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An ID card would not stop the terrorists

My point was that one needs to protect one's own privacy, even though Robert S. Mueller and his boys at the FBI could roll over you darn quick, it is the punks and opportunists that we need to keep at bay...and there are so many of 'em.

If the "eMexico" package is merely a cut-down on license fees, then free software has them beat.

In a Wired Story we get the following quote.

"We agree with the philosophy of free software," said Valencia Garcia. "We'll use the money we save in the city's social programs. The slogan of our mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is 'for the good of all, the poor must come first.'"

I'd suggest you read the entire short article for more information. Also according to another article, " The Mexican government is installing the free Linux operating system in 140,000 computer labs of elementary and middle schools."

``We decided to go with Linux because it would have been too expensive for all the proprietary software licenses,'' said Arturo Espinosa Aldama, the project's leader from the University of Mexico in Mexico City. The popularity of Linux, as an option to Microsoft Windows, is internationally expanding, while many of its former problems are disappearing.

Frankly, there's no need for Red Hat or Calderal or any business to do anything. You see, to get Free Software, you have get out of the iron triangle of technology, business, and money. You have to include other rather foriegn concepts like community and freedom. So whats my bid? Linux User Groups.

From this page I count eleven LUGs that mexicans can contact to help get their schools and organizations technologically up to par. Of course they'll need plenty of other things but the software is all right their ready to download of the internet, to share on CD's, and to modify to their needs. Of course Microsoft won't have for any of that sharing software thing--how can they compete?

Now...all this information I gathered from google, a brilliant search engine that even you can use to answer your own questions.

I'm dead serious too.

Anyone remember this argument. The Rental car
company w/ the GPS speed monitor, which gave
fines to the renter when a certian speed was
exceeded. This is something I'm more concerned
with.

article from wired

So, what are they supposed to use, a really big passwd file? OpenLDAP? Novell NDS? A big Oracle database? Why should we even care what the technology is, as long as it works?

Maybe because it doesn't work.

ever thought of that?

Unfortunately, all the Microsoft-hating government pawns around here seem to have missed the real point of the article.

This isn't just "Microsoft-Hating"
These are valid concerns...

it appears that Sharman Networks now knows about Kazaa Lite, and is determined to shut it down.

I have a feeling there will be a interesting series of modifications to their network like the ones that eliminated Morpheous soon. It seems a better plan than the legal action hinted at here

Re-read this sentence and see for yourself if the US govt qualifies as a terrorist regime.

Why bother? I was referring to the distinctions between how Bush (and, say, 80+% of Americans) define the war and how others (perhaps wilfully) distort that definition when trying to attack it.

Having gone around with you before on this, I'm 0% interested in the "moral status" of the USA. As an American citizen, I am now, when it comes to my relationship to the US federal government, interested only in my personal safety, freedom, and that of my fellow citizens.

I know you hate America. We all know you hate America. I know you are doing everything you can to motivate those who actually do intend to murder innocent Americans (a phrase I concede you won't admit applies to anyone, even two-year-olds on airplanes) to carry out their schemes, murder even more, etc. We all know that now.

And I also suspect you do this primarily because you hold America 100% guilty for the defeat of global communism, a system that murdered tens of millions in the 20th century alone, and which the USA fought, in fits and starts, using all sorts of tactics, including supporting efforts involving the things you list -- Pinochet, Idi Amin, Vietnam, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama (though I'm not sure about that last one).

So, I no longer take you seriously as a communicator of moral uprightness, but rather as a hopeful leader of mass-murder against myself, my family, and my fellow citizens.

Further, I recognize that the left-wing socialist/communist establishment fully embraces Arab-Muslim acts of mass murder as politically legitimate because it believes those acts can be connected to left-wing canards like "poverty", "injustice", "shame", the exact problems the left loves to trump up in order to extort funding, freedom, and military power from the West, especially the USA. (Personally, I agree with the sentiment that labels as "slander" statements that point to poverty as a root cause of terrorism or violence generally. I find poor people no more prone to violence than the wealthy, but the left disagrees when it finds such disagreement convenient.)

So it treats what amounts to right-wing fanatics as brothers-in-arms, mainly as a political ploy to convince the USA that if only it'd adopt the "enlightened" sort of leadership that involves less freedom, higher taxation, international redistribution of wealth, and further restrictions on business (if it's even allowed to exist at all), the problems of terrorism would evaporate -- which, of course, they would not, if history is any guide (since it's historically proven that such systems of government fail in the most crucial test: the ability to locate and promote qualified leaders of moral character).

That's why it's primarily left-wing publications that have trouble using the phrase "terrorist" today, instead equating it with "freedom fighter" -- suggesting that, deep down inside, they know that the so-called "freedom fighters" of the leftist revolutions of the past 100+ years were all, in fact, just terrorists. (Meanwhile, the right-wing publications with which I'm familiar have little trouble declaring people like Timothy McVeigh "terrorists", even though they were acting out in line with right-wing causes like opposing gun control.)

Meanwhile, last I was aware, the USA was no longer involved in any of those things you list. Heck, last I checked, neither were Germany nor Japan involved in murdering innocent civilians as they were in WWII -- and, surprise surprise, Bush is not targeting them, either. (I guess you really resent the US focusing exclusively on present threats rather than trying to bring about some sort of cosmic justice by annihilating itself and all its citizens?)

And until I see you invoke the reality of what the Soviet Union did, Cuba does, China does, on a regular basis in this forum and in these sorts of discussions, especially in the context of any unfortunate activity in which the US military gets involved, rather than constantly (as it seems to me) spewing hatred towards the USA -- as if the world needs more of that presently -- I won't change my opinion of you.

