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But if you think it's a great white consipiracy to "keep da niggas in their place", you're not thinking straight. It's about what every other conspiracy in America is about: making money.

Right, you've almost got it. Very very close.

Music and fashions - to take the most obvious examples - are marketed to black people, not to keep them down, but to sell more music and clothes.

Look, where did hip-hop come from? It came from the music programs getting shut down which affected black students before it affected white ones because there was more money to wring out of parents and communities in white neighborhoods — due to the weight of history, and public policy. So "that's not music!" came from being too cheap to have decent education in the poorest neighborhoods. But moreover, the majority of advertising which is targeted at anyone is designed to make them unhappy. The companies that spend the most to make people feel good are car companies, which also spend a lot of money to make people unhappy — but about half of their advertising actually targets their current customers, and is intended to make them feel good about their past purchases that they're living with today, in the hope of avoiding a negative association.

So yeah, actually, you make money by making people feel bad. By tricking them into buying your shit. Anything they actually need sells itself; these days there's google, these days there's siri, these days there's amazon and ebay and etsy, barring someone trying to trick them into buying something they don't want, they'll find you if you take the least effort to make yourself available. Most advertising is designed to make people feel inadequate if they don't have a product.

When hip-hop was new, they didn't have their own labels. Today a black artist can make music on a black label and sell it to black and white people alike without any trouble; back then, virtually all the labels were owned by old wrinkly white men who pocketed all the money. But moreover, it was these old white guys decided which black artists were going to get a record contract. It wasn't [necessarily] based on what would scientifically sell, it was based on white prejudice — which artists were signed, how much money was spent promoting them. More money was spent promoting gangsta rap than socially conscious music. But that's a relatively minor way in which racial prejudice influenced black culture. The influence of the news media is far larger. And even they had massive influence on black music; do you think there's more evening news eyeballs for KRS-One talking about social progress, or for 2 Live Crew rapping about S&M, and/or eating ass? And do you think the nightly news gives a shit about reporting the spectrum of what is newsworthy, or just about attracting eyeballs?

Luckily, television is fading away, albeit slowwwwwly. We'll be getting more news from the internet, and so there's more chances for less-entrenched media to capture eyeballs as long as people are in the habit of going to search engines for their information. The proliferation of mobile internet use has surely driven this trend forward, through voice interaction going to keyword searches.

You don't like it? Me either. So don't buy it, and persuade your peers to do likewise. Don't try to make it illegal - that won't work. Make it unprofitable.

Hey, I'd be happy if you had to report facts in order to be called news.

Anyway, nowhere have I alleged some unified conspiracy to "keep down the darkie", etc. It's just about not enough substantive effort to check the momentum of the past. It's a big job; racism didn't begin in America. Slavery didn't begin in Ameri

It's on a way different level. You quickly find out from others whether someone is lazy, incompetent, conniving, or suchlike. You find out in short order if someone is a dick. On the other hand, you also find out if someone who was nervous at an interview is in fact highly competent but not much of a people-person. You discover that someone who seems 'green' in a given area has a knack for learning quickly, and otherwise has excellent work-habits.

These are things you cannot know from asking the standard "STAR" interviewing techniques, because even the least bright among us is smart enough to know how to at least half-ass their way through such things.

I think this more about stopping funding of things like this:

Dr. Li’s project will develop, implement and evaluate a venue-based alcohol and HIV risk reduction intervention center for establishment-based female sex workers in Guangxi, China. The sex trade is more prevalent in Guangxi, Dr. Li said, an area ranked third in the rate of HIV among provinces.

http://prognosis.med.wayne.edu/article/grant-allows-research-to-study-link-between-alcohol-abuse-and-spread-of-hiv

If you're going to study hookers, they have to be American hookers.

Subject: Re: calories burned by thinking
Answered By: omnivorous-ga on 31 Jul 2004 04:14 PDT

Nordie2 --

In 1986, researchers isolated both the "at rest" and "active"
consumption of calories in the brain. Since then we've learned quite
a bit about brain activities, particularly as PET scans have been
applied to monitor glucose consumption in the brain.

As a result, we know lots of things, including that:
* energy consumption in the brain is related to learning. In other
words, once you've learned something (like mastering that chess game),
the energy consumption goes down.

* energy consumption in the brain is more than two times higher for
children under age 4. This is no surprise because they are learning
and building brain structure. The brain's energy consumption levels
around age 10 to 12.

Wayne State University
"Brain Surges," (DiCresce, undated)
http://www.med.wayne.edu/wayne%20medicine/wm97/brain.htm

* IQ can effect energy consumption. After learning a task, lower IQ
people have to exert more energy to complete a task than high IQ
people who have learned the same task.

