Personally, I see no reason for ICANN to continue to exist in its current form, and I'd like to see it defunded.
A non-politicized organization whose role is solely to provide and fund technical administration of the root servers worked well enough until Congress decided to do something about this. Why does the job of running a root or TLD server turn from one guy with a machine in his closet to a gigantic bureaucracy when government gets its hooks into it?
We might be better off using the courts to decide who gets what domain name... could they really do a worse job than WIPO? Of course, we could simply replace them with one person who awards the domain to the party with the biggest bank account and get almost identical results to the current system for a hell of a lot less money.
Reading this thread and your reply makes me a lot more nervous about credit card use on the Internet.
A fair number of the readers are the actual sysadmins at e-commerce sites.
To see people who are likely to be e-commerce sysadmins actually state that there is no possible consequence to end users of the theft of credit card and other personal information in a time where identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the First World shows a depth of cluelessness that is frightening.
With respect to the SANS Institute... I won't be sending people to them for security advice and information anymore. (mental note: check my Website and pull any links to them)
To see people say that people have an ethical duty to conceal the commission of felonies which can indeed affect customers because it "might hurt the employer" suggests to me that the real problem with e-commerce security may not be solvable without major governmental intervention, because it is rooted in not technological failure, but simply because the responsible parties don't give a shit about the customers and will not be safe guardians of the private information given to them by customers without the incentive of prison time for failing to protect them.
I hope this passes. The consumer doesn't yet understand that he/she is getting screwed by the entertainment industry and that the industry doesn't care what happens to the economy as long as they get to keep driving BMWs.
When the price of used CDs suddenly go up $2 or so and the sales clerk tells the customer "the money's going to the record industry, they bought themselves a law... if you don't like it, call your Congressperson..." the public will get the idea very, very suddenly.
While Joe Sixpack wouldn't recognize "first sale" doctrine... he knows that once one sells something to somebody, that if that person resells it, he has no right to a profit from the item. He's going to start asking loudly and nastily just why the record industry gets to play by a different set of rules.
You think piracy is big-time NOW? When nobody has any further respect for record industry copyright, I predict that ripped CDs will become far more popular than ones purchased in stores.
This is going to piss off a lot of musicians as well. If one doesn't like music, one doesn't try to do it for a living. Once the musician finds out that the record industry is collecting royalties for the second and subsequent resales of a CD that is being passed along to him as a customre and that he will never see a single cent of profit from this, he's going to go ballistic... and many will suddenly realize that with CD-on-demand (try Ampcast ), they don't need the record industry for international distribution.
As for political impact... watch the Democratic Party stampede in all directions away from Hollywood as the GOP finds they've been handed a new campaign issue... they've been pissed off for years about the fact that the entertainment industry never considered the GOP worth buying.
I think the record industry is shooting itself in the head with this law. If anyone knows anybody at MPAA, tell them about this wonderful new idea and to make sure movies are included as well.
What info do you have? The story appears to be that a single individual who's been running the.ZA domain with his own equipment wants some competent person or organization to replace him. Perhaps he'd like for his e-mail to keep working after he quits.
If the.ZA poster who says that the government has proven that it can't even run its own name server correctly is telling the truth, the government is NOT up to running.ZA domain.
Perhaps you have an issue with the idea that a person might consider his reponsibility to his fellow Internet users more important than his government's orders.
From my point of view, this makes the guy a hero. This also makes you a zero.
If you don't get the fact that ICANN need not connect to any national DNS set up by.ZA... what are you doing in a discussion of national TLD administration?
The list is also extremely useful when he isn't doing that. That's why I've been a subscriber for years and I assume that's why you are as well. I regard politech as an important public service. I can deal with Libertarian cult propaganda in order to get it.
While my position on quite a few things, such as ending the "War on Some Drugs" almost exactly corresponds with the Libertarian Party platform, it's important to recognize that corporations can be as great a threat to civil liberties as government is.
We aren't required to agree with Declan's personal political philosophy in order to make constructive use of the information he presents. Though I've wondered if the information he gets and doesn't choose to post is more interesting than what he posts. However, I have that problem with slashdot as well.
In either case, I'll keep using both as long as what I get here or on politech is useful.
Pseudo-Libertarians are willing to accept any amount of threat to their liberties just so long as they don't come from government
Anyone who reads Declan's politech mailing list or any other list where the Cato Institute frequently releases its propaganda has had his face rubbed in that.
