Wind turbines environmentally friendly? ROTFL! Assuming you like to eat ground eagle and ground buzzard meat for dinner. Windmills kill birds.
Skyscrapers kill birds.
Airplanes kill birds.
Hunters kill birds.
But you know what kills the most birds of all? The car sitting in your driveway, and millions of others just like it.
If you want to go to the site of the bloodiest bird holocaust in the country, go check out your local expressway. When you're ready to give up motorized transportation, then maybe I'll be ready to listen to your "wind turbines are bad for the birds" rallying cry without doubling over in laughter.
f you, your friend, your housemates, or anyone else you know is even remotely considering purchasing one of these for home use, there is a Big Blue Room that they should really consider visiting once and a while.
You've obviously never been part of a condo association or even thought beyond your immediate roommates.
I looked into getting cogent for my condo association. With 20 lofts in the building the cost would have translated to $50/month for shared 100Mbit -- a worse case scenerio of 10Mbit, or 10 times the DSL bandwidth I get now for that price. However, with so few people I would be getting close to 100Mbit for that price, or 100 times the bandwidth for what I'm paying.
Unfortunately, cogent is not available in my building and is not in any way targeting residential customers, and they need 7+ subscribers (@ $1000/each) for each set of equipment to be profitable, so I need to find six other building willing to subscribe who are close enough to use the same Pop -- not impossible, but not trivial either.
For business its great -- we're getting lit up in January. However, for those of us lusting after such things at home we'll have to wait a couple of years, not for the price to drop (although that is always nice), but simply for the service to be available at all, at any price.
Funny you should say that.:-) I'm working on doing exactly that right now.
The (very rough) first draft of the Novel is about 1/4 to 1/3 done, from which a movie script will be made (by either myself or one of the others who have expressed interest in the project). From there one or more movies may be filmed. Best of all, all my material is being released under a GPL-like Free Media License (comments and criticisms welcome) making it possible for anyone who wants to to take the material and incorporate it into their own work.
You are absolutely right, the best way by far to resist the Copyright Cartels and Media Empires is to create your own entertainment and share it with others.
BTW - I hope to have the first draft done by the end of the year, clean it up in the first two months of 2001, then start working on the script by spring (assuming the individual I'm in contact with hasn't already started that). Your guess is as good as mine on when/if filming will ever start -- I know at least one individual who is interested in making a student film, and some friends and I might take a crack at it just for fun as well. Between all of us something will probably get made in the next year or two.
We are in some ways debating the differences between Bach and Beethoven here. There are signficant stylistic differences, but at the end of the day both were classical composers who adhered to much of the same musical orthodoxy (or not, depending upon with whome you debate).
Linux and *BSD are both descendents of UNIX, with vastly more similarities than differences. Both are beautiful systems in their own right, borrow from one another when appropriate, and have many of the same strengths and flaws.
Licensing flame fests aside (I was recently harangued by a BSD License bigot for releasing my -- unfinished, rough first draft -- Novel under the GPL-like Free Media License rather than a BSD style License) and OS religious bigotry aside, I work with both Linux and FreeBSD and, quite frankly, wouldn't want to be without either of them.
There is no one right way to anything, unless you subscribe to the Microsoft philosophy (one world, one internet, one OS, akin to Hitler's "ein Volk, ein Reich..." crap). None of us would want a steady diet of steak, without the occasional salad, potato, or glass of Merlot... why should we accept any less diversity in our computing lives?
Most of my requirements are to do with not wanting to support the MPAA and not throwing any money their way. I'm looking for the most anti-industry DVD player out there. I have no problem spending the money, but I sure as hell want my money to go to the good people.
With every DVD you purchase or rent you will be supporting the MPAA. With any player you purchase, no matter how "anti-industry" it markets itself, you will be supporting the MPAA (the manufacturers pay royalties for the CSS decryption license).
If you are serious about not wanting your money to support entities like the MPAA you should not purchase any DVD player whatsoever, but rather stick to movies you can pick up on cable or tv and record them on video (or onto your hard disk in.avi or dv format via a capture board/digital video recorder).
It is difficult to deny one's appetite as a consumer, particularly for ethical or moral reasons which seem abstract at best. However, it is not impossible.
I have not paid to see a movie in over a year. My DVD collection hasn't grown by a single DVD in as long (the player and DVDs were purchased before the DeCSS debacle). Any audio-visual entertainment of this kind I get from television, the sci-fi channel, and HBO et al. If a movie is so good I want a copy I record it -- soon I hope to be recording it in digital video format and burning it to CDR or archiving to tape in mp4 format, but for now Hi8 and VHS are adequate if not sexy.
In other words, resistence is not futile, but it is hard and takes some self control, and some willingness to deny yourself some of the instant gratification your consumerist appetites cry out for.
You and me both! We were just about to pull the trigger and convert our entire office (would have been some 10-15 licenses) to Applix 5.0 after successfully evaluating one (legally purchased) copy -- now we'll be stuck on star office a little longer, until Koffice or gnome office are sufficiently far along...
Think for yourselves. Don't be afraid not to fork.
I do think for myself, as do most people on the net with the expertise and clout to choose their own root servers.
Forking is a grand tradition of the internet. Disagreement and chosing one's own path is inherent in the very philosophy behind much of the internet.
What the ICANN is engaged in is a profound usurping of the open and free nature of the net and a powergrab of megalomaniacal portions, and should be resisted and fought by all good people everywhere.
Six months ago I changed my employer's root servers to point to opennic. I saw what ICANN was becoming then and chose not to wait until the proverbial fertilizer struck the rotating blades, but rather to act proactively.