ENERGY CONSUMPTION
=====================

Energy consumption by the brain is 230-247 calories, based on 17
calories/gram and human brain sizes of 1,350-1,450 grams. During
periods of peak performance, adults increase that energy consumption
by up to 50%, according to psychology lecturer Mark Moss, of the
University of Northumbria.

While this may not seem an extraordinary amount of energy, the brain
may use 30% of a body's total energy, while being only 2?3% of total
body mass.

Moss cites the original 1986 work of Siebert, Gessner, and Klasser on
the energy supply of the central nervous system in his thesis. The
thesis, particularly the chapter 1 introduction, is a good and not
overly technical discussion of what we know about brain activity,
including descriptions of how PET scans are being used to monitor
glucose consumption in the brain. I've linked the first chapter:

University of Northumbria
"Oxygen Administration, Cognitive Performance and Physiological Responses,"
(Mark C. Moss, PhD Thesis 1999)
http://psychology.unn.ac.uk/mark/chapter1/chap1.htm

Google search strategy:
learning + "glucose consumption" + calories
"size of human brain"

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=381608

Maybe it's not the devices themselves, but your brain coping with information overload.

And I find myself skimming to get to the freaking point. Many writers are ****ing verbose.

With that, I'll deposit this here:
http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sources/zinsser.htm

Agreed. The biggest we've had to my knowledge is a 25 mt bomb - the B41. That's not small, but even a 15mt left people alive at 75 miles. http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/PAGEPUB/CH2.html I don't think a 25 would take out the world...

Typically when you look at what actually happens, rather than the rhetoric, term limits tend to increase corporate power in government (see e.g. here). Basically, your average citizen doesn't know what's going on with the government. Government is a very complicated piece of work, and if you pull out all the people who know how to operate it, the only people left who can make it go are the vendors' marketing departments and whoever has the tech support contract -- i.e. the lobbyists and corporate representatives become the only "voice of reason" or institutional memory. You can imagine what happens when you entrust corporate-types with that role. And new "citizen politicians" are much less savvy about the corporate flacks; they haven't seen it all before, so they aren't as on their guard against shenanigans.

It feels viscerally right to just "throw the bums out," but government accountability takes a scalpel, not a hatchet.

You seem to know what you are talking about. Can you point to a demonstration that shows CO2 increases temperature? Simple experiment will do.

I think there is a slight misunderstanding here. CO2 doesn't warm as such, it is more like a blanket that traps heat, keeping the earth from loosing heat. The heat itself comes from the sun (mostly) and a bit from radioactive decay in the earth itself. I suppose there is a tiny contribution from cosmic rays.

As for an experiment, try this (alternative link: here. Sorry for the snarky links :o)

America is one of the freest countries on earth, there is no doubt, and I am grateful to live in a country that is free. However, your identification with the incidental place of your birth is entirely meaningless. In this way, your wife made a much more meaningful choice about becoming an American. If you were born in Iran, would you consider yourself a patriot if you supported wholeheartedly every decision made by your leaders?

I'm proud of, and grateful for, the good things about my country. And there is more good than bad. I disagree with the wholesale condemnation of the US, especially by someone who benefits from living here.

This is entirely a matter of which end of the gun you are at. Imagine for a moment someone born in London at the height of the British Empire. They are enjoying the fruits of free speech, a market economy, the glittering promise of the mechanized age. For those who cooperate with his countrymen, there is opportunity and wealth. For those who don't wish to give up their religion, culture, resources - for those who don't want to give up their very freedom - there is punishment, poverty, torture, forced migration, forced conscription, and perhaps mercifully, death itself. How could you say he believes in free speech if he only fights for it for Englishmen on the shores of England? How could you say he supports freedom of the press if opposition editors in colonized countries are gunned down and their buildings torched to the ground? How could you say he supports freedom of religion if he refuses to make any concessions for non-christians?

I think it's offensive that anyone pretends America is anything but the newest iteration of western imperialism, as far as it's foreign policy is concerned. Imperialism, above all else, is the denial of the human right to self-governance and independence of the less powerful. Not only that, American imperialism is the height of irony and hypocrisy - we are a nation founded on the belief that English imperialism was inherently immoral and unjust.

As for the benefits I enjoy, they come with a responsibility. In the same way (I hope) I would not have supported slavery simply because I benefited from it, I do not support war, even if I believed I derived my rights from the death of foreigners and the destruction of their homelands.

Twain brings it to light better than I can. Perhaps you and your wife should read it together.

There, with six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright, and we had thirty-two wounded-counting that nose and that elbow. The enemy numbered six hundred -- including women and children -- and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States...

