Where are all these millions of accidental shootings taking place? Certainly not in the USA. One is in more danger from being run over by an automobile than by being shot by accident. Or on purpose for that matter. The statistics to verify these claims are readily available from the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Transportation. Anyone capable of using Google can find them.
I would guess that these millions of shootings are only happening in the mind of a Anonymous Coward. I'm glad I don't have his imagination, his mind must be an incredibly violent place. Why does he fear to identify himself? Perhaps he fears black helicopters or UFO invasion. Perhaps he should get help from a mental health professional before he hurts someone or himself.
The EU basically has chosen a different tradeoff between security and liberty the US has, as it has every right to do.
Well, anyway, than the US chose before 9/11, at any rate. Perhaps we'll have a system of firearms control and censorship in the US restrictive enough to make the most insular European tourist or Chinese bureaucrat feel safe when visiting the USA, all in the name of creating the illusion of safety from terrorism.
Most EU nations have chosen to leave a monopoly of armed violence to their governments, terrorists, and criminals. While this suggests a degree of trust in government that even the history of Europe (1935-1945) suggests is rather unjustified, they have every right to make that choice.
Just as they have a right to choose censorship over freedom of speech. European history suggests that letting the government choose what citizens are allowed to say publically is a rather bad idea, but they have every right to do this.
Just as American citizens have the right to help Europeans who believe that no government has the right to control freedom of speech or expression, whether that government be based in Brussels, Beijing, or other capitols starting wit h the letter 'B'.
Will either democracy survive its current set of choices as anything but systems where the forms of democracy are observed but they have no meaning in terms of how nations are actually governed?
Interesting question, to which I certainly don't have the answer.
A weapon which is of more use to the enemy than to the presumed good guys simply should not be developed.
While the Feds are trying to discover or invent the kind of data mining tools needed to use this for its intended real purpose, whether it's to attack terrorists, political dissidents (as an anti-globalization), or simply to figure out whose votes shouldn't be counted in the 2004 elections, in the meantime, this is one-stop online information shopping for the foriegn enemies of the USA.
A BIG honking distributed network supercomputer this big and as insecure as one can reasonably expect it to be will become a favorite terrorist tool as soon as the back doors are discovered and the how-to information is in the browser caches of every script kiddie in the whole world. Basically, this would become the biggest h4xx0r target in the world. Any vulnerability it's got will be found. Zero-day exploits won't be theoretical problems, they'll be used on discovery.
This will save terrorist organizations the trouble of doing any in-person research on targets. Building plans? Personnel records? Which personnel are vulnerable to blackmail based on... unusual online purchases? What information would you want if you wanted to take down a military base or an oil refinery? No matter what it is, the Poindexter Machine will get you there.
While this may save the lives and increase the effectiveness of terrorists, I don't really think that's a good reason to give the Jihads of today or tomorrow easy access to everybody's secrets.
As I said elsewhere, I rather suspect that there are a hell of a lot more CD-ROM drive-based audio players than the RIAA-labels conceive possible in their worst nightmares, I think that instead of the writing off the CD drives towards the end of production run when everyone moved on to a faster drives, the drive manufacturers simply sell the audio manufacturers the closeouts.
Anybody know for sure?
How fast is your CD-ROM drive now? My 486 box had a 2x CD-ROM, I think this older box has a 36x. One can get faster now. I assume that the excess 1x-24x are sitting on consumer shelves and in car CD-ROM decks, and that *most* CD audio drives sold in the last few years will NOT work with the next generation of copy-protect.
We've never had the situation before where ALL the new product at record stores is incompatible with CD-ROM drives.
I think the record labels who are the "early adopters" across their product ranges of this are about to get a terminal surprise.
Even if it's just a very large minority, they've cut their own throats.
I suspect the 'problem' of CD-ROM drives getting recycled into audio CD players is a lot larger than the RIAA labels is betting on.
Where do you think the 1x-24x generations of CDROM drives wound up at the end of the production runs unsalable because the faster ones where available?
The labels had better pray the answer is "landfills".
Quoteworthy? I suggest letting those who know better make the judge of that. I've been quoted a couple of times as "A.Lizard" myself in the Washington Post on IT-related issues. (check the archives, and you'll have to pay to read the actual articles... I may do that one of these days)
With respect to using AP as an example of credibility... you believe without reservation everything the mass media says? If you ever become newsworthy and they get it wrong about you, perhaps you'll know better. Or perhaps you'll believe "it's in print, therefore it must be right".
If you're interested in finding out how to judge credibility, perhaps one of your local community colleges offers a Journalism 101 course you can take.
Alternately, you might try learning how to develop independent credibility of your own. Learning something about anything might help. Perhaps you'll understand credibility should you ever develop any.
A fair number of consumer audio CD players use computer type CD drives. None of those CD players will work with a "copy-protected" CD if the "copy-protect" scheme works as intended. There are also a fair number of people who use their computers to play audio CDs they have legitimately purchased. I'm one of them.
So the hapless buyer who doesn't read/. takes it back to the store, and gets another CD that's also defective. He tries it on his computer CD audio and it still doesn't work. And this time, they won't give him his money back. So he's stuck with a CD he can't use.
How many times will he do this before he stops buying music CDs entirely? If he's a serious fan, he'll write the artist to tell her why, and the record label fan club will trash the mail.
Being told at the store that "maybe you should buy a new CD player" isn't going to make him any happier, especially since a new CD player that isn't intended for the SACD standard is even more likely to have a CD-ROM drive in it.
If I were your hypothetical BIG NAME ARTIST and found out that I had no choice but to allow my label to put out CDs that an increasing number of my fans can't play, I would be pissed.
It's only a matter of time before a name artist currently in the charts (Prince bugged out some time ago, but who cares?) publically defects.
Certainly, it's tabloid journalism. It is also useful tabloid journalism. It's written in a chatty, informal style. Guess what. Bill Gates' speeches are NOT The Sermon on the Mount and press releases by various vendors are taken far too seriously by the computer industry trade press.