It's really sad, and at the same time kinda funny, that someone like you, pretending to be a moral compass for the US, conducts his campaign by spreading so much hatred and venom towards every single citizen, based on any act carried out in the name of, or even remotely funded or even not actively discouraged (e.g. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait) by, the US, even acts carried out decades before those, whom you hold as morally responsible for them, were born, as you did in this message.

So, since the USA can and will never, no matter what it does (except possibly by becoming a totalitarian communist dictatorship, run by the "enlightened idealists" who run, say, Cuba), meet your standard of morality and thus no longer be validly called a "terrorist regime", and since you're just one voice among many who will, similarly, never acknowledge the US's "moral superiority" in any matter, especially a matter involving actions it takes to defend itself against attack, I've completely given up my interest in the US carrying out our collective defense on the basis of any morality whatsoever.

Instead, all I care about is effectiveness. As long as there are those who declare themselves (by word or deed) enemies of the USA, the federal government had better deal with them, and do that effectively.

I'm not insisting that it do so. Oh, no -- I'm also a Christian, and therefore don't have a desire to commit violence, either directly or by proxy (e.g. by government) -- which is the main reason why I don't cotton to left-wing politics (since it's full of violence by proxy -- against the wealthy, against gun owners, against yet-to-be-born children, against white European males, and so on -- in the form of threat and the spreading of mass hatred and resentment, if not action), and why I have little interest in some strains of right-wing politics as well.

All I ask is, if the government won't do its primary duty and defend me and my fellow citizens, it dissolve itself entirely, leaving all of us free to defend ourselves, conduct our lives, earn and spend our money, plan for our retirement, teach our children, take care of our elderly, contribute to local charitities, and so on, as we each see fit.

In the meantime, people like you have convinced me to not even care, from the point of view of my duties of citizenship (e.g. voting), whether the US is intentionally bombing innocent civilians elsewhere in the world, except insofar as it is calculated as an effective means of defense. After all, people like you refuse to grant me or other Americans even the slightest whiff of good moral intentions, instead castigating us as equally evil to any modern-day terrorist planning to blow up a pediatrics ward. So there is no basis on which I can possibly encourage the US government to conduct itself "more morally". Why should I bother encouraging moral behavior on the premise that it'd earn more friends for the USA, when what the world seems to really respect is the aggressive use of force? After all, the most-respected international organization is the United Nations, and, in that body, the USA gets exactly as many votes as a mass-murdering, politically repressive nation like China gets. So much for international respect for any semblance of morality.

And, since there's plenty of evidence that attempts at morality led to 2001-09-11 (e.g. the restrictions on the sorts of local contacts the CIA may have, the refusal to engage in anything remotely like "racial profiling"), from the defense-of-my-country point of view, I see no practical reason to encourage the US government to behave morally. According to your claimed standards, the US can never become a more moral nation, and to the degree it tries, even I can see that it'll become far less able to defend itself against enemies that already exist and have already taken action against it.

So, thanks for your constant interjections in these and other discussions -- you've really clarified and simplified my outlook, and probably that of many others.

Love looking at the history of technology and all that, but what about looking into the future?

We've got holographic drives coming soon for your digital cameras. We've got more space than you know what to do with.

With IBM out of the picture, the microdrives of the future will have to come from somewhere else.

Where? Whom?

I think Larry probably needed the money to pay off all those San Jose Airport Noise Curfew fines he racked up.

Ok, old news... but still pretty funny.

There's a slight difference here. What an obvious troll... At least nobody seems to be complaining about Mexico City's software purchases.

-B

history has shown us that when the greenback meets technology, the idealists loose.

Yeah, let's dispense with corporations, capitalism, and the greed that goes along with the whole lot.

Then we can see how technology fares under the government that isn't beholden to corporate influence and the almighty dollar, leaving only the "idealists" to run things.

What about this one?

3:00 a.m. March 22, 2000 PST
The University of New Mexico and IBM are teaming up to build the world's fastest Linux-based supercomputer.

Named "LosLobos", the new supercomputer is scheduled to be fully operational by the summer


Whats the current status?

"Microsoft contacted 12 Nov 2001, additional information given 25 Mar 2002."

Well that links in well with the memo Bill Gates sent on January 15th. What was it he said?

"We have done a great job of having teams work around the clock to deliver security fixes for any problems that arise. Our responsiveness has been unmatched ..."
Hmm - that was before the new emphasis on security ...
"If we discover a risk that a feature could compromise someone's privacy, that problem gets solved first."

Given those comments, how can they not have done anything about this? Doesn't sound like a fundamental problem that would take a massive effort to fix.

Funny, how he writes a whole long lengthy article on bsd, and misspells it EVERY time. It's Berk e ley.

Nobody said Mac fans were the smartest motherfuckers on the planet. Take this jackoff, for example.

I often hear that "Macs are better for design" or "Design is easier on a Mac" and other similar statements, but I find it amusing that all of that is disproved by one dipshit who has devoted his life to Apple and the Macintosh.

If design work were so easy on a Mac, then logically, someone who spends as much time around Macs as he does would have no problem at all creating a stunning website. Obviously, that's not true. Case in point: His fucking website.

Maybe his vegan brain is addled from a lack of protein, because I don't know anyone who thinks blue text on a melon-colored background looks good.