I must say I have been impressed at how well opennic does work. Not a single DNS problem or complaint in six months, and name resolution times that are actually more snappy than before.
From a political/freedom point of view Opennic is good in that it is truly democratic, supports both the alternic and icann namespaces (sans the new domains), as well as democraticly created TLDs of its own.
I encourage others to take a look-see. It is my hope that FreeNet's pending naming/key service will allow us to dump DNS altogether, but until that happens opennic is at least open, fair, and democratic, unlike ICANN and many of its corporate rivals.
And so what if the internet becomes fragmented? Worst case, we can send each other our IP addresses in the exact same way we share phone numbers today. More likely, such fragmentation would take the wind out of the sails of such entities as ICANN, preventing both their power grab from succeeding and perhaps pre-empting similarly inappropriate powergrabs in the future and leading to some kind of reasonable and equitable compromise. Do you really think entities such as ICANN and NSI would compromise in any fashion otherwise? Based on their behavior to date, not bloody likely.
With any luck we'll be able to replace the heirarchical, centrally controlled DNS namespace with something less prone to corruption and domination, such as that being proposed by FreeNet. Until then, please consider opennic as a free, democratic alternative to ICANN and Alternnic.
A lot of those ballots have clear votes on every single race except President. Almost none of the "dimpled chad" votes are going to Bush.
According to the inventor of the punch card voting system used, there is a mechanical flaw which can and does lead to the first column of punches being incompletely punched while all of the other rows are punched cleanly. This is particularly the case in old, worn out machinery like much of that used in the election.
There is ample reason to count dimpled ballots, even when the only punch dimpled is in the first column which just so happens to be the presidential votes in question.
That being said, a hand recount of the entire state is what is required and what should happen, to be as sure as possible that the result is as accurate as possible. Unfortunately the Republicans chose to denigrate the entire recount process -- something that is standard procedure in any close election -- rather than request recounts in Republican leaning counties, as was their responsiblity.
The Democrats correctly requested recounts where they thought it would help them.
Clearly, the entire procedure needs to be revisited -- in an election this close, a hand count of the entire state is what should have happened. It wasn't up to the Democrats to request it, but it shouldn't have depended on the Republicans requesting it either. It should simply have been standard operating procedure, begun immediately, with no certification until completed.
Are we really supposed to believe that the voting machines all jammed up only on Gore?
Bush has received some dimpled ballots. However, the dimpled ballot issue is a systemic phenomenon which targets the elderly and weak, who did not use enough force to puncture the first row of chads and thus have their vote counted. The elderly tended to, overwhelmingly, vote for Gore, so the majority of the votes so recovered will favor Gore.
As it is, by refusing to count those votes were are excluding a particular group of people, namely those too elderly or too weak to fully displace the chads in the first column of votes. Since this excludes a demographic group which favors Gore, it is understandable that the co-chair of Guub's election campaign would be so unwilling to include them. What is not tolerable is that this stand: any and all discernable votes must be counted (and should be, statewide).
That this isn't happening denigrates the entire process, and I blame both the Dems for not insisting more vocally on a statewide recount and denigrating the process when the other side obtains legal victories, as well as the Repubs for not doing their job in requesting recounts, gathering a mob to terrorize one canvassing board (Dade) into stopping their recount, and denigrating the process when the Dems have legal victories.
A pox on both of their houses -- we should exile them from both from politics forever and start from scratch.
We may be meaningless and insignficant to the universe (assuming said universe has a capacity for thought or concern > 0, which is a pretty wild, perhaps even absurd, assumption in and of itself) but we matter to one another and to ourselves, therefor we matter.
As the dominant species on this planet the world is exactly what we make of it. That makes us pretty significant in the local realm -- demanding anything more of the rest of the universe is nothing more than petty, even childish, emotional hubris and greed.
In summary: were his lawyers incompetent, or did he have something to hide?
Neither. It is a commonly known rule of thumb (which several lawyers I know tend to follow) that if you are innocent you generally prefer to have a judge presiding, while if you are guilty you generally prefer a jury trial. This isn't hard and fast, obviously, but more often than not that is the gist of one's choice.
He may have had an incompetent lawyer. He may also have had a biased or corrupt judge (remember Kaplan?). Or he may in fact have been guilty.
The latter is unlikely though -- police routinely lie in court, under oath, and obtain false convictions, and in many cases would whether or not the defendent chose a jury trial.
The only thing we can know for certain is that the outcome of this case has all the clarity of the American Presidential Election, i.e. none to speak of.
Pioneer also plans to continue sales of its popular external DVD-Recordable drive (DVR-S201) for high-end authoring and content development applications.
First, as the subject points out, DVD-R is not the same thing as DVD-Recordable (the latter will play in any DVD player and does not have the disk key zeroed out -- it can be used to make true DVDs and, indeed, the early players could be used to make bit-for-bit copies sans decryption, a feature later removed when the MPAA discovered it would undermine their court battle against DeCSS).
Second, Pioneer's statement appears to imply that DVD-Recordable drives will remain (artifically?) expensive, while the DVD-R/DVD-RW drive will be priced lower for consumer use.
I'm afraid DVD-Recordable media isn't likely to come down in price anytime soon, although DVD-R and DVD-RW media should.
As another pointed out, it is likely that future DVD players will play DVD-R and DVD-RW disks, as there are many of us who want to make our own DVDs from our own home videos and be able to send them to our grandparent's/relatives to watch. Pioneer seems to imply this when they say
"The driving force behind both DVD-R and DVD-RW has always been compatibility with standard DVD playback systems," said Andy Parsons, senior vice president of product development and technical support, Pioneer New Media Technologies, Inc.. "Pioneer believes that interchangeability between recorders and players is the most important attribute any recordable DVD format can offer [...]"
