In the first case anti-trust laws would stop Comcast cold. The second example is completely covered by patent law, and I already covered such a circumstance. I lost the link to the court case, but do not disassemble clauses in EULAs have already been ruled to have no bearing and cannot be enforced (at least in the jurisdiction it was tried, and it serves as very strong precedent for cases in other jurisdictions). (finally remembered the Wikipedia article with the relevant court case - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#C ase_law )
Comets, in general are not interstellar bodies, much less intergalactic. Is it probable that a comet deposited the necessary elements on Earth for life? Yes, but those comets were created during the creation of our solar system; they didn't come from Alpha Centauri, etc. I also believe, just on odds, that there is other, probably intelligent, life in the universe and your questions are more accurate than "If"
Actually, the "Do not disassemble" clauses (or reverse engineer) overstep the bounds of copyright. If I purchase a product, it is mine to do with as I please. Copyright, patents, etc. only come into effect if I in turn try to sell the same product (a copy) or a product that does the same thing and uses some of the code (patent infringement). Court rulings have revoked the power of this clause and technically they don't actually mean anything.
A good article on EULAs overstepping their legal authority is on the EFF website. #3 is the pertinent part to this discussion.
If the rights holder provides a legally produced copy to an individual, and prescribes certain copy allowances to that individual (i.e., installation rights, which involves copying some/all of the copyrighted material, and execution rights, which involves additional copying of some/all of that copyrighted material to RAM, Swapdisk, etc., the details of which may slightly vary from system to system) then I don't see what additional copying happened in this case beyond what was already permitted.
By that logic, the act of me reading a book is copying, especially were I to have an eidetic memory. IANAL, but in my view the installation and running of the program constitutes use not copying. Also, copyright protects against redistribution, copying for one's own personal use has always been seen as fair use, not a breach of copyright. This is why archiving and back ups are perfectly legal, but burning a CD and giving/selling it to someone else is not.
We were also all supposed to be driving flying cars and living on the moon, depending on which scientists you listened to back then. Or, if you think this ability to mis-predict when something is going to happen is limited to the scientific world, the end of the world has been predicted to have happened numerous times over the past couple millenia, and they have all been wrong every time as well.
As far as environmentalist predictions that have come true: glaciers have started melting faster and faster, weather patterns have already started changing, entire climates are beginning to change (i.e. the Amazon, not just from the cutting down of the rain forest, the destruction has spread on its own).
While the bill could be better written, the findings are correct and the first subparagraph is a good use of government funds on college campuses.
The second subparagraph that the OP pointed out would allow federal funds to go to possibly go to college campus use of packet filtering specifically when it comes to illegal downloading of music, etc. This bill does not talk about net neutrality at all, which the OP tried to imply, plus it will also, long term, probably save campuses money. Right now they are spending "significant" (the bill doesn't give more detail and I don't remember myself) amounts of money dealing with the increased bandwidth, tech support calls from virus infected users, and dealing with the MAFIAA.
Oh, and by the way, it is not "piracy." It is not even like piracy. It is data duplication. We should call it that.
Actually, it is a very important subset of data duplication called copyright infringement. Data duplication, in and of itself, is legal. However, if that duplication infringes on someone else's legal copyright, its a crime. Just as I can't legally go and copy (insert popular book name here) and hand it out on the street, I can't copy (insert popular CD/DVD title here) and hand it out for free on the internet.
The term "piracy" itself probably does go a bit too far, but I don't remember for sure who it was that named it first, the ones copying the music, etc. or the MAFIAA.
RTFP; the poster didn't say it is currently about litterbugs. The post merely asked where one draws the line. Right now it is claimed to be about assaults, but already it is being used to pester and threaten litterbugs, people playing their music 'too loud' and the like. It isn't a stretch of the imagination to see them using it to fine, etc. litterbugs; especially with facial recognition software becoming more an more accurate and the nearly annual push in Parliament for national ID cards (or did Parliament already pass that? I don't keep close enough track).
So when TPTB decide that domestic violence needs to be more strongly protected against, pointing the cameras at people's houses will be fine? While the GP did do some straw man with his upskirting, he does have a valid point. You can't make excuses like this for further wrong behavior. If drunken brawls are a problem, put more police on the streets near these bars. Don't put up cameras that will threaten you with arrest because you dropped some trash.