But I could be wrong. Maybe design isn't his forte, and he's actually more interested in doing video editing? Well, lets see what he has to say: ""I haven't edited any footage. I haven't even gone back and looked at it. My dream is that somebody will like it and organize an army of interns to produce a detailed log of everything, and then develop some really interesting DVDs.

Yeah, I think the real answer is that he's less interested in actually using his Macs, than he is in giving Reverend Jobs all his aunt's hard-earned money.

Notice I said his aunt's hard-earned money, because the motherfucker doesn't have a fucking job.

In the March 1994 issue of Wired (2.04), there's a speculative article about what the arguments among the Justices would be if such a case ever came up. Interesting to compare Samuel Gelerman's speculation to the real arguments in the decision:

Herd Not Obscene, by Samuel Gelerman, from Wired 2.04

Once again Project Gutenberg shows its beautiful face. If you haven't heard about it before, then read a Wired feature here. Michael Hart started the project years ago and he wants to digitize anything which is out of copyright. The uses are infinite (think of the blind who can fead texts to tactile printers, for example), which this story also shows.

Anyway, Hart is a big supporter of sensible copyrights (read the feature) and if you can spare the time, help him by digitizing your favourite book.

I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of Thomas Gold's "Deep Hot Biosphere" theory. This would seem to support his idea that there is a second biosphere that produces hydrocarbons as a waste product.

Wired had an article about a year or so ago . . .

Here's a link to the WIRED Article. The experiment you're talking about was called the Southern Ocean iron release experiment [SOIREE].

Some additional information on this strategy can be found here and here.

The problem behind any algae based solution is A) get enough nutrients to algae (thus the iron), and B) get the algae to sink to sea bottom where the CO2 won't just be released back into the atmosphere when the algae decomposes. The problem with this experiment was that A) worked, but B) wasn't addressed.

Some references:
Thomas Gold at Cornell
Wired article

• Lay Language Summary of a paper presented by Stuart Parkin at the 1999 APS March Meeting
• Magnetic RAM cures your computer of short-term memory loss by Richard Butner
• IBM, Infineon looking to shake up memory market
• Instant Access Memory by David Voss
• How Magnetic RAM Will Work by Kevin Bonsor
• The Possibility of Commercial MRAM by John Dvorak
• Nanomagnetics (a chapter of Nanostructure Science and Technology: A Worldwide Study)
• Magnetic Random-Access Memory Promises PC Changes
• IBM says breakthrough will enable commercial MRAMs

Interesting highlights:

The trasentric paper quoted Electronic Buyer's News:

"Honeywell Inc. and Motorola Inc. are hoping to spin volume quantities of MRAM through a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract that is also shared by IBM. DRAM powerhouses Micron, NEC, and Samsung are said to be developing the technology, while Hewlett-Packard has a design team looking into the viability of chip-level magnetic storage."

1. Much of this research is funded by a DARPA contract which means it is the money of US Taxpayers at work.
2. Samsung is part of the same contract.

The Wired article is fairly lengthy and also details the biography of Stuart Parkin. Parkin is the IBM fellow that has been driving most of the MRAM research.

Ciao.

Typically, after an initial investigation of the lead, the BSA contacts the organization reported, although in some cases it pursues a software raid.

There have been stories on Slashdot and elsewhere detailing raids on companies where law enforcement agencies have, at the request of the BSA, shutdown companies for days while hard drives are searched, and often trashed.

Here is an article with a litle bit of background.

An individual's use of unlicensed software is no different than the same use at a place of business - indeed many of these cases are not the result of systemic business practices, but rather a single rogue employee. The reason the BSA chooses companies is due mainly to the deep pockets issue.

Also, the South Carolina DMV sold 3.5 million driver photos for $5000 in 1999. There is a lot of info at Charleston.net if you are interested.

They sold the pictures to a company called Image Data for use in fraud prevention. The idea is that a merchant can buy a special terminal from Image Data that scans the bar code on a South Carolina driver licence. The bar code gets sent to Image Data, and they send back the driver's picture for display on the terminal, so the merchant can verify the person's identity.

Other states have also tried to sell their info to Image Data, including Florida and Colorado, among others. The governors of these states stopped the sales, after all the bad press from the South Carolina deal, although some of the Colorado photos were released before the deal was halted. News that the database was funded in part by the Secret Service added to the outcry.

There are several vendors building hardware in this space. For example, a bunch of my friends and former Packet Engines coworkers started World Wide Packets, which builds boxes that amount to the same thing. They're a two year old startup that is waiting for a market to appear for their hardware. Their stuff rocks, but they only make equipment and don't control the deployment.

FYI Packet Engines was acquired by Alcatel in late 1998. They managed to bungle their way through the acquisition of several companies in a short time, completely crushing out of existence some very promising technology through truly appalling corporate stupidity during what was the biggest boom time in history for ethernet and IP routing infrastructure manufacturers.

Alas, Packet Engines and nearly all of the others are now almost completely gone.

My name is ______, I have spent $XXXXX on your services this last year alone. Please know that I will stop buying services from your organization until you remove the TRUSTe "trustmark" from your web site and you cut off all ties with that organization.

For details, please see the story below. http://www.wired.com/news/exec/0,1370,51624,00.htm l

Sincerely,

_____________

The TrustE program is rooted in the ideology of anarcho-Capitalism, the idea that a free society can come about through the abolition of all government, and the aggressive privatization of everything, including courts and militaries. (Less aggressive Libertarians are generally minarchist, and believe that it's probably best to let government have the courts and the military, in order to best protect property.)

