Merriam-Webster has as one of its definitions of corporation the following:
a body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person although constituted by one or more persons and legally endowed with various rights and duties including the capacity of succession
The rights of a corporation are the same as those of a person, but the set of corporate responsibilities is less. We need to start bringing those into closer alignment. Many things have been done by corporations that would cause a human to be imprisoned for life. For example, Monsanto and PCB pollution. As far as I am aware, however, there isn't really a corporate death penalty, but there definitely should be. Corporations are great for individuals avoiding responsibility, and many of these go on profiting for years from heinous acts. If there were a such thing as a corporate death penalty, wherein the courts could declare that Monsanto, Altria (nee Philip Morris), and Union Carbide simply cease to exist as legal entities. The company would be dissolved and the assets sold off. The net proceeds (after paying off debts and liabilities) could go to the shareholders, but my instinct is not, as it is the shareholders who are responsible for the behavior of a corporation. This would be a good motivator for them to pay attention to the way their investment is behaving, a type of responsibility sorely lacking today when the only consequence is lawsuits whose settlements barely amount to 10% of a year's profits.
So I'm stuck on hold with Chase bank. When setting up access to my account with Quicken, I was told that Chase is currently authorized to share my account and other personal information with other corporations. There was a law passed recently that granted this right to financial institutions. They had to inform customers, but it was an opt-out rather than an opt-in. Clearly Congress got effectively lobbied by the financial industry here. So I made a second call to Chase customer service (because the person at the first number couldn't do this and couldn't transfer me) and wade through another phone menu to talk to a customer service rep. I explain what I want, then get put on hold because this rep has to talk to a "product specialist" who can do this. So she gets put on hold (she claims), so I get put on hold. I get put on hold three times at a few minutes a pop, listening to the same minute-long fragment of a piano song every time. Finally after about 20 minutes on the phone with multiple Chase reps, I get it done. Makes me not feel bad about going on the can while talking to her.
So clearly this is wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if Chase made this process difficult just to dissuade people from getting their information taken off limits. After all, I've done the same sort of thing in my job. The difference is, of course, my job is for a website that only demands an email address, country, and date of birth (for COPPA-compliance). I do not have a record of all of an individual's financial transactions. Nor do I have a social security number, mother's maiden name, or any other, more sensitive information. Clearly Congress was not acting in the best interests of Americans. While the Supreme Court has stated that privacy is a necessary adjunct to freedom of association, and there is the Fourth Amendment ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"), neither is explicit in stating general privacy as a right in and of itself; rather, they support privacy in certain conditions as necessary to advance other primary rights. I think it is time, in this day and age where so much information on individuals is kept by entities outside their control, that American's have an explicit Constitutional right to privacy. The framers could not have seen this coming two centuries ago. Such an amendment would also prevent the so-called "tyranny of convenience," where an entity could effectively coerce an agreement to share personal information by making it sufficiently convenient to do so and sufficiently inconvenient not do, by providing a basis and impetus for Congress to climb out of the banking industry's pocket and make laws with teeth. Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.
The idea of this is just funny: Google Directory - News > Columnists > Humor > Anti-establishment. Well, to me it is. I mean, a web directory of "anti-establishment" columnists? It might be true, but it seems so... suit. The blurbs there look like the web equivalent of the BMG music blurbs:
Stabbing guitar licks layered over a throbbing bass and relentless percussion combine with the lead singer's haunting keen to produce this year's standout heavy metal act...
Or some similar silliness. Guitars often crunch, apparently. I wouldn't know, not being in the business. But where was I... oh yeah. Connecting two things that really should be left separate. Just walk away, man, walk away.
Hot diggity! Yahoo! Internet Life has awarded "Best Download Site" to my chronic and relapsing employers, Audiogalaxy (link). I'd like to think I played some small part in it. A very, very small part. Ah well. I can bask in the glory.
I've gotten asked where I get the weird links. It's not like I tried very hard; I stole them. The community of people who use the web the way people used it in the early middle days ('95 or so) has shrunk greatly (proportionally, of course). I mean, most of the people I know are early middle school web users (as in "old school," not as in 6th grade), but there are still some who follow the new pattern. Well, you follow one link to another to another, and pretty soon you're somewhere totally weird. But people generally don't do that anymore. There have been many statistics coming out over the last few years about the fact that an decreasingly (increasingly? I'm confused) smaller number of websites (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) is taking up an increasingly larger proportion of user time on the web. Part of that has to do with the sorts of users that are coming online. Part of that is that these big players are growing blob-like, adding more and more content and features in an effort to make it unnecessary to go anywhere else. I think, also, that part of the issue is (paradoxically) that there is too much selection out there. There are so many sites that one can like that eventually one's daily visit list becomes far too long to reasonably cover without one's eyes glazing over. I have some 25 sites in my daily list (of which I only have time to visit about 17, and I'm unemployed), another 15 regular (more frequently than weekly) comics, as well as 10 weekly sites. Then there's other, less regular ones, like reviews sites. Finally there are all the links to follow that I get from the above. It's a lot. For example, here's an easy way to find a bunch of decent weblogs. You can often find interesting weblogs by looking for weblog software and then seeing "these sites use us." They generally don't show off crappy sites, although if that's all they have, they will. But if you find, say, five sites for weblogging software (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), you can easily find links to sites using said software. And there goes your whole day.
I'm trying to move away from Blogger, see, into something a bit more full-featured. Unfortunately, some things are just a little too full-featured (slash). And some things aren't written in PHP. And some aren't Open Source (two things necessary for me to tinker with it). And so forth.
I think the quality of stuff on this page would increase significantly if I had a digital camera. Unfortunately, that requires money. And money requires a well-paying job. And a well-paying job requires working a lot. Which means being tired and/or busy. Which means no time to post. Which would probably be much better for everyone concerned. But without digicam, you get no girlfriend pics. Too bad for you. I get to see her whenever I want.
And I think that's the first mention ever on this page of said girlfriend.
This guy Paul Snively (unfortunate name; currently psinvely AT earthlink.net) said something interesting on a message board (link) that I liked. I figured I would give credit. He said: "I don't know what to say about this. It frustrates me, but I end up feeling like giving that frustration full expression seems elitist." The context doesn't really matter. It's just a good way of articulating that vague feeling I've often had when stuff just doesn't measure up.
I now own hotforjesus.com. There's really no point to it. I just liked how it sounds, and domains for $12 make the impulse buy... well, it was an impulse buy. Still, it sounds pretty cool. Just add musical talent and three like friends and I could have a band. I mean, the name's the hardest part...