However, what struck me about the Salon interview is... the poor quality of the thought that underlies the Cato Institute pronouncements. on various issues... the detachment from reality.
I read the article and kept wondering what rock this guy had been living under for the last few years.
"and then he tried to transfer the sound to the digital audiotape that he had, and it wouldn't do it. He blamed DRM for that.
I wrote him back and said, look, be mad at the Digital Home Recording Act. That's what said you can't record from a digital source onto a digital audiotape. It has nothing to do with DRM."
Being locked out of the use of one's own software and hardware AND intellectual property to protect corporate copyright holders is irrelevant to DRM? What's this guy smoking? I think we all need to know so we can avoid it.
His comments about fair usage in an academic context... perhaps he hasn't used computers long enough to have gone through changes in digital format, perhaps he thinks that floppies were always 3.5" and CD-Rs were the first portable mass storage.
Perhaps he really has no clue that a DRM imposed by a company that no longer exists in a legacy media format might make it impossible to access information necessary to legitimate academic research... anything from a masters' thesis to a kid trying to find out what music in the early 21st century sounded like.
I guess "no clue" is the best way to characterize this guy. Is he typical? I strongly suspect so.
Why are we taking the pathetic assholes at the Cato Institute seriously?
Not that they're totally useless, if they happen to support your position on censorship (government ONLY, they don't seem to understand that free-enterprise censorship exists) by all means use them to bolster your position's credibility, when dealing with government officials, if they aren't familiar with the Cato Institute, it might help.
Just don't take them seriously even if they happen to be on your side.
And what kind of environmentally friendly ways are you using to compose your replies or post them?
I've been reading your kind of environmental elitism preaching about how the rest of us need to sacrifice for years.
Presumably you think "your message" is important enough to exempt you from the reduction of consumption the rest of us "need".
You might find it interesting to track down the origin of your message... who funded the studies that are used as the basis of your advice. Who funded the "deep ecology" agenda?
The possession of firearms is not entirely illegal in Australia. Self-loading guns are readily available but there are restrictions on high capacity self-loading rimfire rifles, self-loading centrefire rifles and shotguns and pump-action shotguns. These were the types of guns mainly used in Australian gun massacres. For more information on this consult this link [guncontrol.org.au].
How you can say that banning of certain types of weapons leads to control of political speech I am not sure. Sure guns are needed in the instance of a revolution against the government when it fails the people, but that is a last resort after democracy has failed.
The banned guns are the ones which are most likely to be useful for citizens who need to get rid of an oppressive government after democracy has indeed failed.
As to the success or failure of your democracy, that remains to be seen. Government is a continuous experiment. What is true of any government in terms of stability and benevolence may not be true tomorrow. Democracy only lasts as long as public vigilance does. The law under discussion is a massive step in the wrong direction.
A government that genuinely intends to be oppressive isn't exactly likely to undo the ban described above to give the citizens a fair chance to allow them to get rid of that regime.
As for my being labeled troll... just because someone has moderator points doesn't mean that he can't be an antigun fanatic, or even an imbecile. Or a Microsoft employee.I suspect the person who moderated my post is all of the above.
Having moderator points just says that a person has posted a few things that people agreed with, and being a slashdot user doesn't exactly mean that one has a valid opinion on public policy issues.
where banning the private possession of firearms inevitably leads to control of political speech and association ending in totalitarian democracy.
As a Canadian I can attest to the fact that whoever uttered this statement needs to go back to grade school.
Actually, I stated that as the NRA position, I merely think it highly probable.
Your pride in having a document defining your rights that lacks a guarantee of free speech and press is misplaced, that's in Part 1...
As an American, I suggest you learn about your system of government before bringing your ignorant whines into a public policy debate.
Your precious Charter can be shitcanned or modified into uselessness any time enough members of Parliament want it to be, after which it needs a "Mother, may I" from the Brits.
Do you really think that Canada would have difficulty getting a UK Parliament to sign off on replacing the current version with a new and more restrictive version friendlier to repressive governments, particularly given RIP and the growth of an Orwellian "surveillance society" as the UK government has approved?
It seems easier than getting 34 independent US state legislatures to sign off on gutting the US Bill of Rights.
Have you read the US Constitution? Or for that matter, your own Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
If you had, you might have read the following:
"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Sounds good... until you take a hard look at it. Who defines "reasonable"?
