Where will you train them? You need the people who
have the knowledge to do the work. If they are not in the US, and do not wish to be in the US, then you have to live with the situation.
The whole point is to develop a US skill base. If you really can't do it, then... that's that. It doesn't get done.
All hail the free market.
When it comes to government expenditure, I really don't want a "free market" - especially on defense matters. I do not want government money flowing out of the country giving other countries jobs at my expense! When private companies outsource, it is their money - not so the government.
"can you really claim the US lacks security researchers capable of working on a secure OS"
No idea. Security is not my thing. I'm talking from the experience of my own research area.
You missed the point. The US does not lack that expertise internally (I think I can safely say Linus and the guys behind Red Hat Linux and SELinux are both capable of writing an OS, securely) - so why the hell was it giving the jobs to a foreign team, when they have ample domestic talent which could have done the job without adding to the US trade deficit and unemployment?!
Research is a small community of specialists. For a given research project there are probably only a few people in the world who have the ability and expertise to fulfil the research. And if these are abroad, what can you do about it?
Get some researchers in the US! Either train people already here, or attract people with those skills to immigrate. Developing America's skillset is the aim of DARPA grants; promoting science in other countries is the job of those countries!
Of course, its not surprising if there is some control over where it is spent, and through who. But there again I thought that DARPA's remit was to get the research done, rather than get it done somewhere specifically. Do they want to fund American research, or fund research for the American state. I guess largely the latter.
Actually, the former is a major part. It is an American funding body. If the military needs some technology developed elsewhere, they can buy it in - but if it is to be custom-developed using US funds, it must do so in the US. Like other defense procurement - and indeed almost all other government expenditure - it must come from the US wherever possible; there's an Executive Order to this effect.
Yes, there will no doubt be exceptions - but can you really claim the US lacks security researchers capable of working on a secure OS - considering Linus Torvalds is in the US, as are Red Hat, the FSF, Sun, SGI, IBM (inventors of DES), and the NSA who brought us SELinux? For that matter - perhaps DARPA just decided that having OpenBSD and Linux work both US government funded was inefficient, and OpenBSD (as the foreign import) should get the bullet?
I believe you are correct that the orginal law has been repealed. I don't think that placates Theo. (I'll answer more in a moment.)
Given Theo's views, I'm not sure anything would;-)
The rules against exporting crypto are gone. The DMCA makes it difficult (at least) to research/develop crypto. And the laws in this area show no sign of lightening up. (In fact, they show the opposite.)
From what I've read of the DMCA, it doesn't: you can research or develop any crypto you like. The restrictions only apply when you are actually "researching" a copy-protection system itself. Studying video blanking signals is fine: it's only when you're specifically attacking Macrovision that the DMCA comes into play. Hence Sklyarov's prosecution: he was selling a "crack" to Adobe's eBook protection. That's exactly what the DMCA was intended to prohibit! Crypto research itself is fine, despite all the SlashFUD.
Sure, and that works for a while. Eventually though (with the way stuff is going) they will find themselves having to cut themselves off from the rest of the crypto community. Maybe they will have enough talent to keep it up then, maybe not. Regardless the crypto itself would end up only avalible to them and other government agencies. And that scares me.
So far, they have been ahead of "the rest of the crypto community": they had public key crypto and RSA itself long before Rivest and co did. They have plenty of in-house talent. Whether or not the government having strong crypto is good is a matter of opinion; I'm inclined to believe anyone should be entitled to have and use crypto freely, including the government.
"UPenn's redirection certainly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of these rules: the funding is supposed to fund work within the US."
Large parts of DARPA's research programme would collapse if they actually did things this way. There are too many researchers who do not live in the US, who they rely on.
True. Most rules of this sort can't be rigidly enforced, or things collapse. Spending some grant money overseas is one thing, though, making a "sub-grant" to an entire foreign project is another!
One obvious question I haven't seen asked yet, though: where is the Canadian government in all this? The US government funds US projects all the time (from the Internet itself, to SELinux) - why doesn't the Canadian government pick up the tab for this Canadian project?
in time, the EU council will be democratically elected.. and a EuroPresident as well. Some nations will resist, politicians will want to wield nationalism to retain power... but people will have advocates who will transform the central gov.
Yes, they might one day evolve a democracy. Until then, I'm not holding my breath. From a corrupt and unaccountable body which has previously legislated the shape of bananas, almost any expectation would be optimistic.
as for your desire to move to the US, i recommend strongly against it. their mindless, shallow and ignorant...
At least most of them can find their shift keys, and know the difference between "their" and "they're";-) Cheap shot, I know, but calling others ignorant in a short sentence containing two grammatical mistakes is too tempting a target... Would you happen to be a native French speaker...?
the cities are dirty and filled with the worst poverty and crime.
Funny. While US crime levels plummet, the UK is importing American crime-fighting tactics in an attempt to deal with a surging crime level. Meanwhile, ozone and PM2.5 pollution levels are projected to be dramatically lower in the US over the next 20 years, with lake acidity falling significantly as well. Poverty is also at almost a 40 year low in the US: not perfect, but much better than it has been, and still improving overall. (It's cyclical; slowly rising at present, due to the poor economy.)
in 10-15 years, they will be so absolutely committed to imperialism to defend against a collapse of their consumer culture, the plutocracy will drive them to utter chaos..
Perhaps, but it seems to be doing pretty well so far. As for imperialism, it's ironic you say this in defence of the EU, which just expanded to cover a further 10 countries, as France deployed troops into the Ivory Coast...
im thinking another depression, a collapse in their currency and states going bankrupt...
Well, that's happened to most of the EU member states at least once in the last century: maybe it's America's turn now. Or maybe it'll be the Euro which collapses: France and Germany are both in violation of the "Stability and Growth Pact", as well as heading for recessions...
the result of this threat to their 'standard of living' will be war abroad...
Unlikely; while that is how Germany handled the situation you describe, the US isn't heading in that direction at present - and managed to deal with the last depression without starting a war anywhere.
Canada will be all by colonialised by this time,
By the British Empire^WCommonwealth again? The US has never "colonialised" anything, unless you count displacing "Indian" tribes back before most of the EU member governments existed...
because the AmericanMindVirus is incredibly infectious, alot of Canadians watch too much "American News."
You mean, a lot of Canadians choose to know what's happening in their only close neighbour? I wonder why.
-- which is horribly Pro-USA propaganda... have you ever seen Fox News Network?
Of course I have. Before you attack it any further, you should probably be told: it's not American. It's owned by an Australian, through a largely British media company. (News International, parent company of Sky and the Times of London.)
As for your complaints of pro-USA "propoganda": which country spends over $1bn "to enhance pride in X, to contribute to X's economic growth and prosperity, to protect X's heritage, to ensure access to X voices and X space, and to encourage participation in and contribution to X society."? Hint: it isn't the US. There is no "AmericanMindVirus": people are (in the US, but not in Canada or France) free to choose and develop their own culture and language, instead of having it dictated to them by a committee.
Except for the fact that they are worried about US law on the issues of encryption research.