A Plea for correction of Inappropriate Moderation
on
ICANN Meetings
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· Score: 1
You would, however, miss church. When are people going to realize that this kind of attitude contributes to the overall moral decline we've been seeing in the last 30 years?
Whoever moderated this up as "insightful" needs a good, hard bitchslap in meta-moderation (and a counter moderation from someone with such priveleges today). Posting this kind of religious nonsense to a secular, intellectual and scientific discussion forum is flaimbait of the most classic and cliched kind, a practice as old as the 'net itself.
"OFFTOPIC" "OVERRATED" or "FLAIMBAIT" would all be far more appropriate descriptions than "insightful" in this context. If one must feel positive about such trolling, the only defensible stance would be "FUNNY." But insightful? Hardly, by even the most liberal definition.
The above post was inappropriately moderated down as "flaimbait," probably by someone either in law enforcement, or someone with friends and relatives who are and was offended by the original posts very accurate (and gloves off) commentary on the FBI.
Someone with mod priveleges today please rectify this.
And for the loser his modded this down as "flaimbait" I look forward to tearing you a new one in meta-moderation.
f libertarians had their way, and there was no local government to encourage other companies to attempt to service the area, would you be even worse off?
This is obviously a troll, but since it is also outright disinformation someone needs to speak up.
I am not a Libertarian, although I will be voting Libertarian in this election.
However, your assertion that libertarians don't want any lcoal government is untrue. They wish to return FEDERAL government to a form which operates within the parameters specificed by the US Constitution. The party does not advocate eliminating local governemt (as the constitution does not prohibit it).
There may be some individuals who do advocate little or no local government, but for each person who does you'll find another individual who does not.
Finally, you assume a government is necessary to "encourage other companies to attempt a service in the area." That assumption makes about as much sense as assuming we need need a government to encourage companies to offer us Science Fiction programming, as opposed to, say, Lyric Opera. We need government for neither -- we as individuals and as customers can decide (and in this instance the free market really is the best arbiter).
And yes, if you live on the Ass of the World you'll probably have to lay your own cable, just as our ancesters a hundred years ago living on remote ranches often had to make their own roads and dig their own wells. Its part and parcel to living in the middle of nowhere, so you'd better get used to it. What makes you think you have a right to have the cost of your service subsidized by others?
It is the habit of many libertarians to equate companies with people, when speaking of freedoms and rights.
I think this is entirely wrong. People are mortal beings, born with "certain inalienable rights" according to the philosophy of the founding fathers (of the USA). Nowhere in the constitution does it say "corporations" or "companies" or "businesses" enjoy these rights.
It is a legal fiction that has made the corporation an equal to the individual before the law -- a very destrcutive legal fiction I might add. For corporations are not equal to humans in any real sense: they are potentially immortal, command more wealth than many nations, and have a degree of power over throngs of people which, in more sane societies, is reserved for the government alone, or the people themselves.
I will be voting libertarian this election, because overall I think we need to move in that direction. However, I think their blind faith in the free market as a panacea for all ills is both overly simplistic and demonstrably wrong (health care, anybody? How about care for the elderly and nursing homes? Or care for orphaned children?), and their notion that there is no trade off between freedom for corporations from regulation and freedom for individuals is equally wrong (child labor, the rights of employees,- for better or worse - to unionize, the family leave act, etc).
Corporations are not people and do not deserve to be treated as such, nor was the constitution ever intended to do so.
However, these criticism aside, the Libertarians are absolutely correct that, as a first step toward sanity, we need to return our government to the rule of law under the constitution as it was written.
Then we need to fix the constitution with appropriate amendments. One of the things that needs to be addressed is the current immunity of corporate authorities from the constitution, so called "private" (in name only) corporations are not required to respect their employees (or anyone elses) constitutional rights, as the constitution "only applies to the government."
I would argue that it is past time for a constitutional amendment extending its authority to cover all realms of authority, private and public, within the borders of the United States. That would probably be sufficient: then the Libertarians could follow their agenda of (nearly complete) deregulation without reducing the rights and liberties of individuals. Without such a change you are correct, unabridge rights for corporations will translate directly to seriously abridged rights for individuals.
If you want to get out from under the yoke of American imperialism, one of the best thing you (and the rest of the world) can do is "just say NO" to intellectual property laws and software patents in particular.
There is a reason the US Patent office is granting every software patent under the sun. That reason is to give American software companies an advantage (perhaps an unassailable one), enforced by a government mandated monopoly. Just the sort of solution Washington would come up with to fend of increasing competition from abroad... for the cure (software patents) is far worse than the illness (foreign competition). The very patents which will supposedly protect (unfairly IMHO) American corporate interests are the very same patents that can and will be used to kill some of the most promising new products (such as Linux or FreeBSD).
Think about this. If the EU ratifies the notion of software patents, then they will have to honor all of the patents granted by the USPTO, including the plethora of stupid and obvious patents that make developing just about any non-trivial program a violation of somebody's IP somewhere.
It would be nice if the US would dismantle its patent system (at least for software, preferably for everything), but since that isn't likely the best we can hope for is that the rest of the world is intelligent enough to stand up to us. Then at least the (software) technology can continue to move forward at an exponential pace somewhere, even if it is only outside of our own borders. Hopefully then the competition from abroad will force our misguided powermongers to rethink their position in this country, in a decade or two.