"People usually get the local government they deserve." E.E."Doc" Smith
We may get to see for the first time in an English-speaking country the first example of the domino effect claimed by the US National Rifle Association... where banning the private possession of firearms inevitably leads to control of political speech and association ending in totalitarian democracy.
You can't have legitimate political campaigns where elected government officials are using electronic surveillance not only against known terrorists and criminals, but against political opponents as well. That's why the Watergate scandal ended President Nixon's political career, because his people got caught doing exactly that.
If this disturbing Australian trend goes to completion, how long before media outside AU realize that Australia is no longer a "free country"? Probably after we get significant numbers of people applying for "political asylum" in the US.
The only suggestions I have for Aussies if this doesn't get stopped, and if it's gotten this far, your elected officials probably no longer care what you think are:
1. You may already have seen the very last free election in Australia in your lifetime.
2. If you are serious about freedom, your options are:
think of a way to fight the new regime (isn't it too bad you gave up your guns?)
or
leave.
I recommend departure. If you live among a people willing to vote away their freedoms even when there is no obvious threat, I can't see any good reason to risk death and imprisonment for them. The people who tend to do best during a migration are those who get out first, they have the best chance to find jobs and housing before the hordes of refugees show up behind them.
For those who would neither fight nor depart, don't worry. I'm sure your regime will continue to call itself a democracy and even allow the facade of "free elections" for a while. Of course, your choice will only be among the parties the government allows to continue. And the forms of free enterprise that the government approves of.
I wish you Aussies luck. You'll need it.
No, I'm not offering the US as an example of perfect democracy, though we've had stolen Presidential elections in the past and 0wN3d legislatures and our democracy has survived. As to whether it will continue to do so, I certainly don't know.
The remark from their Minister of Communications saying that they believe taking the.ZA domain will increase Internet availability and other remarks in the cnet article demonstrates that the government simply has no clue as to what they're taking, just as the domain admin has said.
I think the admin should leave the country, a government this irrational is likely to blame him when they take over and find either that they've been unplugged from the root or that their attempts to do well meaning but wrong things will have the same effect.
I really don't miss the good old BBS days
on
Remembering the BBS
·
· Score: 2
My first cyberspace exposure was in the 1980s when I worked at Atari, multiuser on a VAX11/780. It was different, but my fellow workers at Coin-Op weren't all that interesting... I kind of filed that experience in my mind because I wasn't expecting to get a chance to play again with e-mail... outside the Fortune 500, e-mail was a rare and exotic thing.
I started out with a 300 baud modem on a C-64 when Fido networks were the hot new BBS thing.
Later, I was a co-sys on a thriving mulitline (I think we got to 16 lines BBS in the SF Bay Area using call-forwarding to get complete regional coverage. We had a thriving community, I'm not sure how many accounts I had... I'll just say that A.Lizard was very well known locally.
There is something to be said for getting automatic "Elite" access wherever I went within my local call radius.
I even put together one of the very first virtual companies (hardware: modems) using a local BBS one of the collaborators on the project owned... we used a sub (=echo=conference) on the system for discussion and a private file transfer area for swapping ECAD files. The company fell apart due to personal conflicts, but I knew that "virtual companies" were a workable idea long before anyone invented that phrase.
I used a BBS my client had for telecommuting (turning in my work, getting work-related messages) before the word was invented. BTW, it was an early MacBBS and it sucked rocks. (No, not because it was based on Mac.)
For me, the most important thing about BBS systems was meeting interesting people of the opposite sex. My interests are a bit arcane, finding women that share them isn't that easy.
Suddenly in 1991, people were talking about something strange called The Internet where e-mail went overseas in hours instead of weeks. I put out messages on several BBS systems asking if anybody could give me access... I got replies within days. I got hooked the first time I had an actual conversation via Internet with a geekette (Hi,Stayka!) living in Germany... the BBS was set up to dial out on demand... message replies were coming back in a few minutes. My main Internet address back then was:
alizard%tweekco%boo@Pacbell.com or if you prefer, pacbell!boo!tweekco!alizard
When I got Internet access, my pool of people to fish in went from the few thousand (mostly male) I could access via Fido, WWIV-Net/Link (and several more obscure WWIV-based networks), V-net (though e-mailed file attachments were k3wl)... to millions (this was 1991-1994)... my transition to the Net took a few years.
For meeting people, the Net has been much better for me. It came in just in time to save my sanity. I'm now contemplating a second trip to Holland to meet the second woman I've taken a personal interest in out there. (the first didn't quite work out)
For things like file transfer and other data-driven uses... it was much better even when I was accessing it via Waffle BBS. It suited the things I was trying to do on line a hell of a lot better than BBS systems ever did. All I wanted was a faster modem...