I was aware of that concern early in OpenBSD's life, but AIUI those laws no longer apply? (You're still not allowed to export crypto to various "evil" countries, but that is a trade embargo: technically, you aren't allowed to export pens or bits of string there either!)
Seriously, good point, but the US is driving security researchers out of the country. If the government wants to stay in the game they (will soon) either have to employ non-US citizens or change the laws back. I know which one I'm betting on...
Are they still driving anything out? I was under the impression the crypto rules had gone. I know there's a lot of FUD regarding the DMCA - some might be accurate, most of it certainly isn't (just look at the/. posts: "this post double-ROT13ed: decryption illegal under the DMCA"!) - but not crypto any more.
As for needing to employ non-US citizens: the NSA and GCHQ (their British counterpart) both manage pretty well, despite much stronger restrictions applying to their staff than to any university researcher. They also seem to have managed to produce SELinux without needing to export the work...
It's a bit stronger than that: federal law specifically prohibits funding foreign projects such as Theo's.
They were sending the money off to Mr. Smith at U Penn and he was redirecting the money in question. The fact is that DARPA money cannot directly fund work outside the US so this method was being used.
From the reference to "DARPA review", I wonder if someone at DARPA objected to this redirection? UPenn's redirection certainly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of these rules: the funding is supposed to fund work within the US.
Result the decisions that are made are loosely related to the original information.
There is the old game of "gossip" telephone game
Probably everyone reading this has played the telephone game at one time or another.
Loved by nursery school teachers everywhere, it usually goes like this: participants stand in a circle. The teacher whispers a sentence, word, or phrase into the ear of the first person in the circle. The first person whispers what they hear to the second person, the second person whispers what they hear to the third person and so on until everyone has had a turn and the last person announces what they heard. The phrase which started out "The mashed potatoes are dry" has morphed into "Last Thanksgiving, my grandmother put ex-lax in the sweet potato pie."
That is WITHOUT hidden agenda and biases.
In this case, I suspect something similar happened. Theo's quote refers to a "DARPA review"; as I understand DARPA's rules, their grant money must be spent within the US. UPenn were accepting that money within the US, then transferring it to Theo's team in Canada - which looks to me as if it violates DARPA's rules. I suspect someone in DARPA took a look at how their grant money was being spent, and told UPenn "you can't use the money that way, stop it!". The various stages of communication (this quote came via a reporter FFS!) then mangled this into some sort of terrorist theory...
Whatever the reasoning, the US government really isn't supposed to "export" work this way. We've seen enough outcry on Slashdot lately over outsourcing by private companies: if I were a US taxpayer, I'd be glad that at least the government has rules against doing this! Of course, Theo and co could probably have avoided the whole problem by being employed in the US by UPenn...
What kind of idiot would fight to impose anything other than a democracy on himself?!)
I can assure you, those who decided to name the United States a Republic HAD read Plato's Republic --- which I suggest you do now... here is a Gutenberg txt
"Democracy" and "Republic" aren't mutually exclusive. In this context, by democracy I meant the people being the ultimate authority (as they are in the US), as opposed to - for example - a dictatorship or a monarchy in the way the UK was centuries ago: the government ruling without needing the people's consent to do so. The US is a democracy in that sense.
As for your assesment of the EU, its it by far the most promising democratic effort on the planet today. I look to it as a work in progress yes, but successfull thusfar, and likely to be the most successfull "state" in the history of the Planet in very short order. And as a more medium term goal; Will they Admit Canada (or will I have to move) and/or Russia...:) *THAT* is my hope.
Interesting. Having lived in it for almost all my life, I regard it not as a democratic work in progress, but a bureaucratic disaster in progress! It is not in any sense a democratic anything (the entire Council of Ministers was fired for corruption recently - and promptly reappointed), and their auditor refuses to certify their accounts as being honest. For any private entity, this would mean huge fines, jail terms and perhaps closure of the company; for them, it's business as usual.
Perhaps, a decade from now, the corruption will have been solved and they will have implemented some form of democratic accountability instead of bribes and propoganda. (They recently issued a "free" 1 Euro coin to each school kid, in an effort to boost support...) Until then, I hope Canada stays out: I want a backup option in case I can't emigrate to the US yet!
"This is probably a sign that the current administration has really bad cyber security plans."
If the security is so bad for a former Microsoft employee to want to wash his hands of it, I weep for the future.
More likely he didn't like being ripped apart by real security. If their plan was like Britain's "e-government", which consisted of Blair starring in the Office XP launch then switching all government sites over to IIS, I'm sure this MS guy would be delighted. If he objects to it, that's a good sign: hopefully, their security plans is:
1. Remove all insecure MS crap from.gov systems.
2. Replace with secure platforms (probably some sort of Unix).
Any security plan from an MS guy is... questionable. When the MS guy walks out, it's a good sign they're making progress;-)
A lot of people, mainly outside the west, are engaged in revolutionary struggles to create theocracys. That's what our good friend osama wants to do.
Good point. That's a case of a group of people fighting to impose their will on others, though: Al Queda and the Taleban are both small but powerful subsets, rather than the sort of "popular uprising" the word revolution usually describes.
Anarchists would like to get rid of the government completely, democracy or no.
In a sense, though, that is an extreme form of democracy: everyone "rules" themselves. Democracy is not just a matter of everything being decided by a vote: freedom means the freedom to say and do what you want, even when other people don't like it or agree with it! (It's not an absolute, of course: there are always some restrictions for various reasons.)
We can say all these people are just crazys who if they weren't so brain washed would wanted liberal democracys, and they probably are, but doesn't that sound pretty assinine?
Anarchists want freedom for themselves - a bit more freedom than other people want them to have. Groups like Al Queda and the USSR's Communist Party want to impose their rule on other people - not on themselves. It's not a matter of brainwashing, it's a simple power grab. (They do often have supporters, who believe they benefit personally from the power grab - but if they had the support of the majority, their rule could as easily be a democracy anyway!)
"Maybe this is why a revolution in this sense will not happen in a democracy"
If democracy is the base state of a country, then we would long ago have all become democracies. Clearly that is not the case, since many dictatorships exist throughout the world.
Not the "base state", but the one any true revolution would aim to achieve. (What kind of idiot would fight to impose anything other than a democracy on himself?!)
George Orwell's Animal Farm is a very insightful piece of work you might like to read:
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/animf.htm
Its basically the story of how Russian went from Tzars to Democracy to Dictatorship, transposed into Animals on a farm.
The pigs SLOWLY amass power and control, the rest of the Animals SLOWLY lose power and control, and the balance shifts until the pigs attack the Farmer and depose him.
A SLOW bypassing of Judicial review, a SLOW move to gain more control is how the US democracy will die, but its still a revolution, just in slow-mo.
I'd disagree there: a revolution is replacing one form of government with another. When an existing government evolves (or degenerates) into another form - like the Animal Farm example of becoming a dictatorship, as happened in Germany, and Russia with a committee in place of a single dictator - that's not a revolution. The EU is much further down this road than the US, having started from a much less robust design: the "parliamentary system" (effectively, "let's give absolute unchecked power to a single House of Representatives") represented a single point of failure - and it turned round and handed power to the corrupt and unelected EU Council of Ministers. Now, that body is starting to flex its muscles, and people are starting to wonder if that was a good idea after all...