It's fashionable to bash The Reg among the people who mistake mass media news for the real thing. For me, if a person whines publically about it, I start wondering about the writer... which of his toes did The Register stomp on... I'm willing to assume deservedly. They have enough credibilty so I can make that as a default assumption.
BTW, I freelance, I've been writing lately for one of the major online tech news publications. (Hint: NOT ZDnet) I frequently find The Reg useful in spotting things that are worth looking into in more depth than they can provide.
In the US, campaign financing is mainly private, coming from those who have the biggest financial stake in making sure someone is elected who can add to their profits. That makes a very big difference.
Though I've also noticed that EU politicians are capable of doing things just as stupid as any of the things the whole world laughs at when our US Congresscritters do them,
On the other hand, every time someone looks to the United States and envies our elections,
After the 2000 elections, I don't think anybody is looking to the USA for lessons on how to give free, fair, and democratic elections. You obviously didn't read the foriegn coverage of that election in places like The Guardian(UK) of little issues (like tens of thousands of voters disqualified in Florida because of false felony accusations based on a list from an organization controlled by major campaign contributors to the Bush campaign. Note that most of those falsely barred from voting didn't get to vote in the 2002 elections, either.
Why was this buried, spun, or completely ignored by US mass media? Why did I have to log on to an English newspaper to get decent US election coverage? Interesting question.
despotic and evil government
When the Hollywood content providers get most of their legislative agenda passed (who's going to stop them?), you may be using these words yourself to describe the US government.
Of course, if you're still employed in IT at this point, you'll probably be using those words in London or Copenhagen or Nuremburg. Hollywood's agenda is not compatible with the existence of high-tech research, development, or production in the USA.
truth is that most politicians and most government authorities really do want what is best for the public
You got "insightful", you should have gotten funny. I hope you intended humor with your post, otherwise it shows cluelessness on an almost Microsoft True Believer scale.
Most politicians want whatever will get them the most campaign contributions, mostly in the largest possible chunks. If you really believe that Fritz "Hollywood" Hollings wants what's best for any public but that of his 0wn3rs, I suggest you change your recreational drug of choice or at least find an honest dealer.
From the available evidence, most 'authorities', by which you presumably mean law enforcement want whatever will get them the most personal power at the expense of all the rest of us.
The biggest secret about this system isn't what's in it, it's that it can be done.
The USA doesn't even have the majority of good scientists and engineers. What one team has done, another can do. Everybody will have these systems a few years after the US deploys them, and probably cheaper than US DOD contractors are selling them for to the US government.
All this means is that energy weapons are about to enter the military bag of tricks. So our future battlefields will have that lovely "Star Wars" look to them, but people and vehicles will be vaporizing for real, not as special effects.
The real bad news for Americans is that the USA seems to be on the edge of giving up its technological leadership.
Education is suffering. The entertainment industry is getting a stranglehold on US technology in both hardware and software, and no effective opposition is coming forth.
South Korea was merely ahead of us in broadband development. Not content with only having 60% of households broadband-wired, they're about to put another few billion dollars to pick up the rest. Where are the new services going to come from to take advantage of this? From the USA? Don't bet on it. What is the US doing to catch up? "Leaving it to the free market" that tanked on this to begin with. The US may be the last industrialized country where broadband replaces dialup, and the ability of individuals to figure out how to come up with useful products and services around broadband in the US runs straight into bandwidth and usage limits dreamed up by the cable companies and to a lesser extent, telcos.
I'm not trying to start any Libertarian theological debates here, so I'm not saying whether this is good or bad. Just stating what we know to be true.
Military technology used to drive civilian R&D. Now, it's the other way around. When high-technology companies leave the US in search of better regulatory climates and most of us go with them, will the ability to create the best military tech go with them and with us?
For better for worse, the lack of leadership our government and business leaders are providing us means that for better or worse, a Pax Americana will be a very temporary thing. Perhaps it'll last long enough to get George Bush re-elected and the current generation of Fortune 500 CEOs into a profitable retirement.
I'm sure they'd be very interested in your opinion.
I remember seeing a recent article referenced here that says that Amazon Books attributes its newly-found semi-profitability to its decision to go Open Source.
So, while this article may get hundreds of yelling and screaming "point of fact" replies, it seems that many companies have tried OSS software (or at least costed it) and have come to the same conclusions--in the long run, it's at least as expensive as commercial equivalents.
Let's see some names here. WHO has tried and failed with Open Source software? Or did TCO and backed off. You anticipate people asking you for "point of fact" replies. Is there something immoral about asking "point of fact" questions? I don't think embarrassing either you or your employer is immoral.
If you have a problem with "point of fact" questions, why didn't you provide some facts to anticipate these questions? Is it that you don't have any facts? Ever heard of Google? If you can't provide any facts, why should we respect either you or your opinion?
You can even cite yourself as an example of Open Source failure if you like. I'm sure we'd believe you if you told us that a command line is just too hard for you. And I'd reply that perhaps if you offer IBM enough money, or a lesser sum to some of the individual training consultants around here, perhaps someone can be found with the patience to teach you Linux. It might even be cheaper for you to do this than to buy your next computer upgrade to support XP or its successor, though I can't guarantee this.
Organizations who have gone/are going Open Source? Home Depot. Burlington Coat Factory. The government of Spain. Police departments in portions of the UK, and the consultant firm rolling out those desktops and servers has just gotten a contract from the EC to write a proposal to roll out Linux for EC governments. The people running those organizations don't seem to agree with you.
With respect to support, ever heard of IBM? They do a lot of commercial Linux support.
Whether or not an organization should go with Open Source depends on circumstances very specific to that organization. Your statements about Open Source are no more useful than the ones that say everyone needs to use it.
With respect to software usability, depends on what software is available, what the software is used for and who will be using it.
However, I am comfortable in saying that Open Source is improving in usability, ease of installation, and ease of maintenance rapidly, and as it does, it will become useful to a wider range of individuals and organizations. At the same time, it is NOT increasing rapidly with respect to required workstation resources.
The guy who reposted the article on LinuxFormat should have posted both pages. Page 2 is good enough that I have to retract the word "hack", even if I regard the use of the word "pundit" as at best, ill-advised. But I suspect that the author couldn't say what he really wanted to say about "investor analysts" in the article.