I rarely look back and really don't miss the "good old days". Even with getting viruses every day, having to firewall my dialup connection, and spam, I'm having a hell of a lot more fun online now. If I ever feel like discussing the "good old days", I can always talk to the sysadmins at my local ISP. They ran one of the BBS systems I used to use. I doubt they look back much. They can download via OC-12...
Re:The problem is not a failure of the market
on
Homogenized Music
·
· Score: 2
Quotes from the article:
The company lost money every quarter last year, piling up an annual loss of $1.1 billion. Clear Channel also is shouldering $8 billion in debt -- the legacy of its deal-a-minute expansion spree. With a long advertising slump afoot, the company's stock is selling at about half its peak price of two years ago.
The company lost money every quarter last year, piling up an annual loss of $1.1 billion.
The other day, Clear Channel reported that it lost $16.9 billion during the first three months of 2002, mostly as a result of writing off devalued assets.
Indeed, radio is changing. Arbitron reports that Americans are listening to it less each year. The ratings service estimates that on average people spend 10 percent less time with it now than in 1996.
Note that radio broadcasters were one of the sets of corporate interests who wanted to use CARP to shut down Internet radio.
I'd say that the marketplace is speaking. These statements are storm warnings saying the business model is in deep shit. Their normallosses are $1.1 billion, they're carrying $8+ billion in debt, and they just had a $16 billion writedown?
Clear Channel probably won't get the message until the banks carrying their line of credit tell them they don't feel like paying.
If they weren't already, their IP ranges will probably be in every other blacklist on earth in the next hour or two. They have put themselves out of business.
The fact that the article on slashdot should insure this, and I suspect that a number of somebodys will be keeping an eye on this company to insure that their IPs are blocked no matter how they get changed.
If they can make this work (unless there are some drastic advances in the technology, I'm dubious...) and charge for licensing the technology to private industry... this is a DARPA deal that actually might profit the taxpayers.
Of course I'm speaking from the POV of someone who wants one.
How long would it take before the opposition would culture the genetically engineered bacteria , possibly eliminate whatever governs its reproductive control, and send it back to us? Research into this kind of bacteria isn't exactly as dangerous as working on Ebola, for instance...
Let's use gasoline as an example. Dump some into a oil refinery tank farm and watch the infection chain spread via tanker into our service stations and from there, to our autos. What shape is our economy in when large chunks of our petroleum distribution chain has to be sterilized before reuse?
Worse, the most probable enemies of the industrialized world are in the best position to absorb this kind of infrastructure attack, i.e. the US is funding a type of attack that endangers us more than the opposition.
. I'd hold out hope for some competitor to emerge with a service that gets this balance right to blow them out of the water, but the anticompetitive climate of broadband doesn't leave much room for that to happen.
It's been done.The people in the best place to do this are the publically owned public utility districts who often already have fiber optic to the curb in place or more often, can easily deploy it for pricing comparable to what most dialup ISPs charge.
If you're very lucky, you're in an area where the cable companies haven't bought enough legislators to make laws forbidding this. I think the City of Alameda, California just came in under the wire on this law. The cable industry buys California state politicians, too.
If it's legal in your state and if your area is served by a public utilities district (my guess as to why private utilities companies don't do this is anti-compete clauses in the contracts for running TV cables on their poles) . why not push them about this?
Next time you decide to post on a techno-public policy issue, read the damned things it links to BEFORE YOU POST, before you publically make a jackass of yourself again.
On this issue, it might also have helped if you've ever designed anything using ADCs, but that's 4 years worth of schooling I'm not sure you have the intellectual ability to profit from.
You don't see any problem with turning a 50 cent part (quantity 10K) into a $10 part (same quantity) which requires $10 worth of handling due to paperwork that goes with the regulation?
You don't see any problem with passing this cost along to the consumer, making a $10 consumer toy a $50 consumer toy that doesn't work as well as the gadget it replaces?
Get some glasses, d00d before you stumble into a tree.
Anybody working with electronic hardware who intends to continue to do so will have to move out of America to do this... from the individual to IBM and Apple.
I don't see this restriction happening anywhere else on earth... I think what we'll see is world product lines and "USA-compliant" product lines... the USA-compliant will be much more expensive, will show up a year or two after the world versions do, but nobody will be able to afford them because our economy will be sliding towards Third World status.