You may not be able to trust, blindly, the executable, but if you are presented with the binary, and everything else, you are able to test it to see exactly what it does. You can, if you want, watch as it changes the buffer, registry, etc. You can then watch the same information on a voting machine and verify that it is doing the same actions. Memory locations will obviously change, but if you have the source code you can make sure that the differences match what should happen. Yes, there are ways to mess with the code in a very obfuscated way, but contrary to what the other poster said, it will take much more than half a dozen people to hijack an election.
I still hold that, for all of its possible flaws, if implemented properly, as this bill does, electronic voting can be more secure and accurate than punch cards or optical scanners.
Can you see what compiler was used to turn source into binary? Can you verify that published source/binaries are the same as what's inside the machine in front of you? Can you verify that the hardware is the same as what the software is expected to run on? Can you verify that the hardware works as intended (like, no memory errors etc)? I expect that for most (or all) of these questions, the answer will be: no, not really.
Actually the answer is, in general, yes. The software vendors must turn over "source code, object code, and executable representation of the voting system software for use in an election" (from the bill). And where the answer is no (hardware) it will be tested by NIST. I have dealt with the NIST and they are nothing if not AR.
For once, I have read a technology bill that actually make sense and is well written. What will happen to it in committee and beyond is any body's guess, but as it stands right now, this is a good bill.
As far as your complaints about a paper trail, the point of the paper trail is to have a physical back-up in case of a dispute. In general, the electronic vote is what will be considered. However, at least one precinct per county (plus any disputes) will be audited at random with the results made public. This means that both have their place, the electronic voting machines for easier voter use and verification (the voter has to check the paper ballot and make sure its accurate), and the paper trail, mixed with auditing, to make sure those results are accurate. If this piece of legislation goes through, it will remove the 'hanging chad' issues we saw in Florida, while at the same time giving the people the ability to make sure that their votes don't just go into a black box with the hope that it will come out the same on the other side.
There is already, just for the hardware, $1 billion worth of funds allocated for this bill; to be used until it is used up (not tied to a budget year). There were other appropriations sections in this as well, auditing and dispute handling were the other two sections I noticed, also how to divvy it up among the states, but I didn't read those sections closely. As someone else has said, that price is worth knowing what is happening to my vote.
The time saved in testing injured patients alone to make sure that the right type of blood is given will save thousands of lives (I know it only takes a few seconds to do the test, but you've got to collect blood and take it to the lab and that takes a few minutes which some people may not have).
This is true, but, except in the most extreme of shortages, this isn't an issue. Most hospitals, in an emergency will simply transfuse a person with O+ blood (O- for women of child bearing age). While giving an O- patient O+ blood can have side effects, they are usually minor when it is only one pint, especially compared to imminent death. This most often only introduces new antigens that have to be dealt with on future transfusions and won't kill the patient. In general its important to avoid this, as there can be serious allergic reactions, but if its death or transfusion, a doctor will sign off on an emergency O transfusion. It can have serious repercussions on an unborn fetus, which is why women of a certain age are only given O- in these circumstances.
Credentials: Worked in a hospital blood bank for 3 years and another blood bank later for about the same.
Yeah, this has been proposed every few years. I can't find any articles on it right now, but the most recent time it was talked about, the scientists showed core samples that had crystallization that matches the way concrete would form. These get ignored because anyone who wants to study the pyramids aren't allowed to unless they subscribe to Egypt's dogmatic view that they were built @3000 BC by hard working Egyptians moving gigantic rocks thousands of miles...
Also count into this Linux users who want laptops sans MS. I know when I purchased my laptop I went the easy way and just got a cheap Dell with Windows, then proceeded to uninstall it in favor of Linux. If I could have gotten it with Linux preinstalled it would have saved me a lot of time (especially when it came to driver hunting...) I think the ROI for this idea goes beyond just the number of systems sold. I think it also includes an improvement in the way *Nix users look at Dell in general (if they pull this off properly, of course.)
Marriage, originally, had nothing to do with those two points. There were, in my understanding, a couple main reasons for monogamous relationships - separation of labor, which increases the amount of food a family can produce for their young, was the biggest one. There are many monogamous (or serially monogamous) animals that accent this, e.g. wolves, monkeys, most bird species, etc.