You do realize that gun control is a left-wing promoted action right? And that Hitler was a Facist? As in, the total OPPOSITE spectrum of what you are talking about?
That was Mussolini. Hitler was a Nationalist Socialist. Which certainly isn't a purely right wing position... Not to mention being the guy who tightened Germany's existing gun "control" laws in 1938. (The quote about 1935 going down in history is an urban myth, but has some basis in fact.)
Nice try, give me a call when you move back to reality.
The reality is that victim disarmament (or gun "control" to its supporters, many of whom exempt themselves from it) increases crime. It's a pretty obvious pattern, really: disarm public, crime goes up. Arm the public, crime goes down. There's a very clear reason for it, too: in areas which practice gun "control", you can be much more confident your victim is defenseless. As a result, there are very clear correlations: hot burglaries, for example, are much more common in areas with low gun ownership.
The old saying about "outlaw guns, and only outlaws will have guns" is very true. If you really believe making gun ownership illegal will somehow disarm criminals, you are the one who need to return to reality! The only people disarmed by gun "control" are the victims of crime, not the perpetrators.
If they've served their debt to society, and they appear to have truly reformed, then hiring them is expedient and possibly noble.
Agreed. They need some kind of job - why shouldn't it be one they are suited for, where they can contribute the most to society by helping prevent or reduce the next generation of crackers' exploits?
However, Mitnick is an unrepentant repeat offender. I wouldn't let him pay me to look at my computers.
Also agreed: the "poacher turned gamekeeper" idea works, but only if the poacher has truly turned gamekeeper!
This isn't a new idea; car companies have, apparently, been hiring car thieves for years. (Not the usual "joyrider" type, I mean the ones who defeat the locks, alarm, immobilizer etc.) They know exactly the kind of vulnerability to look for. If you do it properly - let them loose on a car while supervised - the worst case is that they achieve nothing, at a fairly small cost (while making the car look better).
This reminds me of when Markus Kuhn was hired to test a satellite scrambling system (as in DirecTV or Sky). The company was paranoid enough to meet him off-site, rather than let him into their office; he responded by cracking their security system, then uploading his report on the vulnerabilities to their corporate mail server. As root. (I'm not sure how they felt about that...)
Third, if GWB had offered to drop sanctions in exchange for exclusive contracts for american companies I'm sure Saddam would have jumped.
France did offer precisely this - they'd use their influence as P5 members to drop the sanctions, in exchange for TotalFinaElf getting sweet deals on Iraqi oil, and Saddam did jump.
However, the only dead russians and french in the country (if there were any) were there providing military support to Saddam's regime. I doubt the french and russians have many big fans in iraq right now.
Very true; one Iraqi commented (as a picture of Chirac was treated to the same as Hussein's portraits have been) that French and Russian people would not be safe in Iraq for another 20 years.
Finally, the greed motive doesn't work out too well as US support for the war goes. But, it does work as a reason that the french and russians opposed the war (their oil companies were making a killing under saddam and oil-for-food).
Absolutely. France was set to benefit even more from the lifting of sanctions - Hussein had promised TotalFinaElf lucrative oil deals in exchange for that - and were already profiting heavily from illegal arms sales such as this). It's France and Russia who were abusing the UN for control of Iraqi oil, not the coalition!
I originally thought of allowing the users to press a number on the telephone pad -- however that would allow them to input a sequence of all the numbers on the keypad into the voicemail message.
No: if they are asked to press, say, 3, and respond by pressing 0123456789, they failed. Just check whether or not the first key pressed was the correct one. That way, any would-be abuser of the system has a 1 in 10 chance of getting through using a pre-recorded message, rather than the near-certainty they have with the current one. A two digit version (to accept, dial 27 now) reduces that to 1 in 100 odds - you'd have to be pretty desperate (or stupid!) to try that one.
Using random words is better. # key resets the random word, so that if the person can't pronounce the word so the system can understand it then gives them another chance to try.
Could work; more complex to implement, though. Just using numbers is simple and foolproof: I'd say a 1% chance of a fraudulent call succeeding is much better than the current setup!
Alternatively: don't do 3rd party billing. Instead, just offer customers a calling card, which would work like a normal calling card but billed to your regular phone bill. Much simpler and resistant to fraud!
Instead of a question, you tell them how to accept charges. you tell them how twice. Most people will be able to figure it out by the second time it's played to them. Those who can't shouldn't be accepting a collect call (or reproducing for that matter).
Hmm...
To avoid being neutered, please repeat after me: supercallifragilisticexpealydotious. What the f... Thank you. The doctor will arrive shortly.
There are some very important reasons to allow CLID blocking. Organizations such as domestic violence shelters, health care providers, public health, etc require CLID. [I think you mean CLID blocking here;-)] For example, do you want a CLID tag left on your hon display that says "County VD clinic," called? Even if they no one answers "finger prints" are left for every one in your house to see.
If the wrong person answers, there's one hell of a big fingerprint right there anyway. Which is why calling like that is an incredibly dumb idea. (I'd actually forgotten the US system gives names as well; the UK's CLID implementation is number only. Which also avoids the problem, as long as you're careful how the switchboard operator answers!)
You could make an exception for cases like that, much as directory assistance will give out "unlisted" numbers in emergencies (to appropriate authorities, that is). Or just show their number as having a person's name, or being number-only. For the VD clinic, unless it's a standalone clinic unrelated to anything else, just use the hospital switchboard: easy enough to explain away if needed.
These are hardly major issues, or frequent occurences, anyway. A much bigger problem in the UK is that, with local calls still being charged per minute for most people, any call you make to the local VD clinic will then show up on the phone bill... AFAIK, that's never been a problem here. You just don't phone them; if you're waiting for results, either collect them in person, or have them mailed in a suitable envelope. Never having had any involvement with VD clinics (or VD!) it's not something I've encountered - the phone system is my field...
If for some reason they really, really need the ability to make anonymous calls, they could get a specific exception. I'm still not convinced this is the case: do domestic violence shelters make many calls of that sort? I'm sure VD clinics have worked out some way of handling calls answered by the wrong person long before this!
Better yet, what about caller id. If they don't send you the signal are they hiding the origin. Does this mean that they are legally required to provide caller id information to everyone?
They aren't hiding it - just not telling you it. Having said that, I would like to see CLID made a required service (i.e. any telco providing lines must at least offer CLID, at some limited price) - and I'd love to see CLID-blocking banned! (I have it filtered anyway; make any anonymous calls to me, and you just get an "error message" from the telco: "This line does not accept anonymous calls." or similar.)
If you're calling me, why on earth would you want to conceal your identity? Either it's a nuisance call (in which case I definitely don't want to receive it!) or it involves some sort of identity, whether personal or corporate. The only sort of caller I can think of which would want to be anonymous is the sort I don't want to receive in the first place;-)
You understand the word 'Compulsory' as in you do not have a choice...
