Slashdot Mirror
Saving the Net
An anonymous reader writes "Doc Searls, editor at Linux Journal, has a very insightful editorial that brings it all together - the FCC media consolidation ruling, SCO vs. Linux, why broadband is under attack by telcos and cable systems, why we lost Eldred vs. Ashcroft, what's really interesting about Howard Dean's presidential campaign, and a very astute observation about the vast gulf between Liberals and Conservatives."
How about we all agree to disband and join bbs's ?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
From the article: But they avoid visiting a fact that should be deeply troubling to every candidate running (and then governing) for money rather than for voters: Dean's lead is owed to a huge number of small donations, not to a small number of large special interests. If he's being bought, it's by his voters. This is a New Thing. It's also been made possible by the Net.
This was part of what the internet was all about: democratizing the ability of an individual outside the established powers to enter into competition or publication or public recognition. Dean has been smart about this and so far, he certainly has my vote.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I'm happy with AOL and MSN. They provide all I need. I find more useful content on there anyway then I do on the "internet"
When will Americans learn what "liberal" really means? Many Americans use it as if it is an insult, and they seem ignorant to the fact that the United States was founded on the basis of liberalism.
The author spends too much time polarizing this into a liberal vs. conservative issue. That's a meaningless division, much like republican vs. democrat. Obviously he has a lot of issues with what he deems as conservatives, so he's stereotyping them and lashing out.
(As a side note, the raw meaning of the term "conservative" is pretty interesting in regard to his issues. You could say that people who want music and software to be free are "liberal." You could also say that people who think that a UNIX-alike is the pinnacle of operating system design are "conservative.")
To paraphrase a common saying, do not attribute to consipracy that which can be adequately explained by greed.
There's little doubt that there's movements working against what much of the Linux communities believe in, but there's no Big Bad hidden agenda here -- just simple, petty and local greed.
Regards,
--
*Art
Terminator is trying to ..excuse me RIAA/MPAA is trying to get Arnold to run for President under their banner..
Not a joke people..
Its time for Revolution...
Don't Tread on OpenSource
And who embodies better money and greed than croporations, who themselves are bigger than many countries?
The robber barons of yesteryear must be staring in stupendous awe from hell!!!
The only 'major' piece missing is a simple and cheap form of active aiming to keep the transmitter and receiver reliably pointing at each other. There's a project for someone.
Well, I'll just go build my own internet... with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the internet.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
Move the whole thing to Canada.
Seriously now. You want Howard Dean? We've got a party full of them. We just keep electing them, and we can't stop ourselves.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
OK, AOL would never let you play streamed Harry Potter movies on it, but you could use the web and run office applications, which would keep most of us happy. Wouldn't it?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
That article just seemed to be a collection of random quotes thrown together without one original thought from the author or even an underlying explanation of how they fit together.
A great example is the quote from the National Review. It is a great quote and specifically attacks the changes that have happened in copyright law. At the end of the quote the article "author" says "National Review is a conservative magazine. John Bloom is a conservative columnist. This is significant." But he doesn't go on to explain WHY this is significant. Is it because the author is surprised that a conservative can have an intelligent thought?
In other things he is just plain wrong. He states that "Liberals often are flummoxed by the way conservatives seem to love big business (including, of course, big media)." Yet it is the democrats who are most in the pocket of big business. Here is a clue - Hollywood is 99.9% liberals. The other 0.1% is Drew Carey. Senator Hollings is a Democrat. DMCA was signed by a Democrat into law. Mary Bono may be a Republican but only in name.
If you think that the internet is failing than this article is a great sign it isn't. The fact that any unintelligent schlub could post an article like this and receive praise for it proves it.
The word consumer, as a whole, is also a source of aggravation. It implies a notion of being fed, of being given content that you don't necessarily desire. And this is precisely what this notion of "distributors of intellectual property" is demanding of you. Sit down in front of your computer/TV, pay an exorbitant fee, and watch the same old boring content and advertisement barrage over and over again. The great thing about the current computer is its ability to allow for the construction of content, not its ability to supply it. This is further amplified by the Internet, and the accompanying ease of distribution and immense audience. For instance, a musician could record a song onto his computer and sell it via the Internet, or a graphic artist could market his art. In the future, perhaps even an independent film company could market it's wares online. A future dictated by DRM and "property" restrictions allows only a few select companies to digitally "watermark" their media in a manner which the now-crippled computer can read. Does anyone honestly believe that these same companies that desire such immense control will relinquish it in the future to independents desiring to sell to the same market?
Suddenly a person is no longer an individual, but a forced consumer of multiple mega-corporations. The prospect is as disturbing as it is possible. The myth of "intellectual property" is curbing and inhibiting the free expression of ideas and content, precisely what copyright law was intended to promote.
---rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Quick! Call Al Gore!
... money. Plain and simple.
When a lot of big companies start seeing a potential to see their profits tumble they will react agressively to protect their interests. Is it any wonder that the media companies are worried that millions of people around the world are sharing millions of music tracks and films? Are the software companies worried about people downloading software? The answer is yes.
Do such companies want to control the internet? Undoutedly. Can you imagine the potential for a company like Disney to broadcast Disney.tv to every household on the planet with an internet enabled tv? Wow... you are talking serious money there, but people can already do it - for free at the moment.
I think a lot of these people identify the internet as this 'Holy Grail' to make billions, if only they had the final, killer ingredient. Whilst this potential exists, where there's money there's immense power and this power will try to bend, distort and manouever the internet as best it can towards its vested interests.
Bring Nader back.
Uh, no. Don't. http://repentantnadervoter.org/
And don't go with Dean either. Help convince Wesley Clark to enter the race: http://www.draftwesleyclark.com/
Howard Dean seems to be a very unusual candidate with regard to the use of technology and the tech crowd in general. How about we try to get an interview with him? We can ask him about DMCA, Patriot act and stuff like that. Wouldn't it be nice to have a president who actually heard of Slashdot?:)
He appeared on Lessig's blog which has (I would guess) a lot fewer readers than Slashdot, so it seems likely he would agree, if we approached it right. Does anyone know his campaign people, so we can find out?
This is a frequent criticism of Modern Democracy. For the moment we'll hold aside the fact that Ancient Democracy was available only to property-holding males (something the republicans I'm sure would love to bring back). Ancient Democracy was not about getting paid, in salary or in kind; in was civic duty.
Modern Democracy, at least as practiced in the USA, is all about money. And as has been said about corruption, "...follow the money." Why don't american politicians finally prove that they're not the lords of a corrupt system, but the leaders of a just system and ban soft money.
I knew then, knew utterly,
the deal done in my heart forever,
though how I knew not,
nor ever have.
Very smart.
The author does an excellent job of synthesizing a number of disparate, troubling issues going on in our society at the moment into a very coherent whole.
If you can understand that democracies are only as good as their voters' information systems, or that markets are only as healthy as the exchange of goods, services, and ideas in them is free, then you should be able to appreciate where the author is going.
The reason esoteric issues like telecom and media regulation, and intellectual "property" law end up commanding such a large amount of attention in the community is because both of these, people are realizing, are not just important, but absolutely essential, to maintaining those very important American principles.
A cheap, ubiquitous communications medium. The free flow of information which respects, but it is not outrageously hobbled by, the rights of authors... It's only our economy, and our democracy, at stake.
I think we need a galvanizing issue. I suggest Saving the Net. To do that, we need to treat the Net as two things:
1. a public domain, and therefore
2. a natural habitat for markets
In other words, we need to see the Net as a marketplace that has done enormous good, is under extreme threat and needs to be saved.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
I once told a friend, "There is far more Stupidity than Evil in the world."
I have since unfortunately found the corollary, "Sufficient Stupidity combined with enough Power is effectively indistinguishable from Evil."
Something like that applies here, "Sufficient Greed combined with enough Power/Wealth can effect the appearance of a Conspiracy."
Think "Greedy Lemmings," and it can look like a Conspiracy.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
First off this the vast gulf between Liberals and Conservatives, I don't exactly know what to say to this except no shit that's like saying there's a huge contrast between black and white, seems to me that possibly stating the obvious is a little too much this early in the wonderful work day.
Second off, why is everyone making SCO the talk of the town? It's the right of every american to be able to sue another american, but that doesn't mean their right. How many civil suits are just tossed out every year? I mean lets face it folks, if the hens in the hen house are going to spread the rumors at least focus on the fact that everyone except SCO has stated they don't haev a leg to stand on. Quit bringing them up all the damned time, it's really insanely getting old and quite frankly it's time to call a spade a spade. SCO/Caldera/Whatever was a viable company back in the day with DR DOS, Caldera OpenLinux, and other software packages. They led the way in easy linux installers and netware networking code, and they really did bring the idea of a nice easy system to reality. But like everything else this was copied and innovation stopped, henceforth Caldera stopped being a real player in the market. There was a little wind in their sail when they went after the LSB, but alas hard to push for LSB when you're suing the L.
So it's a ploy for them to pretend like their still a player in the game when they haven't been on the playing roster for nearly 3 years and a few exhibition games don't count. They're like the Harlom Globtrotters of the Linux World, except they really suck at what they do, so I guess they're not like the Harlem Globtrotters of the Linux World.
Lastly I know everyone seems all "scared" of media companies getting to big, but entertainment is quite possibly the most cut-throat industry in all the world. There are so many avenues for entertainment and leisure that these companies will stop at nothing to try and score the almigty buck. And will they ever stop, nope. Ask yourself, do you own a TV, does it watch commercial/cable television. Do you remember the last mt. dew commercial you saw? Then really stop bitching because you're part of your own self-identified problem. Don't bite the hand that feeds ya, whether you acknowledge it or not. I like commercial television, and I like television. I don't mind getting independent news from the web and independent publications (right and left wing newsletters are great reading).
Enlighten yourself and be an example to others. Don't just bitch about everything all the time. Anyone can whine, it takes someone actually doing something to make a difference.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
The potential he has to revolutionize politics is worth voting for.
I dont agree with everything he says, but hes the only politician who actually cares what we think.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The other [factor] is the high regard political conservatives hold for successful enterprises. Combine the two, and you get conservatives eagerly rewarding companies whose primary achievements consist of successful long-term adaptation to highly regulated environments. That's what's happened with broadcasting and telecom.
Lest we forget, it is actually the Democratic Party that is more in the pocket of Hollywood and the media companies, while the Republican Party tends to favor "big business" in general. Both parties have their share of guilt in all this mess. The DMCA was passed with bipartisan (i.e. substantial Democratic) support and was signed into law by a Democrat (Clinton). Trial and IP lawyers also tend to support the Democrats (cf. John Edwards). (Over-)deregulation of the media and telecoms industries took place largely during the Clinton Administration (though it started in the first Bush Administration).
I seriously doubt that Howard Dean is any angel on this, either. He's just as much a politician as any other. His rhetoric about being from the "Democractic wing of the Democratic Party" is a little ironic, given that he's against gun control, is hardly a pacifist (he supported Gulf War I and interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo), etc. etc. etc. I don't see him as being a liberal at all (neither in the modern "leftist" sense nor in the older Jeffersonian sense), but an opportunist like any other.
FWIW given my own political positions I'll probably be voting for "anything but Dubya", but I dislike the idolizing that Dean has been benefitting from of late. And I also dislike disingenuous attacks on one party or the other...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Not all Democrats are Liberal or Progressive.
Dean is a moderate, not a liberal, just like Bush isnt a real conservative, hes a moderate.
Meaning not everything they do follows their ideology.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I second that e-motion. Bad pun, sorry.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
People walking past the connection beams and getting the laser light aimed at their eye. Big lawsuits here.
If it gets really popular, you get to see all of the beams of light around you everywhere, thus creating a new game for children where they walk to places trying to dodge or jump over the lights like in a movie where a thief is trying to get a well protected diamond or something. That would be the good part, as the people who disregard the beams would break the connection making anyone playing online Quake very, very mad.
On a serious note, I don't think it's feasible. Too much interference from other light in the same spectrum, like...say...the sun.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
From the article: And I'm hearing from people who insist that Linux is not exactly ownerless, either. "Linux is a registered Trademark of Linus Torvalds" appears on 268,000 Web documents, Google tells me. In at least one sense, these folks say, Linus owns Linux. That means it is, in a limited sense, proprietary.
This should really be corrected. The trademark is simply on the name. You can't go write your own software and call it Linux. But the software and code is as far from proprietary as you can get. If Linus started wrecking Linux with patches, you could take the code, rename it, and have your own kernel. This guy should RTFL (license) before he writes an article.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
As another poster pointed out, it's plain and simple greed. The big media companies want perpetual copyright so they can continue to milk those works as long as possible. Copyright to a media company is the same as a manufacturing company's raw materials or even inventory. Manufacturing organizations are taxed on their inventory; if the big media companies want to own all that copyright, they should be taxed on it.
The real issue here is that the overwhelming majority of people at large are not aware of these issues. Anyone attempting to educate the masses on such things are immediately shut out as hippie radicals. The only people really working at these issues are the ones who stand to make a profit on them (i.e. the big media companies). Those same people working relentlessly for profit via copyright are the ones who are so quick to equate Linux, open source, anything public domain, etc to communism.
The cruel irony here is that the very people who label public domain as communism are the same people who are robbing our freedoms.
Sigh. Linux and the Internet were great while they lasted.
I'm a hardcore conservative, and I'm not sure how much I agree with this definition. To my way of thinking, it's not a matter of "rewarding the strong". It's a matter of incentive --- if people are going to be taken care of no matter whether or not they do any useful work, they simply aren't likely to do any useful work. It's more a matter of rewarding effort than of rewarding strength. Granted, there are some serious problems with the way capitalism works too, and it does often turn out that the "stronger" ones do better. But I think that's the nature of freedom. You can't truly have freedom without the possibility of great success or great failure.
On a side note, as a conservative, I'm very strongly against the modern notion of "intellectual property". I'm all for property rights, capitalism, and the free market. But as the article mentions, copyright isn't a property right and shouldn't be treated as one. I believe in the Constitution above everything else, as far as politics go. And in the thinking of the founders, copyright cannot be a property right. Property is a right that the founders envisionsed as being inherent to mankind --- right up there with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Rights like that cannot be infringed by the state. They are not granted by the state. They are inherent to the people. But, the Constitution allows Congress to GRANT and LIMIT copyright. If copyright were an inherent right, they would have protected it as such --- they certainly wouldn't have given Congress the authority to "grant" it. Therefore I must conclude that the notion of "intellectual property" is thoroughly unconstitutional, and thus I cannot support it.
From the article:
Worse, [the Internet] was designed as an end-to-end system, where all the power to create, distribute and consume are located at the ends of the system and not in the middle.