If I know President Roosevelt -- and I am sure I do -- this utterance cost him more pain and shame than any other that ever issued from his pen or his mouth. I am far from blaming him. If I had been in his place my official duty would have compelled me to say what he said. It was a convention, an old tradition, and he had to be loyal to it. There was no help for it. This is what he said:

Washington, March 10. Wood, Manila:- I congratulate you and the officers and men of your command upon the brilliant feat of arms wherein you and they so well upheld the honor of the American flag. (Signed) Theodore Roosevelt.

His whole utterance is merely a convention. Not a word of what he said came out of his heart. He knew perfectly well that to pen six hundred helpless and weaponless savages in a hole like rats in a trap and massacre them in detail during a stretch of a day and a half, from a safe position on the heights above, was no brilliant feat of arms - and would not have been a brilliant feat of arms even if Christian America, represented by its salar

"Personally" is a redundant word anyway and such useless clutter infects most writing today, usually in direct proportion to the person's education level, unfortunately.

http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sources/zinsser.htm

I found the link to the "Legitimate" upgrade.

Go here and save it to a CD. Then load it up and patch up Vista.

It'll run faster than you ever can believe! It's like Vista, only better!

"DRM, driver signing, authentication, keys, patents, licenses... these are all hinderences, concessions made to preserving the status quo, to protecting Big Money."

Sez you!

3. Clutter

Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds--the writer is always slightly behind. New varieties sprout overnight, and by noon they are part of American speech. John Dean holds the record. In just one day of testimony on TV during the Watergate hearings he raised the clutter quotient by 400 percent. The next day everyone in America was saying "at this point in time" instead of "now."

Consider all the prepositions that are routinely draped onto verbs that don't need any help. Head up. Free up. Face up to. We no longer head committees. We head them up. We don't face problems anymore. We face up to them when we can free up a few minutes. A small detail, you may say--not worth bothering about. It is worth bothering about. The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details. Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there. "Up" in "free up" shouldn't be there. Can we picture anything being freed up? The writer of clean English must examine every word that he puts on paper. He will find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.

I think William Zinsser would have something to say on this topic:

http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sourc es/zinsser.htm

I'm sorry, I copied the link wrong, here is a working link:

http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sourc es/zinsser.htm

I read this book, and past the first few chapters, thought it was a boring and pendantic excursion into the proper grammar world. I said it before in this very thread, but I'll repeat it because it is such a good book:

Get "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser.

Here are the most worthwhile chapters:
http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sourc es/zinsser.htm [wayne.edu]

The rest of the book is okay, but these three chapters are simply inspired.

I highly recommend the book "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. The first 7 chapters make the whole book worthwhile.

Here are the most worthwhile chapters:
http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/general/sourc es/zinsser.htm

The rest of the book is okay, but these three chapters are simply inspired.

Introverts like to process the world internally and work on self-improvement and typically observe more and talk less. Read more...

On the other hand, consider the address weisong@cs.wayne.edu. Visit www.cs.wayne.edu/~weisong, and you'll see his homepage. Look at the CS deprtment's list of faculty, and you see a link to that page. Wayne State University is an accredited institution listed, among other places, on the U.S. News & World Report site, and their campus directory has a link to their CS department. Since Dr. Shi is a professor, the department probably did a minimal background-check before hiring him, and you can trust his identity (at least minimally) based on his e-mail address.

Incidentally, I'm sure this directory would be useful to Dr. Shi; even though he teaches computer security, he's lost the passphrase or digital private key for all four of his public PGP keys, and he either never generated or subsequently lost the corresponding revocation certificates as well.

I have experience with doing something that was, in some sense, a DoS attack. Of course, I had forgotten to set the evil bit...

The professor of a class I'm taking recently told us to be careful about what screen-savers we download and run; appparently he'd seen some unusual ones in his lab, and he was worried about viruses. His advice might be relevant to the Lycos screensaver, too.

I'm a college student, and I go to class four days a week. When I was in the undergrad program at a different university, most of my classes were half-empty on Friday at noon and two-thirds empty on Friday at 3pm; now my department doesn't even bother scheduling anything on Fridays. Sure, the library is open Friday-Saturday-Sunday and the computer-labs are open Friday-Saturday, but a full-time student could go to school just four days a week. He can telecommute (take web classes?), too.

5-day-a-week jobs are so 20th-century...

Then why did you reply to my initial post?

It is only similar in that the workers are exploited.

By Win32 I mean everything that a Windows application calls or passes control to that isn't in the kernel.