...which is why I asked about the courts. I do understand that word, but I do not accept that authority exists to use it against me in this instance. I wouldn't refuse to pay - I would take the position that there is no valid demand on me which even requires consideration.
It isn't you (the buyer) who has no choice. It's the copyright owner. Some price is decided for the license; anyone paying them that price is then automatically entitled to whatever that license allows. ISTR such a system already exists for radio: you don't get each radio station negotiating a price for each piece of work - instead, there's a formula which determines how much you pay. (Some amount per listener per minute, IIRC.) The RIAA is the body responsible: you pay them $x/month, with the value of x being determined by audience figures (surveys etc); the RIAA then divides the money up based on popularity (y% of airtime -> y% of the money), again determined by surveys. As long as you keep paying the $x each month, you can then play whatever track you like on your station: you have a blanket license for it. A bit like a site license for software: it's all sorted out on an aggregate statistical basis, instead of keeping track of what software is on each machine on your site.
(In practice, in the radio case, it's all gone horribly wrong - payola means that overall, the money flows in the opposite direction, and the money flow determines the airplay rather than vice versa...)
I'm assuming it's 70mbps/channel. But for 31 miles there had better be a lot of channels. Could you imagine 9,500 square miles (pi*31^2) of people all sharing the same 10 or so wifi channels? It could suck.
It would suck if used for home connections in a city, certainly - but you wouldn't use it as a DSL-replacement in NYC. For fixed installation in cities, DSL or cable modems will be much better. Out in the countryside, however - cable and DSL can't reach. If you bear in mind the 50:1 contention ratio for DSL, the 70 Mbps would give 7,000 houses the equivalent service of a half-megabit DSL line each. When the alternatives are 56K dialup or satellite, this is a huge leap forward!
Equally, for mobile usage, this could be great. All the homes in NYC on a 70 Mbps channel is a non-starter - but all the laptops sharing a couple of those channels? Could be good - especially if you have a NIC capable of "roaming" between this WiMax and WiFi hotspots. As you leave your home's WiFi coverage, you stay online with WiMax. Back to WiFi as you pick up a coffee in Starbucks, then a short spell on WiMax again until you reach the office. As long as you aren't driving, you could actually get useful work done during the commute: handling email, checking news sites, whatever - and by the time you reach your desk, you're already up to date!
Also: the article talked about "31 linear miles". Is that "anywhere within 31 miles of the base station" or "a footprint 31 miles wide" - i.e. radius or diameter? Since this is marketing-speak, I'm guessing they'd go for the diameter, to make the number bigger, meaning it's more like 2,300 square miles footprint - less in urban areas, due to buildings. Either way, this means a WiMax tower would have the same sort of range as cellphone towers: instead of putting in individual "hotspots" of WiFi where demand is greatest, a company could cover a whole state for data the same way cellphone companies do for voice calls.
Ricochet tried this, but with a proprietary (IIRC) system with much lower data rates and much worse coverage, and still came close to succeeding - it wasn't quite viable, but close. A similar service using WiMax could well make it...
"Americans are the most charitable people to be found"? Huh? since when. If americans were so generous there would be hunger and poverty in the US.
They are indeed. Partly because of a tax system which rewards and encourages donations, partly because they have so much more to give than most other countries (higher GDP/capita + lower taxes -> more money to spend on everything, including charity). As for hunger - there are plenty of charities active to feed the homeless, as well as those in other countries. Poverty? Last time I looked, the definition of "poverty" in the US included people with cable TV. That's only "poverty" if you're on drugs.
"You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and kill you."
Only in america is this kind of lawlessness and vigilanteeism revered.
That appears to be a reference to law enforcement. Insert the words "or imprison" after "kill". The point is that if you break the law like that, you will be punished for it - many criminals are dumb enough to be surprised when their crimes result in long stays in prison. Punishing criminals is very far from any kind of "lawlessness"!
"You do not have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience. We hate oppressive governments and won't lift a finger to stop you from going to fight if you'd like. However, we do not enjoy parenting the entire world and do not want to spend so much of our time battling each and every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat."
Sound awfull naive given the war on iraq huh?
Not really. For more than a decade after Gulf War Part 1, the Untied Notions persisted with their plan, Operation Ostrich (apply sanctions which are ignored by many of those who voted for them, send "inspectors" who couldn't find their ass with both hands, ignore problem until it goes away or someone else deals with it). Only once Iraq was becoming a larger threat - funding terrorists (as Hussein did quite openly), housing them (Ansar Al Islam, which included a hundred or more Al Queda people from Afghanistan) did the US decide to act. Also note the continued rule of Mugabe, apartheid and all, Arafat's den of terror, the unelected "president" of Syria, and many other such regimes. So far, post-Clinton, the wars have entailed Afghanistan (when the Taleban's room-mates Al Queda attacked the US) and Iraq (attacked US interests in 1994, housed Al Queda splinter group in the North, trained terrorists in aircraft hijacking, still has large stores of anthrax, sarin etc unaccounted for along with a nuclear program). They were threats to and enemies of the US, and were removed as a result; other regimes, such as Mugabe's apartheid, are not - so they don't receive the same treatment.
The US is not pursuing the half-witted interventionism morons like Clinton (let's bomb Kosovo. Oh, and maybe Sudan. Uhh... how about Iraq, too?) - who sat flying US aircraft over Iraq for the whole of his rule instead of actually dealing with the root problem - meanwhile, creating a "peace process" in Northern Ireland fit only for use in perforated sheets in the bathroom, and doing much the same in the Israel/Palestinian situation.
What kind of a moron wrote those "laws".
I don't know, but they make some very valid points. Far too many morons these days seem to think the rest of the world should fund their lifestyle without any effort on their part!
Eventually, with all these profit-guarentee laws, its going to be illegal to purchase a competitor's items.
Sounds depressingly familiar... In the UK, until around 1984, it was illegal to obtain telephone service from anyone other than the (government owned) British Telecom (Kingston Communications in Hull) - governments don't like competition! It still is illegal not to subscribe to the state TV company, if you own a TV: you're free to subscribe to other channels as well, but you have to subscribe to the BBC as well - even if you're in a transmission blackspot and don't receive it! For that matter, until not that many years ago, there were still state monopolies or near-monopolies on everything from milk to steel - and you even had a limit on how much money you could take with you on holiday. Of course, in these days of credit cards, that kind of control would be almost impossible to maintain effectively, but back when moving money meant taking cash or travellers' checks, it was much easier.
It's always been a reflex of such governments: if "your side" is losing in a market, instead of competing, just tax, restrict or outright prohibit the competitors. In the UK, taxis, pubs (bars) and farm production are all subject to quotas and often price-fixing - no competition allowed! I'm all in favor of proper regulation - food safety, roadworthy taxis driven by non-axe-murderers and non-toxic drinks - but when the government tries to push prices up artificially, or ban competition to bow to political lobbying from taxi-drivers, farmers or bar owners, it's gone WAAAAAAAAY too far. Who can actually say, honestly, that there can be too much choice for our own good?