While Adobe is NOT our friend, Adobe stock pricing dropping in response to the announcement by Microsoft a vaporware format that will apparently work only with Office 11 and which has zero installed base either among users or creators suggests that investors haven't learned a damned thing from the rise and fall of the Internet bubble.
The important lesson that seems to have been missed is... learn enough about the underlying technology to understand whether or not the business model makes sense or not through one's personal analysis, don't make an investment decision based on what the "pundits" say.
So the entire printing industry is going to change over from supporting PDF as an input format that supports everything up to and including embedded job ticket and billing information because Microsoft said "Boo!"
All of us are immediately going to go out and deinstall Acrobat Reader or whatever we're using to read PDFs and buy Office 11 (changing to XP to do it) because all the terabytes of PDF only content are going to magically morph into XDocs.
Yeah, right.
Even if the format is in fact superior, PDF is so much a part of Internet and print and other technologies that it would be years before XDoc content became noticeable enough to make it worth the trouble for end users to download and install a reader.
A company who makes its docs available in XDoc format only means that only Office 11 users will be able to read it. All that company will get as a result will be trouble from angry users. People aren't going to upgrade to Office 11 just to read some company's docs.
However, it does present an investment opportunity for making money off the stupid who are unloading Adobe because they actually believe this bullshit, just like the pre-announcement of the MS antitrust decision did... people snapped up $93 million in MS stock in response to that pre-announcement, including the slashdot readers who got to the pre-announcement from here.
I was wondering who the "pundits" cited in this article were. That's a word that only marketdroids and a few hack journalists that know no better use. The original of this article which was posted without attribution at Linux format can be found here.
Well, the "pundits" exist, a search on XDocs at google reveals this.
Here's a somewhat better article hereWell, the same investor analysts whose stock hyping and premature panic that drove the rise and fall of the bubble are in hype mode now. Apparently, since their understanding isn't past the buzzword level, they just don't get how embedded PDF technology is in American business and particuarly industrial segments like printing.
With the right apps, I can send a PDF file to a printer that can be turned into a gigantic print run without human intervention. If XDocs is all that Microsoft hopes for and enjoys the results that Microsoft wants and comes out on time, I might be able to do the same with XDocs by 2010 or so.
Remember this next time you're tempted to make an investment decision based on what a "pundit" says. Then check the facts yourself, you might make a lot more money by doing the opposite.
Red Hat put a good big chunk into Public Knowledge (Yet Another 501(c)3 non-profit) recently in the apparent hope they'd get something going.
One big problem in this context is that the people who have real money and are giving are giving to the organizations like EFF, CDT, Public Knowledge, etc... which gives them tax deductions and a feeling of doing something worthwhile, which in fact they are. However, they will not and can not solve either our political problems or theirs. Tax deductible non-profits not only can't make political contributions, but can't even publish voter guides. These groups have been around ever since the first threats to our rights have been visible, and we're still looking down the barrel of stuff like CBDTPA and BWG, etc.
We need political organizers and lobbyists who can write big campaign checks with our money to back them, not more public-interest lawyers.
While I can't honestly call them part of the problem, neither are they part of any solution which will keep technology viable in the US. No matter how much money is given to these groups, not one politician is going to have his mind changed by this.
The legal battles need to be fought, but without a PAC with enough power to reshape the political landscape, court victories are going to be ultimately meaningless. At least not in terms of keeping technology jobs in the USA.
If I knew the answer to your question, I would already have hit them up for this. Explore your own personal and industry connections is all I can really say, and that's all I can say to anyone else who reads this who isn't in a position to personally write the check needed to get this rolling or pass the hat among a handful of friends / business contacts to do this.
Internet censorship legislation like CDA and COPA, of course.
Internet censorship is the kind of bad idea that has an unpleasant tendency to spread even without US help, but it spreads a lot faster with the US government encouraging other countries to adopt it for themselves and to help them enforce ours.
That's why one or a small number of people need to come forward with startup funding and a useful PAC won't happen otherwise. The reason for the small number is to keep arguments on what has to be done to a minimum, to allow focus on specific goals. The $5 and $10 and $100 contributions will come later, and if you want this to work, open your checkbook when the hat gets passed your way in the increasingly unlikely chance that this will actually happen.
What does the startup funding needs to be spent on? Mainly infrastructure and professionals. We can't depend on volunteers to come forward with the right expertise, the expertise largely doesn't exist in our community. We can't expect people to do the jobs we need full-time... forever to have done without paying them to do it.
To start with, not necessarily in this order, what's needed is:
A DC office in a "good" area. Among other things, to get the message across to politicians that the organization is for real.
Top bracket political lobbyists. When the organization is legally ready to collect and disburse contributions, we need people who know what they're doing to go and who are known to Capitol Hill and tell the politicians what they need to do for us to get our support.
A Website capable of handling lots of traffic.
A high-traffic web-to-fax gateway of the sort the ACLU, NRA, etc. has to allow us to communicate with our Congresscritters and the White House via point-and-click on issues of interest to the community.
Legal professionals to navigate the intricacies of registering as a Federal PAC and to comply with state and federal law on political fundraising and spending.
Political organizers / campaign consultants with at least real state-level experience. The organization is going to have to mobilize our community when it needs to be. Get our people to sign up for the mailing list so we know when Congress needs to be contacted, get our people into the field to volunteer for the political campaigns of our friends, make campaign commercials to help our friends and nail our enemies, etc., etc., etc.
Staff to analyze new legislation and figure out what's of major interest to us, to make sure the e-mail and snailmail gets answered, to make sure that current information goes up on the Website and mailing list. This must be run by someone with relevant experience.
A merchant credit card account capable of handling lots of small donations.
A video production facility capable of broadcast-grade work if this can be fit into the budget.
This must be done before a single dollar is raised to help or fight a political candidate, before a single fax for or against a bill is sent, and this list is hardly complete.