This definition is over-reaching. There are user mode processes that do not depend on or are even aware of Win32. How about the Session Manager (init process)? It does not depend on Win32, does not run in kernel mode, and yet provides services from the "\SmApiPort" LPC port. What about other intrinisic subsystems like the Security Accounts Manager, the Local Security Authority, the Event Log, and user mode Plug & Play? There are many other services that use Win32 only for the service control interface, maintained by services.exe and the Win32 library interface. They don't care about the Win32 server's internal state, and so cannot be corrupted from it. These are services that have zero windows, the only Win32 specific message destination; they only link to advapi.dll and kernel32.dll, whose functions are handled by the kernel, not the Win32 server. In fact, according to Microsoft guidelines services are never supposed to create windows, exactly because it could be a security problem.

It still maintains shared state that can lead to security violations if it's corrupted, so that internal state has to be considered part of the trust boundary.

Since the Win32 server is a trusted component, taking control of it would mean control of the system.
Are you saying that corruption of Win32's state is unavoidable due to its design, or that Win32 adds too much attack area?

Also, the shared memory extension to X is a performance enhancement. X will run over any communication channel that provides a single reliable buffered stream.

Looking through \BaseNamedObjects, there are exactly 0 shared memory "section" objects that are world-writable. There are 5 that only me personally can read and write to, 3 accessable to SYSTEM and Administrators, and several read-only to everyone. (excluding the sections made by Cygwin; insecure sections made by it to maintain state are a long-known problem) It's possible that there are some insecure sections that are being duplicated among processes (I doubt it as shared objects almost always have names, so they can be found easily: some process has to personally duplicate a handle for you otherwise), but I'm not about to check every unnamed section; perfmon tells me that there are 4171 section objects, more than any other type.
I get the feeling that sections are either used to advertise public information, exchange state between processes in the same security context (like the sections accessible only to me), as a private channel between two processes (I assume data there is checked like any other source), or to memory-map files. They aren't used to store common state information, far as I can tell. That's done in private memory in the service's server process.

Linux is a particularly profligate implementation of UNIX, yes, but I suspect that count's significantly inflated.

In the kernel source, under include/linux/syscalls.h, I counted the number of asmlinkage functions, and got 268. From the filename and contents, I assume this defines the syscall entrypoints. To get XP's syscall count, I counted the number of Nt* functions exported from ntdll.dll, which is 285. If you have a better way to count them...

It's all part of the same distinction. If your communication is over a buffered stream, you don't need to know what's at the other end.

Windows has generic pipes, too. The console, pipes, sockets, anything you can use CreateFile on can all be accessed with the

One example: trypanosomiasis- sleeping sickness. Infects 500,000/year, kills 100,000/year. And it drives you mad before you go into a coma and die. The older treatment Melarsoprol contains arsenic (and anti-freeze) and kills over 5% of patients taking it. It also feels like injecting bleach into the body. Another newer treatment (Eflornithine) works better and has far less severe side effects. It was used throughout the 90's as the best treatment. However, Eflornithine was only commercially manufactured as a potential cancer treatment-- once found to not work on cancer, there was no reason to continue making it, and Aventis ended production of eflornithine in 1999. As the last of the old stock ran out, patients had to go back to the dangerous and painful arsenic treatment.

Luckily for those 500,000 people per year, eflornithine was later found to have one important use: its a fine facial hair depilatory cream . So as the production of this drug was re-started to prevent the horror of unwanted facial hair, 500k people get the side-benefit of a non-arsenic treatment for a deadly disease. But only because eflornithine was found to treat excess hair, not because it prevents painful death.

This is just one anecdote- one illness. Because this is Slashdot, got to have some software analogies... they can be made. In the software world of closed source, Microsoft can discontinue support for a product, and people suffer from the time and money to upgrade. Or you can be the country of Iceland, volunteering to do all the work to make an Icelandic language verion of Windows 98, and Microsoft can just refuse you. In the biotech/med world of closed source, you can be 500,000 people not wanting to inject arsenic in their veins, and Aventis can still discontinue support for for your non-arsenic drug treatment.

It could be argued that eflornithine wouldn't have existed without closed-source drug development: but that doesn't seem to be the case here. First, while drug production is closed-source, basic research is at heart open-source. Sencond, Al Sjoerdsma, the scientist who first discovered its properties was apparently more of a Tim Berners-Lee type than a Gates or Darl McBride type. Other posters in here have pointed out how many patented drugs often are first found in university labs (taxpayer funded, open source methods) before disappearing into a licencing hole.

Every time I try to go to a SourceForge.net site, I get redirected to a 404 page on "portland.co.uk", and their page even shows up in the ad-boxes on Slashdot; is there any connection here? Or has someone been messing with the DNS locally (at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA)?