Also agreed! AIUI, immigrants have to pass tests on English and on the US before they can become US citizens (hence vote). Why couldn't the same apply to people born in the US? Better still, a simple test on issues relating to that specific election and the candidates. Even just generic things like the candidate's names, who the incumbent is, that kind of thing. 10% turnout of people who actually care and have a clue would be better [IMO] than 30% turnout of people, two thirds of whom don't care and lack clue! Granted, it would be difficult, but then so was travelling to the Moon, and the US managed that OK...
There's got to be a bank out there that would be willing to go this route. All they would need to do is issue a temporary Visa/MasterCard number with an organizational name that would be backed by an initial cash deposit. You could even replenish your account if you wanted to keep the same number for a while. Is there some legal reason why this couldn't be done?
It already is! Visa "gift card" - like a regular gift certificate, up to $500 value, but in the form of a pre-paid Visa card. Mastercard have one too. Certainly not as anonymous as cash, but probably close with careful use and procurement. For that matter, you can even use one to obtain cash from an ATM, putting an extra layer in between you and the purchases...
"UK/European laws can not be applied to the USA, so what's your point?"
Airlines who implement such a system will be banned from using European airports. Read the article.
Yeah, that would work. Except for two little details: first, any airline not implementing such a system (and one of the four described in the article is itself European, and already in use!) would be banned from US airports. Secondly, the EU agreed to this as an exception, according to a recent article in the Times. Finally: the privacy rules apply only to private use. For governments, it's a free-for-all: the British government, for one, is at least as eager to monitor the public's every move as the US, probably more so. Where the US saw an outcry over claims USA PATRIOT allowed phone-tapping without a warrant (not entirely true - although such a warrant is, IMO, too easy to obtain), the UK has always had this for the security services. They want to bug your phone? They do it. They want to break in and bug your house? Same. (Rather than a warrant, they obtain immunity from prosecution for it.)
As for the European Convention on Human Rights, forget it: almost every section, from freedom of expression to privacy, has the gaping loophole "... except in the interest of national security". Governments aren't allowed to torture you, or a few other things, but apart from that, you're fair game for anything done in the name of "national security". Grep your credit card records for purchases from a Halal butcher? No problem. Check for phonecalls to certain other countries, or certain other people? Same. Search your supermarket loyalty card for chemicals they are interested in? You get the idea - and you won't even know it's happened, because they don't have to tell anybody.
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The whole point is to develop a US skill base. If you really can't do it, then... that's that. It doesn't get done.
All hail the free market.
When it comes to government expenditure, I really don't want a "free market" - especially on defense matters. I do not want government money flowing out of the country giving other countries jobs at my expense! When private companies outsource, it is their money - not so the government.
"can you really claim the US lacks security researchers capable of working on a secure OS"
No idea. Security is not my thing. I'm talking from the experience of my own research area.
You missed the point. The US does not lack that expertise internally (I think I can safely say Linus and the guys behind Red Hat Linux and SELinux are both capable of writing an OS, securely) - so why the hell was it giving the jobs to a foreign team, when they have ample domestic talent which could have done the job without adding to the US trade deficit and unemployment?!
Get some researchers in the US! Either train people already here, or attract people with those skills to immigrate. Developing America's skillset is the aim of DARPA grants; promoting science in other countries is the job of those countries!
Of course, its not surprising if there is some control over where it is spent, and through who. But there again I thought that DARPA's remit was to get the research done, rather than get it done somewhere specifically. Do they want to fund American research, or fund research for the American state. I guess largely the latter.
Actually, the former is a major part. It is an American funding body. If the military needs some technology developed elsewhere, they can buy it in - but if it is to be custom-developed using US funds, it must do so in the US. Like other defense procurement - and indeed almost all other government expenditure - it must come from the US wherever possible; there's an Executive Order to this effect.
Yes, there will no doubt be exceptions - but can you really claim the US lacks security researchers capable of working on a secure OS - considering Linus Torvalds is in the US, as are Red Hat, the FSF, Sun, SGI, IBM (inventors of DES), and the NSA who brought us SELinux? For that matter - perhaps DARPA just decided that having OpenBSD and Linux work both US government funded was inefficient, and OpenBSD (as the foreign import) should get the bullet?
Given Theo's views, I'm not sure anything would ;-)
The rules against exporting crypto are gone. The DMCA makes it difficult (at least) to research/develop crypto. And the laws in this area show no sign of lightening up. (In fact, they show the opposite.)
From what I've read of the DMCA, it doesn't: you can research or develop any crypto you like. The restrictions only apply when you are actually "researching" a copy-protection system itself. Studying video blanking signals is fine: it's only when you're specifically attacking Macrovision that the DMCA comes into play. Hence Sklyarov's prosecution: he was selling a "crack" to Adobe's eBook protection. That's exactly what the DMCA was intended to prohibit! Crypto research itself is fine, despite all the SlashFUD.
Sure, and that works for a while. Eventually though (with the way stuff is going) they will find themselves having to cut themselves off from the rest of the crypto community. Maybe they will have enough talent to keep it up then, maybe not. Regardless the crypto itself would end up only avalible to them and other government agencies. And that scares me.
So far, they have been ahead of "the rest of the crypto community": they had public key crypto and RSA itself long before Rivest and co did. They have plenty of in-house talent. Whether or not the government having strong crypto is good is a matter of opinion; I'm inclined to believe anyone should be entitled to have and use crypto freely, including the government.
True. Most rules of this sort can't be rigidly enforced, or things collapse. Spending some grant money overseas is one thing, though, making a "sub-grant" to an entire foreign project is another!
One obvious question I haven't seen asked yet, though: where is the Canadian government in all this? The US government funds US projects all the time (from the Internet itself, to SELinux) - why doesn't the Canadian government pick up the tab for this Canadian project?
Yes, they might one day evolve a democracy. Until then, I'm not holding my breath. From a corrupt and unaccountable body which has previously legislated the shape of bananas, almost any expectation would be optimistic.
as for your desire to move to the US, i recommend strongly against it. their mindless, shallow and ignorant...
At least most of them can find their shift keys, and know the difference between "their" and "they're" ;-) Cheap shot, I know, but calling others ignorant in a short sentence containing two grammatical mistakes is too tempting a target... Would you happen to be a native French speaker...?
the cities are dirty and filled with the worst poverty and crime.
Funny. While US crime levels plummet, the UK is importing American crime-fighting tactics in an attempt to deal with a surging crime level. Meanwhile, ozone and PM2.5 pollution levels are projected to be dramatically lower in the US over the next 20 years, with lake acidity falling significantly as well. Poverty is also at almost a 40 year low in the US: not perfect, but much better than it has been, and still improving overall. (It's cyclical; slowly rising at present, due to the poor economy.)
in 10-15 years, they will be so absolutely committed to imperialism to defend against a collapse of their consumer culture, the plutocracy will drive them to utter chaos..
Perhaps, but it seems to be doing pretty well so far. As for imperialism, it's ironic you say this in defence of the EU, which just expanded to cover a further 10 countries, as France deployed troops into the Ivory Coast...
im thinking another depression, a collapse in their currency and states going bankrupt...
