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The capacity to exercise choice; free will

You don't want your face scanned - don't buy an airline ticket. You don't want your e-mail read - don't send any. You have a free way to travel - you can walk. You have a free way to communicate - travel to whomever you want to talk to to and start flapping your gums. Identifying your face when you get on an airplane does not eliminate your freedom. It increases it. It does this because it helps to protect your life. You know, that self-evident freedom, along with liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I know, I know. The police might ask for your ID if you don't look right when you are out walking. You can't yell 'FIRE' in a crowded movie house. The principles that apply in the U.S. are that your freedoms are pretty much absolute unless (and this is a big unless) the rights of someone else are threatened. I'd say that being killed as part of a terrorist act is a pretty big threat. If the government wants to know that I went to Disneyland with the kids on an airplane, I'm okay with that. If I want to plot to overthrow the government and the big meeting is in East Bumfsck, I would probably not get on the plane. Hmmm... Maybe this would make terrorism a little more difficult?

So many of these arguments about freedoms are based on the argument "I don't want the government to know what I'm doing." Why? Are you embarrassed? Are you afraid that you might be doing something wrong? If you are, then why should you be able to get away with it? If you are not, why worry? If the government makes a mistake (this is the fear that I understand) more records would HELP YOU! If the government has a db entry that I went to some terrorist meeting on such-and-such a date, I would love to pull out e-mail records (preferably with PGP signatures!), atm records, toll both records, credit card receipts and more that all show that I wasn't there!

I keep seeing the phrase that 'information wants to be free'. So why not this kind of information?

The capacity to exercise choice; free will

You don't want your face scanned - don't buy an airline ticket. You don't want your e-mail read - don't send any. You have a free way to travel - you can walk. You have a free way to communicate - travel to whomever you want to talk to to and start flapping your gums. Identifying your face when you get on an airplane does not eliminate your freedom. It increases it. It does this because it helps to protect your life. You know, that self-evident freedom, along with liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I know, I know. The police might ask for your ID if you don't look right when you are out walking. You can't yell 'FIRE' in a crowded movie house. The principles that apply in the U.S. are that your freedoms are pretty much absolute unless (and this is a big unless) the rights of someone else are threatened. I'd say that being killed as part of a terrorist act is a pretty big threat. If the government wants to know that I went to Disneyland with the kids on an airplane, I'm okay with that. If I want to plot to overthrow the government and the big meeting is in East Bumfsck, I would probably not get on the plane. Hmmm... Maybe this would make terrorism a little more difficult?

So many of these arguments about freedoms are based on the argument "I don't want the government to know what I'm doing." Why? Are you embarrassed? Are you afraid that you might be doing something wrong? If you are, then why should you be able to get away with it? If you are not, why worry? If the government makes a mistake (this is the fear that I understand) more records would HELP YOU! If the government has a db entry that I went to some terrorist meeting on such-and-such a date, I would love to pull out e-mail records (preferably with PGP signatures!), atm records, toll both records, credit card receipts and more that all show that I wasn't there!

I keep seeing the phrase that 'information wants to be free'. So why not this kind of information?

The Court often rules along party lines. That's why appointing judges is so important.

FYI: Justice [dictionary.com].

Enjoy.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

grok /grok/, var. /grohk/ vt. [from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] The emphatic form is `grok in fullness'. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash. See also glark. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the `void' type these days."

Source: Jargon File 4.2.0

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

grok /grok/, var. /grohk/ vt. [from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] The emphatic form is `grok in fullness'. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash. See also glark. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the `void' type these days."

Source: Jargon File 4.2.0

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

grok /grok/, var. /grohk/ vt. [from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically `to be one with'] The emphatic form is `grok in fullness'. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash. See also glark. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the `void' type these days."

Source: Jargon File 4.2.0

You can't translate a word in a foreign alphabet ! The best one can do is transliterate.

Here's a handy tip - it's much less embarrassing to take a moment to look these things up before you make an ass of yourself.

"Arms" as defined by dictionary.com.

~LoudMusic

"Arms" as defined by dictionary.com.

~LoudMusic

Here's some wisdom in regards to divorce, a matter which affects 50 percent of our population every day:
"Don't make long-term decisions when you are upset --your judgment isn't sound and you don't want to build the rest of your life on decisions based on anger, guilt or fear."

Yet, here we are, taken advantage of in our most vulnerable moment, by those who've waited for this opportunity to strip our rights away from us. They've used our current emotions against us in a brilliant maneuver. Those foreign terrorists handed our own special group of terrorists unprecedented powers that require NO judiciary oversight.