• The (food/software) itself is secondary to locking you into a company's support products and support cycle treadmill
• The proprietary product is often based on (taken from / stolen from) older open source projects.
• they have all or nothing security models
• They break standards.
• they're closed source, top-down implementations that lead to monocultures.

For example, look at trypanosomiasis- sleeping sickness. Infects 500k/year, kills 100k/year, drives you mad before you go into a coma and die. The older treatment (Melarsoprol) contains arsenic (and anti-freeze) and kills over 5% of patients taking it. It also feels like injecting bleach into the body. Another newer treatment (Eflornithine) works better and has far less severe side effects. It was used throughout the 90's as the best treatment. However, Eflornithine was only commercially manufactured as a potential cancer treatment-- once found to not work on cancer, there was no reason to continue making it, and Aventis ended production of eflornithine in 1999. As the last of the old stock ran out, patients had to go back to the dangerous and painful arsenic treatment.

Luckily for those 500,000 people per year, eflornithine was later found to have one important use: its a fine facial hair depilatory cream . So as the production of this drug was re-started to prevent the horror of unwanted facial hair, 500k people get the side-benefit of a non-arsenic treatment for a deadly disease. But only because eflornithine was found to treat excess hair, not because it prevents painful death.

This is just one anecdote- one illness. The analogy to software can still be made: when Microsoft discontinues support for a product, people suffer from the time and money to upgrade. When Aventis discontinues support for a product, people suffer as well. It could be argued that eflornithine wouldn't have existed without closed-source drug development: but that doesn't seem to be the case here. First, while drug production is closed-source, basic research is at heart open-source. Sencond, Al Sjoerdsma, the scientist who first discovered its properties was apparently more of a Tim Berners-Lee type than a Gates or Darl McBride type.

It's a monopoly racket, it always has been and it's going to take something dramatic to break it up.

It's not a monopoly -- even though most colleges have their own bookstores, there's nothing forcing you to shop there. If you don't like the prices, just order from Britain.

They're small

More information about the zebra mussel can be found here:

The Zebra Mussel Page

The slide show link is informative. To quote: "Zebra mussels are a pest organism because they not only attach to one another, but also to man-made objects, including water intakes and other plumbing of water, power, and other companies that use fresh water. [snip] Zebra mussels also attach to other organisms, such as these native (North American) mussels from Lake Erie. Heavy loads of zebra mussels have killed essentially all native Unionid mussels in western Lake Erie, an early site of the zebra mussel invasion. Zebra mussels first appeared in Lake St. Clair (yellow star, north of Lake Erie), possibly from ship's ballast water from the Black Sea region. They rapidly spread downstream with the current, and upstream and to other watersheds on boats, with bait, and by other man-mediated mechanisms."

The National Atlas website has a nice Shockwave animation illustrating the invasion between 1988 and 1999:

Animated Map Showing Zebra Mussel Distribution

From here: President Bush's 2002 budget request calls for increased spending for the U.S. Department of Education -- but how much of an increase is a matter of some debate. The White House says the increase is 11.5 percent, while Democrats contend the actual increase is 5.7 percent. Bush's spending plan would bring the department's budget to $44.5 billion.

From here: Senators Boost Special Education Spending

From here: President Bush sat at a school desk Tuesday and signed the most far-reaching federal education bill in nearly four decades, a $26 billion plan to broaden academic testing, triple spending for literacy programs and help children escape America's worst public schools.


Bush has worked extensively with Kennedy (who then turns around and backstabs) to improve education. He's actually taken the liberal approach, I personally would have liked to have seen vouchers.

As far as the $87B goes, I look at it as an investment in our economic future. It sounds like a lot of money (and it is), but what effect will $0.05 cents/gallon cheaper gasoline have on our economy over the course of the next decade? And who does that benefit? EVERYBODY, even if you don't own a car, nothing happens without transportation. I agree that at least part of it could be a long term loan, but I also don't think this is one thing you can pick out and call an entitlement to the rich. How many rich people are benefitting from this? If 10% of the wealthiest people are paying 90% of the taxes, what portion of that 10% is benefiting from this? Tell me one government spending program that benefits the rich!

The way to prevent forest fires from devestating entire cities is to clear cut and clean out underbrush, two things that environmentalists have always opposed. If you don't think that logging will help prevent and slow forest fires, then you've got a problem. If you're insuating that forest fires are preferable to logging (when loggers plant new trees for every one they cut down anyway), I'd have to disagree - if the trees are going to be destroyed, we might as well get some benefit. Before you go on your environmentalist crusade, people like ELF have probably done more to HARM the environment then help it.