The Net's end-to-end nature is so severely anathema to cable and telco companies that they have done everything they can to make the Net as controlled and asymmetrical as possible.
But the phone system is also end-to-end in nature. Cable and telco companies know they are just selling access, same as they sell access to the phone system or the cable system (most cable providers produce little by way of content; that's left to people like USA Networks and HBO.)
I think the situation at the telcos and cablecoms is far more complicated than how the author protrays. Witness the trouble Verizon took recently to block the subpoena of a customer whom the RIAA wanted. And one of the megacorps is Sony who both sells music and produces devices to copy that music.
News from the future:
July 23rd, 2008
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court today upheld the Pre-emptive Piracy Prevention Act (PPPA), which gave the private armies employed by the sole remaining media corporation the power to declare and pursue war against individuals on US soil - who can then be designated as "enemy combatants" and tried by military tribunals created by our glorious leader, Grand Marshall Rupert Murdoch.
Omnimedia spokesmen hailed the ruling, calling it a victory for intellectual property rights, and saying that it vindicated their use of nuclear weapons against the city of Palo Alto, where their intelligence indicated that the source of all the world's pirated content, the so-called "Universal Inserter," was hiding.
Mere minutes after the blast, the Universal Inserter uploaded an illegal copy of Charlice's new video (purchase a license to view title) [goatse.cx], to his partner in crime, the Universal Downloader. Experts believe the upload is genuine.
The attorney representing the Universal Inserter, Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig, who has drawn considerable controversy for refusing to acknowledge that his client even exists, was unavailable for comment as he is being held on charges of aiding and abetting the enemy at the Omnimedia detention center in Gautonomo Bay.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
A hurricane came unexpectedly. The ship went down and was lost. A man found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing. Only bananas and coconuts.
Used to 5-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do, so for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice and longed for his old life and fixed his gaze on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.
One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. She rowed up to him and in disbelief, he asked her:
"Where did you come from? How did you get here?"
"I rowed from the other side of the island," she said. "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing," he said. "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many are there? You were lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."
"It's only me, "she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up; nothing did."
He was confused. "Then how did you get the rowboat?"
"Oh, simple, " replied the woman. "I made the rowboat out of materials that I found on the island. The oars were whittled from Gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
"B-B-But that's impossible," stuttered the man. "You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?"
"Oh, that was no problem," replied the woman. "On the other side of the island there is a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgettable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But enough of that," she said. "Where do you live?"
Sheepishly, he confessed that he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.
"Well, let's row over to my place, then," she said. After a few minutes of rowing she docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked to the shore he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman tied up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead, dumb struck. As they walked into the house, she said casually:
"It's not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please; would you like a drink?"
"No, no thank you," he said, still dazed. "I can't take any more coconut juice."
"It's not coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?"
Trying to hide his amazement, the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk.
After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, "I'm going to slip into something comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."
No longer questioning anything, the man went into the bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge were fastened onto it's end inside a swivel mechanism. "This woman is amazing," mused. "What next?"
When he returned, she greeted him wearing nothing but vines - strategically positioned - and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckoned for him to sit down next to her.
"Tell me, " she began, suggestively, slithering closer to him, "we've been out here for a very long time. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing for all these months. You know..." She stared into his eyes.
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You mean--?" he replied...... "You mean.....I can check my e-mail from here?"
To win conservative minds on limiting extensions of copyrights, it is a good idea to prove that these limitations may have a greater economic benefit than extending them. I have seen some work in this area, but none that definitively proves this theory.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
How about the innocents killed by execution? Is that not a problem? How about the fact that it merely sets up the state as a band of murderous thugs? How about the fact that, at the end of the day, it just kills another person and therefore doesn't genuinely solve anything?
Here's a clue for your civiliation. Life is NOT precious.
At a minimum, it's a source of labor, which means it has some value. Personally, I'd prefer to see that principle put to use- forced hard labor for life for all people who would otherwise be condemned to death.
but my experience with PhD's tells me that intelligence and possesing a PhD does not neccesarily correlate.
;)
with me it does of course
This is just a pipe-dream. But I often wondered if the Internet could be reborn though another connection medium. I was thinking it being based on quantum communication. The reason for QC would be that it can't be controlled by the FCC, has the ability to (in theory) be accessed wirelessly and at a global level.
Life is not for the lazy.
He didn't sign the PATRIOT act, and he has pledged to repeal it if elected. He's also pledged to scale back our military in favor of education, equal rights for lesbians and gays, accept the Kyoto treaty, and a lot of other things that sound really good to me.
Check it out:
http://kucinich.us/issues/issue_10key.htm
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Apparently, there is a company in Nigeria that can help. They just need $1000 to cover the expenses of relating the patents.
nelamason@mailsurf.com contacted me with respect to large amounts of money I could earn for pretending to be a dead relative.
The Late Engineer MARK JOHNSON, Lebanese national and an oil merchant/contractor with the Federal Government of Nigeria, until his death five years ago in a ghastly air crash, banked with us here at the UNION BANK PLC, Lagos, and had a closing balance of USD12,000,000.00 (Twelve Million Dollars) which the bank now unquestionably expect it to be claimed by MARK JOHNSON'S next of kin or alternatively be donated to a Charity Organisation here. Efforts have been made by the UNION BANK, to get in touch with any of the JOHNSON'S family but to no avail. It is because of the perceived impossibility of not being able to locate ENGR MARK JOHNSON'S next of kin that the management under the influence of our Chairman Board of Directors, Major General Kalu Ike Kalu who has agreed that since the incident occurred in 1998 and has left the fund dormant and devalued we should transfer the fund overseas and utilize it either on stock exchange market or personal business interest.
He can possibly put you in contact for a suitable fee. I'd recommend instead understanding humour as a method of expression. Far easier on the bank account.
Many unsigned musicians provide free downloads of their music on their websites as a way to attract more fans, for example my friend Rick Walker. Many such musicians, while relatively unknown, are as good as any major label band and certainly an improvement over the pablum they serve up on ClearChannel.
You can find many more examples in my new article:
-
Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads
The article also explores some of the historical and legal issues behind copyright, and suggests steps the file traders can take to make file sharing legal.If you're a musician who offers downloads of your music, I can link to your band's website from the article if you give my article a reciprocal link. Please follow the instructions given here.
(I just posted a new draft if you read it before.)
Request your free CD of my piano music.
How about the innocents killed by execution? Is that not a problem? How about the fact that it merely sets up the state as a band of murderous thugs? How about the fact that, at the end of the day, it just kills another person and therefore doesn't genuinely solve anything?
.
Innocent people killed by execution is a huge problem, but there are countless cases where there is no question that the convict is the perpetrator. In those cases, I support the death penalty.
I respect people that are opposed to execution on moral grounds, but IMO tolerating murder by letting killers live is just as bad as "being a band of murderous thugs". It's just too bad the system is so wasteful on resources that a killer can appeal appeal appeal for years and drain money
At the end of the day, it kills another person who has no value to humanity. Good riddance to them. (And hey, it clears prison space, which I'm sure the RIAA would love to put to use.)
However, I agree with you about hard labor. But it will never happen...the ACLU or some other bleeding-heart organization and assert prisoners' rights to watching TV and living rather comfortably on taxpayer dollars.
accept the Kyoto treaty
I was under the impression that such treaties needed to be ratified by the Congress (specifically the Senate, I think?), rather than the president.
For that matter, every other item you mention above is under direct control of the congress. Sure, it sounds good, but that doesn't mean any of it is likely to happen under any circumstances.
Yeah, especially when you are trying to herd a bunch of stubborn cats like geeks. The problem is that geeks, who mostly espouse libertarian values, have been sucked into the John Wayne individualism that permeates conservative thought. Until geeks learn to embrace the concepts behind words like "solidarity" and "cooperation," any concerted effort by technologists to combat more organized institutions is destined to wither on the vine.
But good luck anyway.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
I think the situation is even worse than the author describes. The media companies are turning copyright into a property right, which is bad enough, but they are also ensuring that they don't actually transfer any property rights when you buy from them.
They are setting up a sort of feudal system, where they own all the property, and we are merely serfs who get to pay rent to access the property.
It is important to restore some balance in the copyright law between the public and the media companies; but I think it is equally important to define what property rights (i.e. fair use rights) consumers have when they buy a CD or a DVD.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
Much of our society is not fit to vote. They don't pay attention to the issues, they don't critically think about what they see and hear and they sure as hell don't have enough passion to keep a fire lit under our leaders' asses. Giving every tom, dick, harry, jane and sally the right to vote is the perfect way to guarantee that you will have a government that does represent us. "Swing voters" are only at best about 20% of the electorate, the rest are pretty much 50/50 both major parties. If we could get rid of the other 80%'s right to vote then we'd have an electorate filled mostly with at a minimum semi-critical thinkers.
It's taboo to say that just because you're a citizen doesn't mean you are fit to wield any form of political power. Of course it all goes back to the inability of most Americans to pass a moral judgement against someone's behavior and beliefs. How often do we hear "well that's their culture and it's just different from ours?" I'm in college and I hear that all the time. I get a look of utter disgust like I'm a member of the KKK when I suggest that not everyone is biochemically equal and that certain cultural practices are barbaric and worthy of our deepest contempt. When I criticized many African and Middle Eastern countries for tolerating female circumcision I got a little bit of "how dare you criticize Africa you honkey" from some of the blacks there.
You want to get rid of corruption? It won't end with banning soft money. You have many reforms needed on top of that.
1) Make it a class 4-6 felony to give soft money. You know what that felony class range is? Around 10 years to life as possible sentences.
2) Pass a constitutional amendment waiving 8th amendment protection for those attempting to corrupt the government so that if you catch a lobbyist trying to bribe someone you can execute them if they are a repeat offender. Waive the same protection for elected and appointed government officials
3) Allow each state to pass its own ethics rules. Allow each state to issue a warrant for the arrest of a member of Congress from their delegation who has violated their rules. Also give the state police the power to place their member of Congress under arrest anywhere in the US and extradite them to their state for criminal prosecution.
4) Give each state legislature the power to pass a vote of no confidence in their congressional delegation.
5) Create a new form of impeachement for the executive branch where if a simple majority of state legislatures pass a vote of no confidence in a member of the cabinet they're out and if 2/3 or more vote on the President he's removed.
6) Since we're also talking about democratic reforms how about we pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting judges from ordering appropriations of taxpayer money and creating public policy. They can rule it unconstitutional, but not create it.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
#include sco-rant.h
#include visionary-emulator.h
#include some-other-guys-ideas.h
void main()
{
printf();
}
This statement is ludicrous. Linus owns the name Linux, not the operating system. There is a very big difference. He owns none of the code. He only has control over what can be called Linux. So far he seems to have been pretty lenient with that trademark as there are over a hundred distros and most, if not all of them, use the word Linux in some part of their name.
Time makes more converts than reason
Read your history.
The point is, there is no real "ideology" per se regarding the Internet. It was a communications advancement, not a grand humanitarian vision.
My original post was attempting to combat the grandiose revisionist rhetoric that so many geeks are spewing forth about the Internet.
It's not a church. It's not the red cross.
It's a telecom network.
evil adrian
First off, all these moves by huge orginisations are more reactionary than predatory. Things are changing quickly, and they can't deal with it to well.
What I think is happening, is we are moving into a democratic technocracy. Where the major policy decisions and values are being forced by the nature of the technology and not the nature of government. Copyrights are a classic example. No matter how many laws you pass, no matter how many troops you send out, they are effectively dead, and unenforcable - unless you become an absolute police state, something that is not likely to happen in normal democratic governments - even though they are trying very hard at it.
In a way this is a natural progression, and is good. Technology allows our society to move away from mob rule. I have a right not to be taxed and regulated so much even if the popular mob thinks otherwise.
http://ronja.twibright.com/
(Exactly what you were talking about!)
Tony.
Ludicrous? Tell that to those guys who'll sell you plots on the moon and the planets in our solar system.
Apparently they just said 'all of that is ours' and it now actually is because no one complained (check the FAQ).
Finally, a note from the company's self-proclaimed Head Cheese: At the time if the writing of this news letter I need to let all of you know I have been presented a wonderful acknowledgment from the Congress of the United States. I have been named co-chairman of the Republican Congressional Business Advisory Council. I have also been given the National Republican Leadership Award and most recently I have been issued the highest honor the National Republican Congressional Committee has, the prestigious Republican Gold Medal.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
How would you propose the `bulls` force a homocidal criminal who cares little for doing what you expect or ask? If they cared they wouldn't be there. How do you force them? You can't. Why give them an opportunity to escape and reinfect society?
The problem with death-sentences not being a detterant, as I see it, is that they are not linked to the crime as a consequence for murder. The temporal distance is to great for society to keep in its consciousness. Consquences need to be swifter with more media attention. Remind us, comfort us...
There will, are, were a few innocents `murdered` by the state but honestly I don't mind. Its not me or anyone I know.
Civilized societies do not carry out executions, because they are barbaric and against basic human rights.
It's not about politics. At least not as how we normally think about it.
The idea that "property" is the one all-consuming right that we have, quite frankly is self-destructive. Sure, property is important...but copyright is exactly that. IP is bullshit.
To go a step further, the reason for this is the belief that we can all "do it ourselves". That somehow, we can pull ourselves up from the bootstraps and make ourselves successful is frankly...bullshit.
There are more important things than business, and money and profit.
Culture and society.
Those are the most important things we have. Without those things, everything else is meaningless. We need to start to realize that.
I agree with a limited copyright. My idea? Copyright should last for 20 years, or until the commercial aspect is gone. If you take something off the market, put it in the public domain. Allow those that care about the culture to nurture it.
They are conservative ideas however. One of the problem is that nobody can refute them in the current political enviroment. Make a sneeze toward it and you called a commie.
How can you fix it?
I don't know..
I'm not entirely certain how that post could be modded down as flamebait. It is very historically accurate. Liberalism was essentially "usurped" by the socialist movement in the early parts of the 20th century. Perhaps usurped is not a good word since I don't think it was some sort of intentional plot, heh heh, but it's the only word I can think of at the moment. Whatever the case may be, liberalism's definition has changed drastically since the founders. Early writing by Ayn Rand, for example, do not directly refer to the words "liberal" but certainly reflects sentiment, albeit her personal opinion, of regret over this very political shift from old liberalism to modern socialistic liberalism. So the claim of the orginal post that our nation was founded on the principles of liberalism truly is factually misleading without clarification since the definition used by those long dead founding liberals truly is completely different than the definition modern readers will think of when they read the claim.
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
You fool! He's a Libertarian, not a liberal. Get it right: Conservatives worship Satan; Liberals defend their right to do it; Libertarians don't care if they do it, as long as they do it over there.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Apparently Orrin Hatch is trying to change that.
