21–30 of 245 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I hate the bureaucracy in my country (Brazil). There's a clear penalty for trying to do things the right way (tons of useless and expensive paperwork), and nothing happens to the crooks who take advantage of the system.
Terry Gilliam's film: Brazil spotlights the absurdity of bureaucracy. Is Brazil renowned for theirs?
The situation with web sites and software that have 10 to 100 page long (when printed) EULAs or Terms of Use are a similar concept. Much software these days makes you click a box saying you have read and understood a legal agreement that is far more complex than any employment or IP transfer agreement I have ever signed.
It's not exactly an isolated case. When I turned 18 I was presented with the same document. To my mother's dismay, I pointed out the flaws and then marked in the necessary negatives in pen to render the document useless before signing it. Since the other party (a member with legal power at the clinic) did not sign after me, I'm not sure the form is actually binding on either of us. Could somebody clarify what precede…
In this instance by presenting you with the form they likely legally signified their willingness to enter into the agreement.
I've run into the same routine with medical professionals. Also, many of these privacy notices have a clause that they can disclose your private information for certain reasons, then a list which includes "advertising and marketing" purposes with other entities. When I ask about this I am always told they would never do that, it is a standard notice and no one other than me has ever said anything. When I refuse to si…
I suppose there are databases out there with diagnoses of patients and the medications they take, but there are no patient identifiers in these databases, so it's basically an anonymous batch. That kind of anonymous data is going to be important to make further advances in healthcare IT, and healthcare in general.
When everybody becomes a forced liar, it becomes easy for authentic liars to hide in the crowd.
This is why I hate the bureaucracy in my country (Brazil). There's a clear penalty for trying to do things the right way (tons of useless and expensive paperwork), and nothing happens to the crooks who take advantage of the system.
Note that the article is from 2011 (August 1 if you believe the headers). No direct relation to the "rms collapsed" story posted yesterday.
Yeah. As it says on the bottom, "Copyright 2011 Richard Stallman released under Creative Commons Attribution Noderivs 3.0 unported". It's a surprising statement for many reasons. First, I have traditionally thought of CC as somehow opposed to GNU, but here's Stallman releasing with CC. Second, it's a 2011 document -- had he not been to a doctor prior to 2011? unlikely, so maybe he just never noticed what he was signi…
It's not true, though -- and this shouldn't be surprising. A short blog post is not at all the same as software, and so it's pretty normal that he'd treat it differently.
One obvious reason -- to get his views out, and to gain respect from people who don't know him, it helps for them to encounter him making intelligent comments on related issues. If he lets others republish his posts and essays (statements of opinion, mind you, not software or documentation) without attribution and/or edited, he loses that chance with no gain in exchange.
Etc.
They lie, you lie ..
I've run into the same routine with medical professionals. Also, many of these privacy notices have a clause that they can disclose your private information for certain reasons, then a list which includes "advertising and marketing" purposes with other entities. When I ask about this I am always told they would never do that, it is a standard notice and no one other than me has ever said anything. When I refuse to si…
It must have gotten to the point by now that the mere length of a privacy policy, or EULA, is enough to convince the court that there effectively is no policy or no agreement, signed, seal broken or not.