They've sidestepped one of the foundations of our political system and liberty, the checks and balances between the three divisions of the government. This is good for us?

If this, and legislations like this, are the future, I feel sorry for those who come after us. They'll never experience the freedoms we've enjoyed and taken for granted.

But, as the obvious nature of this hasn't immediately been apparent to you, I doubt anything I've said will have changed your opinion. Take the blue pill, the red has a bitter aftertaste.

~Quid Pro Quo~

Shutup you stupid Nazi, go sleep with O'Hare...

"Religion is the opium of the masses." You're a self-proclaimed Athiest, that's a religion. Pull your head out of your arse and smell some fresh air for once...

No kidding...
What totally irritated me were the reporters who kept asking (more like pestering) fire/police men to describe what they saw.
ALL of them responded with some version of "indescribable," "unspeakable" or "I can't put it in words"...
To which the reporters then asked, "well can you explain it for us?" (This is directly quoted from a CBS broadcast I just watched)

Morons!! Stop bothering these people with idiotic questions!! Go buy a dictionary and look up indescribable and unspeakable.

No kidding...
What totally irritated me were the reporters who kept asking (more like pestering) fire/police men to describe what they saw.
ALL of them responded with some version of "indescribable," "unspeakable" or "I can't put it in words"...
To which the reporters then asked, "well can you explain it for us?" (This is directly quoted from a CBS broadcast I just watched)

Morons!! Stop bothering these people with idiotic questions!! Go buy a dictionary and look up indescribable and unspeakable.

"Stenography which is the clear alternative to encryption"...

umm, "stenography" is "The art or process of writing in shorthand." according to dictionary.com.

I think what you meant was "steganography", which is "The art of writing in cipher, or in characters which are not intelligible except to persons who have the key; cryptography.".

Alternatively, although I have no idea if a pattern exists within flight number assignment, but they might be some rhyme to the reason, although the sums of the digits are surely not the key.

Go read your Nostrodamus and claim how ironic that he predicted this and draw whatever the hell you want. It's all a coincidence.

Bush: "We will win this war."

Against whom?

I'm an American. I don't understand what the hell Bush is saying.

war (wôr)
n.

"A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties."

- Which nation?
- Which state?
- Which parties?

Yes, we are investigating. People will be found and heads will roll. But will we really able to wage war on terrorists? Technically, since there will always be terrorists, from many nations, and from many areas of the world, with a wide variation of religious beliefs, how will we wage war exactly?

One thing is probably going to happen. We'll give up freedom for security. The borders will be less porus. Less holes, less gaps. Immigration laws will probably change too. We'll all be a little bit more watchful of our Arab friends in the U.S. -- people who are good people and are true Americans. We'll move from a republic to a true empire. The U.S. will become more and more like the political Microsoft of the world. Are we there already? I don't know.

I love the U.S. and I would die protecting it and my family. I would not kill other people in other countries.

I'm blathering. Fuck terrorists. 'Nuff said.

And does anybody know anything about early reports of flight 93 being shot down by USAF planes?

CNN is reporting, and I've seen it elsewhere, that people on that flight called relatives who told them of the WTC attacks. It has been said that the men on the flight voted to fight the terrorists once realizing their plight was not likely to come to a negotiated end on a runway somewhere. Apparently, the passengers did prevent them from striking their target, now strongly favored to have been the White House.

Regardless of whether the President was there at the time or not, a successful attack on the White House-- a blow struck against the worldwide symbol of Democracy and America-- would have been just totally detrimental to the [at that time] already-seriously-floundering morale of Mr. and Mrs. America. IMHO, when they identify the passengers who fought the terrorists, a high school or two ought to be named for those guys. They won (or at least fought to a draw) one of the battles of a war of iconoclasm. Those fuckers are attacking the images of this country, the things we hold dear as symbols of America, in order to shake our faith in the system, and hopefully bring the system crashing down.

~Philly

The roster? Are you quite sure? ;)

You mean, "the chickens are coming home to roost"? I hope not, because that expression doesn't really fit... it's more of a "reaping what you sow" sort of thing.

The original statement was:
I can respect your opinion, but you said it yourself - you are not a US citizen. So, really, there's no way you can possibly know how people living in the US feel right now.

and my response was:
Of course... because as we all know... the US is the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT HAS HAD TO SUFFER THROUGH TERRORISM!!!!

see sarcasm...

A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.

Dear neitzsche, You do not exist.

Totalitarianism - "Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed."

What about what you described helps a central authority exercise control over your life? If anything it helps them to exercise less control over your life, because if they want to find out who you are they don't have to stop you and check ID or anything.