About time too. Who needs to send troops to 'liberate' a foreign country when you can just send the Pres to kick some ass?
Warning: May contain nuts
It's very frustrating for me, and hard for me to understand. To me, the best way to live is to learn as much as you can, and try to find the best choices for yourself by gathering as much information as is possible (or feasible; you don't want to spend 2 hours researching where you will eat lunch today). Art and creation are, I believe, some of the most fun you can have without being naked (not that that's excluded...)
But a lot of people seem really, truly content with being told what to eat, wear, listen to, drive, vote for, support, etc. There are people who always vote Democrat/Republican without any consideration for the actual candidate. There are people that prefer McDonald's to real food. Most people just do what their friends do, and how did their friends start doing it? What's the source? I guess there's no way to be sure, but I'm betting it was an advertisement.
Maybe it's because it makes life easy. You listen to music to relax, and thinking about it is too hard. It's easier to watch TV than to read a book. It's easy to enjoy fast food, because it's a collection of chemicals designed to be pleasing to the largest number of people. No dangerous sharp edges for you to beware.
Similarly, most people don't want to create. Artistic effort is difficult, requiring many hours to produce something. TV can be enjoyed now. Learning how to really cook would be hard, and my family needs dinner today. Hamburger Helper is good enough. It was a hard day at work and I have a lot on my mind. I don't have time to be creative.
Now, there's great joy to be had in take-out pizza, beer, and Brotherhood of the Wolf. Some days, it's nice to let someone else take the helm. But Einstein understood that we have to keep our brains moving in new directions in order to keep them alive (he played the violin). If all you do is work and consume, you are a unit. I couldn't stand it.
(Some people take great joy in their work, which is wonderful, and ideal even. But being one-dimensional is still bad. You'll get further if you stretch your mind in new directions as often as possible; you may be surprised at how related two seemingly dissimilar things really are.)
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
YOUR life may not be precious, but everyone else's, well that's up to them.
By the way, did you know that the USA is the only country in the world which openly allows the execution of under 18's and is responsible for 13 out of the 20 known executions of minors in the last decade?
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Yeah, and it later turned out that it was wrong, and he was innocent.
So, who is to be executed if someone is executed and it turns out that they are innocent? The judge? The jury? The guy who pulls the switch?
By your logic, someone has to be executed, because an innocent person was murdered.
No, by logic that you have assumed on my behalf, you have made that conclusion. I never said anything of the sort. What about a case like the elderly driver who killed those people in the marketplace? Innocent people died, but there would obviously never be an execution.
So by your logic that you have made up for me, anytime there is any death by the hands of another, there has to be an execution. See the idiocy we get into when you just randomly extrapolate things?
Getting back to the point, I said there are countless cases where there is no question that the convict is the perpetrator. I was talking about cases like Jeffrey Dahmer, the sniper killer (John Mohammed?), etc etc. I'm sure there are cases from your local area that you can think of that apply here. In my area, a son stabbed his father to death over an argument. There were two witnesses, neighbor testimonials, and he had the knife in his hand over the body when the police arrived. I'm talking about cases like that.
"- Pot is safer than Beer"
On a societal level, pot is not as dangerous because its abuse is greatly limited by anti-drug abuse laws and prosecution.
On an individual level, pot is a lot more dangerous, with toxins that stay in the body a lot longer than with beer. Also, pot abuse is forced on those who are near by. Smoke a joint, anyone near you smokes it too. Beer consumption in contrast is a private matter.
It's not just the President, either. Take a look at Senators and Representatives, too. You don't even have to do an in-depth analysis. If your Senator doesn't get it, vote him/her out. Period. You might even get away with simply voting younger. If the average age of Congress dropped 20 years we'd have a different government.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
This is the key point from the article, the heart of what's wrong with the anti-IP movement and the Slashdot crowd:
On such a simple scale, it was clear how the majority of the Court would vote. Not because they are conservative, but because they are Americans. We have a (generally sensible) pro-property bias in this culture that makes it extremely hard for people to think critically about the most complicated form of property out there--what most call "intellectual property." To question property of any form makes you a communist. Yet this is precisely our problem: To make it clear that we are pro-copyright without being extremists either way.
So deep is this confusion that even a smart, and traditionally leftist, social commentator like Edward Rothstein makes the same fundamental mistake in a piece published Saturday. He describes the movement, of which I am part, as "countercultural," "radical," and anti-corporate. Now no doubt there are some for whom those terms are true descriptors. But I for one would be ecstatic if we could just have the same copyright law that existed under Richard Nixon..."
Through history the "there should be no such thing as private property!" movement has been driven by those who simply don't have much private property of their own and thus would like some of yours. This is the perception most of the mainstream has of the "it's our right to download movies and software!" crowd; that they simply want something for free because they lack the resources to pay.
You ask why we middle-Americans side with the big-media companies, but the answer is we don't. We side with the very basic American idea of you not being able to move into my houses with twenty of your hippy friends in the name of "property belongs to everybody!!! Who cares that we didn't build or maintain or earn or buy it!!!"
Someone will shout back that this isn't the argument of the anti-IP side, and I understand; but that's how it sounds to us. You didn't write or film or fund the movie. So why do you claim a "right" to see it free?
The author of the article is absolutely right; if you want to win the debate you must make it more about reforming copyright laws to make them more reasonable (the mainstream can get down with that), and less about "YOU EVIL CAPITALISTS DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO KEEP ANYTHING TO YOURSELVES WITHOUT SHARING WITH US!!!" The average American will NEVER come over to that side.
The ability to own property is as fundamental a freedom to this country as free speech or the right to privacy. If you want to change the minds of the masses (and you must if you want the politicians and CEO's to change theirs; bribes or no bribes they will go with the flow of public opinion in order to stay in office) you must re-frame the argument in that way... or watch your movement slowly die as the open-trading technology window closes. And it WILL close.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
You do realise that just like BS stands for 'Bullshit', Ph.D. just stands for Piled higher and Deeper?
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Actually if you just avoid anything Michael posts, it will be about news again. He is the one posting most of the archliberal stuff, and he tends to post the most innacurate news items to boot. I honestly have no idea why Slashdot keeps him, he is nothing more than an unprofessional joke.
Finkployd
There's an old story about a chess player who makes a deal with the Devil. Satan, through his sub daemons, agrees to make the chess player the best chess player in the world on two conditions... 1) He relinquishes his soul (standard boilerplate stuff) 2) After he dies, he'll play a game of chess every day with Satan.
Man agrees, becomes undisputed champion, beats Deep Blue blindfolded, etc. Eventually, he dies, goes to Hell, and sits down to play his first game with Satan. It's then that he realizes that Satan is, quite literally, an idiot.
..In my eyes, the biggest problem with the structure of the telecom industry and the ensuing problems that this creates for conent providers is the fact that it COSTS to upkeep the system. Millions of miles (I'm guessing here) of copper and fiber crisscross this planet and somebody has to go out there and maintain it. That costs incredible amounts of money, which in turn (partly) justifies the incredible expense for bandwidth and operations.. ..If we had no 'lines' tying us down but rather high speed (100 Mbit+) wireless nodes for everything the cost of ownership would plummet (only having to invest in transmission towers and satillites, which I do understand is a pretty hefty pricetag, but you can't tell me its more expensive than paying for the upkeep of all the installed copper/fiber around this country..and the world for that matter).. I'm simplifying here because I really don't understand the intricacies of the telecom industry when it comes to upkeep, but this is what I'm logically, from my limited knowledge, concluding about the situation.. ..One could say..that just as the recording industry's business model is becoming outdated because of the advent of new and cheap digital reproduction technologies, Telecom's structure with the use of 'lines' is outdated because those lines stifle the ability for the consumer to make choices as to what provider they want to use. I understand its not as simple as I'm posing here, but without dedicated 'lines' that have to be owned and upkept one would have to admit the ballgame would get a whole lot more interesting as far as how telco's and content providers would have to operate in order to win the customer's (I hate the word consumer, it really does sound like I'm being 'fed' something rather than entering into a negotiation to buy a product..)trust.. ..Or something to that effect..
And you believe that the State is skilled enough to actually separate the wheat from the chaff? Hah! I, for one, will not take any odds of being a casualty of this system when other alternatives exist.
I'm curious as to what value you think it serves. I cannot see any real value in the death penalty, and therefore cannot support it in good faith.
I respect people that are opposed to execution on moral grounds, but IMO tolerating murder by letting killers live is just as bad as "being a band of murderous thugs". It's just too bad the system is so wasteful on resources that a killer can appeal appeal appeal for years and drain money .
Uhm...how is choosing to not execute a person "tolerating murder"? States without a death penalty generally give those who would be executed a sentence of life without parole. This is hardly tolerance. Consider the alternative of life imprisonment, especially lifelong imprisonment with hard labor as I suggest. This is still, technically, a death sentence. The difference, however, is that the convict's life hasn't been taken, merely his/her liberty. The State doesn't give you life; it does give you liberty. In a case of life imprisonment, especially a harsh one as I believe in, most of the allegedly beneficial aspects of state-sponsored murder are preserved.
At the end of the day, it kills another person who has no value to humanity. Good riddance to them.
I really hope you can see what a vacant argument that is, especially when you mix it with your agreement about hard labor. Obviously, you have to recognize that, at a minimum, a living person is a unit of labor. Labor has a value. Regardless of that, though, you seem bound to the assumption that someone who murders is without value to humanity, I guess on the grounds that murder is morally reprehensible and immediately strips you of your value. Surely, then, we should start our condemnation with those who murder and extend it to those who support murder. That's fine. The executioners have their backs to the wall first, followed by their supporters.
However, I agree with you about hard labor. But it will never happen...the ACLU or some other bleeding-heart organization and assert prisoners' rights to watching TV and living rather comfortably on taxpayer dollars.
Nobody batted an eye when McVeigh was essentially put in solitary confinement for several years. Clearly, people are able to distinguish between different levels of reprehensibility. I don't care if someone who's in prison for bouncing checks or selling marijuana watches TV and gets protection from violent prisoners. I *want* many of society's criminals rehabilitated so their lives can be of benefit to others (unfortunately, prison rarely rehabilitates). On the other hand, I want those who've violently taken things from others to be forced to serve them. In the case of murder, I believe no amount of labor can truly repay for the damage done, so the only option is to take back as much labor as possible, which is life, without parole, at hard labor.
I'd also like to add that, as the friend of someone who was thrown in jail merely for wearing the t-shirt of a heavy metal band, I am thankful that the ACLU exists.
The author of the article makes some interesting speculations, but would have been better served by doing some research before waxing philosophical.
First, at least with DSL, the main reason that it's usually asymmetric in favor of download speed is a technical one -- issues arise with crosstalk. Check out http://www.commweb.com/article/COM20011010S0005 for a more thorough discussion.
Also, the reason the Supreme Court ruled the way it did in Eldred v. Ashcroft wasn't because of confusion about what kind of right copyright is or anything so abstract. The court said that since the term of copyright enacted by the Sonny Bono CTEA was still limited, it was constitutional. It's not the court's job to decide what length of term is appropriate to protect innovation; that's why Congress was given that charge by the Constitution. If you, like most thinking human beings, don't agree with the copyright term lengths, your representatives are where you should look for relief.
In short, it seems that much of what the author is attributing to Big Media changing the notion of copyrights and the nature of the 'Net is due to technical concerns of one kind or another. Does that mean the threat isn't there? No, but we're not going to get anywhere by misunderstanding its origins.
The Republican Party is geared towards saving people money.
Sounds good so far ... most people consider saving money to be a good thing.
This is the key issue for Republican politics, regardless of all the morality bullshit they spew.
Well, if you are immoral, then you don't understand morality. You can't image actually having it, so you impute weird motives instead of just listening to what people say.
If you're greedy, you vote Republican, whether it's for an end to the estate tax or a $300 tax refund loan.
How is it greedy to want to save money? Your own money?
I put in the extra hours, I got the deliverable done on time, I did the work, why shouldn't I keep my money? How is that greedy? I think that coveting other people's money is what is greedy.
...Are recieving the LEAST amount of dollars in these tax cuts "for families" as you stated. Sure cut their taxes 50 dollars a month and cut the robber-baron billionaire's taxes so they get an extra 500,000 (0?) a month. What's a poor corporation to do but send their job's oversea's so as to get that couple extra zero's bushites won't give em'? That's what they'll do because they are upset when they get a couple strings cut from the arms and legs of one more pupet president.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
Doc Searls makes the mistake of attempting to blame the problem on a conservative mindset in the entertainment and telecom industries. He rehashes the same old misconception: left=open, right=good old boys club; left=fairness, right=tyranny of the powerful. It's easy to find how this is not true, using his own article. He says how the telecoms are used to operating in a regulated environment. So who regulated the environment, but liberal legislators who wanted to promote (ding, ding, ding) FAIRNESS. If you have a natural monopoly, it's not inherently ILLEGAL. However, trying to ARTIFICIALLY extend the monopoly past its possible lifespan or use your position to gouge customers is not allowed by antitrust laws. He also inexplicably uses a sports metaphor (make it, take it) and makes me wonder if the liberal idea of baskeball would require putting weights on Allan Iverson to make it more "fair". Similarly, he jokingly admits that he'd like to have the same copyright law that existed under Nixon. The irony is that the mess that is our current copyright law was introduced under the Carter administration.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Or follow the Tour de France from my office.
Or buy books online.
Or email pictures to grandma.
Or ...
(lookout, the sky is falling, and I'm sure its because of a (right/left wing) conspiracy).
Well, for starters you don't actually need to line up at some office to immigrate, most of the paper-work can be done remotely these days. And the border is open enough that you can come here and work with almost no red tape.
But the real reason is that generally we don't want any of you: Canada only accepts for immigration the world's best and brightest, and in general those on the top of the pyramid in first-world countries aren't willing to risk losing their status by emigrating.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
As George Lakoff explained in Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't (University of Chicago, 1995), conservatives consider strength a "moral value". Strong is good. Weak is bad.
And if you want to really piss off a conservative, you can then point out that this idea--Strong good, weak bad--is Satanist dogma.
On the other hand, the reverse--Strong Bad--answers his email in a really funny manner.
BILL: But if we change the constitution....
KID: We can pass all sorts of crazy laws!
BILL: Now you're talking!
(in every sense!)
In all seriousness, your Canada comment points out how /.'s American bias is starting to distort reality: just because the US government screws up the US Internet doesn't mean the rest of the Internet will be significantly effected.
Americans are now a minority online, and as we all know, the Internet routes around damaged legal jurisdictions. Perhaps the best thing that could happen to the Internet is the long run is for the creation of a Great Firewall of America like in Signal to Noise and let the rest of us get along with our surfing.