Well, that's happened to most of the EU member states at least once in the last century: maybe it's America's turn now. Or maybe it'll be the Euro which collapses: France and Germany are both in violation of the "Stability and Growth Pact", as well as heading for recessions...
the result of this threat to their 'standard of living' will be war abroad...
Unlikely; while that is how Germany handled the situation you describe, the US isn't heading in that direction at present - and managed to deal with the last depression without starting a war anywhere.
Canada will be all by colonialised by this time,
By the British Empire^WCommonwealth again? The US has never "colonialised" anything, unless you count displacing "Indian" tribes back before most of the EU member governments existed...
because the AmericanMindVirus is incredibly infectious, alot of Canadians watch too much "American News."
You mean, a lot of Canadians choose to know what's happening in their only close neighbour? I wonder why.
-- which is horribly Pro-USA propaganda... have you ever seen Fox News Network?
Of course I have. Before you attack it any further, you should probably be told: it's not American. It's owned by an Australian, through a largely British media company. (News International, parent company of Sky and the Times of London.)
As for your complaints of pro-USA "propoganda": which country spends over $1bn "to enhance pride in X, to contribute to X's economic growth and prosperity, to protect X's heritage, to ensure access to X voices and X space, and to encourage participation in and contribution to X society."? Hint: it isn't the US. There is no "AmericanMindVirus": people are (in the US, but not in Canada or France) free to choose and develop their own culture and language, instead of having it dictated to them by a committee.
I was aware of that concern early in OpenBSD's life, but AIUI those laws no longer apply? (You're still not allowed to export crypto to various "evil" countries, but that is a trade embargo: technically, you aren't allowed to export pens or bits of string there either!)
Seriously, good point, but the US is driving security researchers out of the country. If the government wants to stay in the game they (will soon) either have to employ non-US citizens or change the laws back. I know which one I'm betting on...
Are they still driving anything out? I was under the impression the crypto rules had gone. I know there's a lot of FUD regarding the DMCA - some might be accurate, most of it certainly isn't (just look at the /. posts: "this post double-ROT13ed: decryption illegal under the DMCA"!) - but not crypto any more.
As for needing to employ non-US citizens: the NSA and GCHQ (their British counterpart) both manage pretty well, despite much stronger restrictions applying to their staff than to any university researcher. They also seem to have managed to produce SELinux without needing to export the work...
It's a bit stronger than that: federal law specifically prohibits funding foreign projects such as Theo's.
They were sending the money off to Mr. Smith at U Penn and he was redirecting the money in question. The fact is that DARPA money cannot directly fund work outside the US so this method was being used.
From the reference to "DARPA review", I wonder if someone at DARPA objected to this redirection? UPenn's redirection certainly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of these rules: the funding is supposed to fund work within the US.
In this case, I suspect something similar happened. Theo's quote refers to a "DARPA review"; as I understand DARPA's rules, their grant money must be spent within the US. UPenn were accepting that money within the US, then transferring it to Theo's team in Canada - which looks to me as if it violates DARPA's rules. I suspect someone in DARPA took a look at how their grant money was being spent, and told UPenn "you can't use the money that way, stop it!". The various stages of communication (this quote came via a reporter FFS!) then mangled this into some sort of terrorist theory...
Whatever the reasoning, the US government really isn't supposed to "export" work this way. We've seen enough outcry on Slashdot lately over outsourcing by private companies: if I were a US taxpayer, I'd be glad that at least the government has rules against doing this! Of course, Theo and co could probably have avoided the whole problem by being employed in the US by UPenn...
"Democracy" and "Republic" aren't mutually exclusive. In this context, by democracy I meant the people being the ultimate authority (as they are in the US), as opposed to - for example - a dictatorship or a monarchy in the way the UK was centuries ago: the government ruling without needing the people's consent to do so. The US is a democracy in that sense.
As for your assesment of the EU, its it by far the most promising democratic effort on the planet today. I look to it as a work in progress yes, but successfull thusfar, and likely to be the most successfull "state" in the history of the Planet in very short order. And as a more medium term goal; Will they Admit Canada (or will I have to move) and/or Russia... :) *THAT* is my hope.
Interesting. Having lived in it for almost all my life, I regard it not as a democratic work in progress, but a bureaucratic disaster in progress! It is not in any sense a democratic anything (the entire Council of Ministers was fired for corruption recently - and promptly reappointed), and their auditor refuses to certify their accounts as being honest. For any private entity, this would mean huge fines, jail terms and perhaps closure of the company; for them, it's business as usual.
Perhaps, a decade from now, the corruption will have been solved and they will have implemented some form of democratic accountability instead of bribes and propoganda. (They recently issued a "free" 1 Euro coin to each school kid, in an effort to boost support...) Until then, I hope Canada stays out: I want a backup option in case I can't emigrate to the US yet!
More likely he didn't like being ripped apart by real security. If their plan was like Britain's "e-government", which consisted of Blair starring in the Office XP launch then switching all government sites over to IIS, I'm sure this MS guy would be delighted. If he objects to it, that's a good sign: hopefully, their security plans is:
1. Remove all insecure MS crap from .gov systems.
2. Replace with secure platforms (probably some sort of Unix).
Any security plan from an MS guy is ... questionable. When the MS guy walks out, it's a good sign they're making progress ;-)
Good point. That's a case of a group of people fighting to impose their will on others, though: Al Queda and the Taleban are both small but powerful subsets, rather than the sort of "popular uprising" the word revolution usually describes.
Anarchists would like to get rid of the government completely, democracy or no.
In a sense, though, that is an extreme form of democracy: everyone "rules" themselves. Democracy is not just a matter of everything being decided by a vote: freedom means the freedom to say and do what you want, even when other people don't like it or agree with it! (It's not an absolute, of course: there are always some restrictions for various reasons.)
We can say all these people are just crazys who if they weren't so brain washed would wanted liberal democracys, and they probably are, but doesn't that sound pretty assinine?
Anarchists want freedom for themselves - a bit more freedom than other people want them to have. Groups like Al Queda and the USSR's Communist Party want to impose their rule on other people - not on themselves. It's not a matter of brainwashing, it's a simple power grab. (They do often have supporters, who believe they benefit personally from the power grab - but if they had the support of the majority, their rule could as easily be a democracy anyway!)
Not the "base state", but the one any true revolution would aim to achieve. (What kind of idiot would fight to impose anything other than a democracy on himself?!)
I'd disagree there: a revolution is replacing one form of government with another. When an existing government evolves (or degenerates) into another form - like the Animal Farm example of becoming a dictatorship, as happened in Germany, and Russia with a committee in place of a single dictator - that's not a revolution. The EU is much further down this road than the US, having started from a much less robust design: the "parliamentary system" (effectively, "let's give absolute unchecked power to a single House of Representatives") represented a single point of failure - and it turned round and handed power to the corrupt and unelected EU Council of Ministers. Now, that body is starting to flex its muscles, and people are starting to wonder if that was a good idea after all...