Information wants to be free. Laws which attempt to stop the spread of information will fail. You have to come up with a way to protect against abuses without stopping the spread of information, usually by adding more information. You haven't stated any of your potential problems with these systems, so I'll leave alone the better solutions to the problems which don't involve stopping information.

Technology needs to be accepted. Just as the RIAA needs to accept that napsteresque systems will never be stopped no matter how many laws they passed, U.S. citizens need to accept that police surveilance is not going to stop no matter how many laws they pass. Sure, you can effectively stop the police from using illegal obtained information as evidence in court, but you can't take the information away. We need to reach a comprimise in both situations which addresses the fact that information is naturally free.

So what was it NASA sent to Mars again? Have a dictionary.com definition of
robot:

robot (rbt, -bt)
n.
1. A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance.
2. A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control.
3. A person who works mechanically without original thought, especially one who responds automatically to the commands of others.

I'd say the vehicles on Battle Bots qualify. Now if you think AI design is easy, why don't you go program one?

A little used word in the UK is milliard meaning one thousand million. It appears in quite a lot of european languages (examples: Milliard in French and "Miljard" in Swedish).

check this out: irregardless [dictionary.com]

"To abstain from or act together in abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with as an
expression of protest or disfavor or as a means of coercion."[dictionary.com]

"An expression of disfavor"? Okay, it might be a stress release, but unlikely to accomplish much.

Or fighting coercion with coercion? Lame and hypocritcal. (The ability to coerce is one of qualities people dislike in a monopoly.)

See the dictionary.com entry for tautology (search for "logic" within the page) -- Most people who've taken a course on discrete math would be familiar with this usage.

Btw, the antonym for tautology in this sense would be "contradiction": an expression which never evaluates to (boolean) truth, irrespective of the values assigned to its sub-expressions. "It is raining outside my house and it is not raining outside my house" would be an example of a contradiction. Replace and with or and you have a tautology.

This page explains in great detail why not:

http://language.perl.com/misc/virus.html

Additional support:

http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=vir us

A search on Google for "viruses" turns up 1,480,000 hits.
A search on Google for "virii" turns up 38,200 hits.

Any technical literature written by professionals will NEVER EVER USE THE WORD VIRII! IT'S NOT A REAL WORD! The plural of "virus" is "viruses"!

http://www.mcafee.com - on the FRONT PAGE the word "viruses" is printed several times. "Virii" is not.

http://www.centralcommand.com - same deal.

I'm going to keep posting this on every virus story that comes up until everyone gets the damn hint!

"Viruses" is correct, "virii" is not. Look it up in a dictionary if you don't believe me: http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=vir us

Whom is a direct object. "To whom" is correct, "to who" is not.

In the same manner, saying "between you and I" is incorrect; "between you and me" is correct.
You'd never say "Give that to I," now would you?

Honestly, people, correct grammar is neither difficult nor time consuming. Hell, I went to a US High School and all this was taught in English class. What the hell is your excuse?

You don't have any "right" not to be cut off by your ISP. They don't have any "right" to cut you off.

What part of his post does this contradict?

Let's quit talking about rights here.

OK, but you started it. The word "right" is used only once in his post ("It's not right ...") to mean that premature disconnections are not 3. Fitting, proper, or appropriate , legal issues aside.

I don't like "rights language" any more than you do, but for once when someone isn't using it, you go ahead and bash him anyway.

theoretical
adj.

1. Of, relating to, or based on theory.
2. Restricted to theory; not practical: theoretical physics.
3. Given to theorizing; speculative.

theoretical
adj.

1. Of, relating to, or based on theory.
2. Restricted to theory; not practical: theoretical physics. 3. Given to theorizing; speculative.

Though the double-negative is amusing ("non-asynchronous"), I believe that the opposite of "asynchronous" is "synchronous".

Voltage is *NOT* "the rate at which energy is drawn from a source". What you are describing is power

voltage n 1: the rate at which energy is drawn from a source that produces a flow of electricity in a circuit

http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=vol tage

Is it just me, or does that word not mean what he thinks it means?

Does he really mean complicit, or perhaps complacent? Or something else?

Complicit doesn't really fit well, if you ask me. Grammar Nazi?

I do not think this word means what you think it means.

may contain "bugs"

other special, incidental, consequential, direct or indirect damages

• General: those damages presumed by the law to exist in every case of this type. Example: pain and suffering.
• Special: damages which do not arise in every such case. Example: medical bills.
• Direct: damages directly caused by Joe's wrongdoing. Both of the above examples would be direct damages.
• Indirect, incidental, and consequential Incidental and Consequential damages together comprise indirect damages. There's a distinction between them, but it doesn't matter. These damages refer to problems not directly caused by the wrongdoing. For example, the time off work you had, or (in a different context) lost profits.