You may wish to consider an ssh tunnel to an offshore mail account. xs4all.com took a lot of grief from Germany for refusing to take down a site run by the Rote Armee Faktion (Red Army Faction - RAF) for reasons of free speach, and despite enormous pressure they stuck to their guns (bad pun, sorry) and did not compromise their principles. I do not know if xs4all.com meets all of your criteria, but it would be a good "first stop" to check out.
Maintaining your email outside of American jurisdiction would help immensly. If the FBI or CIA really wants the information they'll probably get it, but this would discourage "casual" FBI browsing, in as much as the request to look at your private files would have to go through international channels, to a country which places a rather high value on your privacy.
Because once a nice little hail storm hits your house, all of a sudden you're replacing a $200,000 roof instead of a $10,000 roof.
That is what steel shutters are for. In Germany nearly every window has a roll-up, metal shutter than can be lowered like a window-blind to protect the glass for harsh weather, or drop the ambient light to zero when one wants to sleep the day away.:-)
There is absolutely no reason one couldn't protect photovoltaic roof cells in exactly the same manner for minimal cost. Hell, if no one in the USA makes such shutters, have them shipped over from the EU.
Couple them to motors and, if you want to get fancy, connect a barometer inline with a trigger to close the shutters should the baromentric pressur drop suddenly within a short time. Not a perfect automated defense, but pretty good should you be on vacation. If you're at home and a storm approach, push a button, shutters closed, roof protected.
Unlike tangible goods and real property, the nature of IP -- or any form of knowledge -- is to spread."
Looks a lot like "Information wants to be free" to me..:)
Yes, but then he goes on to say As far as IP being worthy of being safeguarded, it matters little to me whether or not a week's worth of my labor was spent fashioning a dining room table or writing code -- both consumed part of my life and are fruits of my labor, and I want both to be guarded from those who would take them without my giving me something in exchange.
The (unspoken) implication is that copyright, patents, and other forms of IP are OK, although strictly speaking he did not state that explicitly.
I think he (and a lot of people, both here and elsewhere) need to be educated and made to realize (or at least confront and argue against) the notion that a government mandated and enforced monopoly isn't necessary for IP creators to be fairly compensated and, furthermore, has a stifling impact on the field of endeavor so affected, not to mention the society, culture, and the economy as a whole.
Nevertheless, while Libertarians are split on the question of IP (and he perhaps falls on the wrong side of that debate), he is quite correct in saying that "our first step on the road to freedom is to return to the Constitution as the rule of law for our nation." We can (and must) fix the debacle that is IP, but he argues (perhaps correctly) that getting bogged down in that is putting the cart before the horse.
Although I disagree with his (implied) stance on patents and copyrights, I have been persuaded to vote for Harry Browne over Ralph Nader nevertheless. There is no candidate I agree with on every issue, but I agree with Harry Browne's agenda on far more points than I do with any other candidate.
(And yes, as someone who was going to vote for Ralph Nader based on his stance WRT corporate and special interests influencing government, I have had my mind changed. This happens from time to time, if one's mind is truly open.)
Sure it will. Check out this link. Bush is known for his big oil contributors, he will stop all forms of advancement in the alternative energy fuels when given the word of big oil.
The same thing happened when Reagan was elected. All research into Solar Power a Argonne Natl. Laboratory was killed almost immediately and remained dead throughout their administrations. In many respects the Reagan/Bush administration was to alternative power as Microsoft was to Computer Science -- they slowed the technological development down for at least 10 years or so.
The other post was correct -- any career politician will be a whore to the contributor with the biggest check, but historically the Republicans have been the worst offendors when it comes to fossil fuels vs. alternative energy, with the Reagan/Bush administrations being the worst offendors by far.
Not only humorous, but an explanaition of exactly how prophecies are self-fulfilling that even the most paranoid and closed minded bible thumper can understand.
It doesn't mean the warning isn't valid, but it does demonstrate that these are people postulating the behavior of other people, not divine forknowledge handed down from on high.
And no, modern society isn't the first to invent the notion of assigning numbers to names -- the Romans did that in their censuses as well (which, as we all know, was a regular occurance during the time in which that was written). That passage was almost certainly the contemporary equivelent of the fearmongering we hear today about Big Brother (with perhaps the same amount of relevance -- after all, these people were routinely fed to Lions for sport a few short generations later, and the future of Free Mankind doesn't look a whole lot rosier these days).
Instead of taking it out on the slashdot accepted enemy DC, why aren't we enraged by a patent that is unbelievably obvious.
"We" are, or at least I am. However, I think the community is at least as outraged by corporate idiots who help make such reprehensible patents profitable by paying $100M to license such obvious notions.
Amen.
[begin rant]
And, with any luck, another nail in the coffin for patents. It is generations past time to scrap the entire patent system and close the patent office. Patents have never served to promote progress, indeed, they have only served to slow it down.
Consider for a moment: when a new (even non-obvious invention) comes along, there is almost always a footrace between multiple inventors to the patent office, with the winner gaining exclusive rights and the losers (who also invented the device) out in the cold. Why is this? Because nearly every invention builds upon a mountain of public knowledge, and an invention "whose time has come" will occur to several independent minds at about the same time.
So what do we do? We stiff several inventors to disproportionately reward one. The irony is that it isn't even necessary -- individuals and companies were inventive before the patent system was created and will remain so after it goes away. Why? Because, as the free market shows us in every other arena, a monopoly isn't required to be profitable, or even to recoup development costs.