Your point A never entered into is from a psychological stand point since there wasn't psychology back then. B didn't enter into it because, when the institution of marriage became popular, people thought diseases were caused by the gods. If either of those were issues, polygamy would probably not exist. Those are, however, modern concerns, and important factors. But trying to say that those are the reasons marriage exists is shortsighted at best.
actually, when it comes to commerce, if it happens between people in two different states, it does fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Its Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, aka the Commerce Clause
[Congress has the authority] to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.
Yeah, this is all well and good for some (a few) slashdotters that do think. But for the hundreds of thousands of people who go researching on the internet about, for example, birth control and find the top 5 hits filled with these false articles, they won't know any better. This is consumer fraud, plain and simple. But this isn't something the government and FTC alone should handle; googlebot and all the other search engine bots need to wise up. They were able to do it for meta tag abuse, then link farms, this is the next step. The real, honest bloggers need to step up too. One of the main reasons there aren't already required paid disclosures on these blogs is because of a carefully run campaign (that was wagedhere too) to mark it, falsely, as an attack on normal bloggers.
In 1997 in Novell v. Network Trade Center 25 F. Supp. 2d 1218 (C.D. Utah 1997)[2] purchaser is an "owner" by way of sale and is entitled to the use and enjoyment of the software with the same rights as exist in the purchase of any other good.
This would include taking it apart to see how it works.
On the other hand, taking the whole piece of software, or a significant piece of it, and selling it as if it were your own is a copyright infringement the same as copying a page from a book and saying it is your own work, thus where the GPL comes in. GPL gives limited allowance to 'infringe' on the copyright, as long as you follow few rules, without contacting the original authors.
The thing is, the warranty makes no mention of any software requirements. Its all well and good if they don't want to support Linux (well, imo its wrong, but still legal), but if they don't say "Changing the OS on this system voids the warranty" then what HP/Compaq is doing is fraud. You can't arbitrarily void the warranty. Otherwise they could say, "Oh, you installed Firefox? We only allow you to use IE, your warranty is now void." etc.
Yes, the security policy is being established by the government. But if you have read anything about Vista, any software that Microsoft hasn't certified will give security error warnings. I never said Microsoft would gain directly from this policy, I said that more companies are going to need to get their software MS Certified so that it can run under this more secure policy. Microsoft will make money off of these extra certifications.
It is doing what the customer (US Government) wants, but not what the users (scientists, analysts, etc. who need specialized programs) want or need.
You're trying so hard to turn this around and make it about Microsoft but they have little to do with it.
MS has little (as far as has been shown so far) to do with the policy itself, but once the policy is implemented they have full control over the systems and what software can and cannot run on it. This mandate states that "No Vista application will be able to be sold to federal agencies if the application does not run on the secure version of Vista." Now this could mean that as long as you can click through the "This isn't a Windows Certified program" (or whatever the error is) and it still works that it will be allowed. Or it could, more likely, mean that all software that the government runs needs Microsoft to certify it. If that doesn't give MS a lot of (imo unnecessary) power, I don't know what does. Not only that, but MS will make a ton of cash, not just from the Vista boxes, but from the thousands of government contractors with millions in government money that will need to get their software certified.
Oh please, don't act like open source doesn't exist in Win32.
This relates to my last point, how much open source software is MS certified? Also, how many open source projects can afford to get certified?
<tinFoilHat>Finally, what I see in this is a move to stop the Open Document movement that many state governments are moving towards. What better way to cut it off than to talk the federal government into adopting a software infrastructure that is largely incompatible.</tinFoilHat>
The reason the N-Series PCs are more expensive, as others have noted, is because Dell gets paid bounties for customers signing up for AOL or McAfee, etc. They can't make this extra money from customers if they can't install this extra nag(crap)-ware. Personally, at least when it comes to desktops, I would rather spend the extra hour or two to build my own from parts I order myself (likely for less than I would pay Dell), and not pay MS or add to their claims at market dominance.
I'm no terrorist and I don't care if the government watches over me.
Unfortunately, that doesn't help those in governments where saying the wrong thing to the wrong person can get you locked up without a trial. Similar things have happened to a couple American citizens (and people unfortunate enough to have been noticed by the American administration, accidentally or otherwise) in America. Your innocence is only a protection if those who would persecute you need to prove your guilt. It does nothing when you are never even given the chance to prove your innocence.
It's all about compromise, just like everything else we have in our society. We are not truly free, we live by rules so that we can all live together.