This is not a new concept: whoever controls information outlets controls what the readers of that content see. Ever wonder why there is a King James Version of the Bible? or a New International version? They started from arguments between groups that eventually resulted in new bibles being printed. The same thing happens with movies and music. Anyone over 40 can give you the name of a song they like that got remade recently and an incident where some kid thought the remake was the original, giving credit to the new artist. Or old TV movies/series that get remade to the same effect.
Every time a new distribution media comes along it is usually controlled easily and readily because startup costs and production tended to be centralized. Publishing companies need printing presses, music and TV need studios, etc. People who want to control the distribution can easily do so by cutting it off or regulating it at the source. Distribution was also easily controlled since transportation cartels tended to be monopolies or oligopolies that would make deals with producers or get taken over by them. Localized distrubitors could be bullied with threats of price wars or bribed with treats of guarenteed monopolies in their area (much as states do with wine distribution contracts these days). Yet the internet is an entirely different entity, in that distributor and publisher have been combined into one and that no one corporation can hope to realistically control even the majority of computer-based infrastructure.
As with any new medium, test cases arise that will set precedent for how to approach this new medium. Companies with the money are bribing Congressional officials to guarentee their copyrights and change the nature of them from honorable, respectable, limited right to an exact piece material into exclusive right to repress any and every idea even remotely based on the original idea for 75-100 years. Innovation has slowed dramatically as a result, and this would decimate engineering and scientific progress if the same ideas ever became law in those fields. Yet now people can readily copy material and distribute (publish) it with the click of a mouse. There's no time to tax it, regulate it, put it through a middleman, or anything else. Copyright laws were changing even before the internet came about, and music oligopolies were exploiting the populace for decades, but now they can be circumvented with ease. This infuriates the companies since fair-market value for their material turns out to be so much lower than their formerly enforcable prices were. Thus, in a backlash, they now want to charge more to "make up for lost profit" and have Draconian copyrights and copyright enforcement laws to protect their material ad infinitum whether it is justifiable or not.
What really makes this tricky is that the infrastructure is diverse and the battlefield is international. Laws are limited only to the country they are made in. Ultimately it would take the UN to write legislation for anything realistic to apply to the entire planet, so the companies are going for the next-best thing: arresting or bankrupting anyone in the US involved in "copyright violation" and trying to force other countries to do the same. They do this by threatening trade sanctions by bemoaning their loss of revenues due to "pirates", legitimate or otherwise, and getting pity from some of the populace. It also helps that these same companies also tend to own TV and news stations as well as many congressmen who rely on those sources to get re-elected.
It will be difficult to fight this war from our end since we lack the resources and congresmen of these giant companies. How do we fight back legally? First, get some like-minded friends together and write your congressmen and see if they won their last election by a thin margin. If they are not solidly rooted in their district, they will very likely listen to what you and your voting friends have to say. Second, if you are not already, get regist
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
As many other posters have pointed out, suggesting optical links for anything larger than a LAN party must be a joke (you're not an idiot, right?). A much more reasonable suggestion is the launch of publicly-controlled communications microsatellites.
Perhaps the launch vehicle could be built on some of that X-Prize technology that keeps generating press-releases. We might actually have to find some radio spectrum a little more useful than the visual range (since it's in space, I assume we only have to worry about interference and not licensing?). But the cost of launching a few satellites that communicate with off-the-shelf minidishes would almost certainly be lower overall than setting up line-of-sight laser connections. And the open source community already knows enough about routing (and is now starting to do hardware projects) that the design is not a major obstacle.
I can see the inevitable reply now. (something about profit?).
resistance is futile.
A belief in the rule of laws over the rule of socialluy favored or well-placed men. Nothing more, nothing less.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Surely copyright ("copy right") is there just to give the creator of the work the ability to control their creation and to make money from it, right?
As this article describes, the creator's copy right was meant to be held only for a limited time after which the work would enter the public domain. So the true reason that this copy right is given is not so that the creator or the 'owner' of the copyright could make money, but instead to give motivation for the creation of content for the good of society.
So I say we need to start giving the term 'copyright' a different spin. It isn't just the right of the owners to prevent copying, but also (perhaps moreso) the right of everyone to copy. We should talk of these copyright extensions not as strengthening the rights of the owners, but weakening those of everyone else.
Remember that it is your tax dollars that pay to give this limited right to the authors and to protect it. When copyrights were 14-28 years, there was an excellent chance that all the work which your tax dollars were paying to protect (and therefore effectively partially subsidizing) would be free for your use within your lifetime. That is no longer the case.
1) Identify core values near and dear to the slashdot crowd (copyright, civil liberties, all that).
2) Rank each candidate based on their votes and political statements on these core values
3) Prof^H^H^H^H Publish!
Seriously, the NRA does it, NARAL does it, lots of groups do it. I await the day when a candidate goes up to the podium and says "Slashdot gives me an A+ rating, vote for me!"
I'm a Canadian (who works in the US) and I've noted (given my constant exposure to it) that American politics are very, very strange.
It seems that a large number of Americans see politics as some sort of sport or game, where "our team" plays against "their team" with control of the Presidency, House, Senate etc as both goal and a means of keeping score.
As such, it seems that many, many voters look straight past the issues, and instead vote for their "team" regardless of the conduct of the actual players.
A prime example is what happened to Bill Clinton, and what is now (not) happening to Dubya.
Clinton is an articulate, intelligent man. He is also a known philanderer who had an affair on the job and lied about it. And despite this character flaw, during his two terms as President, the US did pretty well.
Yet despite his intelligence and demonstrated competance, he and his wife were the targets of levels of harrassment and abuse, orchestrated by "the other side", to a degree that was downright Orwellian. Once the affair (and the subsequent lie) was exposed, he was hauled in front of an impeachement hearing, ostensibly for lying to the American People.
Now I cannot condone the lie, although I can understand it - the man was trying to protect his private life. Martial fidelity is a deeply personal subject and nobobody wants his dirty laundry aired publically.
But at the end of the day, the issue of if Clinton had an affair or not, or if he lied about it or not, had zero impact on the type of job he was doing as President.
But now....
We have a President who plays for the other team; the team that went to such extrordinary lengths to try and bring down the former President. this President, too, has been caught in a lie, also presented directly to the American people. But unlike the former President's lie, THIS lie was used to justify taking the country to war against another nation. Unlike Clinton's hummer, Dubya's lie about Iraq buying nuclear material resulted in enormous taxpayer expendature and American deaths.
The latter lie is more serious than the former by several orders of magnitude, but is is going unchallenged, from what I can see because the journalists who should be going after Dubya for his misconduct play for his team.
If this isn't corruption, I don't know what is.
So then, I ask you - are you capable of breaking away from your "team" and voting for someone based on concience and consideration of the issues, or are you forever tied to support the candidate with the (R) behind his name?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
There is a technology which is out there could be put to good effect in an area such as this. I've always felt that it would be great to have a two teir internet. One tier is an authenticated, non anonymous Internet, where you log on and every site you visit knows who you are. This solves some problems, such as having to create new accounts for every website you go to, allows shops to track your habits etc, all the things that happen to us in the real world whenever we use a credit card. If you dont like it dont use it.
A second teir then is provided for people who want to be anonymous. This is how the internet works today.
This way the big companies get what they want (ability to control and track us as consumers) and the people get what they want (most people just want to go online, buy something, look at some sites with as little hassle as possible. The second Tier which is anonymous continues to provide all the freedoms that more indepth net users wish to have.
Best of both worlds.
The astute among you will realise that to an extent this is what Microsoft tried to do with Passport but it was doomed to failure, not because it was a bad idea but because it was Microsoft. No one was going to let Microsoft have all that information so noone got involved.
Obviously a central repository of Personal details (only actually has to store a person name and a Globally unique ID - information relevant to each individual site can be held at the site) will cost money, so let the companies that sign up for it pay the price. They get customers willing to use it because its trustworthy, people are more willing to log in, because they dont have to remember yet another login and password.
Now why not set this up as a W3C standard, with a company (a bit like network solutions for domains) assigned to handle it and all companies wishing to implement it paying for it.
With the above ideas everyones happy.
Good saying: If you are under 20 and already a Republican, then you have no heart. If you are over 30 and still a Democrat, then you have no brain.
Hello Rush, how have you been? I haven't listened to your show lately mostly because of the garbage you spew from your mouth like you just did. You are looking much better now that you're not so fat though. Now if you would just stop saying liberal as if it were a cuss word we'd get along even better.
I bet you secretly troll alt.politics.democrats to flame don't you. Admit it.
BTW socilism is not healthcare for those in need. If there was a salary cap _then_ we can talk about living in a socialist state. The truth is that the gap between rich and poor is growing every day. If the glutton CEOs and top level execs would stop lineing thier pockets maybe we wouldn't need national healthcare because there would be more jobs. CEOs make well over 50x what the average worker in thier company does. I've seen numbers as high as 500x. Maybe if it wasn't legal for corps to call themselves an american company yet move "home office" to Bermuda for a tax break there would be more tax revenue and the rich wouldn't have to shoulder so much of the burden. You can't expect someone who 1) couldn't afford to go to college 2) Can't get a job that gets him above the poverty line to shoulder the burden now can you. The republicans always tell us that giving money to the rich will help create jobs. BS. Jobs are moving out of this country at an alarming rate. All republicans care about it the bottom line, thiers. Then you have the balls to call Dean a socialist becuase he wants to take care of the sick? How dare you. Your party stands for nothing but evil, yet you stand behind the very book I swore to live my life by. I never want to hear your party speak of morals sir, because you have none.
I think this quote is merely a common example of an acadmic stating something that is painfully obvious as though it were an insight. This happens all the time in academia and it's because they get the good weed so they're euphoric about all sorts of pedestrian ideas. Not only that, they kid themselves that the zit-faced suburban coeds they're bagging are so hot. But I digress.
It's not at all useless to speak of conservative -vs- liberal. In fact, it's one of the finest topics around. But you have to listen to my opinions to know what's really going on. And since you're so interested, allow me to enlighten:
The difference is that liberals have a fatal faith in logic that does them no favors in the political realm where rhetoric takes precedence. This is hardly a mystery. The Democratic party is secretly known as the Teacher's Union Party. (Shh.) And we all know that teachers have a terrible time in politics. If you doubt it, just look into your average classroom. The problem is, they're pedantic. They are dying to pretend a logical explanation about why you shouldn't pull people's hair or cheat on your exam is going to solve the problem.
Conservatives, on the other hand, don't give a flying fuck about logic as long as it makes money and keeps them in power. Cross your fingers and salute the flag. This is why the conservatives always bounce back despite a collection of absolutely absurd and contradictory moral positions.
The moral is, fuck em' all. Don't take anybody too seriously. The way to save the net is to get your local utility to offer broadband. It's quite simple. Think globally, act locally.
I wont even bother with your silly class-warfare nonsense. Dean wants to take care of his little Napoleonic ego, dufus. We will let him. Then we will destroy him. Dean has little-man syndrome. My party stands for the defence and security of this nation. Yours stands for government control, socialist income redistribution, Politcal correctness and emotion over reason.
Bring it on, losers. We got something for your ass.
This is one of the most important issues of our time. By alowing a monopoly on digital communication we beg the eventual end to free speech and debate. Yes it is about content control and who has it. Ironic but
The Founding Fathers wanted that term to be 14 years, with an additional 14 years if the author [was] still alive. After 28 years, they figured you'd had your chance to exploit your creation, and now it belonged to the nation at large. That way we would never end up with a system of hereditary privilege, similar to the printers guilds of Renaissance England, who tied up rights to dead authors and tightly controlled what could or could not be printed and who could or could not use literary material.
In America, land of free ideas as well as free people, this would never happen, they said.
Well, it's happened. It's happened because for years now Congress has allowed it to happen. We now have an exact replica of the medieval Stationers' Company, which controlled the English copyrights, only its names today are Disney, Bertelsmann, and AOL Time Warner. The big media companies, holding the copyrights of dead authors, have said, in effect, that Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton were wrong and that we should go back to the aristocratic system of hereditary ownership, granting copyrights in perpetuity. To effect this result, they've liberally greased the palms of Congressmen in the form of campaign contributions--and it's worked...
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
First, I'm not sure it's in real nead to be saved. It is evolving. New technologies are replacing old ones. More people are sending email with phones than reading usenet news with rn or nn on Wise green text terminals. Oh, I'm so scared.
Second, Arguements about cable open access, etc, are really the same arguement as access to any restricted markets, public utilities, telcos, cable, airline, radio, tv, and medical sectors. By the way how many of you want to start your own hospital or electric company? Some serious barriers are there. Not the least of which is capital.
However, it was once said that there is money waiting in banks earning very little interest waiting for people with vision and good ideas. Ideally if you had the expertise to enter one of these markets, and really knew your stuff you could get the other resources you needed with investors.
However, the current Government says it is in the public good I'm not allowed to start my own radio station and likewise not in the public good to start my own private water company (pipes not bottles). Why?
That's it really, financial and other resources aside, why?
Simple. In the USA anyway. The people, most of them, don't care. They don't have 28 year expirations anymore, as the article points out the founders intended, because they don't want it. What????? Point the finger at the people.
Why not, it is a democratically elected represented government. Electoral College issues aside *sigh*, the US congress and even most state govenments are run by people the citizens locally elect. The citizens think MICKEY MOUSE is cool, so why penailze Disney by putting the mouse into the public domain.
But isn't this a really interesting theory, if it really is ultimately the people who are the problem, then doesn't something like the Electoral College make sense. The idea there being that the people were either too ignorant or had little to no economic, that is to say property, to have a real interested in their own welfare, so obviously those with an interest and the mind/knowledge should do it for them. The latter property issue being a good justification to not allowing people who are flat broke from voting, as they will only vote for freebees and handouts rather than the public good. Oooooopsss isn't that what one US polical party has been accusing the the other of doing, encouraging in fact that kind of voting record, say in Labor Unions, the black community, the poor. Oh how this is all so relevant to modern politics.
But I digress, back to the third point, or was it the fourth. The people, the mob, can at times be morons when it comes to politics. So why not have those with the citizens best interests at heart make the decisions for them. This works, that is to say the Electoral College idea works only in theory. As we have seen it worked out over time, the political theory and the practical reality are different. Even though the College has failed, the underlying problem it addressed, that the people were going to vote or not vote, active apathy, for things not in their best interests still exists. People still don't care their US House just did XYZ; or their US Congressman ABC.
They are all just a bunch of [enter negative view of government comment here]. The funny thing with that is the Government, as it relates to the democrative (gov theoy here, not party) process the peole are the reason it has the negatives in the first place.