We all assume we'll continue to have exponential growth in knowledge and technology we've grown accustomed to, particularly in the high tech computer industry. This would be true, except that with 20 year monopolies being granted on even the most trivial and obvious ideas, the exponent in question has been reduced from "greater than one" to "nearly equal to one."
This may serve the purposes of the entrenched industries and governments, who can't abide new technologies until they figure out how to dominate and control them and are desperate to slow progress down by any means, but it is a disservice to the rest of mankind.
As was said by the European representative at ICANN, intellectual property is nothing more than theft from the public domain. Nowhere is this more true than with patents.
Of course, Drugs could not be outlawed at a federal level by any means short of a constitutional amendment either. Seem like there are some loopholes there, maybe?
No, there are no loopholes there.
The courts have simply decided to ignore the constitution when it is convinient to do so. The constitution explicitly states that, except for those powers specificly granted by the constitution, the federal government has no authority to regulate anything.
The (in)famous interstate commerce clause has often been cited as an excuse for the federal government collecting new, unconstitutional powers, but with respect to drugs even that falls down.
California, Oregon, and Washington (among others) have all legalized the medicinal use of marijuana.
Right or wrong, that is their consititional right. However, a man growing marijuana in California, for lawful consumption in California, is not involved in any kind of interstate commerce. Nevertheless, he will be arrested, tried, convicted, and put in jail (it has already happened numerous times -- indeed a volunteer at a clinic is currently living in Canada, seeking political asylum from the US, because she was present when medicinal marijuana was being dispensed, even though she was guilty of nothing more than pushing the wheelchair).
Flagrantly unconstitutional, but that is little comfort when you're being raped by your cellmate during your years of incarceration, waiting for the appeal to work its way up to the supreme court (assuming they'd even be willing to hear it).
With all three branches of the government ignoring the constitution at will, the constitution means very little. Indeed, with half the bill of rights basically eliminated and the other half under concerted attack, this is little surprise.
I may disagree with much of the Libertarian agenda, but one thing they are absolutely correct about is this: It is past time to return our government to the constitutional boundries our founding fathers codified in the constitution. Then, if we really feel we need government to step in and do something (such as healthcare) we can do so as was originally intended: with a consitituional amendment granting the government said authority. Until then our politicians are little more than thieves, stealing money from our pockets and usurping the constitutional rights of the people.
Highly unlikly that one government employee has access or reason to access both your social security data and your tax return, since they are seperate organizations.
Not only that, but if a government employee does access both, and perhaps your census data in addition, there will be a record of these accesses. There is a small hope that such would discourage abuses, or at least provide an audit trail if and when such abuses occur.
Now they propose a one-stop shopping center for all your personal info, displayed very neatly no doubt in a fancy new GUI for any government employee to see (and possibly abused). Where before there was discouragement, now there is active temptation.
Aren't your IRS and Social Security files cross-corellated already?? I mean, they're both owned by the Federal Government, and you do put your social security number on your tax forms...
Yes, but now they want to cross reference this with your Census information. Not a big deal perhaps, if you were one of the lucky (like myself) who received the "short form," but a large number of people receive the "long form" questionaire which demands (under threat of legal action if you refuse) all kinds of personal information to which the government really isn't entitled.
Now that personal information will be correlated to your financial information, providing one-stop shopping for spooks, police, bureaucrats (who may just not like you because your dating their daughter/sister/girlfriend/wife), and any private person who has the right personal contacts to ask for the information illicitly.
It makes an already abysmal situation with respect to personal privacy that much more abysmal. Worse, it codifies the current trend of violating our privacy into law, which is exactly the opposite of what is needed.
For an example of a country with sane(r) privacy laws I refer you to Germany, which has made the trading of personal information illegal, even between government agencies. After getting used to having some personal privacy over there I have to say, returning to the United States was like a bucket of cold water in the face -- we have almost no privacy here, and now that status quo is about to take on the force of law and be eroded even further.
Slashdot Mirror
Wind turbines environmentally friendly? ROTFL! Assuming you like to eat ground eagle and ground buzzard meat for dinner. Windmills kill birds.
Skyscrapers kill birds.
Airplanes kill birds.
Hunters kill birds.
But you know what kills the most birds of all? The car sitting in your driveway, and millions of others just like it.
If you want to go to the site of the bloodiest bird holocaust in the country, go check out your local expressway. When you're ready to give up motorized transportation, then maybe I'll be ready to listen to your "wind turbines are bad for the birds" rallying cry without doubling over in laughter.
f you, your friend, your housemates, or anyone else you know is even remotely considering purchasing one of these for home use, there is a Big Blue Room that they should really consider visiting once and a while.
You've obviously never been part of a condo association or even thought beyond your immediate roommates.
I looked into getting cogent for my condo association. With 20 lofts in the building the cost would have translated to $50/month for shared 100Mbit -- a worse case scenerio of 10Mbit, or 10 times the DSL bandwidth I get now for that price. However, with so few people I would be getting close to 100Mbit for that price, or 100 times the bandwidth for what I'm paying.
Unfortunately, cogent is not available in my building and is not in any way targeting residential customers, and they need 7+ subscribers (@ $1000/each) for each set of equipment to be profitable, so I need to find six other building willing to subscribe who are close enough to use the same Pop -- not impossible, but not trivial either.
For business its great -- we're getting lit up in January. However, for those of us lusting after such things at home we'll have to wait a couple of years, not for the price to drop (although that is always nice), but simply for the service to be available at all, at any price.
Or, better yet, make your own indie film.
:-) I'm working on doing exactly that right now.
Really. I'm serious.
Funny you should say that.