Agreed, but in order for there to be compromise, those who have to follow the rules should be given equal voice to those who want to set the rules. When laws are being made by people who know little about the subject matter (a series of tubes anyone?) and those people are elected by an even less informed populace, you aren't going to get a compromise that is going to help you or me. You are more likely to get one that helps AT&T and the NSA to continue to monitor everything you do online.
You have a good point. The main reason the space program got so much notice back in the 60's was not because astronauts were risking life and limb (firefighters risk their lives more in one day than most astronauts will in one year), but because we were in an international competition. After we won, the 'stars' that won the game are remembered, and the ones that followed in their footsteps were largely forgotten, unless there was some other drama tied to it (Apollo 13, Challenger, first {insert minority here} to do something in space, etc.) Americans, largely, are interested in competition and rivalries, in space we became the defacto leaders so Americans stopped watching.
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In the first case anti-trust laws would stop Comcast cold. The second example is completely covered by patent law, and I already covered such a circumstance. I lost the link to the court case, but do not disassemble clauses in EULAs have already been ruled to have no bearing and cannot be enforced (at least in the jurisdiction it was tried, and it serves as very strong precedent for cases in other jurisdictions). (finally remembered the Wikipedia article with the relevant court case - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#C ase_law )
Comets, in general are not interstellar bodies, much less intergalactic. Is it probable that a comet deposited the necessary elements on Earth for life? Yes, but those comets were created during the creation of our solar system; they didn't come from Alpha Centauri, etc. I also believe, just on odds, that there is other, probably intelligent, life in the universe and your questions are more accurate than "If"
Actually, the "Do not disassemble" clauses (or reverse engineer) overstep the bounds of copyright. If I purchase a product, it is mine to do with as I please. Copyright, patents, etc. only come into effect if I in turn try to sell the same product (a copy) or a product that does the same thing and uses some of the code (patent infringement). Court rulings have revoked the power of this clause and technically they don't actually mean anything.
A good article on EULAs overstepping their legal authority is on the EFF website. #3 is the pertinent part to this discussion.
By that logic, the act of me reading a book is copying, especially were I to have an eidetic memory. IANAL, but in my view the installation and running of the program constitutes use not copying. Also, copyright protects against redistribution, copying for one's own personal use has always been seen as fair use, not a breach of copyright. This is why archiving and back ups are perfectly legal, but burning a CD and giving/selling it to someone else is not.
We were also all supposed to be driving flying cars and living on the moon, depending on which scientists you listened to back then. Or, if you think this ability to mis-predict when something is going to happen is limited to the scientific world, the end of the world has been predicted to have happened numerous times over the past couple millenia, and they have all been wrong every time as well.
As far as environmentalist predictions that have come true: glaciers have started melting faster and faster, weather patterns have already started changing, entire climates are beginning to change (i.e. the Amazon, not just from the cutting down of the rain forest, the destruction has spread on its own).
While the bill could be better written, the findings are correct and the first subparagraph is a good use of government funds on college campuses.
The second subparagraph that the OP pointed out would allow federal funds to go to possibly go to college campus use of packet filtering specifically when it comes to illegal downloading of music, etc. This bill does not talk about net neutrality at all, which the OP tried to imply, plus it will also, long term, probably save campuses money. Right now they are spending "significant" (the bill doesn't give more detail and I don't remember myself) amounts of money dealing with the increased bandwidth, tech support calls from virus infected users, and dealing with the MAFIAA.
Actually, it is a very important subset of data duplication called copyright infringement. Data duplication, in and of itself, is legal. However, if that duplication infringes on someone else's legal copyright, its a crime. Just as I can't legally go and copy (insert popular book name here) and hand it out on the street, I can't copy (insert popular CD/DVD title here) and hand it out for free on the internet.
The term "piracy" itself probably does go a bit too far, but I don't remember for sure who it was that named it first, the ones copying the music, etc. or the MAFIAA.
RTFP; the poster didn't say it is currently about litterbugs. The post merely asked where one draws the line. Right now it is claimed to be about assaults, but already it is being used to pester and threaten litterbugs, people playing their music 'too loud' and the like. It isn't a stretch of the imagination to see them using it to fine, etc. litterbugs; especially with facial recognition software becoming more an more accurate and the nearly annual push in Parliament for national ID cards (or did Parliament already pass that? I don't keep close enough track).