The anarcho-capitalist argument usually goes something like that: Government intervention is not only bad for business (and thus, you and me), but it's also immoral. But people do not need government to be safe; They can rely on the market for protection. It is beneficial to the market to protect you, since there is obviously a demand for protection.

There are many problems with these notions, but anarcho-Capitalists, generally intelligent people have an affinity for axiomatic theories (in this cased, based in the notion of contracts).

How does the theory fail? It's not too difficult to find out, if you aren't an anarcho-capitalist yourself. All you need to do is look at a failing of the market to protect people, and trace it to its source.

For example, Yahoo just recently changed their privacy policy, for the worst. Let's accept as fact that the majority of people don't like this, since its hit Slashdot and most people are bitter about it. How did Yahoo do that? According to the New York Times article, they have played on the exact lettering of their contract. Yahoo pledged that it would not email its users, but did they say they would not telephone? No, they never said they would not do that.

How has anarcho-capitalism failed here? Anarcho-capitalists would have said that we are kept safe by the competition of privacy policies. There would have been, say, 5 yahoo's, all slightly different, and one would have had a better privacy policy. I don't know how the anarcho-capitalist would respond to the complaint that we want to use services, not read contracts and theorize about them all day (for example, "They say they won't contact me by email, but they might call me by telephone! I better inform Yahoo that their contract needs work before I'm willing to sign it..!").

Note Esther Dyson's complaint, supporting this notion:

On that note, Dyson doesn't think the blame lies solely at the feet of Truste or its clients.

"I've also been disappointed in consumers," she said, "in that they've not been proactive in protecting their own data. You do a survey and consumers say they are very concerned about their privacy. Then you offer them a discount on a book and they'll tell you everything." (Wired story, page 2)

In other words, it's our fault, because we don't think about contracts in full. The problem is that contracts do not accurately reflect what we want. We are irrational beings, which chops at the root of anarcho-capitalist thinking. But rather than ammend their philosophy to take into account consumer behavior (which companies are eager to take advantage of; Look at any college textbook on the subject), they insist that consumer behavior is wrong, and that absolute contract-based theory is right.

Going back to Anarcho-capitalists believing in a competition of privacy policies: Unfortunately, there are not 5 yahoo's. (If there are, we don't know about it.) Why is that? That's probably very complicated to answer, but my guess is that it has to do with branding. And when you have advertising/branding strategies in place to get people to use your business, there is almost always room for only 1, 2, maybe 3 companies in people's heads. But very rarely do I ever see the role of advertising and people's ability to recall brands appearing in anarcho-capitalist literature. In anarcho-capitalist literature, we are all perfectly rational beings who have all the time in the world to investigate every contract and extrapolate it's meaning in purely legalistic terms.

Web surfers, [Esther Dyson's] reasoning went, would read the various companies' policies themselves and make their own choices, letting companies use privacy policies as a competitive differentiator. Truste's seal would simply ensure that the policy was being followed, so that "between two sites I've never heard of, I'd rather pick the one that has the Truste logo," she explained.

--Wired (Notice the implicit necessity for competition, and the assumed assumption of TrustE actually working.)

But we're not even at the main story here, which is about TrustE. TrustE is born almost completely out of anarcho-capitalist theory. Indeed, when I worked at a dot-com (now failed), the owner of the company (and big-time Madrona investor) told us how excited he was to participate in TrustE, which was going to show to the world how anarcho-capitalist protections work for everybody. What is the program?

TrustE fills the role in the anarcho-capitalist dream of a market response to the demand for safety. It works like this: Companies pay TrustE in order to have a seal that proves that they are going to play nice. TrustE in turn watches over the company, and makes sure that they are doing right by what they said they would do. The moment the company tries to do anything wrong, TrustE slaps them by removing their brand from the Company.

Systems like these are proposed by anarcho-capitalists in order to remove the entire government. For example: The justice system. There would be a number of competing courts, and the ones with a good reputation and contract would be utilized by people to try their cases. The military and police forces- if one wasn't nice to people, we'll all just hire another to protect us. To be fair, Libertarians don't go quite as far as the anarcho-Capitalists in this respect, the Libertarians just want to have no government/military regulation except of military force. (I find it likely though, that the government would act in the interest of the corporate interests, and not in the public interests; It is said that "Property is 9/10's of the Law". Undoubtably, people crushed by non-violent anarcho-capitalist market rule would want to / need to violate some property laws, and thus have the weight of the establishment upon them, in full military force.)

How do these systems fail? In precisely the ways that critics say that they will fail. Obviously TrustE wants people's money, so it is already biased to certify companies. I suspect that more importantly, it wants to be seen as actually meaning something (lest everyone stop using them), and thus it doesn't want to de-list its most famous clients. Should Yahoo be delisted, Amazon might feel like delisting. Should the big names fall, everyone would fall.

Anarcho-Capitalists need to learn this method. It's not based in axiomatic derivation, which is clean, but rather, in analysis of real world situations. Anarcho-capitalists extrapolate all kinds of things from their initial set of perfectly rational contract-analyzing citizens. Unfortunately, when we look at real world systems, we find that anarcho-capitalist theory has no value.

Anarcho-Capitalists need to think about this very carefully, and act accordingly. Again, in brief, the method is this: Take a limited set of clear ideas. Extrapolate from them. Then check those ideas against reality around you. How do the ideas fail? Is it reasonable to expect that the failing will reoccur, or is this just a fluke? If they will reoccur, revise the ideas to match reality.