There's a story about a fire several years ago in California. In one area, the only house that survived only survived because the homeowner cleared the underbrush away from the house. He was subsequently fined by the government for destroying the habitat of the Kangaroo Mouse. Is that what you really want?

I don't give a flying fuck what Europeans think of Bush, as I wouldn't want to live in one of their socialist countries and don't value their opinions when it comes to how MY country is run. I'm sure they don't give a flying fuck about my opinion on Schroeder, either, but then he's doing worse domestically in opinion polls than Bush is doing internationally, so that's a moot point.

When Bush was governmer of Texas he did tons of non-partisan work with the democratic senate and was able to achieve a lot. I'll say it again, it's only since he was elected president that the partisans creeped out from under their rock, and instead of trying to work with him and improve things, they merely attack-attack-attack. Even Ted Kennedy, who Bush specifically worked with on education, who Bush actually called "a good guy" in casual conversation, turned around and made those ridiculous accusations.

I stand by what I said.

keep an eye on http://hal.physics.wayne.edu/. if it's not perfectly compliant in a few weeks, maybe the book isn't as good as carl said.

They also are all symetrical along a vertical axis.

Actually, you're wrong. Despite numerous attempts including suing playboy magazine in the 80s, and making a law (in the 90s) which made 'virtual' child porn illegal It isn't 'child porn' when an adult artistically poses in a way that makes them to appear more childlike, nor is is 'child porn' when artwork depicts child-like entities in a less than fully clothed state. It is only child porn if you meet the following requirements. 1. real children were involved. or 2. you were marketing the 'virtual' (cg product) as child porn, and weren't a federal agency trying to bust a pedophile ring.
This is the standard that the supreme court has been holding up as what is defined as 'child porn' and any law that doesn't take intent into it's equasion WILL be ruled unconstitutional.
Would you tear down the sistine chapel because of This? Oh dear, aren't those 'children' in the boat there not wearing any clothes?!? Let's burn the Sistine chapel down because it's 'advocating' child porn!!!
Art is still art, and the sistine chapel isn't promoting or encouraging pedophilia. the fact of the matter is that naked child != child porn. There has to be intent to promote pedophilia, or to harm children to make it child pornography.
Laws that don't take that into consideration are in violation of the constitution, and common sense as well.

No joke. Employers always believe you belong to them. What you say and think is very important to them, and something they believe thay should be able to control. Consider this behavior from Ford Motors' personnel department in the 1930's:

...Intimidation and attacks by his "Servicemen" were commonplace, and a spy network within the factories kept Bennett well-informed. Inside and outside the plants, his men observed union meetings, followed suspected unionists and lurked outside their homes. They also eavesdropped on conservations on the shop floor and in taverns, groceries, restaurants and other public places.

Lessons here:

1. This is nothing new. Employers have acted as petty tyrants for as long as they have existed.

2. The automobile workers were eventually able to do something about this, through concerted group action. Being treated like this at work is not inevitable.

Jessica Litman wrote an excellent book Digital Copyright, which I recomend everyone read.

In the book she references a discussion of copyright lawyers, many of whom hold the opinion that it is not legally possibla to place works in the public domain.

The "Red Flag Law" which only allowed the car to travel 4 miles an hour on country roads and no more than 2 miles an hour in the city slowed travel. Also a man had to warn the approach of the car, by having a signal man walk ahead of the vehicle to signal its coming by swinging a red flag by day and a red lantern at night. This practice hindered the growth and development of the automobile further in England for at least 30 years.

So mayby this time we can learn from history, the CBDTPA,DMCA and ilk legisilation should be raising a few "red flags" before they can do as much damage.

This is kind of offtopic, but I just read a book called Bold Science: Seven Scientists Who Are Changing Our World. It talks about Venter's interesting background. Other scientists mentioned:

Susan Greenfield,

Geoffrey Marcy,

Polly Matzinger,

Saul Perlmutter,

Gretchen Daily, and

Carl Woese.

I would say that there're not completely exlusive, but they're very close. In The Demonization of Piracy, Jessica Litman says that all sorts of things we are used to doing with media that like sharing music with friends, singing "Happy Birthday", etc., always used to be simply "legal but unauthorized uses" (a paraphrase, her original words make more since) I take this to mean that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive as long as the copyright cops only go after the big infringers. It used to be that the line here was well-defined (the "big infringers" were publishing houses making money off someone else's work, the small people were college kids), but now the line is extremely gray, if not nonexistant. This echos what RMS said in his rant on copyright that got Slashdotted a while back.

