even pass the sniff test. Microsoft has spent literally billions of dollars (estimates from $5-$10) more than they have made on their entertainment division - by design. They did that as a long term strategic investment for the sole purpose of staying entrenched in peoples living rooms and lives. A computer for every desk and an xbox for every living room. They aren't about to walk away from that now that they are starting to get to the point they envisioned a decade ago.

This is a long term strategic vision, and frankly one that is better laid thought out and executed than what they have done with their operating systems during the same time frame. Ballmer is a bloody idiot in many ways, but he isn't /that/ much of an idiot. Frankly someone should put their games division in charge of the OS division, as they have better vision and long term execution.

On Comcast they appear to be blocking uploads to the website. I can access and interact with the site but all uploads are completely blocked.

Of course this isn't about congestion, if it was other countries with far higher bandwidth allocations wouldn't be charging a fraction of what we charge. Our national broadband is an international embarrassment and is holding back the economy. Hell, even China is starting to deploy Fiber directly to new construction - and - letting you pick your ISP.

Network lines need to be declared a critical infrastructure, turned over to a third party and let consumers truly have a choice of ISP's. There is no competition for broadband in this country outside of a select few areas and the results are overwhelming. If your lucky enough to live in an area with competition you get /much/ better deals.

The free market is a wonderful thing that work around almost any problem. However the free market can't work if competition isn't allowed and monopolies can corner the market. We need another trustbuster like Teddy Roosevelt.

Next election vote for zombie Teddie Roosevelt - dammit.

That is quite the unfair comparison, and Aaron Swartz is no Bradley Manning. Aaron Swartz downloaded academic materials that that were otherwise available to the public and hardly secret. Bradley Manning is a traitor that sought to embarrass his country by exposing as many secrets en mass as he could. Manning did significant harm to international diplomatic relations and endangered countless lives. It's a bit like saying a protestor holding a sign is the same as the saboteur derailing a train, it's intellectually dishonest at best.

I've said time and time again that Oracle doesn't get security, they just don't. They have been pulling things like this for a very long time. I never could have imagined saying this 10 years ago or so, but Oracle, you need to look at Microsoft for some pointers on handling security. Since you probably not willing to do that, I'll spell it out for you:

When you find out about a notable security flaw you need to have a patch ready to go within 60 days.
Meaningful notification. The everyday hacks that run IT need to have reasonable notification of security flaws.
Workarounds. If you can't fix it, that's fine, but give me a workaround or I'm going to start uninstalling your product.
How does it the flaw work? If you can't tell me how it works it means I have to reverse engineer it myself and this annoys me.
The difference between theoretical flaws and something that is broken beyond saving is typically 8-10 years.
The bad guys make a lot of money by counting on you dismissing security concerns.
You need to make it easier to administer updates to your products.
You need to make it easier to limit updates to your products. Why does Java 6 automatically update to 7? This is a bad, bad thing.

From a security standpoint I can't think of anything I would wish for more than the death of Java. Every chance I have to get rid of Java I put in my two cents to do exactly that.

The Lisa had a mouse and was pushed by Apple management due to the high price tag. The Apple IIe was much cheaper, had visicalc, supported a certain level of commodity hardware and wasn't pushed by Apple management.

The Apple IIe outsold the Lisa 20 to 1.

/subby, thank you for not claiming Apple invented the mouse and giving credit where credit is due....

Hey, let's apply these same changes to your right to free speech, this should be easy.

You can only write up to 7 paragraphs in an article.
Any web form that allows you to put more than 10 paragraphs into an article has to be destroyed or sold out of state.
You have to have a background check before submitting your article to anyone but immediate family.
You can only buy your text editor from a licensed dealer.

Your okay with all of those restrictions, right? You should be because I can promise that you that speech and ideas have killed far more people than guns ever have.

They were in a bind on this with no safe way to do this at all. Make something that is politically correct in some parts of the world and you'll deeply offend other people in other parts of the world with different values. Different cultures simply don't share the same set of values and when we try to impose are values on other cultures it creates a lot of resentment.

It's a balancing act and Bioware is well aware of this. They tried to strike a balance and they were going to be damned no matter what they did. I'm not saying I had a better idea (I don't) on how to do this, but give them credit for trying. There's a country song out right now that's become popular that could just as well be relevant about this as well, "Southern Comfort Zone".

I take it you have never known someone that has paranoid delusions in your life. If you had experience with something like ADHD and met someone that was suffering for it you may well take a moment to talk to them about it. There's nothing funny about someone suffering from mental illness and not getting the help they need.

This wasn't a 'nerdish' question, this was someone who was so naive as to get people to start talking about making your own CPU's etc, etc, etc.

A 'nerdish' question along the same lines might have been something like:

"which OS is best for a live boot environment for internet cafe's? I need to travel and want to make sure my bank account doesn't get hacked. I know a little bit about Windows, however I'd love to try a Linux distro to learn something new."

That would have limited scope and you would find many people on this site who would happily answer a question like that with legitimate answers with a small fraction of the mocking of the poster.

I know it's popular to bash Microsoft on Slashdot, but this is as absurd as asking if Windows Phone 8 is as even matchup to Android or IOS. The story and article are flame-bait and should be treated accordingly.

You don't need computer security, you need psychiatric help, seriously. I've known people with paranoid delusional conditions before. Talk to to Psychologist about getting help and make sure you take care of your mental health. You really, really, don't want to end up on the street where your mental health spirals out of control.

If your not willing to work with that than I suggest you keep a few practical thoughts in mind:

The FBI doesn't care about your porn habits unless they involve underage kids.
The CIA could care less about you unless your working on behalf of a foreign government and even then probably not.
The NSA consider you a civil matter.

If your in another country simply substitute your local government agency for the right one.

Frankly if you were working for anybody that the CIA, NSA etc actually cared about you would be getting professional advice from your employer, and not by asking Slashdot. You sound like a young person thinking about becoming a script kiddie or someone with delusion of prosecution over warez trading and porn surfing. The comment is quite sincere, you need to seek help from a mental health professional.