I don't think the problem is lack of interest, I think the problem is that... you're angry about CBDTPA. Without a credible organization that's ready to help our political friends (and given serious contribution money available, I guarantee we can make friends in Congress) and attack our political enemies that you can give money to, who will tell you who our political friends are so you can vote for them or volunteer to work for them, who will send you e-mail to let you know that it's time to hit the fax gateway to tell your Congresscritter how you want her to vote, just what the hell can you do other than to bitch and moan in places like this? Start a GeekPAC without funding or the knowhow needed to be effective? Write your Congresscritter a letter without a multi-kilobuck check enclosed?
The people with the money would rather spend it on wiring their houses for home entertainment as earlier articles here have discussed and invest in projects which probably can't be completed in the USA if laws and regulations under discussion become real.
I know where many of the professionals mentioned above can be found, a fact that doesn't really do either me or us a whole lot of good without the funding to put them to work.
... which shows that democracy as it is (not just in the US, I would not be surprised if we Europeans would havce to endure the same things as well in a few years) has horribly failed due to human incompetence and greed. I hope for you Americans that every dumb law will be dropped for something fair to the people, the monopolies and the goverment itself.
The UK RIP, Council of Europe Cybercrime Treaty, and EU support for American DMCA law demostrates that even with the removal of major corporations from the political campaign funding process, EU politicians are just as capable of stark idiocy as that which US politicians have been paid off to commit. The bad laws you fear are already on the way via pressure from the USA. The good news is that EU governments are heading towards Open Source, which means they aren't necessarily fanatically opposed to good ideas.
The EU, among other places, has an opportunity to seize technological and incidentally, military leadership from the USA in the long run, by simply refusing to pass bad anti-technology laws because the US government and entertainment industry and Religious Right wants them passed.
Getting politicians to do nothing shouldn't be all that difficult. If I were in the EU and trying to get politicians to refrain from passing bad laws on technology and the Internet, I'd be asking questions like:
"Why does [insert your country's name here] need to pass a law which only gives advantage to the USA entertainment industry? Isn't it more important to protect our high-tech industries from them?"
"If America is bent on giving up its high tech leadership with laws like [insert bad US law that your nation seems to be trying to copy] shouldn't you be supporting our high-tech industry by not imitating the worst ideas of Washington, DC? Do you want us to have to buy leading-edge high tech from China, Taiwan, and India in the future? Why should we level the playing field for America when its problems are of its own making?"
If we don't like the idea of legislators making laws that threaten not only our right to do as we please with our computers and the Internet connections we pay for, our options are to keep bleating about it or:
Build an effective PAC with real money on behalf of the high-tech user community. Startup funding for that in the $500K-$1M range. Without the startup funding, you wind up with GeekPAC. Remember them? If nobody with the money thinks this is worth doing, kiss your freedom and the US economy good-bye, and if you want to participate in new technology, figure out which non-US country you want to relocate to.
Persuade the high-tech vendors to use their industry PACS to defend their right to exist and our jobs. Since they think they can still do business with the content providers and other enemies of high-tech industry, they can be expected to continue this non-strategy until their legal people tell them that new law and regulations (e.g. Broadcast Working Group-based FCC regs) mean that they can move R&D/production out of the USA or close their doors. By then, it'll be too late to do anything about this. Appeasement always seems more cost-effective than fighting.
Personally, I expect that the US high-tech community strategy is going to be to keep on bleating while it's still possible to do so and watch the leading edge of technological innovation depart for locations all over the world. I include in the bleating community the entrepreneurs who made it big before the bottom fell out of dot.com . When they realize they can't do business here, they'll simply relocate to somewhere where they can. Or retire.
If the US loses high technology, this will be simply due to the lack of leadership in the political wars. As I see it, we've got an army ready to march and no general staff and no reasonable prospect of finding one.
If I were you, I'd check those URLs and take a look at your new motherboard. You may have just purchased the same set of problems you think you've fixed.
Perhaps the largest search engines should be told about this. Wouldn't it be a shame if that site suddenly became invisible to anybody not willing to find AA's URL from a print source and type it in?
Not that I have anything against the company personally, but a company that invokes Darwin should get the consequences they asked for.
You could have saved yourself a lot of typing by simply saying that you agree with the incumbents in Congress that politicians should be on sale to the highest bidder (which non-Libertarians are going to disagree with) and that our problem at this point is to either become the highest bidder by becoming our own PAC (which would probably do our community the most good, we don't think we have a vested interest in H1B) or that we should find a way to persuade our vendors to aggregate into the highest bidder via industry PAC.
What makes you think they have any interest in what we have to say now unless we can get the numbers to assure them that we can kick their asses out of office regardless of their level of campaign spending? Which we can't by ourselves, there just aren't that many of us. There are enough of us to swing a close election almost anywhere if we vote as a bloc, but nobody's managed to organize us that way, even with our economic survival at stake.
How many dog and pony shows have been given by geek organizations, and how well have they stacked up in terms of delivering results?
While there are many more of us than there are employees of content providers and our average income is quite a bit higher, THEY are the ones raising the money, not us. The difference here is... the average employee working in the entertainment sector works at Hollywood Video as a sales clerk. IT pros are paid a lot better even post dot.bomb .
The question propounded on this thread was 'how to remove major corporations as the most important influences on politicians?' Public financing has been tried, and is the major source of campaign money in most of the industrialized world. Do you know if this has produced the results you describe?
Remember, not all of us are members of the Libertarian cult and we prefer proof when available rather than using "does it match Libertarian religious beliefs?" as a reality check.
The answer to your question is... OK, Congressman Boucher deserves money, he writes good technology bills. Senator Leahy's record is pretty mixed despite his reputation. Otherwise, anyone and everyone, starting with the people Hollywood hasn't gotten around to and finishing with the people Hollywood has given most money to if there's budget.
A campaign contribution large enough to matter to politicians buys one the access to give the politician a clue. Fritz "Hollywood" Hollings comes from a state that doesn't have any major movie companies in it. How'd he suddenly get the bad ideas he's pushing? He listened to people who gave him the money. If a coalition of high tech manufacturers gave him a lot more money, he'd listen to them tell him that the country needs him to do something else, especially if he was told that if he "didn't do what our nation needs", the next batch of bucks would go to his most viable opponent, and if necessary, they'd find a public spirited person willing to serve if one didn't appear in the normal course of things.
