Re: Alta Vista

Taylor (taylor@KID-LINEAR.TAYLOR.ORG)
Tue, 12 Mar 1996 16:55:46 -0800

Also sprach 'Alexander Chislenko' :

>It's not quite like Big Brother - it doesn't punish you for things that
>it find out about you - it just leaves the punishment to others ;-)

It's more like a tool to make us all Big Brother.

>Also, if you do not want your pages catalogued by Alta Vista or any other
>spider, just indicate it in the "robots.txt" file.
>The biggest spiders are polite creatures, and they all respect the
>"robot exclusion protocol".

True, but much of the information I get back I think should be cataloged.
The scary thing is really the ease that one can assemble a profile on an
individual. Not that I think the public shouldn't have the ability to do
that. Large corporations certainly do, the government certainly does. But
more and more I think that author David Brin was right in his assesment
that privacy is an outdated concept.

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