Basically, the proposals if turned into law in any form having the slightest resemblance to what's described is economic suicide for this nation. America could lose Hollywood... and a few thousand jobs... which would probably be replaced rapidly as people suddenly realize that desktop computer = video production studio.
If it becomes impossible to design or produce electronic equipment in the USA, welcome to the Third World.
Push your elected officials to mandate an accelerated conversion of our economy to anything but fossil fuel for power. Hydrogen, space powersats, whatever.
While this won't turn these countries into democracies automatically, their authoritarian, repressive regimes will fall if the US doesn't prop them up with both military aid and the dollars extracted from us at the gas pumps. If we aren't burning oil, that part of the world will fade into the obscurity it deserves until they can get it together enough to figure out something that they can sell besides oil.
While these regimes will probably be replaced by others equally authoritarian or worse, this will be self-inflicted and there's no real reason why any of us should give a shit. People do have the right to whatever form of self-government they choose. Even if the choices are fucking stupid.
Those with brains and guts over there can choose to fight or escape.
We can welcome those who wanted to escape to a "free" world, it's precisely the ones with brains and guts who provide us (any industrialized country) with the kind of immigrants we want.
Nothing that exotic. I'd guess a cracked solder joint in the power supply causing a voltage fluctuation when the toilet flushed, and that's probably why the power supply died as well, when the crack turned into a break. I'd guess but don't know that the brick was plugged into the wall on the side next to the toilet, right?
If you still had the thing, I'd say touch up the power supply PCB connections with a soldering pencil, or better, replace the 7805 3 pin voltage regulator at the same time.
Used to work at a company producing C-64 software way back when, I had to fix some of those beasties... the C-64 really wasn't intended to run 18+/7.
Try plugging your fluorescent lamp into the UNprotected outlets on the UPS. Though it is convenient during power outages to have the lamp powered from the UPS as well as the computer. Simply change the plug back when that happens.
Slashdot Mirror
A non-politicized organization whose role is solely to provide and fund technical administration of the root servers worked well enough until Congress decided to do something about this. Why does the job of running a root or TLD server turn from one guy with a machine in his closet to a gigantic bureaucracy when government gets its hooks into it?
We might be better off using the courts to decide who gets what domain name... could they really do a worse job than WIPO? Of course, we could simply replace them with one person who awards the domain to the party with the biggest bank account and get almost identical results to the current system for a hell of a lot less money.
Too bad I don't have moderator points today so I can give your post the "Flamebait" rating it deserves.
A fair number of the readers are the actual sysadmins at e-commerce sites.
To see people who are likely to be e-commerce sysadmins actually state that there is no possible consequence to end users of the theft of credit card and other personal information in a time where identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the First World shows a depth of cluelessness that is frightening.
With respect to the SANS Institute... I won't be sending people to them for security advice and information anymore. (mental note: check my Website and pull any links to them)
To see people say that people have an ethical duty to conceal the commission of felonies which can indeed affect customers because it "might hurt the employer" suggests to me that the real problem with e-commerce security may not be solvable without major governmental intervention, because it is rooted in not technological failure, but simply because the responsible parties don't give a shit about the customers and will not be safe guardians of the private information given to them by customers without the incentive of prison time for failing to protect them.
When the price of used CDs suddenly go up $2 or so and the sales clerk tells the customer "the money's going to the record industry, they bought themselves a law... if you don't like it, call your Congressperson..." the public will get the idea very, very suddenly.
While Joe Sixpack wouldn't recognize "first sale" doctrine... he knows that once one sells something to somebody, that if that person resells it, he has no right to a profit from the item. He's going to start asking loudly and nastily just why the record industry gets to play by a different set of rules.
You think piracy is big-time NOW? When nobody has any further respect for record industry copyright, I predict that ripped CDs will become far more popular than ones purchased in stores.
This is going to piss off a lot of musicians as well. If one doesn't like music, one doesn't try to do it for a living. Once the musician finds out that the record industry is collecting royalties for the second and subsequent resales of a CD that is being passed along to him as a customre and that he will never see a single cent of profit from this, he's going to go ballistic... and many will suddenly realize that with CD-on-demand (try Ampcast ), they don't need the record industry for international distribution.
As for political impact... watch the Democratic Party stampede in all directions away from Hollywood as the GOP finds they've been handed a new campaign issue... they've been pissed off for years about the fact that the entertainment industry never considered the GOP worth buying.