He'd cooperate. The same would be true if the slashdot community formed a PAC and offered his campaign a comparable amount of money. Or a coalition to legalize raising ferrets.
Not to say there aren't limits, there are causes no candidate can support no matter how much money is raised to persuade him to do it because even Joe Sixpack won't tolerate a candidate who supports them. SO this approach wouldn't help NAMBLA a whole lot. Though one probably could get Congress to legalize certain kinds of child abuse, e.g. child labor laws permitting opening sweatshops if an acceptable way could be found to make the idea look patriotic.
In the case of Hollings, it would probably be a better strategy to find a viable opponent and make sure he wins, taking heads is another great way to get respect on The Hill.
As for what this leads to, at the moment, if the high-tech manufactures do this, a situation no worse than we have now.
If the high-tech user community (that's us) builds a PAC and raises real money, maybe we can get crap like DMCA rolled back.
As for how to replace a Congress for sale with one that is NOT, the answer is... raise enough money to persuade them to approve public campaign financing and close all the loopholes. How much is enough? It might take enough money to replace a working majority of the incumbents... which would in effect, be a peaceful revolution. A lot cheaper than the other kind.
Anybody who thinks that "raising public awareness" will solve the problem of a Congress for sale is talking out of his asshole. The problem here is... the public doesn't give a fuck about how government is run as long as it pays lip service to public concerns. If the public were willing of its own accord to study the issues, get the information needed to make the best possible voting decisions, and act on them, we would have a government that works for us, not the highest bidder.
I read what you said. If you meant something else entirely, you really should have said so.
Your confidence that DRM-enabled hardware will give control to its users and not the vendors is touching. I don't happen to share it and the vendors haven't really given us anything better than "trust us" as the reason why we should.
Slashdot Mirror
I would guess that these millions of shootings are only happening in the mind of a Anonymous Coward. I'm glad I don't have his imagination, his mind must be an incredibly violent place. Why does he fear to identify himself? Perhaps he fears black helicopters or UFO invasion. Perhaps he should get help from a mental health professional before he hurts someone or himself.
The EU basically has chosen a different tradeoff between security and liberty the US has, as it has every right to do.
Well, anyway, than the US chose before 9/11, at any rate. Perhaps we'll have a system of firearms control and censorship in the US restrictive enough to make the most insular European tourist or Chinese bureaucrat feel safe when visiting the USA, all in the name of creating the illusion of safety from terrorism.
Most EU nations have chosen to leave a monopoly of armed violence to their governments, terrorists, and criminals. While this suggests a degree of trust in government that even the history of Europe (1935-1945) suggests is rather unjustified, they have every right to make that choice.
Just as they have a right to choose censorship over freedom of speech. European history suggests that letting the government choose what citizens are allowed to say publically is a rather bad idea, but they have every right to do this.
Just as American citizens have the right to help Europeans who believe that no government has the right to control freedom of speech or expression, whether that government be based in Brussels, Beijing, or other capitols starting wit h the letter 'B'.
Will either democracy survive its current set of choices as anything but systems where the forms of democracy are observed but they have no meaning in terms of how nations are actually governed?
Interesting question, to which I certainly don't have the answer.
However, bribery works better in person, and foriegn bad guys might not want to take the risks of getting operatives into the USA for this purpose.
If the security isn't particularly good, cracking it remotely might be safer and less hassle.
Another fun possibility, of course, is write access to the network and the databases it's connected to.
While the Feds are trying to discover or invent the kind of data mining tools needed to use this for its intended real purpose, whether it's to attack terrorists, political dissidents (as an anti-globalization), or simply to figure out whose votes shouldn't be counted in the 2004 elections, in the meantime, this is one-stop online information shopping for the foriegn enemies of the USA.
A BIG honking distributed network supercomputer this big and as insecure as one can reasonably expect it to be will become a favorite terrorist tool as soon as the back doors are discovered and the how-to information is in the browser caches of every script kiddie in the whole world. Basically, this would become the biggest h4xx0r target in the world. Any vulnerability it's got will be found. Zero-day exploits won't be theoretical problems, they'll be used on discovery.
This will save terrorist organizations the trouble of doing any in-person research on targets. Building plans? Personnel records? Which personnel are vulnerable to blackmail based on ... unusual online purchases? What information would you want if you wanted to take down a military base or an oil refinery? No matter what it is, the Poindexter Machine will get you there.
While this may save the lives and increase the effectiveness of terrorists, I don't really think that's a good reason to give the Jihads of today or tomorrow easy access to everybody's secrets.
As I said elsewhere, I rather suspect that there are a hell of a lot more CD-ROM drive-based audio players than the RIAA-labels conceive possible in their worst nightmares, I think that instead of the writing off the CD drives towards the end of production run when everyone moved on to a faster drives, the drive manufacturers simply sell the audio manufacturers the closeouts.
Anybody know for sure?
How fast is your CD-ROM drive now? My 486 box had a 2x CD-ROM, I think this older box has a 36x. One can get faster now. I assume that the excess 1x-24x are sitting on consumer shelves and in car CD-ROM decks, and that *most* CD audio drives sold in the last few years will NOT work with the next generation of copy-protect.
We've never had the situation before where ALL the new product at record stores is incompatible with CD-ROM drives.
I think the record labels who are the "early adopters" across their product ranges of this are about to get a terminal surprise.
Even if it's just a very large minority, they've cut their own throats.
Why would we want to stop them from doing this?
Where do you think the 1x-24x generations of CDROM drives wound up at the end of the production runs unsalable because the faster ones where available?
The labels had better pray the answer is "landfills".
With respect to using AP as an example of credibility... you believe without reservation everything the mass media says? If you ever become newsworthy and they get it wrong about you, perhaps you'll know better. Or perhaps you'll believe "it's in print, therefore it must be right".
If you're interested in finding out how to judge credibility, perhaps one of your local community colleges offers a Journalism 101 course you can take.