So anyone have a better idea? Pure rule directly by the people fails, apparently the voter apathy or outright bad voting decisions seem to get in the way again. So much for the classical right. What about the glorious socialism touted by the classical left as successful in those great economical bastions of Scandinavia for example. My guess is it can't scale, look at China and the failure of socialist solutions in the United States. You don't even have to look across the country, in terms of scale, to see it. Even in relatively small m
------ Michael A. Romig
And you believe that the State is skilled enough to actually separate the wheat from the chaff? Hah! I, for one, will not take any odds of being a casualty of this system when other alternatives exist.
So why is the State skilled enough to even put someone on trial in the first place? I agree they obviously make mistakes, but what do you trust them to do?
Uhm...how is choosing to not execute a person "tolerating murder"? States without a death penalty generally give those who would be executed a sentence of life without parole. This is hardly tolerance. Consider the alternative of life imprisonment, especially lifelong imprisonment with hard labor as I suggest. This is still, technically, a death sentence. The difference, however, is that the convict's life hasn't been taken, merely his/her liberty. The State doesn't give you life; it does give you liberty.
It tolerates murder because the punishments are rather tame. "Life in prison" is rarely that. How many times have you read of a prisoner being released before their term is up? Not many prisoners actually die in prison.
The "allegedly beneficial" justification for capital punishment is that their existence is no longer of concern to the rest of society. I for one don't want killers back on the streets, so if they die, that's just fine by me.
I think en masse, executions would make future murderers think twice, but evidence has shown that right now that really isn't the case.
Frankly, all things considered, I don't really care what happens to them. I don't want them rehabilated and sent off to college or any other form of higher education. There's plenty of law-abiding citizens who don't get those opportunities. Now, if everyone else got theirs first, then that'd be fine. That clearly is not the case.
It's interesting how feverent people are to defend the rights of the convict, but could care less about his victims and their families. No, the State doesn't grant life, but neither do individuals. Yet individuals still see themselves fit to take it away. That's where the State gains the ability to respond in kind.
I really hope you can see what a vacant argument that is, especially when you mix it with your agreement about hard labor. Obviously, you have to recognize that, at a minimum, a living person is a unit of labor. Labor has a value. Regardless of that, though, you seem bound to the assumption that someone who murders is without value to humanity, I guess on the grounds that murder is morally reprehensible and immediately strips you of your value. Surely, then, we should start our condemnation with those who murder and extend it to those who support murder. That's fine. The executioners have their backs to the wall first, followed by their supporters.
No, labor is potential value. Since it's not being used and they do nothing but usurp money, that value is gone.
Your argument about executing supporters of murder is idiotic. If you blindly try to extend logic without considering extenuating factors, you get into the kind of logic trainwrecks you detailed above.
Here's an example: Your ridiculous argument also would imply that we as society can *never* support punishment of any type, because by punishing people for their punishing others in the first place, we should be punished ourselves (whew.) I mean, why not? If you want to say that I should be executed because I support capital punishment, then surely I should be punished for meting out any type of punishment.
That aside, my personal feelings about their worth to society have nothing to do with your argument. There's a rather large gap between a random person murdering another innocent person, and society deciding to reciprocate. The key difference is the convict can avoid potential punishment by not doing it, whereas their victim had no choice.
I think people need to learn to make the kind of statements like those made in this article without using the term liberal or conservative.
As an outsider (not an American) I see and fail to understand many posts that say, "I agree completely with the ideas and that something has gone wrong, but what he says about [insert my affiliation here] is untrue and unfair. [insert opposing affiliation here] is worse for the following three reasons. Therefore this is a poorly written article."
The next post then comes to the defense of the offended party, and the argument continues, the important ideas and the call for action forgotten.
I'd rather be parsing. --Jive5
You can follow the Tour de France from your office, but you can't set up your own web cast of your own event.
You can buy books online, but you can't sell them. (Might be pirated! Besides, what about the license agreement in the front cover ?)
You can email pictures to grandma, and maybe she can email pictures to you, but as soon as you or grandma emails a funny snap to half a dozen friends, the account is "temporarily disabled" while a Ashcroftian functionary tries to figure out if you are competeing with Time magazine.
Because of the artificial asymmetry of cable modems (there is no hardware reason why upstream shouldn't equal downstream) much of this is already partly true.
Rob Malda started this site from his dorm room. Sadly, because of port blocking and restrictions on hosting servers, college kids of today can't do the same. The barrier to entry in the web world is slowing being raised to that of a $250 / mo rackspace account.
I've never touched drugs. Too bad we can't say the same about dubya.
I for one love this country and everyone in it. Even when they are confused and hatefull such as yourself. We have our problems here, but giving food to the fat does nothing to help anyone. I don't really think we need a huge military. We do need one, but we're spending a bit much on it. I'd prefer to give the soliers more money though, not the defense contractors. We both know we're spending too much there.
And there is no denying the "class welfare nonsense". It exists. Too many gluttons, way too many starving.
Money, power, politics, control, generations.
Whenever there is a source of money or the chance of a source of money, people will try to control it. This is most dramatically seen by the instability of African states where oil or diamonds are discovered.
Secondly, the dispossed young are forever trying to redefine their world while those with money and power are forever trying to stop this happening. Think of the many Latin American dictatorships: old men in the army killing young protesting students.
What is happening to the Net is not unlike a coup d'etat, a modern right-wing hunger for money and power using 'civilized' tools but tools nonetheless: manipulation of language and the media, manipulation of laws and the courts, manipulation of trade and economics.
This is not a new kind of drama. It is the age-old story of revolution and counter-revolution.
Just because we're talking about 'copyright' does not mean the debate is polite, decent, or even restrained. When enough money and power are on the table, there is no big difference between disenfranchising people for arbitrary crimes, and executing people for arbitrary crimes. The end always justifies the means.
We are, IMHO, seeing the exposure of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy': Clinton was right to describe it so, wrong to think he was the target. We are all the the targets.
Luckily America is still a democracy, and there is exactly one way to unroll this movement towards an extremist right-wing state: the ballot box.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Greedy is being unwilling to pay your share, while voting for politicians who are spending more than this country can afford.
Greedy is lobbying for a tax cut on your multi-million dollar income and trust fund dividends at the expense of hard-working people who struggle to make ends meet.
Does this include all Republicans? Of course not. Just the ones who actually influence government policy-- and they pay for this privilege by buying the TV commercials and funding the "think tanks" that do so much to get your vote.
Jumping in, against my better judgement...
As a discloser, I am what you would probably classify upper-class (I never can keep it straight). I support tax cuts across the board for people who pay taxes, as a general rule, to stimulate the economy.
With that said, frankly, the taxes I pay are fair. My tax bracket is the highest, but, due to the magic of tax brackets, my effective tax rate is 26% (people forget that your tax bracket is what you pay on the last dollar you earn, not every dollar you earn). At first glance, you think, "wow, paying a quarter of all you make in taxes." But for it, I get defense, police, roads, etc, etc. Easily worth 25%. Not worth 60%, worth more than 10%. I think the 25% I pay is about right. (I also lean toward a flat-tax, but thats a different argument).
I am a major believer in free-market economics. You may think this strange, but I support a living-wage. Yes, economically, it skews the labor market. Yes, it sends some jobs oversees (but not service jobs). Yes, regulation is generally bad. Res, yes yes.
But I grew up in a single-parent family with a mother working 2 minumum wage jobs. She worked very, very hard. She managed money very, very well. I didn't realize how badly out of style her clothes were; she didn't buy ANY new clothes that I can remember. Her kids came first. In short, she did everything right, everything that conservatives support, yet we were still short on money.
We survived. One Christmas there were no presents for me and my sister. My Mom severly cut her finger and did not go to the hospital; we couldn't afford it. No one should live that way, least of all a single-mother with small children doing everything right.
It is said that a society can be judged by its treatment of its old, its young, its poor, its sick, and its criminal. Our criminals get great food and healthcare, yet we let hard-working, honest people struggle to merely survive. While economically a bad idea, for shere humanity, we need a living wage law.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Searls seemed quite honest in his article that Democrats are to blame for creating the sick regulatory environment that brought about this mess.
His point, however, has to do with the here-and-now of a Republican controlled government. What he's saying is that in trying to "dismantle" media regulation in an inept fashion *, Republicans are only allowing its unhealthy spawn to metastasize.
* Though I would suggest that big-money campaign contributions have as much to do with the flawed deregulation plan as ineptitude.
> THE ARPANET/INTERNET WAS ORIGINALLY BUILT TO WITHSTAND PHYSICAL ATTACK. THAT WAS THE REASON. THAT IS WHY IT WAS BUILT.
To my memory, Internet was created in CERN for free exchange of [scientific] ideas:
www.hitmill.com/internet/web_history.asp
Doesn't that corrrespond to what is now the Open Source? You can call it an ideology. It were this continent's greedy screwheads that tried (and trying) to use if to profit (I remember the idea of charging $0.002 per page which was utterly ridiculous).
Alternative WiFi internet, mentioned in the first few posts, is a good thing. I think we will be there finally.
UNDERSTOOD?!?!?
Yes and no. You'll note that in the recent FCC decision that sought to allow expanded ownership of TV stations, it was the Democrats who voted No.
You'll notice that not a single Republican voted against the DMCA, and precious view against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
I believe the Democrats have advanced some corrupt decisions regarding Copyright law, and they may not be entirely trustworthy on other issues having to do with the media. However, I see with my own two eyes that the current Republican President and Congress are actively trying to tear apart the last regulations that keep the media diverse and free.
Furthermore, it's hard to ignore the present makeup of our government. When a guy like Searls tears into Conservatives, he's simply being realistic. These are the people running the show right now, and whatever happens has to be explained in the context of their ideology.
Yeah, you know, I know and he knows. What he's pointing out is that others are misrepresenting this. Microsoft talks about "gatekeepers" exerting control over free software projects, though they have given up the famous bus atack. SCO is playing on the confusion between the Linux kernel and ALL of free software. How else can they make the insane statement, "Linux is an illegal derivative of Unix."? Thanks for bringing up the concept. There are some people who don't understand the nature of free software. Now to correct the confusion people unforetunate enough to have never directly used free software, repeat that 268,000 times.
Sounds hard? Well it is, because there's billions of dollars of propaganda aimed at convincing you that every idea has an owner and is therefore a kind of property. It's ugly when someone like Madonna thinks no one should ever sing her songs in a public place without first asking for permision and then paying her. It's really gaulling when the same people try to convince you that the same thing is true, in however small a degree, of the most widely know piece of free software in the world. They want you to think that even Linux has an "owner" who you owe something too. Correcting this perception is difficult.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I loosely trust the State to handle regulation of political liberty. It makes mistakes there, too, but the damage done by those mistakes is not quite as reversible as when it kills.
It tolerates murder because the punishments are rather tame. "Life in prison" is rarely that. How many times have you read of a prisoner being released before their term is up? Not many prisoners actually die in prison.
I'd argue that, long before the case is made for state-sanctioned murder, that issue needs to be addressed.
Frankly, all things considered, I don't really care what happens to them. I don't want them rehabilated and sent off to college or any other form of higher education. There's plenty of law-abiding citizens who don't get those opportunities. Now, if everyone else got theirs first, then that'd be fine. That clearly is not the case.
Perhaps, but we're always going to need certain classes of labor that many forms of criminals can be easily rehabilitated into.
I think en masse, executions would make future murderers think twice, but evidence has shown that right now that really isn't the case.
Actually, evidence shows that executions have never served as a deterrant for any crime. There's good reason to believe that, at least for certain common classes of murder, it cannot have a strong deterrant power.
It's interesting how feverent people are to defend the rights of the convict, but could care less about his victims and their families. No, the State doesn't grant life, but neither do individuals. Yet individuals still see themselves fit to take it away. That's where the State gains the ability to respond in kind.
Nice try, but I don't bite. I'm concerned with everyone's rights. Furthermore, I don't think prisoners deserve much in the way of rights, but I do believe people have a right to their own existence. The State doesn't gain any ability through some essential means- it operates as it will, and if it is revolted against and overthrown, it loses the ability to do anything.
No, labor is potential value. Since it's not being used and they do nothing but usurp money, that value is gone.
Yes, but as per our previous agreements about good systems of punishment, the labor can be used. It certainly has a better positive return than our system of execution.
Your argument about executing supporters of murder is idiotic. If you blindly try to extend logic without considering extenuating factors, you get into the kind of logic trainwrecks you detailed above.
That's a cute excuse. It brightens my day. Try making a case for why some forms of murder are moral and others aren't, and maybe I'll listen.
Here's an example: Your ridiculous argument also would imply that we as society can *never* support punishment of any type, because by punishing people for their punishing others in the first place, we should be punished ourselves (whew.) I mean, why not? If you want to say that I should be executed because I support capital punishment, then surely I should be punished for meting out any type of punishment.
Wow. I can't breathe because of all the words stuffed in my mouth, and I've been using your comments about someone's value after murdering. I'd hate to see what you'd do if I actually talked about my beliefs. All I ever said on the topic is that I don't know what killing another person can genuinely serve. If the effects seemed to be worthwhile, I'd entertain the practice. I've yet to see any worthwhile results, though. And I've seen a lot of negative side-effects, not the least of which are deaths of innocent people.
That aside, my personal feelings about their worth to society have nothing to do with your argument. There's a rather large gap between a random person murder
It is easier and cheaper than ever to have a net presence and therefore add whatever content you wish. I can put up a website or message board in my house, and as long as the traffic isn't too high, they don't care. True, my cable company doesn't want me hosting a website/message board that gets a lot of hits, but I'm only paying $40/month for relatively huge bandwidth. If my Internet presence becomes large, then it only stands to reason that I should pay extra for that.
There are still plenty of domain hosting sites out there that are extremely cheap. I have a friend with a website and he pays $8/month! I grant you his site has low traffic, but if his site generates more traffic, he can easily upgrade the service agreement.
As for selling books online and the Ashcroftian comment, those are simply absurd. I could just as easily say something like, "the anarchy of the net spread to the real world and civilization collapsed." Both are theoretically possible, but not realistic.
When the stuff you suggested actually starts happening, give me a call, I'll be right beside you. Until then, the call to arms is simply alarmist ranting.
"Saving The Net" is not an argument that will go far with the vast majority of voters. Don't forget that the vast majority of 'Net users use it primarily for occasional email. To these people, the 'Net is just a faster way to send a letter. If the 'Net went away, they would say, "that's such a shame. I have to spend more on stamps now."
Most people just don't care about the untapped power of the Internet, and won't care until their ISP bills get too high. At that point, they'll ask a few questions and then just give in to the higher bill.