In closing, some choice quotes:

L IKE MANY Internet activists, Dyson is an unapologetic libertarian. For her, the true importance of the Internet is its potential to empower individuals against the forces of government. The dispersed nature of the World Wide Web enables individuals (and businesses) to avoid physical jurisdiction, and the ability of users to communicate freely can foster a kind of free-market democracy that leans on the side of citizens, not legislators.

--MetroActive on Esther Dyson

(Esther Dyson, we can at least vote against the government. How will we protect ourselves from companies..? Dollar votes have proven not to work, the companies research our behaviors too well. You have seen yourself that it does not work. Shall we just be screwed; Are we getting our just deserts for being human?)

Another interesting quote is on the TrustE web page:

. The core of this initiative was the TRUSTe Privacy Seal, a visual symbol that could be displayed by Web sites that met the program?s requirements for data gathering and dissemination practices, and agreed to participate in its dispute resolution process. TRUSTe?s goal was to establish a seal that would send a clear signal to consumers that they could expect companies to adhere to certain requirements about the way Web sites handled data, and that an independent, third-party would hear and respond to their complaints and resolve their disputes.

It's interesting to study where the words come from. Unfortunately, I won't take the time to back up this claim, but "...independent, third-party would hear and respond to their complaints and resolve their disputes." comes straight out of the anarcho-capitalist literature on how to run a justice system by third-party companies, without a government..!

Well, young John Gaults of the world, TrustE has failed. This is a great opportunity for you to come forward with your own competing TrustE systems that will have better morals, and certify to the world the successes of your anarcho-capitalist philosophy.

The TrustE program is rooted in the ideology of anarcho-Capitalism, the idea that a free society can come about through the abolition of all government, and the aggressive privatization of everything, including courts and militaries. (Less aggressive Libertarians are generally minarchist, and believe that it's probably best to let government have the courts and the military, in order to best protect property.)

The anarcho-capitalist argument usually goes something like that: Government intervention is not only bad for business (and thus, you and me), but it's also immoral. But people do not need government to be safe; They can rely on the market for protection. It is beneficial to the market to protect you, since there is obviously a demand for protection.

There are many problems with these notions, but anarcho-Capitalists, generally intelligent people have an affinity for axiomatic theories (in this cased, based in the notion of contracts).

How does the theory fail? It's not too difficult to find out, if you aren't an anarcho-capitalist yourself. All you need to do is look at a failing of the market to protect people, and trace it to its source.

For example, Yahoo just recently changed their privacy policy, for the worst. Let's accept as fact that the majority of people don't like this, since its hit Slashdot and most people are bitter about it. How did Yahoo do that? According to the New York Times article, they have played on the exact lettering of their contract. Yahoo pledged that it would not email its users, but did they say they would not telephone? No, they never said they would not do that.

How has anarcho-capitalism failed here? Anarcho-capitalists would have said that we are kept safe by the competition of privacy policies. There would have been, say, 5 yahoo's, all slightly different, and one would have had a better privacy policy. I don't know how the anarcho-capitalist would respond to the complaint that we want to use services, not read contracts and theorize about them all day (for example, "They say they won't contact me by email, but they might call me by telephone! I better inform Yahoo that their contract needs work before I'm willing to sign it..!").

Note Esther Dyson's complaint, supporting this notion:

On that note, Dyson doesn't think the blame lies solely at the feet of Truste or its clients.

"I've also been disappointed in consumers," she said, "in that they've not been proactive in protecting their own data. You do a survey and consumers say they are very concerned about their privacy. Then you offer them a discount on a book and they'll tell you everything." (Wired story, page 2)

In other words, it's our fault, because we don't think about contracts in full. The problem is that contracts do not accurately reflect what we want. We are irrational beings, which chops at the root of anarcho-capitalist thinking. But rather than ammend their philosophy to take into account consumer behavior (which companies are eager to take advantage of; Look at any college textbook on the subject), they insist that consumer behavior is wrong, and that absolute contract-based theory is right.

Going back to Anarcho-capitalists believing in a competition of privacy policies: Unfortunately, there are not 5 yahoo's. (If there are, we don't know about it.) Why is that? That's probably very complicated to answer, but my guess is that it has to do with branding. And when you have advertising/branding strategies in place to get people to use your business, there is almost always room for only 1, 2, maybe 3 companies in people's heads. But very rarely do I ever see the role of advertising and people's ability to recall brands appearing in anarcho-capitalist literature. In anarcho-capitalist literature, we are all perfectly rational beings who have all the time in the world to investigate every contract and extrapolate it's meaning in purely legalistic terms.

Web surfers, [Esther Dyson's] reasoning went, would read the various companies' policies themselves and make their own choices, letting companies use privacy policies as a competitive differentiator. Truste's seal would simply ensure that the policy was being followed, so that "between two sites I've never heard of, I'd rather pick the one that has the Truste logo," she explained.

--Wired (Notice the implicit necessity for competition, and the assumed assumption of TrustE actually working.)

But we're not even at the main story here, which is about TrustE. TrustE is born almost completely out of anarcho-capitalist theory. Indeed, when I worked at a dot-com (now failed), the owner of the company (and big-time Madrona investor) told us how excited he was to participate in TrustE, which was going to show to the world how anarcho-capitalist protections work for everybody. What is the program?

TrustE fills the role in the anarcho-capitalist dream of a market response to the demand for safety. It works like this: Companies pay TrustE in order to have a seal that proves that they are going to play nice. TrustE in turn watches over the company, and makes sure that they are doing right by what they said they would do. The moment the company tries to do anything wrong, TrustE slaps them by removing their brand from the Company.