Alternately, you might try learning how to develop independent credibility of your own. Learning something about anything might help. Perhaps you'll understand credibility should you ever develop any.
So the hapless buyer who doesn't read /. takes it back to the store, and gets another CD that's also defective. He tries it on his computer CD audio and it still doesn't work. And this time, they won't give him his money back. So he's stuck with a CD he can't use.
How many times will he do this before he stops buying music CDs entirely? If he's a serious fan, he'll write the artist to tell her why, and the record label fan club will trash the mail.
Being told at the store that "maybe you should buy a new CD player" isn't going to make him any happier, especially since a new CD player that isn't intended for the SACD standard is even more likely to have a CD-ROM drive in it.
If I were your hypothetical BIG NAME ARTIST and found out that I had no choice but to allow my label to put out CDs that an increasing number of my fans can't play, I would be pissed.
It's only a matter of time before a name artist currently in the charts (Prince bugged out some time ago, but who cares?) publically defects.
Internet anonymity for Linux newbies
Data security for Linux power users
Certainly, it's tabloid journalism. It is also useful tabloid journalism. It's written in a chatty, informal style. Guess what. Bill Gates' speeches are NOT The Sermon on the Mount and press releases by various vendors are taken far too seriously by the computer industry trade press.
It's fashionable to bash The Reg among the people who mistake mass media news for the real thing. For me, if a person whines publically about it, I start wondering about the writer... which of his toes did The Register stomp on... I'm willing to assume deservedly. They have enough credibilty so I can make that as a default assumption.
BTW, I freelance, I've been writing lately for one of the major online tech news publications. (Hint: NOT ZDnet) I frequently find The Reg useful in spotting things that are worth looking into in more depth than they can provide.
Though I've also noticed that EU politicians are capable of doing things just as stupid as any of the things the whole world laughs at when our US Congresscritters do them,
After the 2000 elections, I don't think anybody is looking to the USA for lessons on how to give free, fair, and democratic elections. You obviously didn't read the foriegn coverage of that election in places like The Guardian(UK) of little issues (like tens of thousands of voters disqualified in Florida because of false felony accusations based on a list from an organization controlled by major campaign contributors to the Bush campaign. Note that most of those falsely barred from voting didn't get to vote in the 2002 elections, either.
Why was this buried, spun, or completely ignored by US mass media? Why did I have to log on to an English newspaper to get decent US election coverage? Interesting question.
despotic and evil government
When the Hollywood content providers get most of their legislative agenda passed (who's going to stop them?), you may be using these words yourself to describe the US government.
Of course, if you're still employed in IT at this point, you'll probably be using those words in London or Copenhagen or Nuremburg. Hollywood's agenda is not compatible with the existence of high-tech research, development, or production in the USA.
You got "insightful", you should have gotten funny. I hope you intended humor with your post, otherwise it shows cluelessness on an almost Microsoft True Believer scale.
Most politicians want whatever will get them the most campaign contributions, mostly in the largest possible chunks. If you really believe that Fritz "Hollywood" Hollings wants what's best for any public but that of his 0wn3rs, I suggest you change your recreational drug of choice or at least find an honest dealer.
From the available evidence, most 'authorities', by which you presumably mean law enforcement want whatever will get them the most personal power at the expense of all the rest of us.
The USA doesn't even have the majority of good scientists and engineers. What one team has done, another can do. Everybody will have these systems a few years after the US deploys them, and probably cheaper than US DOD contractors are selling them for to the US government.
All this means is that energy weapons are about to enter the military bag of tricks. So our future battlefields will have that lovely "Star Wars" look to them, but people and vehicles will be vaporizing for real, not as special effects.
The real bad news for Americans is that the USA seems to be on the edge of giving up its technological leadership.
Education is suffering. The entertainment industry is getting a stranglehold on US technology in both hardware and software, and no effective opposition is coming forth.
South Korea was merely ahead of us in broadband development. Not content with only having 60% of households broadband-wired, they're about to put another few billion dollars to pick up the rest. Where are the new services going to come from to take advantage of this? From the USA? Don't bet on it. What is the US doing to catch up? "Leaving it to the free market" that tanked on this to begin with. The US may be the last industrialized country where broadband replaces dialup, and the ability of individuals to figure out how to come up with useful products and services around broadband in the US runs straight into bandwidth and usage limits dreamed up by the cable companies and to a lesser extent, telcos.
I'm not trying to start any Libertarian theological debates here, so I'm not saying whether this is good or bad. Just stating what we know to be true.
Military technology used to drive civilian R&D. Now, it's the other way around. When high-technology companies leave the US in search of better regulatory climates and most of us go with them, will the ability to create the best military tech go with them and with us?
For better for worse, the lack of leadership our government and business leaders are providing us means that for better or worse, a Pax Americana will be a very temporary thing. Perhaps it'll last long enough to get George Bush re-elected and the current generation of Fortune 500 CEOs into a profitable retirement.
I remember seeing a recent article referenced here that says that Amazon Books attributes its newly-found semi-profitability to its decision to go Open Source.
So, while this article may get hundreds of yelling and screaming "point of fact" replies, it seems that many companies have tried OSS software (or at least costed it) and have come to the same conclusions--in the long run, it's at least as expensive as commercial equivalents.
Let's see some names here. WHO has tried and failed with Open Source software? Or did TCO and backed off. You anticipate people asking you for "point of fact" replies. Is there something immoral about asking "point of fact" questions? I don't think embarrassing either you or your employer is immoral.
If you have a problem with "point of fact" questions, why didn't you provide some facts to anticipate these questions? Is it that you don't have any facts? Ever heard of Google? If you can't provide any facts, why should we respect either you or your opinion?
You can even cite yourself as an example of Open Source failure if you like. I'm sure we'd believe you if you told us that a command line is just too hard for you. And I'd reply that perhaps if you offer IBM enough money, or a lesser sum to some of the individual training consultants around here, perhaps someone can be found with the patience to teach you Linux. It might even be cheaper for you to do this than to buy your next computer upgrade to support XP or its successor, though I can't guarantee this.