My first response would be to show them how to use the 'Net to do things that matter to ordinary people; things like unlimited free long distance calling. People have to be given something that can only be provided on the Internet, whatever that turns out to be, can be done as easily as using a telephone, and that would be devastating to lose. Without that extreme, not enough people are going to care about the Internet being controlled by a single gigantic corporation.
Okay but who gives goverment the guns?? Who holds them. That's right! Citizens. And personally, I've never had my taxes collected at gunpoint usually the HR IS systems deducts the money for various taxes and deposits the rest in to my bank account. Where the hell do you live that they collect taxes that way?
From my experience, I'd have to say that at least in this part of America, "Liberal" means "what used to be called 'Moderates', before Bush's War".
;)
Greetings from sunny Florida.
return us to the that age of localized community forum..
If enough people within a populated area run an open wireless hub, a community 'freenet' can be built across a small city or town.
Correction: that should read "irreversible".
I don't know where you've been, but we currently have a $450bn projected deficit for the year 2003, and that number may grow to $500bn by the end of the year. This number, along with the trillions of debt that Reagan and Bush created, are essentially a loan taken out in your name, and in the name of every taxpayer in the USA.
After the Bush tax cut, the rich still pay a much higher percentage and actual amount than the non-rich.
Ah yes. Because you're one of the millions of people who don't actually look at your paycheck before you cash it. Maybe I can help you, by pointing out the 7.5% Social Security tax that the government withdraws from your check, along with the additional 7.5% that the government demands from your employer (money that you could be getting paid, otherwise.) And even though this isn't "income tax", it's being used to fund the war in Iraq, Congressional Pork, and who knows what else. If it looks like a tax, smells like a tax... Then it's a tax.
But the great thing about Social Security tax is that you only pay that 15% on the first $88,000 of your income. So under Bush's new tax cuts someone who declares $70,000 of income pays 35.03% of their income to the Federal Government, while someone who makes $1,000,000 pays only 33.81%. So much for fair.
And that's without any fancy deductions, which the wealthier earner will almost certainly be better able to take advantage of. Ask George Bush, who only paid 29% in 1999, on $900,000 worth of income. It's without counting the dividend and capital gains tax cuts which are likely to disproportionately benefit the wealthier person (I don't ever make more than a few hundred per year in dividends.)
Basically, anyone who believes this shit is pulling out their wallet and handing it over to someone who makes more than 10 times what they do. They're doing this, while our budget bleeds, because they think it's "fair"-- though they obviously haven't done the math. They're doing this because they feel that making the wealthy wealthier will somehow help our economy, when the problem currently on the demand side, eg it's people like the middle class and working class that we need to have extra cash to burn.
And somehow, the Republican Party is able to raise ever larger amounts of money. Hmm. I wonder where it's coming from. Basically, if you believe any of this is right, just or fair, then you're a sucker.
All Americans, left and right, are part of the liberal tradition. It's the foundation of our country's political history. I wince everytime someone criticizes "liberals" because they really should be criticizing people on the "left". America was founded on the "liberal" ideals of John Locke, who was a big proponent of private property.
You must mean financially trounced? With Gore winning the popular vote and Bush squeaking by in the Supreme Court, there's really no debating that this was the closest presidential election ever.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Brin only says that because he has less power than he'd like.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
That's a cute excuse. It brightens my day. Try making a case for why some forms of murder are moral and others aren't, and maybe I'll listen.
Who said I think it's moral? Or that punishment always has to be moral?
The fact of the matter is that according to my religious beliefs, I can't morally defend execution. I can justify it for other reasons. I personally think victim's families should have a say at trial. If they don't want the death penalty sought, the prosecutor should consider that when determining what punishment he seeks.
I don't think killing in any form is exactly moral, but my desire to see justice both for society and to the victim('s) family overrides it in this case.(Any responses about how a truly intelligent person always considers moral implications will be gleefully ignored. Ditto for questions such as "What if you were starving and needed bread? Should you be punished?")
Serial killers, for example, deserve to die. I can't really rationalize my beliefs from an intellectual standpoint; I just like to see justice. Not exactly the best of reasons, but eh.
Wow. I can't breathe because of all the words stuffed in my mouth, and I've been using your comments about someone's value after murdering. I'd hate to see what you'd do if I actually talked about my beliefs. All I ever said on the topic is that I don't know what killing another person can genuinely serve. If the effects seemed to be worthwhile, I'd entertain the practice. I've yet to see any worthwhile results, though. And I've seen a lot of negative side-effects, not the least of which are deaths of innocent people.
That's exactly my point. You put words in my mouth more or less, and then you object when I do the same idiotic thing to you. Your analogy of executing me because I support capital punishment is no different than the one I postulated.
"Value" of someone has nothing to do with your analogy. It was about the (ill)logical conclusion you jumped to. You can argue about the moral differences between types of killing--and that's fine--but to make a claim that your scenario was logical is what I was really arguing.
The problem with "living wage" and minimum wage laws is that they force employers to become welfare agencies by paying people money they did not earn: a handout, not an honest living.
I am all for people making an honest living, but... What do you propose we do about people who can't earn enough to get by?
If we allow them to starve, then the vast majority of the poor would turn to crime, rather than starve, and then the government would have to have move police to protect those who do make an honest living, and more prisons to house our criminals (poor), all costing the 'honest' more in taxes.
I would love it if we didn't need minimum wage laws, but we need consider what would happen without them, instead of just saying that they are bad and should be done away with.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
In our reality, the share of Congressional pork has swung wildly towards the Republican side:
Fiscal conservatives grab for pork projects behind scenes
Democrat pork gets the chop
In fact, a recent study showed that on average, Republican Senators command several times as much pork as their Democrat brethren. This is a reversal from the days of Democratic Congress, but it's not just a change of party, but an enormous change of degree. The amounts are starggering. How does this happen to such a viruous party? Because they control the House and Senate, of course. But that's not the only reason.
See, since even before our little tragedy in 2001, George Bush has not seen fit to keep his promise to avoid massive government deficits. September 11th, the bad economy, these are all excuses. Naturally, they haven't stopped him from spending on things near and dear to his heart, like Missile Defense or issuing massive tax cuts.
But what most people don't realize is that these programs have a price. Congresscritters, in this case, particularly Republican Congresscritters, who chafed under Clinton-- a Democrat who actually dared Congress into balancing the budget-- have found that they can now use that excuse to their heart's content. All of the taps are open, and without a pesky balanced budget to guilt them into fiscal responsibility, they can spend, spend, spend. On garbage.
Even better, with Bush periodically coming to Congress to ask some huge favor, like support for the war in Iraq, or his tax cuts, or Missile Defense, the Republicans can get a lot of quid pro quo fom the White House. It's a neat little deal. Essentially, Bush will talk tough about government spending, but he won't actually do anything to reign it in (at least not when it comes to his loyal Republican senators.)
So we all pay the price for this foolishness. And still, many people are so completely out of their minds that they still try to blame the Democrats as though this were 1985 and Madonna was in style. Get over it and be a goddamn patriot. Give a shit about your country.
I wasn't being disrespectful of GWB, but I'm not sure he fully qualified as having grasp of history and both national and international politics before becoming president, national probably but not the rest, but that would be true of a lot of politicians. He certainly seems to be learning on the job quite succesfully.
The point was about naturalised US citizens being eligible for election to the presidency - AC is probably an extreme example but he's been a US citizen longer than GWB.
It's not my system but the 'Arnie' amendment makes sense to me.
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
The USA is a democratic republic, not a democracy. It is actually heading more in the direction of a democracy (note the recent increase in referrenda and trivial constitutional amendments), but is still nevertheless a republic. If you read the history of ancient republics (e.g. Rome) you will note that "being bought" was not just a problem, but THE problem. In Rome's case, it eventually led to the creation of the Roman Empire, which was just the Republic in a "fully bought" state.
What do you think would happen if only one person bought off most of the Congresscritters? I bet you would say, "A revolution". If you think that is what would save us, perhaps you ought to read up on Marius and Sulla, and what happened after their nice little civil war.
Ancient Democracy on the other hand, has much more in common with what we in America might call "Local Politics". Which makes sense when you realize that very few of the ancient democratic city-states had a population of over 100,000. (Sorry, that's a guess; no time to check the numbers today).
I think everyone, even the Congresscritters themselves, realize that we need to make a system that can't be bought. The question is how. I believe that a more direct democracy is the answer. While direct democracy has it's problems (esp. in a nation where WWF has higher ratings than CSPAN), it is a lot harder to buy the loyalty of 280 million people than 535...
The King James Bible was indeed the result of dispute, but it worked in the opposite direction. King James wanted to undermine the authority of the Church's leaders by creating a Bible accessible to the laymen.
To us, the language of the King James is difficult, but in the day, it was common.
We can all discuss and rant and argue all day long about how and why our rights and freedoms are being taken away, but until we take real action and encourage others to do the same, nothing is going to change. None of us have political power. But fortunately, a successful grassroots movement is far more powerful than ANY politicians or lobbyists.
So are you ready to put your money where your mouths are? Do you really want to save the Net? Here's how:
1.) Open Source - No, not just a free lunch where available - instead think about making it your career. The more companies that switch to OSS solutions, the weaker the established proprietary empires become and the greater the resistance to any bogus legal challenges. The Open Source movement is only hindered by a lack of consultant-developers who can simultaneously make a living by meeting clients needs and help write the software to enable their own and others ability to do so. Offer cheaper and better solutions and you will have customers.
2.) Alternative Media - Simply put, don't support the existing media empires. Whether that means canceling your $80/mo supreme cable or satellite package, waiting for movies to hit the rental store, not buying RIAA music or going to signed bands' concerts, or whatever, the revenue stream to these greedy and abusive oligopolists must be redirected elsewhere for change to ever happen. Instead, use the money you would have spent on supporting independent artists. And if you're going to use P2P, use it to spread legal, alternative content. Otherwise, you just help advertise for the establishment. And if you're really connected to your local music scene, why not help your favorite artists get online and establish an Internet fanbase that'll eventually allow them to tour and sell concert tickets.
3.) Have you been successful at 1.) and/or 2.)? Write some articles on how you did it, encourage others to become entrepreneurs in your footsteps, and generally let the world know that a choice exists. There are a lot of people who would love to break from the mold, but aren't convinced it's possible.
4.) Support groups like the EFF. I consider this a political option and therefore less powerful than 1. and 2., but it can still make a difference in the meantime.
Well, it tends to call into question the appropriateness of the punishment when it's not seen as moral, if you ask me. Morality is, for the most part, the way in which things are justified. Immoral acts are not justifiable. Anything justifiable has some backing morality to it. People do sometimes (often, conceivably) act before considering moral outcomes, but morality of some kind will inevitably be part of any analysis of the results. It might be as simple as "I did it, I felt right at the time, thus it's justifiable", but it'll still be there.
The fact of the matter is that according to my religious beliefs, I can't morally defend execution. I can justify it for other reasons
That's extremely curious to me. Again, morality is the way by which things are justified.
I don't think killing in any form is exactly moral, but my desire to see justice both for society and to the victim('s) family overrides it in this case.(Any responses about how a truly intelligent person always considers moral implications will be gleefully ignored. Ditto for questions such as "What if you were starving and needed bread? Should you be punished?")
I wouldn't suggest either thing. I would suggest, though, that "justice" is a moral construct. Given this, what you're saying seems to me to be "Killing is not moral. Justice creates a superior morality, though, that blots out the immorality of killing in cases where justice can be invoked." This ultimately leads back to having to really expose the moral basis of the State, the moral concepts you yourself are working with, etc.
Value" of someone has nothing to do with your analogy. It was about the (ill)logical conclusion you jumped to. You can argue about the moral differences between types of killing--and that's fine--but to make a claim that your scenario was logical is what I was really arguing.
I think a better perspective is that the process was logical, but that it started with false assumptions about your perspective I ascertained from the tone of your posts. I apologize.
If there is any static IP DSL with reasonable bandidth and price 768/$60 avalible at home, and you don't get it and run a server(s) on it, you are part of the problem. Throw your DHCP based cable modem in the river! It's not real Internet.
And you call yourself a geek!
Go ahead and flame me, I am full of love. :)
PS: COLOs don't count they don't help this problem.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Yes and no. You'll note that in the recent FCC decision that sought to allow expanded ownership of TV stations, it was the Democrats who voted No. You'll notice that not a single Republican voted against the DMCA, and precious view against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
All true. But you will also notice that the Democrats are hardly blame-free in all of this. Sen. Fritz Hollings (a Democrat) was one of the main offenders in the whole debate (though of course Sen. Orrin Hatch is as well).
Like I said, on balance I tend to favor the Democrats (in spite of a number of things). Read my journal if you don't think that's true. But the article seemed to be pinning the blame for things like the DMCA squarely on the Republicans and "conservatives" (whatever that means), which is flatly wrong IMO.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
The Supreme Court's choice did in fact have enormous consequences, namely deciding who was president. Agreed that they decided to let the vote stand, but this shouldn't mask the fact that the choice was put before them and theirs to make, and IIRC there were some rather tough questions they had to wrestle with.
Bush won by barely squeaking by in the actual vote counts in Florida.
For the purposes of this discussion, fair enough. My point was/is that the race was indeed close.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Great, now be honest about how we got those things you mentioned. If you think Liberals are responsible for those items, you are nuts. Save for Americans public school system which sucks beyond belief. Progressive taxation is nothing more than stealing from someone to give to someone else. But overall, not bad. I'll bet you gave yourself a headache coming up with the list.
1) Bush did not lie. His "16 words" was true. He told us that British intelligence said something: a true statment
That depends on what the meaning of "is" is, doesn't it?
Say my little brother came to me and said, "The ocean is all red, and your parents are aliens from Mars, and you're dead." I don't believe any of these things, so if I in my capacity as president gave a state of the union address where I said my brother had good intelligence on the dreadful color of the ocean and the my state of living, and that we must continue printing money at a furious pace and borrow half a trillion dollars a year to finance coloring the ocean blue again and providing me with new organs from the dead bodies of others, this would technically not be a lie, but if you've got any sense you would see that it is just plain wrong and it is a fraudulent lie by any reasonable moral standard.
Rep. Ron Paul gave an good speech on how the neo-cons have stolen the agenda, and what they are up to.
I'm not saying Clinton was any better, he signed the DMCA and an extensive wire tapping law and he was the first president to approve of the new inflation formula. These days real inflation is in the double digits as far as I can tell, but the official inflation is in the low single digits, "with a threat of deflation" because now a 3Ghz Pentium 4 at $500 costs 1/3 of what a $500 1Ghz Pentium 4 of two years ago cost. I don't even remember when the last time we had a net trade surplus was. The dollar is plumetting as the Euro gets adopted as international trade currency, the federal reserve should be buying them back not printing more, if we can't sell our products at less than 0.9 euros to the dollar we've got serious problems that devaluing the currency will just make worse.