The (very rough) first draft of the Novel is about 1/4 to 1/3 done, from which a movie script will be made (by either myself or one of the others who have expressed interest in the project). From there one or more movies may be filmed. Best of all, all my material is being released under a GPL-like Free Media License (comments and criticisms welcome) making it possible for anyone who wants to to take the material and incorporate it into their own work.
You are absolutely right, the best way by far to resist the Copyright Cartels and Media Empires is to create your own entertainment and share it with others.
BTW - I hope to have the first draft done by the end of the year, clean it up in the first two months of 2001, then start working on the script by spring (assuming the individual I'm in contact with hasn't already started that). Your guess is as good as mine on when/if filming will ever start -- I know at least one individual who is interested in making a student film, and some friends and I might take a crack at it just for fun as well. Between all of us something will probably get made in the next year or two.
We are in some ways debating the differences between Bach and Beethoven here. There are signficant stylistic differences, but at the end of the day both were classical composers who adhered to much of the same musical orthodoxy (or not, depending upon with whome you debate).
... why should we accept any less diversity in our computing lives?
Linux and *BSD are both descendents of UNIX, with vastly more similarities than differences. Both are beautiful systems in their own right, borrow from one another when appropriate, and have many of the same strengths and flaws.
Licensing flame fests aside (I was recently harangued by a BSD License bigot for releasing my -- unfinished, rough first draft -- Novel under the GPL-like Free Media License rather than a BSD style License) and OS religious bigotry aside, I work with both Linux and FreeBSD and, quite frankly, wouldn't want to be without either of them.
There is no one right way to anything, unless you subscribe to the Microsoft philosophy (one world, one internet, one OS, akin to Hitler's "ein Volk, ein Reich..." crap). None of us would want a steady diet of steak, without the occasional salad, potato, or glass of Merlot
Most of my requirements are to do with not wanting to support the MPAA and not throwing any money their way. I'm looking for the most anti-industry DVD player out there. I have no problem spending the money, but I sure as hell want my money to go to the good people.
.avi or dv format via a capture board/digital video recorder).
With every DVD you purchase or rent you will be supporting the MPAA. With any player you purchase, no matter how "anti-industry" it markets itself, you will be supporting the MPAA (the manufacturers pay royalties for the CSS decryption license).
If you are serious about not wanting your money to support entities like the MPAA you should not purchase any DVD player whatsoever, but rather stick to movies you can pick up on cable or tv and record them on video (or onto your hard disk in
It is difficult to deny one's appetite as a consumer, particularly for ethical or moral reasons which seem abstract at best. However, it is not impossible.
I have not paid to see a movie in over a year. My DVD collection hasn't grown by a single DVD in as long (the player and DVDs were purchased before the DeCSS debacle). Any audio-visual entertainment of this kind I get from television, the sci-fi channel, and HBO et al. If a movie is so good I want a copy I record it -- soon I hope to be recording it in digital video format and burning it to CDR or archiving to tape in mp4 format, but for now Hi8 and VHS are adequate if not sexy.
In other words, resistence is not futile, but it is hard and takes some self control, and some willingness to deny yourself some of the instant gratification your consumerist appetites cry out for.
Drat - I like Applixware a lot !
...
You and me both! We were just about to pull the trigger and convert our entire office (would have been some 10-15 licenses) to Applix 5.0 after successfully evaluating one (legally purchased) copy -- now we'll be stuck on star office a little longer, until Koffice or gnome office are sufficiently far along
Think for yourselves. Don't be afraid not to fork.
I do think for myself, as do most people on the net with the expertise and clout to choose their own root servers.
Forking is a grand tradition of the internet. Disagreement and chosing one's own path is inherent in the very philosophy behind much of the internet.
What the ICANN is engaged in is a profound usurping of the open and free nature of the net and a powergrab of megalomaniacal portions, and should be resisted and fought by all good people everywhere.
Six months ago I changed my employer's root servers to point to opennic. I saw what ICANN was becoming then and chose not to wait until the proverbial fertilizer struck the rotating blades, but rather to act proactively.
I must say I have been impressed at how well opennic does work. Not a single DNS problem or complaint in six months, and name resolution times that are actually more snappy than before.
From a political/freedom point of view Opennic is good in that it is truly democratic, supports both the alternic and icann namespaces (sans the new domains), as well as democraticly created TLDs of its own.
I encourage others to take a look-see. It is my hope that FreeNet's pending naming/key service will allow us to dump DNS altogether, but until that happens opennic is at least open, fair, and democratic, unlike ICANN and many of its corporate rivals.
And so what if the internet becomes fragmented? Worst case, we can send each other our IP addresses in the exact same way we share phone numbers today. More likely, such fragmentation would take the wind out of the sails of such entities as ICANN, preventing both their power grab from succeeding and perhaps pre-empting similarly inappropriate powergrabs in the future and leading to some kind of reasonable and equitable compromise. Do you really think entities such as ICANN and NSI would compromise in any fashion otherwise? Based on their behavior to date, not bloody likely.
With any luck we'll be able to replace the heirarchical, centrally controlled DNS namespace with something less prone to corruption and domination, such as that being proposed by FreeNet. Until then, please consider opennic as a free, democratic alternative to ICANN and Alternnic.
A lot of those ballots have clear votes on every single race except President. Almost none of the "dimpled chad" votes are going to Bush.
According to the inventor of the punch card voting system used, there is a mechanical flaw which can and does lead to the first column of punches being incompletely punched while all of the other rows are punched cleanly. This is particularly the case in old, worn out machinery like much of that used in the election.