That was Mussolini. Hitler was a Nationalist Socialist. Which certainly isn't a purely right wing position... Not to mention being the guy who tightened Germany's existing gun "control" laws in 1938. (The quote about 1935 going down in history is an urban myth, but has some basis in fact.)
Nice try, give me a call when you move back to reality.
The reality is that victim disarmament (or gun "control" to its supporters, many of whom exempt themselves from it) increases crime. It's a pretty obvious pattern, really: disarm public, crime goes up. Arm the public, crime goes down. There's a very clear reason for it, too: in areas which practice gun "control", you can be much more confident your victim is defenseless. As a result, there are very clear correlations: hot burglaries, for example, are much more common in areas with low gun ownership.
The old saying about "outlaw guns, and only outlaws will have guns" is very true. If you really believe making gun ownership illegal will somehow disarm criminals, you are the one who need to return to reality! The only people disarmed by gun "control" are the victims of crime, not the perpetrators.
Agreed. They need some kind of job - why shouldn't it be one they are suited for, where they can contribute the most to society by helping prevent or reduce the next generation of crackers' exploits?
However, Mitnick is an unrepentant repeat offender. I wouldn't let him pay me to look at my computers.
Also agreed: the "poacher turned gamekeeper" idea works, but only if the poacher has truly turned gamekeeper!
This isn't a new idea; car companies have, apparently, been hiring car thieves for years. (Not the usual "joyrider" type, I mean the ones who defeat the locks, alarm, immobilizer etc.) They know exactly the kind of vulnerability to look for. If you do it properly - let them loose on a car while supervised - the worst case is that they achieve nothing, at a fairly small cost (while making the car look better).
This reminds me of when Markus Kuhn was hired to test a satellite scrambling system (as in DirecTV or Sky). The company was paranoid enough to meet him off-site, rather than let him into their office; he responded by cracking their security system, then uploading his report on the vulnerabilities to their corporate mail server. As root. (I'm not sure how they felt about that...)
France did offer precisely this - they'd use their influence as P5 members to drop the sanctions, in exchange for TotalFinaElf getting sweet deals on Iraqi oil, and Saddam did jump.
However, the only dead russians and french in the country (if there were any) were there providing military support to Saddam's regime. I doubt the french and russians have many big fans in iraq right now.
Very true; one Iraqi commented (as a picture of Chirac was treated to the same as Hussein's portraits have been) that French and Russian people would not be safe in Iraq for another 20 years.
Finally, the greed motive doesn't work out too well as US support for the war goes. But, it does work as a reason that the french and russians opposed the war (their oil companies were making a killing under saddam and oil-for-food).
Absolutely. France was set to benefit even more from the lifting of sanctions - Hussein had promised TotalFinaElf lucrative oil deals in exchange for that - and were already profiting heavily from illegal arms sales such as this). It's France and Russia who were abusing the UN for control of Iraqi oil, not the coalition!
No: if they are asked to press, say, 3, and respond by pressing 0123456789, they failed. Just check whether or not the first key pressed was the correct one. That way, any would-be abuser of the system has a 1 in 10 chance of getting through using a pre-recorded message, rather than the near-certainty they have with the current one. A two digit version (to accept, dial 27 now) reduces that to 1 in 100 odds - you'd have to be pretty desperate (or stupid!) to try that one.
Using random words is better. # key resets the random word, so that if the person can't pronounce the word so the system can understand it then gives them another chance to try.
Could work; more complex to implement, though. Just using numbers is simple and foolproof: I'd say a 1% chance of a fraudulent call succeeding is much better than the current setup!
Alternatively: don't do 3rd party billing. Instead, just offer customers a calling card, which would work like a normal calling card but billed to your regular phone bill. Much simpler and resistant to fraud!
Instead of a question, you tell them how to accept charges. you tell them how twice. Most people will be able to figure it out by the second time it's played to them. Those who can't shouldn't be accepting a collect call (or reproducing for that matter).
Hmm...
If the wrong person answers, there's one hell of a big fingerprint right there anyway. Which is why calling like that is an incredibly dumb idea. (I'd actually forgotten the US system gives names as well; the UK's CLID implementation is number only. Which also avoids the problem, as long as you're careful how the switchboard operator answers!)
You could make an exception for cases like that, much as directory assistance will give out "unlisted" numbers in emergencies (to appropriate authorities, that is). Or just show their number as having a person's name, or being number-only. For the VD clinic, unless it's a standalone clinic unrelated to anything else, just use the hospital switchboard: easy enough to explain away if needed.
These are hardly major issues, or frequent occurences, anyway. A much bigger problem in the UK is that, with local calls still being charged per minute for most people, any call you make to the local VD clinic will then show up on the phone bill... AFAIK, that's never been a problem here. You just don't phone them; if you're waiting for results, either collect them in person, or have them mailed in a suitable envelope. Never having had any involvement with VD clinics (or VD!) it's not something I've encountered - the phone system is my field...
If for some reason they really, really need the ability to make anonymous calls, they could get a specific exception. I'm still not convinced this is the case: do domestic violence shelters make many calls of that sort? I'm sure VD clinics have worked out some way of handling calls answered by the wrong person long before this!
They aren't hiding it - just not telling you it. Having said that, I would like to see CLID made a required service (i.e. any telco providing lines must at least offer CLID, at some limited price) - and I'd love to see CLID-blocking banned! (I have it filtered anyway; make any anonymous calls to me, and you just get an "error message" from the telco: "This line does not accept anonymous calls." or similar.)
If you're calling me, why on earth would you want to conceal your identity? Either it's a nuisance call (in which case I definitely don't want to receive it!) or it involves some sort of identity, whether personal or corporate. The only sort of caller I can think of which would want to be anonymous is the sort I don't want to receive in the first place ;-)
It isn't you (the buyer) who has no choice. It's the copyright owner. Some price is decided for the license; anyone paying them that price is then automatically entitled to whatever that license allows. ISTR such a system already exists for radio: you don't get each radio station negotiating a price for each piece of work - instead, there's a formula which determines how much you pay. (Some amount per listener per minute, IIRC.) The RIAA is the body responsible: you pay them $x/month, with the value of x being determined by audience figures (surveys etc); the RIAA then divides the money up based on popularity (y% of airtime -> y% of the money), again determined by surveys. As long as you keep paying the $x each month, you can then play whatever track you like on your station: you have a blanket license for it. A bit like a site license for software: it's all sorted out on an aggregate statistical basis, instead of keeping track of what software is on each machine on your site.
(In practice, in the radio case, it's all gone horribly wrong - payola means that overall, the money flows in the opposite direction, and the money flow determines the airplay rather than vice versa...)
It would suck if used for home connections in a city, certainly - but you wouldn't use it as a DSL-replacement in NYC. For fixed installation in cities, DSL or cable modems will be much better. Out in the countryside, however - cable and DSL can't reach. If you bear in mind the 50:1 contention ratio for DSL, the 70 Mbps would give 7,000 houses the equivalent service of a half-megabit DSL line each. When the alternatives are 56K dialup or satellite, this is a huge leap forward!