I think the record industry is shooting itself in the head with this law. If anyone knows anybody at MPAA, tell them about this wonderful new idea and to make sure movies are included as well.
Of course, this means that all your desktop icons will have .ink extensions, but so what?
If the .ZA poster who says that the government has proven that it can't even run its own name server correctly is telling the truth, the government is NOT up to running .ZA domain.
Perhaps you have an issue with the idea that a person might consider his reponsibility to his fellow Internet users more important than his government's orders.
From my point of view, this makes the guy a hero. This also makes you a zero.
If you don't get the fact that ICANN need not connect to any national DNS set up by .ZA... what are you doing in a discussion of national TLD administration?
While my position on quite a few things, such as ending the "War on Some Drugs" almost exactly corresponds with the Libertarian Party platform, it's important to recognize that corporations can be as great a threat to civil liberties as government is.
We aren't required to agree with Declan's personal political philosophy in order to make constructive use of the information he presents. Though I've wondered if the information he gets and doesn't choose to post is more interesting than what he posts. However, I have that problem with slashdot as well.
In either case, I'll keep using both as long as what I get here or on politech is useful.
Anyone who reads Declan's politech mailing list or any other list where the Cato Institute frequently releases its propaganda has had his face rubbed in that.
However, what struck me about the Salon interview is... the poor quality of the thought that underlies the Cato Institute pronouncements. on various issues... the detachment from reality.
I read the article and kept wondering what rock this guy had been living under for the last few years.
"and then he tried to transfer the sound to the digital audiotape that he had, and it wouldn't do it. He blamed DRM for that.
I wrote him back and said, look, be mad at the Digital Home Recording Act. That's what said you can't record from a digital source onto a digital audiotape. It has nothing to do with DRM."
Being locked out of the use of one's own software and hardware AND intellectual property to protect corporate copyright holders is irrelevant to DRM? What's this guy smoking? I think we all need to know so we can avoid it.
His comments about fair usage in an academic context... perhaps he hasn't used computers long enough to have gone through changes in digital format, perhaps he thinks that floppies were always 3.5" and CD-Rs were the first portable mass storage.
Perhaps he really has no clue that a DRM imposed by a company that no longer exists in a legacy media format might make it impossible to access information necessary to legitimate academic research... anything from a masters' thesis to a kid trying to find out what music in the early 21st century sounded like.
I guess "no clue" is the best way to characterize this guy. Is he typical? I strongly suspect so.
Why are we taking the pathetic assholes at the Cato Institute seriously?
Not that they're totally useless, if they happen to support your position on censorship (government ONLY, they don't seem to understand that free-enterprise censorship exists) by all means use them to bolster your position's credibility, when dealing with government officials, if they aren't familiar with the Cato Institute, it might help.
Just don't take them seriously even if they happen to be on your side.
I've been reading your kind of environmental elitism preaching about how the rest of us need to sacrifice for years.
Presumably you think "your message" is important enough to exempt you from the reduction of consumption the rest of us "need".
You might find it interesting to track down the origin of your message... who funded the studies that are used as the basis of your advice. Who funded the "deep ecology" agenda?
You will be surprised and not plesantly.
The banned guns are the ones which are most likely to be useful for citizens who need to get rid of an oppressive government after democracy has indeed failed.
As to the success or failure of your democracy, that remains to be seen. Government is a continuous experiment. What is true of any government in terms of stability and benevolence may not be true tomorrow. Democracy only lasts as long as public vigilance does. The law under discussion is a massive step in the wrong direction.
A government that genuinely intends to be oppressive isn't exactly likely to undo the ban described above to give the citizens a fair chance to allow them to get rid of that regime.
As for my being labeled troll... just because someone has moderator points doesn't mean that he can't be an antigun fanatic, or even an imbecile. Or a Microsoft employee.I suspect the person who moderated my post is all of the above.
Having moderator points just says that a person has posted a few things that people agreed with, and being a slashdot user doesn't exactly mean that one has a valid opinion on public policy issues.
Actually, I stated that as the NRA position, I merely think it highly probable.
Your pride in having a document defining your rights that lacks a guarantee of free speech and press is misplaced, that's in Part 1...
As an American, I suggest you learn about your system of government before bringing your ignorant whines into a public policy debate.
Your precious Charter can be shitcanned or modified into uselessness any time enough members of Parliament want it to be, after which it needs a "Mother, may I" from the Brits.