Organizations who have gone/are going Open Source? Home Depot. Burlington Coat Factory. The government of Spain. Police departments in portions of the UK, and the consultant firm rolling out those desktops and servers has just gotten a contract from the EC to write a proposal to roll out Linux for EC governments. The people running those organizations don't seem to agree with you.
With respect to support, ever heard of IBM? They do a lot of commercial Linux support.
Whether or not an organization should go with Open Source depends on circumstances very specific to that organization. Your statements about Open Source are no more useful than the ones that say everyone needs to use it.
With respect to software usability, depends on what software is available, what the software is used for and who will be using it.
However, I am comfortable in saying that Open Source is improving in usability, ease of installation, and ease of maintenance rapidly, and as it does, it will become useful to a wider range of individuals and organizations. At the same time, it is NOT increasing rapidly with respect to required workstation resources.
Can you say the same about Micro$hit?
The guy who reposted the article on LinuxFormat should have posted both pages. Page 2 is good enough that I have to retract the word "hack", even if I regard the use of the word "pundit" as at best, ill-advised. But I suspect that the author couldn't say what he really wanted to say about "investor analysts" in the article.
The important lesson that seems to have been missed is... learn enough about the underlying technology to understand whether or not the business model makes sense or not through one's personal analysis, don't make an investment decision based on what the "pundits" say.
So the entire printing industry is going to change over from supporting PDF as an input format that supports everything up to and including embedded job ticket and billing information because Microsoft said "Boo!"
All of us are immediately going to go out and deinstall Acrobat Reader or whatever we're using to read PDFs and buy Office 11 (changing to XP to do it) because all the terabytes of PDF only content are going to magically morph into XDocs.
Yeah, right.
Even if the format is in fact superior, PDF is so much a part of Internet and print and other technologies that it would be years before XDoc content became noticeable enough to make it worth the trouble for end users to download and install a reader.
A company who makes its docs available in XDoc format only means that only Office 11 users will be able to read it. All that company will get as a result will be trouble from angry users. People aren't going to upgrade to Office 11 just to read some company's docs.
However, it does present an investment opportunity for making money off the stupid who are unloading Adobe because they actually believe this bullshit, just like the pre-announcement of the MS antitrust decision did... people snapped up $93 million in MS stock in response to that pre-announcement, including the slashdot readers who got to the pre-announcement from here.
I was wondering who the "pundits" cited in this article were. That's a word that only marketdroids and a few hack journalists that know no better use. The original of this article which was posted without attribution at Linux format can be found here.
Well, the "pundits" exist, a search on XDocs at google reveals this.
Here's a somewhat better article hereWell, the same investor analysts whose stock hyping and premature panic that drove the rise and fall of the bubble are in hype mode now. Apparently, since their understanding isn't past the buzzword level, they just don't get how embedded PDF technology is in American business and particuarly industrial segments like printing.
With the right apps, I can send a PDF file to a printer that can be turned into a gigantic print run without human intervention. If XDocs is all that Microsoft hopes for and enjoys the results that Microsoft wants and comes out on time, I might be able to do the same with XDocs by 2010 or so.
Remember this next time you're tempted to make an investment decision based on what a "pundit" says. Then check the facts yourself, you might make a lot more money by doing the opposite.
One big problem in this context is that the people who have real money and are giving are giving to the organizations like EFF, CDT, Public Knowledge, etc... which gives them tax deductions and a feeling of doing something worthwhile, which in fact they are. However, they will not and can not solve either our political problems or theirs. Tax deductible non-profits not only can't make political contributions, but can't even publish voter guides. These groups have been around ever since the first threats to our rights have been visible, and we're still looking down the barrel of stuff like CBDTPA and BWG, etc.
We need political organizers and lobbyists who can write big campaign checks with our money to back them, not more public-interest lawyers.
While I can't honestly call them part of the problem, neither are they part of any solution which will keep technology viable in the US. No matter how much money is given to these groups, not one politician is going to have his mind changed by this.
The legal battles need to be fought, but without a PAC with enough power to reshape the political landscape, court victories are going to be ultimately meaningless. At least not in terms of keeping technology jobs in the USA.
If I knew the answer to your question, I would already have hit them up for this. Explore your own personal and industry connections is all I can really say, and that's all I can say to anyone else who reads this who isn't in a position to personally write the check needed to get this rolling or pass the hat among a handful of friends / business contacts to do this.
Internet censorship is the kind of bad idea that has an unpleasant tendency to spread even without US help, but it spreads a lot faster with the US government encouraging other countries to adopt it for themselves and to help them enforce ours.
What does the startup funding needs to be spent on? Mainly infrastructure and professionals. We can't depend on volunteers to come forward with the right expertise, the expertise largely doesn't exist in our community. We can't expect people to do the jobs we need full-time ... forever to have done without paying them to do it.
To start with, not necessarily in this order, what's needed is:
- A DC office in a "good" area. Among other things, to get the message across to politicians that the organization is for real.
- Top bracket political lobbyists. When the organization is legally ready to collect and disburse contributions, we need people who know what they're doing to go and who are known to Capitol Hill and tell the politicians what they need to do for us to get our support.
- A Website capable of handling lots of traffic.
- A high-traffic web-to-fax gateway of the sort the ACLU, NRA, etc. has to allow us to communicate with our Congresscritters and the White House via point-and-click on issues of interest to the community.
- Legal professionals to navigate the intricacies of registering as a Federal PAC and to comply with state and federal law on political fundraising and spending.
- Political organizers / campaign consultants with at least real state-level experience. The organization is going to have to mobilize our community when it needs to be. Get our people to sign up for the mailing list so we know when Congress needs to be contacted, get our people into the field to volunteer for the political campaigns of our friends, make campaign commercials to help our friends and nail our enemies, etc., etc., etc.
- Staff to analyze new legislation and figure out what's of major interest to us, to make sure the e-mail and snailmail gets answered, to make sure that current information goes up on the Website and mailing list. This must be run by someone with relevant experience.
- A merchant credit card account capable of handling lots of small donations.
- A video production facility capable of broadcast-grade work if this can be fit into the budget.