The idea behind "Smart" Credit Cards is not what most people think. The common conception of a "Smart" Credit Card is of something that will protect you from internet pirates and the evil waiter that disappears with your card for 10 min. This is NOT the case and Marketing knows it. The only basis they have for calling them "Smart" Credit cards is that they "Look Smart" as in fashionable and elegant. Context is everything...

Hidden scripts. Web bugs. Pop-ups. Cookies. Ad trackers. SmartTags (a contradiction in terms if I've ever seen one). We've entered an era where companies and unscrupulous marketeers (yes, this is a purposeful allusion to the term buccaneer) hijack our bandwidth and piss us off on a daily basis.

So what do we do? We try to protect ourselves with counter-measures, we spend time and effort getting rid of things that shouldn't be there in the first place. There's got to be a better way. If the corporations can hide behind the law, why can't we, the users, the techies, the people, make legitimate use of it, in order to adequately protect ourselves from the vultures?

Currently, this is difficult. The companies that annoy the hell out of us hide behind a single fact: 'You came to my site. Suck it up, and watch what I'm serving you.' Or, take another infuriating fact: Click-through licenses, which are written in such a convoluted manner so as to make them absolutely useless. But what if users and content providers (for, after all, they get hit by the various gator/smartTag technologies too) worked together to create some kind of structure which would indeed make it illegal to serve such ads to the user without their express consent?

How can technology and common sense be used so that each user can expressly define what he or she consents to viewing? If such 'preferences' were the first thing a remote server processed, for example, would it not help people avoid unwanted content? Would it not become illegal for companies to disregard your wishes and hijack your bandwidth serving you up with a load of crap? It should.

Or what if 'click through' licenses were required to stick to a common format in simple, plain English, Q&A format that even the least advanced user would be able to understand? Eg: 'Does this software install anything that might at any time perform an action without my express consent, such as serve me ads, or communicate information to a server? Yes/No: ...'

So what would it take? Adaptations to the internet protocol? Browser/OS support for this scheme? How would people pushing for such a structure make it a de facto standard, or even make companies/sites disregarding this content liable under law? And is more litigation the answer to it all? Or is it a double-edged knife? Step back for a minute from what you know -- you are fighting a war on someone else's terms. What would it take to redefine the battlefield and take over?

Pathway

why is it that when a
Linux group does it, it's the responsiblity of a single person who is quickly singled out, but when the group from Redmond does it, suddenly it's the entire corporation that is to blame?


Free software and open-source communities value individual contribution and responsibility. Missteps within the community are associated with the responsible individuals. That is a strength of this kind of community structure.

Corporate environments devalue individual responsibility. It is appropriate to hold the whole entity responsible. Microsoft encourages this line of thinking by pointing the finger at the ATL.

In fact, this is part of the nature of a corporation. In legal terms it is equivalent to a person, and its formation is with the intent of shielding the persons who are part of it.

Naturally we must consider M$ innocent until proven guilty on this. But if they are guilty, they are guilty as a whole, unless they choose to
identify the individuals responsible. Such a move would necessitate a major realignment in their corporate culture.

Hubris. It's not arrogance, it's the truth

Where do you think raves came from?

You might want to take a look at this.

Please, learn english if you want to write in it.

"weather" is not the same as "whether."

Please, learn english if you want to write in it.

"weather" is not the same as "whether."

Yes, I know this fact. When I said "everyone's a winner" I was using a special form of expression you should acquaint yourself with.

Please, learn the proper English plural of the word 'virus.'

There's no need to be making up words in hopes of sounding smarter. You only end up looking silly.

when will the nerds here get this right?

Please, learn the proper English plural of the word 'virus.'

There's no need to be making up words in hopes of sounding smarter. You only end up looking silly.

The only people who use the word "virii" are the pseudo-intellectual Slashdot geeks, trying to look 31337.

Please, learn the proper English plural of the word 'virus.'

There's no need to be making up words in hopes of sounding smarter. You only end up looking silly.

It's used to differentiate between the very strange english homonym for "without price" and "having freedom" (and the other 17 meanings .

If you get "free beer" that would imply that you got without cost, not that beer was liberated from servitude. So if something is "free as in beer", then it has no cost.

OTOH if have "free speech" that you have freedom to speak as you will, not that you don't have to put a coin in the slot every time you feel like talking.

IANAL (l=linguist) but to me English seems to be pretty alone in having this confusion, as most European languages seem to use words derived from latin gratis for no cost (cf 'gratitude') and liber for freedom (cf 'liberated').
Maybe says something about the cultural mentality...