Do you really think that Canada would have difficulty getting a UK Parliament to sign off on replacing the current version with a new and more restrictive version friendlier to repressive governments, particularly given RIP and the growth of an Orwellian "surveillance society" as the UK government has approved?
It seems easier than getting 34 independent US state legislatures to sign off on gutting the US Bill of Rights.
Have you read the US Constitution? Or for that matter, your own Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Since you probably haven't, yours is at http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/
If you had, you might have read the following:
"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Sounds good... until you take a hard look at it. Who defines "reasonable"?
We may get to see for the first time in an English-speaking country the first example of the domino effect claimed by the US National Rifle Association... where banning the private possession of firearms inevitably leads to control of political speech and association ending in totalitarian democracy.
You can't have legitimate political campaigns where elected government officials are using electronic surveillance not only against known terrorists and criminals, but against political opponents as well. That's why the Watergate scandal ended President Nixon's political career, because his people got caught doing exactly that.
If this disturbing Australian trend goes to completion, how long before media outside AU realize that Australia is no longer a "free country"? Probably after we get significant numbers of people applying for "political asylum" in the US.
The only suggestions I have for Aussies if this doesn't get stopped, and if it's gotten this far, your elected officials probably no longer care what you think are:
1. You may already have seen the very last free election in Australia in your lifetime.
2. If you are serious about freedom, your options are:
think of a way to fight the new regime (isn't it too bad you gave up your guns?)
or
leave.
I recommend departure. If you live among a people willing to vote away their freedoms even when there is no obvious threat, I can't see any good reason to risk death and imprisonment for them. The people who tend to do best during a migration are those who get out first, they have the best chance to find jobs and housing before the hordes of refugees show up behind them.
For those who would neither fight nor depart, don't worry. I'm sure your regime will continue to call itself a democracy and even allow the facade of "free elections" for a while. Of course, your choice will only be among the parties the government allows to continue. And the forms of free enterprise that the government approves of.
I wish you Aussies luck. You'll need it.
No, I'm not offering the US as an example of perfect democracy, though we've had stolen Presidential elections in the past and 0wN3d legislatures and our democracy has survived. As to whether it will continue to do so, I certainly don't know.
I think the admin should leave the country, a government this irrational is likely to blame him when they take over and find either that they've been unplugged from the root or that their attempts to do well meaning but wrong things will have the same effect.
I started out with a 300 baud modem on a C-64 when Fido networks were the hot new BBS thing.
Later, I was a co-sys on a thriving mulitline (I think we got to 16 lines BBS in the SF Bay Area using call-forwarding to get complete regional coverage. We had a thriving community, I'm not sure how many accounts I had... I'll just say that A.Lizard was very well known locally.
There is something to be said for getting automatic "Elite" access wherever I went within my local call radius.
I even put together one of the very first virtual companies (hardware: modems) using a local BBS one of the collaborators on the project owned... we used a sub (=echo=conference) on the system for discussion and a private file transfer area for swapping ECAD files. The company fell apart due to personal conflicts, but I knew that "virtual companies" were a workable idea long before anyone invented that phrase.
I used a BBS my client had for telecommuting (turning in my work, getting work-related messages) before the word was invented. BTW, it was an early MacBBS and it sucked rocks. (No, not because it was based on Mac.)
For me, the most important thing about BBS systems was meeting interesting people of the opposite sex. My interests are a bit arcane, finding women that share them isn't that easy.
Suddenly in 1991, people were talking about something strange called The Internet where e-mail went overseas in hours instead of weeks. I put out messages on several BBS systems asking if anybody could give me access... I got replies within days. I got hooked the first time I had an actual conversation via Internet with a geekette (Hi,Stayka!) living in Germany... the BBS was set up to dial out on demand... message replies were coming back in a few minutes. My main Internet address back then was: alizard%tweekco%boo@Pacbell.com or if you prefer, pacbell!boo!tweekco!alizard
When I got Internet access, my pool of people to fish in went from the few thousand (mostly male) I could access via Fido, WWIV-Net/Link (and several more obscure WWIV-based networks), V-net (though e-mailed file attachments were k3wl)... to millions (this was 1991-1994)... my transition to the Net took a few years.
For meeting people, the Net has been much better for me. It came in just in time to save my sanity. I'm now contemplating a second trip to Holland to meet the second woman I've taken a personal interest in out there. (the first didn't quite work out)
For things like file transfer and other data-driven uses... it was much better even when I was accessing it via Waffle BBS. It suited the things I was trying to do on line a hell of a lot better than BBS systems ever did. All I wanted was a faster modem...