Systems like these are proposed by anarcho-capitalists in order to remove the entire government. For example: The justice system. There would be a number of competing courts, and the ones with a good reputation and contract would be utilized by people to try their cases. The military and police forces- if one wasn't nice to people, we'll all just hire another to protect us. To be fair, Libertarians don't go quite as far as the anarcho-Capitalists in this respect, the Libertarians just want to have no government/military regulation except of military force. (I find it likely though, that the government would act in the interest of the corporate interests, and not in the public interests; It is said that "Property is 9/10's of the Law". Undoubtably, people crushed by non-violent anarcho-capitalist market rule would want to / need to violate some property laws, and thus have the weight of the establishment upon them, in full military force.)

How do these systems fail? In precisely the ways that critics say that they will fail. Obviously TrustE wants people's money, so it is already biased to certify companies. I suspect that more importantly, it wants to be seen as actually meaning something (lest everyone stop using them), and thus it doesn't want to de-list its most famous clients. Should Yahoo be delisted, Amazon might feel like delisting. Should the big names fall, everyone would fall.

Anarcho-Capitalists need to learn this method. It's not based in axiomatic derivation, which is clean, but rather, in analysis of real world situations. Anarcho-capitalists extrapolate all kinds of things from their initial set of perfectly rational contract-analyzing citizens. Unfortunately, when we look at real world systems, we find that anarcho-capitalist theory has no value.

Anarcho-Capitalists need to think about this very carefully, and act accordingly. Again, in brief, the method is this: Take a limited set of clear ideas. Extrapolate from them. Then check those ideas against reality around you. How do the ideas fail? Is it reasonable to expect that the failing will reoccur, or is this just a fluke? If they will reoccur, revise the ideas to match reality.

In closing, some choice quotes:

L IKE MANY Internet activists, Dyson is an unapologetic libertarian. For her, the true importance of the Internet is its potential to empower individuals against the forces of government. The dispersed nature of the World Wide Web enables individuals (and businesses) to avoid physical jurisdiction, and the ability of users to communicate freely can foster a kind of free-market democracy that leans on the side of citizens, not legislators.

--MetroActive on Esther Dyson

(Esther Dyson, we can at least vote against the government. How will we protect ourselves from companies..? Dollar votes have proven not to work, the companies research our behaviors too well. You have seen yourself that it does not work. Shall we just be screwed; Are we getting our just deserts for being human?)

Another interesting quote is on the TrustE web page:

. The core of this initiative was the TRUSTe Privacy Seal, a visual symbol that could be displayed by Web sites that met the program?s requirements for data gathering and dissemination practices, and agreed to participate in its dispute resolution process. TRUSTe?s goal was to establish a seal that would send a clear signal to consumers that they could expect companies to adhere to certain requirements about the way Web sites handled data, and that an independent, third-party would hear and respond to their complaints and resolve their disputes.

It's interesting to study where the words come from. Unfortunately, I won't take the time to back up this claim, but "...independent, third-party would hear and respond to their complaints and resolve their disputes." comes straight out of the anarcho-capitalist literature on how to run a justice system by third-party companies, without a government..!

Well, young John Gaults of the world, TrustE has failed. This is a great opportunity for you to come forward with your own competing TrustE systems that will have better morals, and certify to the world the successes of your anarcho-capitalist philosophy.

karmawarrior writes "Gateway is launching an advertising campaign against Senator Holling's CBDTPA bill, which, apparently will include its cow mascot encouraging computer users to legally download MP3s and burn their own CDs." Wired also has a story; see Gateway's website for more, as Gateway takes a page from Apple's "Rip-Mix-Burn" playbook.

Driven by al Qaeda's atrocities, the US charged into the classic quagmire of Afghanistan, legendary death trap of military ambition. With the customary roll of thunder, out came the full routine of the modern American expeditionary force. First, a cautious, methodical, widely televised suppression of local air defenses. Then, once CNN became accustomed to the violence, some leisurely and terrible precision targeting throughout the theater, around the clock. In Serbia in 1999, US aircraft smashed stationary targets, like buildings and bridges. In Afghanistan, thanks to much faster satellite relays, they demolished rapidly moving tanks, fleeing Toyota trucks, and amazed guerrillas. It took only two weeks to chase Taliban and al Qaeda forces into Pakistan, Iran, and beyond.

"Driven by al Qaeda's atrocities", they decided to go create a few atrocities of their own. Seen any estimates of civilian casualties on your TV news lately? A few dozen? Hundreds even? No, thousands. Professor Marc Herold has put together the only methodical public attempt to date on casualty estimates, and his figure is between 3,000 and 3,400.

"Terrible precision targeting"? Yes, the precision was pretty terrible alright. But the carnage isn't over yet, and won't be for decades: the UN estimates that around 14,000 unexploded cluster bomblets are still on the ground in Afghanistan. They're bright yellow, the same color as the food parcels the US very kindly dropped, while all the aid agencies pleaded with them to stop. So thousands more will die, long after you've had all your parades and pinned on all your medals.

Slow, careful police work was far too unglamourous. Much more sexually satisfying to bomb the shit out of the country harboring the prime suspect. Do you really think that the strikes against the US will stop, simply because the Taliban have been chased into retreat? How many more young suicide bombers are being created daily, thanks to these atrocities and all the others supported and funded around the world by the US? Will they all just give up and go home, awed by superior US satellite technology? Use your brain, for God's sake. You will reap what you sow.