There is ample reason to count dimpled ballots, even when the only punch dimpled is in the first column which just so happens to be the presidential votes in question.
That being said, a hand recount of the entire state is what is required and what should happen, to be as sure as possible that the result is as accurate as possible. Unfortunately the Republicans chose to denigrate the entire recount process -- something that is standard procedure in any close election -- rather than request recounts in Republican leaning counties, as was their responsiblity.
The Democrats correctly requested recounts where they thought it would help them.
Clearly, the entire procedure needs to be revisited -- in an election this close, a hand count of the entire state is what should have happened. It wasn't up to the Democrats to request it, but it shouldn't have depended on the Republicans requesting it either. It should simply have been standard operating procedure, begun immediately, with no certification until completed.
Are we really supposed to believe that the voting machines all jammed up only on Gore?
Bush has received some dimpled ballots. However, the dimpled ballot issue is a systemic phenomenon which targets the elderly and weak, who did not use enough force to puncture the first row of chads and thus have their vote counted. The elderly tended to, overwhelmingly, vote for Gore, so the majority of the votes so recovered will favor Gore.
As it is, by refusing to count those votes were are excluding a particular group of people, namely those too elderly or too weak to fully displace the chads in the first column of votes. Since this excludes a demographic group which favors Gore, it is understandable that the co-chair of Guub's election campaign would be so unwilling to include them. What is not tolerable is that this stand: any and all discernable votes must be counted (and should be, statewide).
That this isn't happening denigrates the entire process, and I blame both the Dems for not insisting more vocally on a statewide recount and denigrating the process when the other side obtains legal victories, as well as the Repubs for not doing their job in requesting recounts, gathering a mob to terrorize one canvassing board (Dade) into stopping their recount, and denigrating the process when the Dems have legal victories.
A pox on both of their houses -- we should exile them from both from politics forever and start from scratch.
Very well said.
We may be meaningless and insignficant to the universe (assuming said universe has a capacity for thought or concern > 0, which is a pretty wild, perhaps even absurd, assumption in and of itself) but we matter to one another and to ourselves, therefor we matter.
As the dominant species on this planet the world is exactly what we make of it. That makes us pretty significant in the local realm -- demanding anything more of the rest of the universe is nothing more than petty, even childish, emotional hubris and greed.
In summary: were his lawyers incompetent, or did he have something to hide?
Neither. It is a commonly known rule of thumb (which several lawyers I know tend to follow) that if you are innocent you generally prefer to have a judge presiding, while if you are guilty you generally prefer a jury trial. This isn't hard and fast, obviously, but more often than not that is the gist of one's choice.
He may have had an incompetent lawyer. He may also have had a biased or corrupt judge (remember Kaplan?). Or he may in fact have been guilty.
The latter is unlikely though -- police routinely lie in court, under oath, and obtain false convictions, and in many cases would whether or not the defendent chose a jury trial.
The only thing we can know for certain is that the outcome of this case has all the clarity of the American Presidential Election, i.e. none to speak of.
Pioneer also plans to continue sales of its popular external DVD-Recordable drive (DVR-S201) for high-end authoring and content development applications.
First, as the subject points out, DVD-R is not the same thing as DVD-Recordable (the latter will play in any DVD player and does not have the disk key zeroed out -- it can be used to make true DVDs and, indeed, the early players could be used to make bit-for-bit copies sans decryption, a feature later removed when the MPAA discovered it would undermine their court battle against DeCSS).
Second, Pioneer's statement appears to imply that DVD-Recordable drives will remain (artifically?) expensive, while the DVD-R/DVD-RW drive will be priced lower for consumer use.
I'm afraid DVD-Recordable media isn't likely to come down in price anytime soon, although DVD-R and DVD-RW media should.
As another pointed out, it is likely that future DVD players will play DVD-R and DVD-RW disks, as there are many of us who want to make our own DVDs from our own home videos and be able to send them to our grandparent's/relatives to watch. Pioneer seems to imply this when they say
"The driving force behind both DVD-R and DVD-RW has always been compatibility with standard DVD playback systems," said Andy Parsons, senior vice president of product development and technical support, Pioneer New Media Technologies, Inc.. "Pioneer believes that interchangeability between recorders and players is the most important attribute any recordable DVD format can offer [...]"
You would, however, miss church. When are people going to realize that this kind of attitude contributes to the overall moral decline we've been seeing in the last 30 years?
Whoever moderated this up as "insightful" needs a good, hard bitchslap in meta-moderation (and a counter moderation from someone with such priveleges today). Posting this kind of religious nonsense to a secular, intellectual and scientific discussion forum is flaimbait of the most classic and cliched kind, a practice as old as the 'net itself.
"OFFTOPIC" "OVERRATED" or "FLAIMBAIT" would all be far more appropriate descriptions than "insightful" in this context. If one must feel positive about such trolling, the only defensible stance would be "FUNNY." But insightful? Hardly, by even the most liberal definition.
The above post was inappropriately moderated down as "flaimbait," probably by someone either in law enforcement, or someone with friends and relatives who are and was offended by the original posts very accurate (and gloves off) commentary on the FBI.
Someone with mod priveleges today please rectify this.
And for the loser his modded this down as "flaimbait" I look forward to tearing you a new one in meta-moderation.
f libertarians had their way, and there was no local government to encourage other companies to attempt to service the area, would you be even worse off?
This is obviously a troll, but since it is also outright disinformation someone needs to speak up.
I am not a Libertarian, although I will be voting Libertarian in this election.