I think the Canadian that first posted on this topic doesn't really understand the US electoral system. My vote is worth absolutely nothing as far as influencing the outcome of the election. I live in an area, like most Americans, where one party gets 70-90% of the vote. The districts are chosen by the current state legislators so that incumbents that follow party orders remain in power. This is why almost no Americans bother to vote. Both bought and paid for presidential candidates had the support of something like 15% of the populace the last time around. Maybe Gore had 16%, he had like 3 million more votes. I think the guy I voted for didn't even break 1%.
Yeah, sure. Just like he's kept control of government spending. For god's sake, the guy can't even get control of Congressional pork spending shen with his own party controlling Congress. Do you really think he gives a crap about controlling Congressional spending? Of course not. He needs his loyal allies happy so he can periodically ask them for favors, like tax cuts or support for the war in Iraq.
What are you saying? Do you want cut Social Security? What happened to the fiction that it was a "trust fund"? Time to rip a page out of the Democrat play book?
I want Social Security funds placed into a trust fund, instead of "borrowed" by so-called "fiscal conservatives" like George W. Bush. I want the burden of paying Social Security distributed across all income brackets, because Social Security isn't a retirement program, it's a social program that benefits us all by improving national health and reducing crime.
You are forgetting to put in the family-related deductions that the average $70,000 gets that impacts little on the rich guy.
My taxable amount was a bit more than that last year and I didn't collect a dime in "family related deductions". And like I said, we're not factoring in the sort of deductions that the very wealthy can take advantage of that, unfortunately, most of us cannot (and even if we could, the accounting fees alone would equal a significant percentage of our income.) Nor are we considering consumption taxes, fees or state taxes, all of which are regressive.
And even if we did worry about it, we'd still be ignoring the fact that the impact of the taxes is much greater on the middle-class than on the wealthy. Weight the taxes too much on the middle class and working class, and you greatly harm their ability to educate their children and move upward. Do the same to the wealthy, and the actual effect is minimal.
Ever see how rich Corazine is?
Yeah, and he'll be a $1 million dollars better off next year thanks to Bush's tax cuts. Our Federal deficit will, in turn, by $1 million higher. But at least he was honest enough to admit that $1 million isn't a matter of life or death when you're that wealthy; he voted against the cuts.
The wealthy make themselves wealthier through their own work and investment.
Some of them do. And this sort of growth is fantastic. Unfortunately, some people make themselves wealthier by exploiting inefficiencies in our system, at the expense of everyone else. And surprisingly, sometimes hard work just doesn't make you wealthy, unless you're fortunate enough to have familial/racial/class advantages... or politicians protecting you.
It certainly is not fair in comparison to a much lower, fairer flat tax
I'm willing to experiment with a flat tax. I'm just not willing to do it here, until someone can demonstrate that it is actually possible to run a society with one... Without starving the poor, or allowing moneyed interests to simply buy more handouts and thus produce a regressive tax code. Or, as seems likely, squashing consumer spending like a bug.
Why don't you flat taxers go and do this basic research somewhere, and if you're successful we'll all talk about betting the US's future on it.
I liked the article. Doc makes some terrific points. However, he was unclear on one that is of great concern to me. Here's a copy of the comments and question I posted.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Hey, Doc,
Great article, thanks! However, I would like to ask for clarification on one point. From your article:
"I think we need a galvanizing issue. I suggest Saving the Net. To do that, we need to treat the Net as two things:
a public domain, and therefore
a natural habitat for markets
In other words, we need to see the Net as a marketplace that has done enormous good, is under extreme threat and needs to be saved..."
While there is certainly some truth to the fact that parts of the 'net have become a terrific marketplace, there is also the problem of 'net abusers -- spammers -- to consider.
If I interpret your words above literally, it seems to me that you are saying that any 'net-connected device is in the public domain, free for anyone to use as they please.
This is certainly not the case. As a fully self-hosted small business owner, my servers are my own. I pay out of my pocket to operate and maintain them, and keep them connected, and I'm not about to leave them open to things like spammer abuse and mail relaying. In fact, as of this moment, I have several entire countries blocked from sending mail to me because of their widspread spammer infestations.
So, here's my question: When you say "public domain," are you referring to the transmission medium itself (a concept that I have no problem with at all), or the "intelligence" at each end of a connection?
If it's the latter, I've got a BIG problem with that.
Looking forward to your reply. Thanks much.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Missile defense != defense. Missile defense is one of the worst examples of Federal money wastage, next to Reagan's SDI. Not only is the technology considered easily defeated, none of the tests having been completely successful, but the budget for NMD is almost completely undocumented. We're essentially handing over huge sums of money to the Defense Department and its contractors, without asking exactly how it's being spent.
I guess that doesn't trouble you, though, because it's "defense". And "defense" is one of the "few legitimate things" that our government can spend money on with absolutely no oversight. Correct?
Tax cuts aren't spending
I never said it was. All I did was miss a comma. George Bush has no problem spending money on pork programs, or with issuing massive tax cuts.
But even this point is silly. George Bush and Congress are spending, and the President isn't using one iota of his political power to get it under control. Instead of reducing expenditures, he's using his approval ratings to reduce our tax income. The net effect is a huge deficit, with additional deficits stretching away as far as the eye can see.
Of course, this is good economic policy, right? We're going to see a huge economic recovery that will bring the budget back into wack, correct?
Unfortunately, even if we had another 1990s-style boom, we probably still couldn't balance the budget now. Why? Mostly because tax rates have been reduced so much. In order to see the President's prediction of tax cuts->recovery->balanced budget come true, we'd need to see an economic boom like none in the history of the United States. And it would apparently have to last forever, otherwise we would quickly undo any surpluses produced.
Nice alternate history. Clinton, before the Republicans came along, passed wildly unbalanced defecit spending budgets. After 1984, the red ink started flow slower as the Newties balked Clinton's budgets. Clinton, of course, opposed the balanced budget amendment.
You're right. It was a joint effort. Unfortunately, it was a joint effort that never would have been possible without a Democrat leading the way with a set of cuts, tax increases and debt paydowns that began the reduction which ultimately resulted in a balanced budget.
The Republicans opposed all of those actions. Told the world that it would devastate the economy. And were wrong.
As for the balanced budget amendment, what ever happened to it? The only amendment proposals I see coming out of the hill are self-serving "foreigners can be president" or "gays can't marry" twaddle. With the House, Senate and so many state governors, you'd think the BBA would be right at the top of the Republican agenda. Hell, they could almost certainly garner Democratic support.
Or could it be that the BBA was only a political fiction with which to bludgeon the Democrats? Ultimately you have to believe your eyes and not your ideology, and my eyes tell me that Republicans aren't so opposed to deficits-- as long as they have a few semi-reasonable-sounding excuses.
Maybe. But people said that tax increases would decrease our revenue when Clinton proposed them. Our understanding of the economics of deficits is obviously a little... incomplete.
Of course, you wouldn't get that from the sort of statement you just made. Or from the kind of things that are coming out of the White House. No, sir. Nothing but certainty. And lots of it. Enough to justify some of the largest tax cuts in history.
Quite frankly it sounds a lot like gambling. And given that our tax rates have been so slashed that even a huge boom wouldn't balance the budget, it sounds like we're betting against the house.
What happened to conservatism. Doc has a quote that I think holds the answer:
"Combine the two, and you get conservatives eagerly rewarding companies whose primary achievements consist of successful long-term adaptation to highly regulated environments."
In the past conservatives were for the free market. They were for individual initiative. They were for rewarding hard work. Many conservatives of the past would be right at home in the libertarian movement today. That was the conservatism of the forties and fifties. Then it changed ever so slightly. The new emphasis was on business. To be a conservative was to be pro-business. This wasn't a great change, since to be pro-business in the sixties and seventies was to be in favor of free markets and individual initiative and hard work.
The problem is that businesses changed but the conservative mantra did not. The family farm gave way to big agribusiness. Getting a loan from the local bank to start a shop disappeared in favor of wooing venture capital. Private business was all but replaced by public corporations. This happened during the eighties and nineties.
Now it is the aptly named naughts, and the world has been turned upside down. When Dean looks like a conservative, there is something terribly wrong with modern conservatism. It's time to slap these people upside the head and say that Sleepycat Software is every bit as worthy as Oracle, that your local ISP is every bit as worthy as SBC. It's time to take conservatism back to its roots, and make it favor free markets and enterprises once more, instead of this pandering to corporations.
p.s. I'll leave my rant against the modern liberal, and their preference of unions instead of workers, for another time...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yes Clinton was the spawn of satan. But look at the deficit Bush Jr. is running. It is comparable only to Reagans.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
Oy. Go read a little about NMD. Go read about how multiple warheads and decoys can defeat the system.
Then go read about how the entire budget for the program is a complete blank, with no details whatsover. Basically one huge blank check.
Then go read about how Congress, noting that Bush's budget underfunded homeland security operations, politely suggested that some money be transferred from NMD to homeland security (notably, finding and detecting nuclear weapons transported into this country by alternate transportat) and were rebuffed.
(As a New Yorker, this one scares the shit out of me. Any president that would underfund programs to protect the US from a clear and present danger-- in favor of a wasteful and unexplained project that might never work, can be circumvented, and doesn't protect us now-- is a fool.)
Of course not. [The BBA] is a great idea.
Sure it is. It's a great idea that the Republicans have completely abandoned. Probably because they never seriously supported it in the first place.
As long as they borrow money in our name, they're still plundering. It's just a lot easier for them to sneak it past us that way. Unfortunately, it costs us a lot more in the long run this way.
As my dad always told me, there's no such thing as a free lunch. And anyone who tells you different is either a fool or a Republican.
Should I sell my RHAT shares?
Should I install T2 Extreme DRM tonight?
Should I pay for music at BuyMusic instead of P2P?
What are you going to do when Hollywood and Dean join forces?
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
I think this is by far the most pertinant point. The state gives you liberty, and thus can take it away. However, life is given to you naturally, so noone has any right to deprive you of it unnaturally.
The real culprit is money and greed.
Money is not sentient and cannot be the culprit behind anything. Greed is a completely subjective notion and cannot be the culprit behind anything.
And who embodies better money and greed than croporations, who themselves are bigger than many countries?
If I were to accept your notion that there is some level of money and/or power that an entity could obtain that would suddenly push it over the mythical "greedy" barrier, then I would say that governments beat out corporations any day of the year. Governments, in their quest for money and power, have killed millions, destroyed lives, taken over businesses, forced people into labor, forced people into slavery, taken people's life savings, forced people to have abortions, the list goes on and on. More people have been killed by their own governments than they have by anything else in the history of humanity. You seem to think that possession of money is evidential of evil. I think that the destuction of life, liberty, and property is evidential of evil.
The robber barons of yesteryear must be staring in stupendous awe from hell!!!
Hell is a superstitious belief.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
You will note that I did not say that I agreed with the "modern" idea of "liberal", which is what Dean is effectively claiming to be.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
an article on "bundled" contributions
Why do I h8 apple?
Or do you support the drug war? Conservative/liberal are both about groupthink.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I don't really think we need a huge military. We do need one, but we're spending a bit much on it. I'd prefer to give the soliers more money though, not the defense contractors.
WHAT? What, in God's name, are you talking about? Ignoring the first half of that rediculous statement for a second, don't you realise that giving money to defense contractors keeps soldiers alive? If you were a soldier would you rather have the most high tech equipment the world has ever seen, or would you rather have to just take your chances standing in front of bullets and hoping you don't get hit by one?
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You must have misunderstood what I said. Why are we WILLING to pay them too much. For expample does it really cost 100 million for plane X, or is someone lining pockets on joe taxpayers dime. Can't they make it for less? Governments always pay too much for things. Like paying retail for MS windows. when you buy in volume you're supposed to get a discount. It just seems a bit much to be spending. I've always wondered why we don't bring some things internal. For example why can't we have a government funded school for engineers. In exchange for your free ride you agree to come work in our labs and assist in making a damn fine jet that we can now make for (insert arbitrary percentage) cheaper because it's in house. So to answer your questions I want both good equipment and better pay. I think both can happen if we work smarter on things. Come on now, don't you think they deserve to live above the poverty line?
Politics has always been about blood and money. Money is used to influence people to think your way. Blood is used when money doesn't work.
I was at his rally in Santa Fe on June 28 (the same day I announced to run for President - see my website: www.christian2004.com) and his talk was the same Democratic line we have heard for a long time. This is not new politics. Dean's approach is still about money. Getting money from small donations is easier thru the internet but it is still the same old politics.
Leaving all the arguments of how people pirate music over P2P networks and such there is also the issue of Fair Use with IP.
/. it's no so much about the content but about *controlling* the content. If I can't record and save the big game in a format that makes it conveinent for me they can resell it to me later. If they control the bands that are allowed to play I might not ever know that there are better ones out there. If they control the movies that are being produced (Of course how this will change is much more complicated due to the budgets involved but it's the same basic idea.) they can use shills to say "Must see!" over and over until I am under the impression that I must be missing something.
When dealing with real property it's pretty easy to establish fair use. Does Joe Blow have a right to park on my lawn during the big football game? Nope, thats a pretty clear cut deal there. But what about the big game thats being broadcast and recorded by my TiVo? Even though I don't have any rights to say rebroadcast that game for profit shouldn't I be able to move that TV game from the TiVo in my living room to the one in my bedroom whenever I want? Or archive it for later viewing? Ahhh, now we are getting into murky waters.
Now the courts have allready established long ago that "time shifting" is legal and thus thwarted big medias attempt to stifle fair use but they are relentless, at every turn unless forced not to they will limit fair use with cry's of "piracy!" as their reasons for doing so.
And looking at a larger picture we see why they wish to do so, as has been so often pointed out here on
Bottom line, while many people do pirate IP content that does not mean that there should be no fair use. It's, imo, the cost of doing buissness in IP and if you don't like the risk go find something else to do.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
My problem with what you have written is that you sound as though you are reinterating 10 "truths".
However, you do come off sounding very American.
1. Usually, but by no means always.
2. Depends on where you look.
3. Okay, but given their freedom, don't you think we deserve better press?
4. Irrelavent if you can't afford it.
5. Used to be true, but not anymore.
6. Most other countries tend to think the world should be like them, too.
7. True, until they see the cost.
8. What?
9. America has no public school system.
10. Church and state are not separate in America.
--Richard
How greedy is it to sit and contemplate whether you are going to have steak or lobster tonite, or whether your kids are going to a private boarding school in connecticut or massachusetts, when there are other people down the street who can barely afford to eat ramen and have no hope of going to college based on their socio-economic background?