He sure did take it with good humor. After reading the story he sent the following email to the offices of The Onion:

"You have blown my cover as a wheelchair-bound mad professor. But little do you guess I'm really a Time Lord from Andromeda."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/onion_pr .h tml

:-)

that wired article was originally in the magazine two months ago, and, at the time, certainly did offer some piece of mind.

unfortunately, there was an article in wired news this week (also covered in the la times -- can't find wired's) talking about america's losing ground to other nations such as china and india in the satellite advantage rate.

well, that pax americana sure was fun, eh?

We may have won this battle, but the war is far from over. Rep. Adam Schiff is set to introduce a similar bill in the House of Representatives later this month!

Another Punch for Copy Protection

Let's intensify that pressure!

From the Wired article on Leahy's stopping CBDTPA, there's this nugget:

"Also this week, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) told Wired News he was drafting a House bill that would be similar to the CBDTPA."

Looks like Mr. Schiff, the "representative from Disney", representing the mouse's backyard in Glendale, CA, also now needs to be slapped down. What saddens me is that it's reps from my own party (Dems) that are doing this. Just goes to show that whoever is paying for the candidacy gets to make the law. I'm willing to support someone else in the primary over this issue alone.

at least there's still Leahy!

Sen. Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee, came down with an attack of good sense, and said that he won't let it out of committee.

It's dead... for this session at least, but you're right, we need to stay vigilant.

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Are Authors Abused by Used? is an article by M.J. Rose up on Wired.com that means that I am quoted on the front page of Wired.com... although I'm quoted on the front page as "An Author" (presumably on the basis that my name wouldn't mean anything to Wired readers)...

Seeing that only that one quote makes it into the article, here's the full text of my reply to M.J. Rose's e-mail asking whether or not I thought that authors were being abused by used booksellers...

Well, bear in mind that the background I come from is that of comics, where a trade in back issues is part of the terrain. When Sandman #1 was trading for $100 a copy, I saw none of that, and had long since assumed that the trade in old books and comics went with the territory, and was a good thing in the long run: if someone reads a book of mine in paperback, or borrows it from a friend, or gets it for half-price on a book-trading site or in a store where they sell second-hand paperbacks along with aquariums, pet-food and vacuum-cleaner parts, or picks it up in a battered hardback from a remainder table, they're finding out whether or not they like what I write. And if they do then one day, if they can afford it, they'll be lining up to buy a new hardback, or a new paperback.

Lord knows, most of the books I bought in my teens were bought second hand. Sometimes they smelled kind of weird, but it was the only way I was going to read old Sheckley or Lafferty or Peter O' Donnell.

Books, like magazines, have pass-along rates. They don't come with single-user software licenses. I think this is a good thing. If I read a book and like it, I'll lend it to you and hope you give it back. (GOOD OMENS has probably sold a couple of million copies by now, internationally, but its pass-along rate is tens of times that, judging by the copies people bring to signings, which have been lent to everyone they know, are held together with tape and dried soup, and have obviously been dropped into the bath at some point.)

Obviously, it makes me uncomfortable when I see Amazon erroneously listing books that are in print as out of print and sending people to used book dealers to buy them, just as it makes me uncomfortable when I see people on E-Bay paying $75 for my spoken word double CD "Warning Contains Language", which they could get from DreamHaven new for less than half that. There's not a lot one can do about these things, other than write to publishers telling them to ask Amazon to update their database.

This is probably much more than you wanted. Still, to make it explicit: I don't regard every second-hand book sold as a dollar taken from my mouth. I've already been paid for that book at some point. I regard second-hand sales as things that make future readers.

posted by Neil Gaiman 6:06 AM

"Ha ha! Microsoft is screwing up! The big bad Beast of Redmond got into a market it knows nothing about!"

This is different though. Microsoft regards this as a strategic endeavor. The X-Box is not just a game console, it's their point of attack in a war to secure dominance of your living room eyeballs. They already have your office eyeballs and your home office eyeballs (well, maybe not those of Slashdot readers, but most everyone else's). Now they want to make sure that when you turn on your TV or set-top box, it's to use Microsoft products.

They're willing to spend money for a long time in order to make this happen.

This is more than a game console. It's an economic battleground, and Microsoft donsn't give up easily.

Oppedahl added that the Patent Office has been unfairly criticized for issuing an unusually large number of bad Internet-age patents. While it may happen, he said, bad patents are no more of a problem now than they have ever been

Anyway, his opinions on patents are not directly relevant to getting your own DSL coop running. Just understand that the guy behind this one is a high-powered, media-savvy lawyer who knows how to deal with his counterparts in government agencies and corporations. Given the kinds of cases he appears to have been involved in, I suspect money is no problem either. Somehow I think mere engineers like us have no realistic prayer of getting nearly as far.

God forbid the Cyber-Terrorists should get their hands on this! Good thing we have the far-reaching grasp of the Patriot Act and the new Cyberterrorism Act ready to defend us.

I think . . .

Saddam Hussein has a bunker 75 feet under Bagdad.

We are seeking a way to use tactical nuclear weapons in the field.

Tactical nuke plans call for penetration into the ground so they can destroy bunkers.

Iraq is cutting oil production.

The Carlyle group uhh ... nevermind.

Former Pres. George Bush's career began in the oil industry.

Bush Sr. was President when we went to war with ... Iraq.

G. Dubya is President now and threatening Iraq ...

Saddam better duck.

Jean-Olivier Lanctôt-David is a big fat loser

GET OFF YOUR APPLE GEEK POD AND GET A LIFE

He reads slashdot while on the short yellow bus! haha

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,51586,00.html

Karmawhoresystem2.1:

Judes Blast Filtering System

All Mammal clones possible so far are FEMALE!
You will never see this fact cited ever in a non-journal article.
You will never see this "fact" because it really isn't a fact.
See this article from way back in 1999 about the first male mouse clone.

