I attended college in Boston at a different, much less prestigious institution. After wandering around the MIT campus a handful of times, I began to wonder if there was any way I could possibly get involved in the ecosystem. So that fall, I volunteered to help run the annual business plan competition and was accepted on the organizing team without any questions.
Over the course of the next 3 years I became more and more involved at MIT, helping run other student organizations and attending as many talks and events as I could. I can honestly say that no one ever snubbed me or looked down on me for not being an MIT student, and that I truly felt like one of their own. If I ever see significant success in this life, I look forward to being able to repay the debt I owe to this marvelous institution. MIT truly is a special place.
There is no circular reasoning as your entire premise is flawed. Schedule 1 substances are defined as having no currently accepted medical use, but this does not preclude the ability to test for medical use going forward.
If you aren't buying a product, you are the product.
That's worth drilling into your head.
Yes, that means that User = product from HN's perspective, but I am willing to bet it is a lot more of a complex connection than it is with facebook ;-)
I never said that's a bad thing. But at least with the open source software I work with, if you use the software, great. Maybe you will come to me for services later. I wonder how many Debian-involved businesses have such a model.
Paying for media is an interesting exception. Very often for newspapers, etc, you are both buying a product and becoming a product.
But in the end it's a good warning to know the business model of those you get free stuff from.
Why should users have rights in this situation, other than the right to stop using the service? I understand why it would be nice if they did, but why should they? Why is it am imperative?
It depends where you are but there are certain legal rights that no terms of use can waive.
They're set up as a minimum standard of acceptable behaviour that someone should be able to expect by default and that there is no reason why a company shouldn't / can't adhere to. Generally they're around physical protection from harm, though they do extend to other things (including Data Protection in Europe).
Why should these rights at least exist? Because (a) people can't be expected to take a detailed look at every product and service they might use to assess it fully, that would simply be too time consuming, so you set a basic standard for prevention of harm and (b) can you imagine what the likes of Facebook or Exxon or whoever might do without them.
people can't be expected to take a detailed look at every product and service they might use to assess it fully, that would simply be too time consuming, so you set a basic standard for prevention of harm
So basically, you're saying people should trade trust in one third party (the service provider) for trust in another third party (whoever sets and enforces the basic standard). I can understand why people may choose to do this (though in many cases I don't think the second third party is any more reliable than the first), but I don't see it as an improvement. I don't think FB cares about whatever legal standards are in place; to them that's just a cost of doing business. But they do care about losing users.
can you imagine what the likes of Facebook or Exxon or whoever might do without them.
Sure, and I can also imagine people not using FB or Exxon (many people boycotted Exxon for years after the Valdez spill, IIRC). Also, I can turn the question around: can you imagine what those who are trusted to enforce standards of behavior might do once they know the public trusts them and won't question what they do? How good a job did regulators do at enforcing standards of behavior on investment banks?
And before you ask, I do not use FB, precisely because I don't trust them to take care of my data. And it's not just FB; I don't trust Google to take care of my data, which is why I don't use gmail, for example, or any other Google services except search and maps. I don't expect anyone to take care of my data unless I'm paying them, as a customer, to do that--and even then I watch them.
No, that's not what I'm saying. It's not one or the other, these constraints don't prevent the possibility that people may leave if they don't like a service and what it does, they're an additional guard against the very worst potential abuses.
I'm not saying that because company X conforms with the (very light) regulation in place that they're to be trusted, just that I see benefit in having two forms of protection in place.
You're assuming that there is an actual net benefit to having the second form of protection. I don't think there is. It may seem like a short-term benefit if some regulator actually catches, say, Facebook in the act of misusing people's data; but the long-term effect is that people believe that they can actually trust a company with their data when they're not a paying customer (or even, beyond a certain point, when the are a paying customer). And since the long-term outcome of any regulatory scheme is regulatory capture, sooner or later FB will just be buying the regulations they want, and the so-called protection won't be there any more. Again, I refer you to the economy since 2008.
It's a de facto imperative for startups looking to build loyalty, but FB is far from a startup now. They can do whatever the hell they want and get away with it... for now.
You mean the FDA? No offense, but just because you are well versed in one subject does not mean you really understand the idiosyncracies of another. Every time I see a drug / medicine related thread on HN I cringe. Much in the same way you would if you read a technology related post on a forum geared towards doctors and pharmacists.
From what I can tell the rating is random & anonymous. I took a picture of breakfast, don't have any friends using the app, and had 48 votes within a few hours. The app is really slick...