It's not greedy at all. Take my father as an example--he was born dirt-poor in the sticks of small-town Iowa. He's worked 60-hour weeks ever since he was fifteen years old, save for his law school days, when he was only working 40s so he could "concentrate on school". Once in his life he took a two-week vacation--for his honeymoon--but other than that, he's only taken a maximum of ten days. He joined the Army partially to help cover his college debts; and today he's a respected, esteemed, semi-retired member of the bar... and wealthy.
So. How greedy is it for Dad, who's worked 60-hour weeks for the last fifty years, to say "you know, I want to eat lobster tonight"? I think the man's entitled to it. Of course, you, who know how to spend Dad's money better than he does, and who obviously know how hard Dad has worked for it, have different ideas of what Dad is entitled to.
There's that word, "entitlement". Oooh. Bogeyman. The left thinks the right is allergic to it, that the right wants to shut down all entitlements. Nothing is further from the truth. Conservatives believe there are very few entitlements; the rest is just wishful thinking of the way the world should be.
You're entitled to liberty--entitled to make your own decisions for yourself, not having them imposed upon you by the government. This includes the liberty of making your own economic decisions.
You're entitled to work as hard as you like, or as little as you like. Nobody's cracking a whip over your shoulders. Don't want to work? Don't have to work. Want to work hard? You can work hard.
You're entitled to the fruits of your labors. What you build with your own two hands, you're entitled to own. And you can trade this entitlement--remember the "entitled to economic liberty" thing?--in a fair marketplace; if you want to take RIAA's money and give them the fruits of your labor, you can. The government's not forcing you to do it, nor is it forcing you not to do it.
Those are entitlements, and they all stem from the same basic entitlement: human beings are entitled to political and economic liberty. Everything else that gets swept under the rubric of "entitlement" is just people desperately wishing the world was otherwise than it was.
You have no entitlement to take my money out of my pocket to engage in your own private "redistribution of wealth" schemes. That's not liberty; that's tyranny. That's you making these decisions for me. You can try it if you like, but expect to get socked in the jaw. I don't give a damn about the money; money is a whore. I give a damn about your attempt at turning me into your slave.
If you make $500,000/yr and the government wants 30%, you aren't starving.
In the dot-com boom I was getting paid $100,000 a year. By your logic I was living on easy street, right? The reality is I got evicted from my apartment and was homeless in my car for a few days. Let's look at the math:
From a starting salary of $100,000, take away $50,000 right off the top between California and Federal income taxes. Wham--presto--gone.
From the $50,000 left, take away $36,000 for rent. I was living in a one-bedroom garret in San Francisco and property values were so overinflated that I was paying $3,000 a month just in rent.
From the $14,000 left, take away $3,000 for utilities. California power crisis is a bitch, don't you know.
From the $11,000 left, take away $6,000 for car payments on a five-year-old used car.
From the $5,000 left... that's what you have to live on for a year. That has to put gas in the car, that has to put money
I think you get you information about how prisoners are treated from some very questionable sources. But other than that I pretty much agree with you.
How about, instead of a flat tax, a linear tax:
T = r*I - p
where r is the tax rate, and p is (some arbitrarily assigned) poverty level.
Or if not that, at least SOMETHING that has a smooth slope. Tax brackets inherrently cause unfairness near the edges, whatever your tax philosophy.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
We don't bring it "in-house" because the Gov. isn't in the business of running schools, engineering weapons, building airplanes, or anything else it would have to do to be involved in this kind of work. And it shouldn't be, either. Typically, having the Federal government do something is a good way to guarantee that it won't be done the most efficient or (cost) effective way. And perhaps we're not paying bargain basement prices for our military equipment. There are some times you really don't want to just give the job to the lowest bidder. Like, when the defense of the nation is on the line. You want the engineering firms to compete on something other than price, like quality of design, track record for building airplanes properly, Let the Pentagon come up with specs for what it wants, let several companies make their proposals, and pick the best (not necessarily the cheapest) one. If we pay a premium for our satellite guided weapons delivery systems, that's fine so long as they work and save lives. If we pay a premium for the parachutes on our men's backs, that's fine as long as they work and save lives.
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Didn't you watch Demolition Man? They will change the constitution to allow him to run.
I think that networks that build on the concept of WASTE may offer the revival of BBS-like communities. It has the potential to tie together the community members in a similar fashion to BBS. With a BBS, you have to have a friend with the number. With a WASTE network, you have to have a friend with the public key.
.02 CDN cents. Hope they were worth the mod points =)
But I think that WASTE would have to adopt a more server-centric role to foster the community of a BBS. You would have a central server, offering a bulletin board, doors, and file sharing. It would be pretty cool to be able to set up your own little community for you and your friends just by running a server on your home system. Sure, you can do that now by setting up phpBB with a dyDNS account, but for some reason I see the WASTE concept being easier to advertise and implement (the privacy aspect helps as well). The community could be private or public, and I believe that the community that would grow from such a network could resemble the BBSes of old in a way. Not a replacement, but an alternative.
My
Mars
At root, the meaning of "liberal" is something akin to "freedom". The difference between the way Americans and the rest of the world use the word "liberal" is caused by the different areas of life that they apply the word to.
In the US, "liberalism" is typically applied to social/moral issues. Thus "liberals" support the freedom of people to take drugs, have gay sex, burn the flag, run around naked, etc.
The rest of world tends to apply "liberal" to the economic sphere. Such "liberals" are typically anti-union, anti-minimum-wage, and support the right of business to be free to do whatever the hell they want. That is why, for example, the Liberal Party in Australia is the right-wing party of big business.
Simple really...
It sure does! We are paying taxes based on the 1975 assessment of this house. That's a HUGE tax break.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Either hes a conservative or hes a socialist, you cannot be in between because these two are polar opposites.
Its not the fact that hes religious, because I dont think anyone who believes in the death penalty is truely religious.
I just dont understand his logic because he doesnt follow any. You cant be conservative at home but a liberal internationally, giving countries welfare, and providing universal healthcare for Iraqis while not doing anything at home. Giving medicine, and money to fix AIDS in Africa but not spending any money to prevent SARs at home.
Bush is illogical and a hypocrite, hes spent more than Clinton yet says Democrats want big government? Government is bigger now than its ever been, thats not conservative.
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The murderer who is executed most likely killed another person in a fit of rage, because he was drunk or whatever.
But when the state executes someone, it is done on purpose, calculated, letting the person know his time of death, living in hell for a long time before the state coldly murders him.
And if it turned out that he was innocent, the state has murdered an innocent person. And the state didn't do so because it was drunk or confused or angry. It did so completely sober, with a clear mind, and with an intent to kill another human being.
He didn't know what he was doing when he killed his father. He was angry. His mind was clouded. I am not saying that he shouldn't be held accountable for his actions, but he was definitely not aware of what he was doing.But when executed, the state is perfectly well aware of what it is doing. It is doing it on purpose, not because it is blinded by rage, but because it has considered it, pros, cons, evidence for, evidence against, and then made a conscious decision to murder another human being.
So the point, I guess, is: Who will be punished for an innocent man's death? After all, this person was innocently murdered by the state.
Clever signature text goes here.
I dont save any money, I dont see republicans giving tax cuts to the poor, the ones who really need them.
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Farm subsidies,Steel subsidies, Money to Africa, Money to Iraq, Money to Afganastan, Money to Isreal, billions and billions of dollars of special interest tax breaks to the rich, why is there a cap on taxes? The $80,000 cap, why does it exist? What about giving the rich bigger tax cuts than the middle class? Isnt that an entitlement?
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Just because I could in theory go on welfare now, because I'm poor, doesnt mean its easier to live on welfare.
The government makes you work while on welfare, you have absolutely no privacy while on welfare, you lose freedom, you must sign tons of paper work, and the check really isnt even that big, maybe enough money to buy food.
Instead of being on welfare, I myself just get free food when its offered. I mean thats all welfare pays for, FOOD, unless you have kids.
I'd think Universal healthcare does benefit the middle class, thats a democrat idea,
You are right democrats use money to provide a safety net, and Republicans want you to have no safety net.
But please do not assume Republicans dont waste money, Republicans waste more of your money than the Democrats.
Who is giving 15 billion to Africa? 20 billion to Turkey, billions to Afganastan, Billions to isreal, HUNDREDS of billions rebuilding Iraq.
All of these countries are essentially on welfare thanks to the Republicans, the same Republicans dont want you to have welfare.
Iraq will have Universal Healthcare, Africa will have Universal Healthcare, both countries get free food, Isreal is getting economic support, Schools are being built in these countries, guess what, ALL WITH YOUR TAX DOLLARS!
Republicans give welfare to the third world, Democrats give welfare domestically.
NEITHER ARE CONSERVATIVE. Both want to make government bigger, Republicans just want to pretend like they are conservative by cutting taxes while they spend a fortune and grow government.
I think the Democrats cater to the middle class moreso than the Republicans, Welfare was reformed under president Clinton, Under Clinton your salary rose greater than it did in 30 years, you had middle class people finally starting to buy stock!
The Democrats were responsible for creating a BIGGER middle class, they create a bigger middle class by helping the lower class rise up to middle class, once you get to middle class theres not so much help, but by having a safety net, and having a way out of the middle class, it helps with class mobility.
In a Republican world, based on their ideology, there is no way to move up in class, its impossible.
How can you get a better job if theres no public schools ? How can you move up in class without financial aid to help you pay for college? How can you move up in class if you dont live long enough to do so, because theres no universal healthcare?
Republicans want to limit competition by keeping the classes seperate, its divide and conquer, while the middle class and lower middle class fight over stuff like welfare and entitlements, they continue to take more of Americans resources from you while you do all the work to create it.
So yeah Republicans are smarter than Democrats, because they have you doing all the work like a bunch of slaves while they take all the credit, money, and reap all the benefits.
You cant have healthcare even though you are the nurse in the hospital, but the CEO who does nothing but go to meetings and give speeches for a living, he has healthcare.
You kids dont get to go to school because you dont have the money to afford a private school, forget the fact that your kids may be smarter or work harder, but a richer yet dumber kid can go to a private school and get a free ride to Yale.
Is this fair? You work hard all your life and have nothing to show for it, but these lazy Republicans who happen to have been born rich, get to give themselves entitlements, tax cuts, etc?
Lets not forget Republicans have their welfare too, its called corperate welfare, when the rich CEO's company is about to go out of business, all they have to do is make a call to the Republican government and get a nice bailout, hell they might even get subsidies.
One phonecall to the FCC and they can take over the media. The Republicans control all the money, therefore they control America. The only way to g
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The big corperations will take Bush's tax cut money and use that to hire workers over seas.
So Bush is just giving more jobs to India.
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It doesnt matter how many votes you get, it matters what states you win.
The democrats dont NEED more votes, they need more states.
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Why should we give money to these countries? Why should we be protecting Isreal? I mean conservatives believe the poor should help themselves right?
So Bush is no conservative.
Why give 15 Billion to Africa? Let them solve the Aids problem themselves, and let Iraq rebuild their own damn country.
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Very cool idea! ...
...
;)
...
;) be productive!
had an idea too
call it UBERnet layered over the
hard internet.
using UDP to broadcast your UBERnet address.
speed:
"Slammer's attack was ruthless and quick,
spreading hundreds of times faster than
the Code Red virus or Nimda worm. Yet it
started with a single killer packet. The
tiny worm hit its first victim at 12:30 am
Eastern standard time. The machine - a
server running Microsoft SQL - instantly
started spewing millions of Slammer clones,
targeting computers at random. By 12:33 am,
the number of slave servers in Slammer's
replicant army was doubling every 8.5 seconds."
run a UEBERnet name server process:
it tells what ports you got to offer.
it registers about 50 user (max) and parent
UEBERNET name servers (UnS).
you start your UBERnet client which looks
for the closesed/youngest UnS (he's your BOSS)
and registers your name with it.
the UBERnet client starts the UnS locally
(now your the youngest).
Uebernet client will service request from
the webbrowser etc
the oldest UnS is the ROOT-UEBERnet (like beeing ROOT DNS). if this one goes off-line, which tends to happen with DIAL-UP users, the next oldest one becomes BOSS etc.
consider the Server-Client tandem a productiv
WORM or VIRUS! GET INFECTED!
this would be cool because you could get a
name: uebernet.pirhana or just PIRHANA!
and you could keep it even if you drop offline.
you would re-register with UBERnet as soon as you go on-line again (with an new IP-adresse!).
the network will remember you.
guessing:
200 million user-names, 60 million dial-up
user using UBERnet on-line at any given time.
every UnS would just have to service/remember
3.33_ names
it would be interesting to see
the LIST of UBERnet-names flow around the world,
because when america goes to bed asia is waking up(?)
this would be a great distributed computing experiment/example.
we would be free from registering www-addresses and static/hard IP. but still have all the benefits of both. you could even run your own SMTP/APACHE/IRC/FTP/... services!
you get
me@pirhana.UNet!
www.pirhana.UNet!
dynamicBIND, yeah! staticBIND, buh!
Don't flame and tell me it's UBERkill
why this hasn't happend yet? ask the goverment (NSA, FBI, CIA, carnivor etc.)
Eastern Catholics use vulgate (local language) and always have. Don't universalize a pissing match if it doesn't fit the facts. For a very long time, latin *was* vulgate and the western church never really wanted to let go of one language.
I recall something like this showing up in "Demolition Man," the Sly Stallone movie modeled somewhat after Aldous Huxley's _Brave New World_.
Sorry, I was figuring on a bi-weekly basis. That should have been:
In my area even housing used over 70 hours/ 2 week s just by itself.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, I didn't say it, but I think the problem would come more from aggitation from the Muslim voting bloc than the neo-nazis. Or possibly voters cognizant enough of the global situation that would be worried about what the Islamic world would think about a Jew being president. Of course if the voter is that aware they'd also realize the religion of the American President is probably a non-issue to the average Muslim, they're going to think he's an Agent of Zion regardless.
-samI was just here, where did I go?
www.socal-freenet.com
-M@
De nada, mi amigo... I enjoy the trolling rivalry, reminiscent of early ninties hip hop animosity.
*looks over shoulder for gun toting rival faction trolls*
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
Of course, this then leads to serious questions about the division of "natural" and "unnatural". I do maintain, however, a belief that, once you are an adult, your life belongs to you and nobody else, and thus the only person who has a right to kill you is you or someone enacting the euthanasia clause of your living will.
Agreed, but isn't it simpler to stop the whole thing, and give everyone a check for the amount that they paid in?
No. People were promised more than they paid in. Many built there entire retirement plans around that. It's not fair to not live up to that promise.
Umm, that's exactly what I suggested when I said that we should phase out social security.
Democracy Now and Amy Goodman must fit in there somewhere.