I rarely look back and really don't miss the "good old days". Even with getting viruses every day, having to firewall my dialup connection, and spam, I'm having a hell of a lot more fun online now. If I ever feel like discussing the "good old days", I can always talk to the sysadmins at my local ISP. They ran one of the BBS systems I used to use. I doubt they look back much. They can download via OC-12...
Note that radio broadcasters were one of the sets of corporate interests who wanted to use CARP to shut down Internet radio.
I'd say that the marketplace is speaking. These statements are storm warnings saying the business model is in deep shit. Their normallosses are $1.1 billion, they're carrying $8+ billion in debt, and they just had a $16 billion writedown?
Clear Channel probably won't get the message until the banks carrying their line of credit tell them they don't feel like paying.
The fact that the article on slashdot should insure this, and I suspect that a number of somebodys will be keeping an eye on this company to insure that their IPs are blocked no matter how they get changed.
Why am I reminded of Bernie Shifman?
So have you sent resumes out yet?
Of course I'm speaking from the POV of someone who wants one.
Let's use gasoline as an example. Dump some into a oil refinery tank farm and watch the infection chain spread via tanker into our service stations and from there, to our autos. What shape is our economy in when large chunks of our petroleum distribution chain has to be sterilized before reuse?
Worse, the most probable enemies of the industrialized world are in the best position to absorb this kind of infrastructure attack, i.e. the US is funding a type of attack that endangers us more than the opposition.
If you're very lucky, you're in an area where the cable companies haven't bought enough legislators to make laws forbidding this. I think the City of Alameda, California just came in under the wire on this law. The cable industry buys California state politicians, too.
If it's legal in your state and if your area is served by a public utilities district (my guess as to why private utilities companies don't do this is anti-compete clauses in the contracts for running TV cables on their poles) . why not push them about this?
http://www.theneteconomy.com/article/0,3658,s=902& a=22338,00.asp is a good starting point for more info.
On this issue, it might also have helped if you've ever designed anything using ADCs, but that's 4 years worth of schooling I'm not sure you have the intellectual ability to profit from.
You don't see any problem with turning a 50 cent part (quantity 10K) into a $10 part (same quantity) which requires $10 worth of handling due to paperwork that goes with the regulation?
You don't see any problem with passing this cost along to the consumer, making a $10 consumer toy a $50 consumer toy that doesn't work as well as the gadget it replaces?
Get some glasses, d00d before you stumble into a tree.
Anybody working with electronic hardware who intends to continue to do so will have to move out of America to do this... from the individual to IBM and Apple.
I don't see this restriction happening anywhere else on earth... I think what we'll see is world product lines and "USA-compliant" product lines... the USA-compliant will be much more expensive, will show up a year or two after the world versions do, but nobody will be able to afford them because our economy will be sliding towards Third World status.
Basically, the proposals if turned into law in any form having the slightest resemblance to what's described is economic suicide for this nation. America could lose Hollywood... and a few thousand jobs... which would probably be replaced rapidly as people suddenly realize that desktop computer = video production studio.
If it becomes impossible to design or produce electronic equipment in the USA, welcome to the Third World.
No, at least two.
While this won't turn these countries into democracies automatically, their authoritarian, repressive regimes will fall if the US doesn't prop them up with both military aid and the dollars extracted from us at the gas pumps. If we aren't burning oil, that part of the world will fade into the obscurity it deserves until they can get it together enough to figure out something that they can sell besides oil.
While these regimes will probably be replaced by others equally authoritarian or worse, this will be self-inflicted and there's no real reason why any of us should give a shit. People do have the right to whatever form of self-government they choose. Even if the choices are fucking stupid.
Those with brains and guts over there can choose to fight or escape.
We can welcome those who wanted to escape to a "free" world, it's precisely the ones with brains and guts who provide us (any industrialized country) with the kind of immigrants we want.
If you still had the thing, I'd say touch up the power supply PCB connections with a soldering pencil, or better, replace the 7805 3 pin voltage regulator at the same time.
Used to work at a company producing C-64 software way back when, I had to fix some of those beasties... the C-64 really wasn't intended to run 18+/7.
Try plugging your fluorescent lamp into the UNprotected outlets on the UPS. Though it is convenient during power outages to have the lamp powered from the UPS as well as the computer. Simply change the plug back when that happens.