So when TPTB decide that domestic violence needs to be more strongly protected against, pointing the cameras at people's houses will be fine? While the GP did do some straw man with his upskirting, he does have a valid point. You can't make excuses like this for further wrong behavior. If drunken brawls are a problem, put more police on the streets near these bars. Don't put up cameras that will threaten you with arrest because you dropped some trash.
You may not be able to trust, blindly, the executable, but if you are presented with the binary, and everything else, you are able to test it to see exactly what it does. You can, if you want, watch as it changes the buffer, registry, etc. You can then watch the same information on a voting machine and verify that it is doing the same actions. Memory locations will obviously change, but if you have the source code you can make sure that the differences match what should happen. Yes, there are ways to mess with the code in a very obfuscated way, but contrary to what the other poster said, it will take much more than half a dozen people to hijack an election.
I still hold that, for all of its possible flaws, if implemented properly, as this bill does, electronic voting can be more secure and accurate than punch cards or optical scanners.
Actually the answer is, in general, yes. The software vendors must turn over "source code, object code, and executable representation of the voting system software for use in an election" (from the bill). And where the answer is no (hardware) it will be tested by NIST. I have dealt with the NIST and they are nothing if not AR.
For once, I have read a technology bill that actually make sense and is well written. What will happen to it in committee and beyond is any body's guess, but as it stands right now, this is a good bill.
As far as your complaints about a paper trail, the point of the paper trail is to have a physical back-up in case of a dispute. In general, the electronic vote is what will be considered. However, at least one precinct per county (plus any disputes) will be audited at random with the results made public. This means that both have their place, the electronic voting machines for easier voter use and verification (the voter has to check the paper ballot and make sure its accurate), and the paper trail, mixed with auditing, to make sure those results are accurate. If this piece of legislation goes through, it will remove the 'hanging chad' issues we saw in Florida, while at the same time giving the people the ability to make sure that their votes don't just go into a black box with the hope that it will come out the same on the other side.
There is already, just for the hardware, $1 billion worth of funds allocated for this bill; to be used until it is used up (not tied to a budget year). There were other appropriations sections in this as well, auditing and dispute handling were the other two sections I noticed, also how to divvy it up among the states, but I didn't read those sections closely. As someone else has said, that price is worth knowing what is happening to my vote.
This is true, but, except in the most extreme of shortages, this isn't an issue. Most hospitals, in an emergency will simply transfuse a person with O+ blood (O- for women of child bearing age). While giving an O- patient O+ blood can have side effects, they are usually minor when it is only one pint, especially compared to imminent death. This most often only introduces new antigens that have to be dealt with on future transfusions and won't kill the patient. In general its important to avoid this, as there can be serious allergic reactions, but if its death or transfusion, a doctor will sign off on an emergency O transfusion. It can have serious repercussions on an unborn fetus, which is why women of a certain age are only given O- in these circumstances.
Credentials: Worked in a hospital blood bank for 3 years and another blood bank later for about the same.
Yeah, this has been proposed every few years. I can't find any articles on it right now, but the most recent time it was talked about, the scientists showed core samples that had crystallization that matches the way concrete would form. These get ignored because anyone who wants to study the pyramids aren't allowed to unless they subscribe to Egypt's dogmatic view that they were built @3000 BC by hard working Egyptians moving gigantic rocks thousands of miles...
Also count into this Linux users who want laptops sans MS. I know when I purchased my laptop I went the easy way and just got a cheap Dell with Windows, then proceeded to uninstall it in favor of Linux. If I could have gotten it with Linux preinstalled it would have saved me a lot of time (especially when it came to driver hunting...) I think the ROI for this idea goes beyond just the number of systems sold. I think it also includes an improvement in the way *Nix users look at Dell in general (if they pull this off properly, of course.)
Marriage, originally, had nothing to do with those two points. There were, in my understanding, a couple main reasons for monogamous relationships - separation of labor, which increases the amount of food a family can produce for their young, was the biggest one. There are many monogamous (or serially monogamous) animals that accent this, e.g. wolves, monkeys, most bird species, etc.