In my view, the problem is not mainly whether the two are exclusive, but in codifying in law how that exclusivity will play out. There is a paper by Jonathan Rouch called The Rise of Antisocial Law which talks about this problem of trying to codify everything, which is pervading the legal and governmental system today (I think that's a lot of what causes all the stupid-patent stuff that shows up here). It used to be that fair use was not codified, but that people generally respected the traditional intent of copyright (to provide a time-limited incentive for authors, scientists, etc to create. Under that model (and in the pre-Napster world), fair use (small scale infringement) was tolerated and generally left alone. But now, in the post-Napster world, the dominant copyright model has moved to an economic basis, of squeezing every last bit of revenue out of the consumer as possible .(although it doesn't work for most of us - I don't particularly want to pay $18 for a CD that's 5 years old, but if the price were $6, I'd probably sure as hell buy more than 3 times the amount of music)

In addition to this shift, there has been a shift toward more and more finely codified, explicit laws (see above), and the "copyrighted industries" have become much more agressive, no doubt becase they see their IP protections primarily as monetary assets, and not in the way the Founding Fathers did, as incentives, but not neccessarily as permanent "lock-boxes" (to use an over-used phrase from the 2000 campaign)

Oops.. my mistake.. that was a ceiling, not a wall.

Ratguy

Her book is not available for download on her homepage
http://www.law.wayne.edu/litman/

In the event you would like to read the text of any of the laws relating to copyright or the DMCA, take a look here. I teach a class on copyright law, particularly as it relates to new technology.

He brings up an interesting point, one that always makes for an excellent argument in the class I teach:

Good backup policy for many production servers is to make tape backups of the entire hard drive on a daily basis to a different tape each day. Several days of tapes are retained in the event that one is corrupted. Indeed, many tape drives are designed to switch tapes automatically. Is this legal under the license terms of the software, does it violate copyright law, is it fair use, and how would the case proceed in court? (The software in question is usually something with a very restrictive license)

safety Sorry No. Go down and have a look at the 'murder' columns, shows a value of deaths per 100k. US ends up w/ double digits with countries like the USSR, Latvia & Brazil - Drastically higher than sub 2 values of star performers like Canada, Belgium, Greece and Japan..

freedom Sorry No. Have a look at the Corruption Index (Scroll to Table 1), American Imperialism (and here), McArthyism.. I wont bother with the links: DMCA, Marijuana Prohibition, Prostitution, Collusive Monopolies (RIAA/MPAA), The Cuban Embargo, Kent State Massacre, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra Affair, Watergate, Assassinations of John/Bobby Kennedy & MLK, Invasion of Granada, The War on Drugs, Internet Censorship in Schools/Libraries, Consumerism, Work holism, Invasion of Dominican Republic, Gulf War, Systemic Racism (weak gay rights)... etc etc

quality of life Sorry No. Canada has the highest Standard of Living on the planet - 7 years running...

I went to Chicago for NewYears eve to visit some friends. On the way home we heard a news reporter 'lead out of a story' by saying "...and after all; we are the richest and most powerful people in the world." What I began to think is that Americans have begun to treat their 'democracy' (*ahem*) like a Religion. There is no debate. They have enjoyed a very good 150 years - and like all successful civilizations; it will eventually end. If America didnt have such a large piece of 'virgin' North America to exploit for natural resources, and did host a World War (or two) Im betting the world would be a very different place. The 'success' of America dosnt prove the 'rightness' of Capitalism - so get that out of your head. America's 'success' is not success at all! (See adbusters.org about consumerism and mindlessness). America would do itself a favour and learn a little collective humility. Surely the last election has taught you something...

The system has been horribly corrupt by politicians and business people 'on the take'. Their is no longer anyone in Washington who intends to lead Americans. To help America lead and become better global citizens - and try their best to help set a good example - and take examples from those who are already doing good. No person on this planet should be without the rights described in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the US Constitution (or similar documents written or yet-to-be written). Like it or not this is a Global Village and we should be working together for the good of us all.

I refuse to become cynical and jadded. People will respond that this is 'The Real World' - to that I suggest people decide what we are choosing to make this 'Real World' become? Like it or not our collective action/inaction everyday sets the course for the future. We need to stop the 'present' America from setting the course that it is now (and using arms/propaganda to force others into capitulating). (I wont bother with the globalization/imperialist/enslavement/end-of-the-p lanet scenario that is our current future).

Please American PEOPLE do something about your government.

The causes of signifacent historical events, like the Renaissance, is the meat and potatoes of the historian's profession. There is a tendency to hold up singular reasons for events, but the more we learn, the more we see it's not that simple, ever. Even after all the possible causes are taken in to account, there remains the fundimental question, "and what role did the people play?" To what extend were the people alive at the time made by the times, and to what extend were the times made by them? I, for one, refuse to belive that Michelangelo was an android made by the world; that man is but a machine!