I sure hope all the clones have chip implants like these , !

Worse yet, imagine if your first homework assignment in a programming class had to follow these draconian rules! And if you didn't fully understand the specification, and got fined because you turned in non-compliant software to your professor...

Also, this article states: "There is a loophole: Programmers could still create unapproved code on one computer. But they couldn't give it to anyone else or transmit it on a network."

Consider this for a minute: You are working on a large, multi-developer application in a corporate setting. You write a function which contains no digital copyright protection, because the inputs to the function have already been screened. If that quote is correct, you would be unable to submit that function to the main development tree.

Though I agree that it is sort of useless, it doesn't take the coolnes away, hehe =)

Speaking of coolnes, I'd think a better enhancement for Beer Mugs would be to fix them up with some of these and keep your beer cold all the time...

Then Bell paused for a moment and reconsidered. "There's a risk you could say it covers things like even a digital clock program on your computer," he said.

Later in the article...

"...A second loophole would grandfather in code that existed before the CBDTPA took effect. Software that was manufactured and in the hands of consumers before the FCC's rules take effect would be exempt."

Doesn't this introduce a chicken-and-egg problem? If I can't read my clock (because it's digitially protected using the mechanism discussed) how can I know if the code I'm looking at should be grandfathered in?

The good senator needs his head examined.

• This form of SCID is due to a total gene deletion - so that gene replacement was feasible. A lot of genetic diseases are due to genes expressing proteins that are mutated, but still produced. These mutant proteins can frequently have a dominant negative effect, that is, they mess up normal copies of the protein or other proteins in the cell. In this case, adding more good copies of the gene in question will not help.
• Being able to treat stem cells in isolation is a big advantage, since you don't have to target cells in the context of the whole body (needle in haystack problem). In culture, the virus to cell ratio can be really high, increasing the probability of successful infection. Also, stem cells successfully expressing the gene of interest can be selected and preferentially propagated in culture before re-introducing into the patient.
• Another big advantage in being able to treat isolated cells is that you avoid the potential problem of an immune response to the virus itself. This was a big problem recently with a different class of viruses. In some ways SCID, being an immune deficiency, is the ideal disease for viral gene therapy, since these patients are less likely to react to the virus itself.

You would hope so

Basically that guy flamed a corporation on a message board, and was sue'd by that company. The crappy part about it is that he didn't find out about any of this until he was served his judgement. A piece of certified mail was sent which he never recieved, or so he says.. The first time he heard about it, it was a judgement for $450,000 defamation lawsuit that he had lost. There are more and more of these types of lawsuits happening every day.

Id say that things are going to have to change at some point. The U.S. is policing the internet a bit too much. Why should someone in the netherlands have to worry about what laws are passed in the U.S. when making a piece of software that would let him watch a movie. Well, if you use the internet, then you seem to fall under the umbrella of U.S. jurisdiction. Im sure its illegal to post certain material that we would find to be ok in other countries, but thats alright. Try to do that the other way around and you'll get yer ass handed to you by the DMCA.

Why should a russian programmer have to worry about laws being passed here. The simple fact that he chose to use a buisness model that involves using the internet to sell software. Its a very common model, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are not breaking any russian laws at all, so it would seem to be ok. First visit to the good ol' USA, and he ends up in the slammer, thanks to the FBI.

Do you want to start living in a world where anytime you log onto the net, your going to have to abide by every law in every country, because someone from that country might not want it or whatever.. I didn't think so. As I once saw on the back of a VW Bus, I love my country but I fear my government. Ya, we as a country had quite a lot to do with the building of the internet, but its grown quite a bit from then and we dont need to police the whole thing. Lets say that the US had solely invented the automobile, without any sort of help or knowledge from any other country. Now look ahead 40 years, do you think that it would be a bit crazy if you saw that the US has been regulating cars across the world the whole time?

Except the Myst world actually had an excellent plot.

In fact, I remember reading a Wired article a few years ago where one of the brothers (Robin Miller) who created Myst expressed an interest in moving away from video games specifically because narrative was so difficult to achieve in a game.

It was Miller's fascination with storytelling that nudged him in the direction of film. Halfway through the making of Riven, he began to envy an asset every kung-fu flick and airport potboiler has over interactive games: the ability to reveal the turns of a narrative in set sequence, with no multiple-choice fates or clickable cul-de-sacs.

(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.10/miller.ht ml?pg=2&topic=&topic_set=)

So the decision to make a mini-series probably stems from this.

Except the Myst world actually had an excellent plot.

In fact, I remember reading a Wired article a few years ago where one of the brothers (Robin Miller) who created Myst expressed an interest in moving away from video games specifically because narrative was so difficult to achieve in a game.

It was Miller's fascination with storytelling that nudged him in the direction of film. Halfway through the making of Riven, he began to envy an asset every kung-fu flick and airport potboiler has over interactive games: the ability to reveal the turns of a narrative in set sequence, with no multiple-choice fates or clickable cul-de-sacs.

(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.10/miller.ht ml?pg=2&topic=&topic_set=)

So the decision to make a mini-series probably stems from this.

So once all media is constrained by GPS coordinates, the US gov't could selectively deny unfavored nations access to GPS data, rendering all their DVDs, CDs and eBooks useless?

Sound unlikely? It's interesting that the US is pressuring Europe to shelve its own GPS system.

Domination through media denial: "You want your mTV? Meet our demands."