Equally, for mobile usage, this could be great. All the homes in NYC on a 70 Mbps channel is a non-starter - but all the laptops sharing a couple of those channels? Could be good - especially if you have a NIC capable of "roaming" between this WiMax and WiFi hotspots. As you leave your home's WiFi coverage, you stay online with WiMax. Back to WiFi as you pick up a coffee in Starbucks, then a short spell on WiMax again until you reach the office. As long as you aren't driving, you could actually get useful work done during the commute: handling email, checking news sites, whatever - and by the time you reach your desk, you're already up to date!
Also: the article talked about "31 linear miles". Is that "anywhere within 31 miles of the base station" or "a footprint 31 miles wide" - i.e. radius or diameter? Since this is marketing-speak, I'm guessing they'd go for the diameter, to make the number bigger, meaning it's more like 2,300 square miles footprint - less in urban areas, due to buildings. Either way, this means a WiMax tower would have the same sort of range as cellphone towers: instead of putting in individual "hotspots" of WiFi where demand is greatest, a company could cover a whole state for data the same way cellphone companies do for voice calls.
Ricochet tried this, but with a proprietary (IIRC) system with much lower data rates and much worse coverage, and still came close to succeeding - it wasn't quite viable, but close. A similar service using WiMax could well make it...
They are indeed. Partly because of a tax system which rewards and encourages donations, partly because they have so much more to give than most other countries (higher GDP/capita + lower taxes -> more money to spend on everything, including charity). As for hunger - there are plenty of charities active to feed the homeless, as well as those in other countries. Poverty? Last time I looked, the definition of "poverty" in the US included people with cable TV. That's only "poverty" if you're on drugs.
"You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and kill you."
Only in america is this kind of lawlessness and vigilanteeism revered.
That appears to be a reference to law enforcement. Insert the words "or imprison" after "kill". The point is that if you break the law like that, you will be punished for it - many criminals are dumb enough to be surprised when their crimes result in long stays in prison. Punishing criminals is very far from any kind of "lawlessness"!
"You do not have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience. We hate oppressive governments and won't lift a finger to stop you from going to fight if you'd like. However, we do not enjoy parenting the entire world and do not want to spend so much of our time battling each and every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat."
Sound awfull naive given the war on iraq huh?
Not really. For more than a decade after Gulf War Part 1, the Untied Notions persisted with their plan, Operation Ostrich (apply sanctions which are ignored by many of those who voted for them, send "inspectors" who couldn't find their ass with both hands, ignore problem until it goes away or someone else deals with it). Only once Iraq was becoming a larger threat - funding terrorists (as Hussein did quite openly), housing them (Ansar Al Islam, which included a hundred or more Al Queda people from Afghanistan) did the US decide to act. Also note the continued rule of Mugabe, apartheid and all, Arafat's den of terror, the unelected "president" of Syria, and many other such regimes. So far, post-Clinton, the wars have entailed Afghanistan (when the Taleban's room-mates Al Queda attacked the US) and Iraq (attacked US interests in 1994, housed Al Queda splinter group in the North, trained terrorists in aircraft hijacking, still has large stores of anthrax, sarin etc unaccounted for along with a nuclear program). They were threats to and enemies of the US, and were removed as a result; other regimes, such as Mugabe's apartheid, are not - so they don't receive the same treatment.
The US is not pursuing the half-witted interventionism morons like Clinton (let's bomb Kosovo. Oh, and maybe Sudan. Uhh... how about Iraq, too?) - who sat flying US aircraft over Iraq for the whole of his rule instead of actually dealing with the root problem - meanwhile, creating a "peace process" in Northern Ireland fit only for use in perforated sheets in the bathroom, and doing much the same in the Israel/Palestinian situation.
What kind of a moron wrote those "laws".
I don't know, but they make some very valid points. Far too many morons these days seem to think the rest of the world should fund their lifestyle without any effort on their part!
Sounds depressingly familiar... In the UK, until around 1984, it was illegal to obtain telephone service from anyone other than the (government owned) British Telecom (Kingston Communications in Hull) - governments don't like competition! It still is illegal not to subscribe to the state TV company, if you own a TV: you're free to subscribe to other channels as well, but you have to subscribe to the BBC as well - even if you're in a transmission blackspot and don't receive it! For that matter, until not that many years ago, there were still state monopolies or near-monopolies on everything from milk to steel - and you even had a limit on how much money you could take with you on holiday. Of course, in these days of credit cards, that kind of control would be almost impossible to maintain effectively, but back when moving money meant taking cash or travellers' checks, it was much easier.
It's always been a reflex of such governments: if "your side" is losing in a market, instead of competing, just tax, restrict or outright prohibit the competitors. In the UK, taxis, pubs (bars) and farm production are all subject to quotas and often price-fixing - no competition allowed! I'm all in favor of proper regulation - food safety, roadworthy taxis driven by non-axe-murderers and non-toxic drinks - but when the government tries to push prices up artificially, or ban competition to bow to political lobbying from taxi-drivers, farmers or bar owners, it's gone WAAAAAAAAY too far. Who can actually say, honestly, that there can be too much choice for our own good?
Also agreed! AIUI, immigrants have to pass tests on English and on the US before they can become US citizens (hence vote). Why couldn't the same apply to people born in the US? Better still, a simple test on issues relating to that specific election and the candidates. Even just generic things like the candidate's names, who the incumbent is, that kind of thing. 10% turnout of people who actually care and have a clue would be better [IMO] than 30% turnout of people, two thirds of whom don't care and lack clue! Granted, it would be difficult, but then so was travelling to the Moon, and the US managed that OK...
It already is! Visa "gift card" - like a regular gift certificate, up to $500 value, but in the form of a pre-paid Visa card. Mastercard have one too. Certainly not as anonymous as cash, but probably close with careful use and procurement. For that matter, you can even use one to obtain cash from an ATM, putting an extra layer in between you and the purchases...
Yeah, that would work. Except for two little details: first, any airline not implementing such a system (and one of the four described in the article is itself European, and already in use!) would be banned from US airports. Secondly, the EU agreed to this as an exception, according to a recent article in the Times. Finally: the privacy rules apply only to private use. For governments, it's a free-for-all: the British government, for one, is at least as eager to monitor the public's every move as the US, probably more so. Where the US saw an outcry over claims USA PATRIOT allowed phone-tapping without a warrant (not entirely true - although such a warrant is, IMO, too easy to obtain), the UK has always had this for the security services. They want to bug your phone? They do it. They want to break in and bug your house? Same. (Rather than a warrant, they obtain immunity from prosecution for it.)
As for the European Convention on Human Rights, forget it: almost every section, from freedom of expression to privacy, has the gaping loophole "... except in the interest of national security". Governments aren't allowed to torture you, or a few other things, but apart from that, you're fair game for anything done in the name of "national security". Grep your credit card records for purchases from a Halal butcher? No problem. Check for phonecalls to certain other countries, or certain other people? Same. Search your supermarket loyalty card for chemicals they are interested in? You get the idea - and you won't even know it's happened, because they don't have to tell anybody.