They most certainly are indicators of a thriving, healthy economy. When the titans do battle, it means that they're faced with real competition from each other, which, in turn, makes it possible for mere mortals to find niches, do business, and possibly become, themselves, titans.

When it turns sour is when there are no titans slugging it out, but just one titan, making all of the rules. Past examples include United States Steel Corporation, J.P. Morgan's railroad empire, and AT&T's monopoly over the telephone system. These are all examples of the monopolies Woodrow Wilson railed against.

Some people seem to be missing the point of FOCI, and for that, I must take responsibility, as the primary author of the letter, the petition, and most of the content of the site.

The point is competition. The point is that, of the proposals on the table at ICANN, over half are related to either Afilias or Melbourne IT. The point is not whether .web is or isn't a good idea, or whether TLDs or the DNS are or are not good ideas. The point is that, given a world that is this way (which is currently is), can we keep competition alive long enough to make real change?

If Afilias and Melbourne IT are allowed to dominate the DNS any more than they already do, all the Karl Auerbachs in the world won't do us any good.

I'm not saying that Image Online Design are heroes. I'm saying that they represent competition to Afilias and Melbourne IT, and for that, you should consider supporting their bid.

And, as I said in the letter:

As a final note, we encourage you to be critical of what you hear on this issue (even from us!).

So I fully agree with you that people should do research and make up their own minds. There's plenty of public record of the entire history of .web. Furthermore, there's a lively discussion in the ICANN comments area, in which plenty of skeptics, critics, or outright IOD detractors are posting alternative viewpoints. Of course, not all of them are using their names, but that's the 'net for ya'.

Please, though, don't try to make it out like John Mitchell or I are hiding anything. We've made our affiliations clear from the first moment. When we changed the wording of the petition after realizing what Melbourne IT was up to, we mailed all of the existing signatories to let them choose whether or not to apply their signature to the new wording, or let it stand with the old.

We, FOCI, have worked very hard to be precisely the sort of effort on behalf of a company that we'd like to see more of. We're not trying to snow you, or convince you that we don't have, ultimately, capitalist interests at heart. We're trying to be straight with you, and let you decide what is important to a Competitive Internet.

Even filtering advocates should be appalled at the actual practices of the industry. See peacefire.org for more analysis of filtering software.

Don't forget the wonderful censorware.org site. This is what we recommend to parents. Peacefire has more of a "how dare they lock me out!" mentality.

Censorware has a "Look what doesn't work to protect your children" mentality.

In either case, my husband and I ended up getting a Sunday editorial spot in our local paper on the school library and censorware issue. (It doesn't carry editorials past day one, so there is no link to place here.) This is a case where the technologically literate need to do a few simple things to fight censorware.

1. Write letters to the editor of all local papers. Include facts. Hammer on the facts. Hammer on pages that do get banned, and pages that slip through. censorware.org's review of bess contains excellent ammunition.
2. When discussing censorware with the community, make sure your language and affect are similar to that of a Baptist Sunday School teacher. Show deep concern, explain that these things don't work, express dismay at this abrogation of parental and community responsibility, and do it without frothing at the mouth.
3. Do not use ad hominem arguments. (What would you expect coming from an ignorant slob like that?) Instead, be the voice of sweet reason and responsibility. Explain the wonders that can no longer be seen. Blocks flesh tones? No more Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Uses keywords? No more Testicular cancer. Uses algorithms? No more information on the Brotherhood of Flagellants. If all else fails, use
4. Indignation. How dare anyone decide what your child gets to see? Who appointed them the ultimate decider of your child's upbringing? What standards shall be used?
5. Bring up community standards. Communities are changing so rapidly that the demographic standards obscenity have changed. In many cultures, the pictures of astronauts in shorts at NASA is offensive to modesty. In other cultures, the human body is something to be celebrated. Shall I assume that the female breast is taboo, as in Baptist Illinois, or shall I be like the folk on Pago Pago and forbid the display of female thighs, and the discussion of bodily function between father and son?
6. Finally, if necessary, in public debate, ask how much time they spend watching TV with children, reading the books their children read, and providing other outlets. Remind the audience that the Internet has never been a substitute for parenting. Remind the audience of the evils of using the public library as a babysitter. If parents do not trust their own children, have them watch their children, rather than forcing us to do it for them.

As a student of Wayne State University, I can assure you it's not in Nebraska. It's in Detroit, Michigan and you can learn more at http://www.wayne.edu/.

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