This must be done before a single dollar is raised to help or fight a political candidate, before a single fax for or against a bill is sent, and this list is hardly complete.I don't think the problem is lack of interest, I think the problem is that... you're angry about CBDTPA. Without a credible organization that's ready to help our political friends (and given serious contribution money available, I guarantee we can make friends in Congress) and attack our political enemies that you can give money to, who will tell you who our political friends are so you can vote for them or volunteer to work for them, who will send you e-mail to let you know that it's time to hit the fax gateway to tell your Congresscritter how you want her to vote, just what the hell can you do other than to bitch and moan in places like this? Start a GeekPAC without funding or the knowhow needed to be effective? Write your Congresscritter a letter without a multi-kilobuck check enclosed?
The people with the money would rather spend it on wiring their houses for home entertainment as earlier articles here have discussed and invest in projects which probably can't be completed in the USA if laws and regulations under discussion become real.
I know where many of the professionals mentioned above can be found, a fact that doesn't really do either me or us a whole lot of good without the funding to put them to work.
The UK RIP, Council of Europe Cybercrime Treaty, and EU support for American DMCA law demostrates that even with the removal of major corporations from the political campaign funding process, EU politicians are just as capable of stark idiocy as that which US politicians have been paid off to commit. The bad laws you fear are already on the way via pressure from the USA. The good news is that EU governments are heading towards Open Source, which means they aren't necessarily fanatically opposed to good ideas.
The EU, among other places, has an opportunity to seize technological and incidentally, military leadership from the USA in the long run, by simply refusing to pass bad anti-technology laws because the US government and entertainment industry and Religious Right wants them passed.
Getting politicians to do nothing shouldn't be all that difficult. If I were in the EU and trying to get politicians to refrain from passing bad laws on technology and the Internet, I'd be asking questions like:
"Why does [insert your country's name here] need to pass a law which only gives advantage to the USA entertainment industry? Isn't it more important to protect our high-tech industries from them?"
"If America is bent on giving up its high tech leadership with laws like [insert bad US law that your nation seems to be trying to copy] shouldn't you be supporting our high-tech industry by not imitating the worst ideas of Washington, DC? Do you want us to have to buy leading-edge high tech from China, Taiwan, and India in the future? Why should we level the playing field for America when its problems are of its own making?"
Personally, I expect that the US high-tech community strategy is going to be to keep on bleating while it's still possible to do so and watch the leading edge of technological innovation depart for locations all over the world. I include in the bleating community the entrepreneurs who made it big before the bottom fell out of dot.com . When they realize they can't do business here, they'll simply relocate to somewhere where they can. Or retire.
If the US loses high technology, this will be simply due to the lack of leadership in the political wars. As I see it, we've got an army ready to march and no general staff and no reasonable prospect of finding one.
If I were you, I'd check those URLs and take a look at your new motherboard. You may have just purchased the same set of problems you think you've fixed.
Not that I have anything against the company personally, but a company that invokes Darwin should get the consequences they asked for.
What makes you think they have any interest in what we have to say now unless we can get the numbers to assure them that we can kick their asses out of office regardless of their level of campaign spending? Which we can't by ourselves, there just aren't that many of us. There are enough of us to swing a close election almost anywhere if we vote as a bloc, but nobody's managed to organize us that way, even with our economic survival at stake.
How many dog and pony shows have been given by geek organizations, and how well have they stacked up in terms of delivering results? While there are many more of us than there are employees of content providers and our average income is quite a bit higher, THEY are the ones raising the money, not us. The difference here is... the average employee working in the entertainment sector works at Hollywood Video as a sales clerk. IT pros are paid a lot better even post dot.bomb .
The question propounded on this thread was 'how to remove major corporations as the most important influences on politicians?' Public financing has been tried, and is the major source of campaign money in most of the industrialized world. Do you know if this has produced the results you describe?
Remember, not all of us are members of the Libertarian cult and we prefer proof when available rather than using "does it match Libertarian religious beliefs?" as a reality check.
A campaign contribution large enough to matter to politicians buys one the access to give the politician a clue. Fritz "Hollywood" Hollings comes from a state that doesn't have any major movie companies in it. How'd he suddenly get the bad ideas he's pushing? He listened to people who gave him the money. If a coalition of high tech manufacturers gave him a lot more money, he'd listen to them tell him that the country needs him to do something else, especially if he was told that if he "didn't do what our nation needs", the next batch of bucks would go to his most viable opponent, and if necessary, they'd find a public spirited person willing to serve if one didn't appear in the normal course of things.
He'd cooperate. The same would be true if the slashdot community formed a PAC and offered his campaign a comparable amount of money. Or a coalition to legalize raising ferrets.
Not to say there aren't limits, there are causes no candidate can support no matter how much money is raised to persuade him to do it because even Joe Sixpack won't tolerate a candidate who supports them. SO this approach wouldn't help NAMBLA a whole lot. Though one probably could get Congress to legalize certain kinds of child abuse, e.g. child labor laws permitting opening sweatshops if an acceptable way could be found to make the idea look patriotic.
In the case of Hollings, it would probably be a better strategy to find a viable opponent and make sure he wins, taking heads is another great way to get respect on The Hill.
As for what this leads to, at the moment, if the high-tech manufactures do this, a situation no worse than we have now.
If the high-tech user community (that's us) builds a PAC and raises real money, maybe we can get crap like DMCA rolled back.
As for how to replace a Congress for sale with one that is NOT, the answer is... raise enough money to persuade them to approve public campaign financing and close all the loopholes. How much is enough? It might take enough money to replace a working majority of the incumbents... which would in effect, be a peaceful revolution. A lot cheaper than the other kind.
Anybody who thinks that "raising public awareness" will solve the problem of a Congress for sale is talking out of his asshole. The problem here is... the public doesn't give a fuck about how government is run as long as it pays lip service to public concerns. If the public were willing of its own accord to study the issues, get the information needed to make the best possible voting decisions, and act on them, we would have a government that works for us, not the highest bidder.
Your confidence that DRM-enabled hardware will give control to its users and not the vendors is touching. I don't happen to share it and the vendors haven't really given us anything better than "trust us" as the reason why we should.