Your point A never entered into is from a psychological stand point since there wasn't psychology back then. B didn't enter into it because, when the institution of marriage became popular, people thought diseases were caused by the gods. If either of those were issues, polygamy would probably not exist. Those are, however, modern concerns, and important factors. But trying to say that those are the reasons marriage exists is shortsighted at best.
actually, when it comes to commerce, if it happens between people in two different states, it does fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Its Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, aka the Commerce Clause
Yeah, this is all well and good for some (a few) slashdotters that do think. But for the hundreds of thousands of people who go researching on the internet about, for example, birth control and find the top 5 hits filled with these false articles, they won't know any better. This is consumer fraud, plain and simple. But this isn't something the government and FTC alone should handle; googlebot and all the other search engine bots need to wise up. They were able to do it for meta tag abuse, then link farms, this is the next step. The real, honest bloggers need to step up too. One of the main reasons there aren't already required paid disclosures on these blogs is because of a carefully run campaign (that was waged here too) to mark it, falsely, as an attack on normal bloggers.
Actually, no. (obligatory IANAL clause)
Doctrine of First Sale (or at least the important part in this issue):
This would include taking it apart to see how it works.
On the other hand, taking the whole piece of software, or a significant piece of it, and selling it as if it were your own is a copyright infringement the same as copying a page from a book and saying it is your own work, thus where the GPL comes in. GPL gives limited allowance to 'infringe' on the copyright, as long as you follow few rules, without contacting the original authors.
The thing is, the warranty makes no mention of any software requirements. Its all well and good if they don't want to support Linux (well, imo its wrong, but still legal), but if they don't say "Changing the OS on this system voids the warranty" then what HP/Compaq is doing is fraud. You can't arbitrarily void the warranty. Otherwise they could say, "Oh, you installed Firefox? We only allow you to use IE, your warranty is now void." etc.
Yes, the security policy is being established by the government. But if you have read anything about Vista, any software that Microsoft hasn't certified will give security error warnings. I never said Microsoft would gain directly from this policy, I said that more companies are going to need to get their software MS Certified so that it can run under this more secure policy. Microsoft will make money off of these extra certifications.
Think outside the box for ignorance's sake.
It is doing what the customer (US Government) wants, but not what the users (scientists, analysts, etc. who need specialized programs) want or need.
MS has little (as far as has been shown so far) to do with the policy itself, but once the policy is implemented they have full control over the systems and what software can and cannot run on it. This mandate states that "No Vista application will be able to be sold to federal agencies if the application does not run on the secure version of Vista." Now this could mean that as long as you can click through the "This isn't a Windows Certified program" (or whatever the error is) and it still works that it will be allowed. Or it could, more likely, mean that all software that the government runs needs Microsoft to certify it. If that doesn't give MS a lot of (imo unnecessary) power, I don't know what does. Not only that, but MS will make a ton of cash, not just from the Vista boxes, but from the thousands of government contractors with millions in government money that will need to get their software certified.
This relates to my last point, how much open source software is MS certified? Also, how many open source projects can afford to get certified?
<tinFoilHat>Finally, what I see in this is a move to stop the Open Document movement that many state governments are moving towards. What better way to cut it off than to talk the federal government into adopting a software infrastructure that is largely incompatible.</tinFoilHat>
The reason the N-Series PCs are more expensive, as others have noted, is because Dell gets paid bounties for customers signing up for AOL or McAfee, etc. They can't make this extra money from customers if they can't install this extra nag(crap)-ware. Personally, at least when it comes to desktops, I would rather spend the extra hour or two to build my own from parts I order myself (likely for less than I would pay Dell), and not pay MS or add to their claims at market dominance.
Unfortunately, that doesn't help those in governments where saying the wrong thing to the wrong person can get you locked up without a trial. Similar things have happened to a couple American citizens (and people unfortunate enough to have been noticed by the American administration, accidentally or otherwise) in America. Your innocence is only a protection if those who would persecute you need to prove your guilt. It does nothing when you are never even given the chance to prove your innocence.
Agreed, but in order for there to be compromise, those who have to follow the rules should be given equal voice to those who want to set the rules. When laws are being made by people who know little about the subject matter (a series of tubes anyone?) and those people are elected by an even less informed populace, you aren't going to get a compromise that is going to help you or me. You are more likely to get one that helps AT&T and the NSA to continue to monitor everything you do online.
You have a good point. The main reason the space program got so much notice back in the 60's was not because astronauts were risking life and limb (firefighters risk their lives more in one day than most astronauts will in one year), but because we were in an international competition. After we won, the 'stars' that won the game are remembered, and the ones that followed in their footsteps were largely forgotten, unless there was some other drama tied to it (Apollo 13, Challenger, first {insert minority here} to do something in space, etc.) Americans, largely, are interested in competition and rivalries, in space we became the defacto leaders so Americans stopped watching.