However, your assertion that libertarians don't want any lcoal government is untrue. They wish to return FEDERAL government to a form which operates within the parameters specificed by the US Constitution. The party does not advocate eliminating local governemt (as the constitution does not prohibit it).
There may be some individuals who do advocate little or no local government, but for each person who does you'll find another individual who does not.
Finally, you assume a government is necessary to "encourage other companies to attempt a service in the area." That assumption makes about as much sense as assuming we need need a government to encourage companies to offer us Science Fiction programming, as opposed to, say, Lyric Opera. We need government for neither -- we as individuals and as customers can decide (and in this instance the free market really is the best arbiter).
And yes, if you live on the Ass of the World you'll probably have to lay your own cable, just as our ancesters a hundred years ago living on remote ranches often had to make their own roads and dig their own wells. Its part and parcel to living in the middle of nowhere, so you'd better get used to it. What makes you think you have a right to have the cost of your service subsidized by others?
It is the habit of many libertarians to equate companies with people, when speaking of freedoms and rights.
I think this is entirely wrong. People are mortal beings, born with "certain inalienable rights" according to the philosophy of the founding fathers (of the USA). Nowhere in the constitution does it say "corporations" or "companies" or "businesses" enjoy these rights.
It is a legal fiction that has made the corporation an equal to the individual before the law -- a very destrcutive legal fiction I might add. For corporations are not equal to humans in any real sense: they are potentially immortal, command more wealth than many nations, and have a degree of power over throngs of people which, in more sane societies, is reserved for the government alone, or the people themselves.
I will be voting libertarian this election, because overall I think we need to move in that direction. However, I think their blind faith in the free market as a panacea for all ills is both overly simplistic and demonstrably wrong (health care, anybody? How about care for the elderly and nursing homes? Or care for orphaned children?), and their notion that there is no trade off between freedom for corporations from regulation and freedom for individuals is equally wrong (child labor, the rights of employees,- for better or worse - to unionize, the family leave act, etc).
Corporations are not people and do not deserve to be treated as such, nor was the constitution ever intended to do so.
However, these criticism aside, the Libertarians are absolutely correct that, as a first step toward sanity, we need to return our government to the rule of law under the constitution as it was written.
Then we need to fix the constitution with appropriate amendments. One of the things that needs to be addressed is the current immunity of corporate authorities from the constitution, so called "private" (in name only) corporations are not required to respect their employees (or anyone elses) constitutional rights, as the constitution "only applies to the government."
I would argue that it is past time for a constitutional amendment extending its authority to cover all realms of authority, private and public, within the borders of the United States. That would probably be sufficient: then the Libertarians could follow their agenda of (nearly complete) deregulation without reducing the rights and liberties of individuals. Without such a change you are correct, unabridge rights for corporations will translate directly to seriously abridged rights for individuals.
If you want to get out from under the yoke of American imperialism, one of the best thing you (and the rest of the world) can do is "just say NO" to intellectual property laws and software patents in particular.
... for the cure (software patents) is far worse than the illness (foreign competition). The very patents which will supposedly protect (unfairly IMHO) American corporate interests are the very same patents that can and will be used to kill some of the most promising new products (such as Linux or FreeBSD).
There is a reason the US Patent office is granting every software patent under the sun. That reason is to give American software companies an advantage (perhaps an unassailable one), enforced by a government mandated monopoly. Just the sort of solution Washington would come up with to fend of increasing competition from abroad
Think about this. If the EU ratifies the notion of software patents, then they will have to honor all of the patents granted by the USPTO, including the plethora of stupid and obvious patents that make developing just about any non-trivial program a violation of somebody's IP somewhere.
It would be nice if the US would dismantle its patent system (at least for software, preferably for everything), but since that isn't likely the best we can hope for is that the rest of the world is intelligent enough to stand up to us. Then at least the (software) technology can continue to move forward at an exponential pace somewhere, even if it is only outside of our own borders. Hopefully then the competition from abroad will force our misguided powermongers to rethink their position in this country, in a decade or two.
You may wish to consider an ssh tunnel to an offshore mail account. xs4all.com took a lot of grief from Germany for refusing to take down a site run by the Rote Armee Faktion (Red Army Faction - RAF) for reasons of free speach, and despite enormous pressure they stuck to their guns (bad pun, sorry) and did not compromise their principles. I do not know if xs4all.com meets all of your criteria, but it would be a good "first stop" to check out.
Maintaining your email outside of American jurisdiction would help immensly. If the FBI or CIA really wants the information they'll probably get it, but this would discourage "casual" FBI browsing, in as much as the request to look at your private files would have to go through international channels, to a country which places a rather high value on your privacy.
Because once a nice little hail storm hits your house, all of a sudden you're replacing a $200,000 roof instead of a $10,000 roof.
:-)
That is what steel shutters are for. In Germany nearly every window has a roll-up, metal shutter than can be lowered like a window-blind to protect the glass for harsh weather, or drop the ambient light to zero when one wants to sleep the day away.
There is absolutely no reason one couldn't protect photovoltaic roof cells in exactly the same manner for minimal cost. Hell, if no one in the USA makes such shutters, have them shipped over from the EU.
Couple them to motors and, if you want to get fancy, connect a barometer inline with a trigger to close the shutters should the baromentric pressur drop suddenly within a short time. Not a perfect automated defense, but pretty good should you be on vacation. If you're at home and a storm approach, push a button, shutters closed, roof protected.
Unlike tangible goods and real property, the nature of IP -- or any form of knowledge -- is to spread."
:)
Looks a lot like "Information wants to be free" to me..
Yes, but then he goes on to say
As far as IP being worthy of being safeguarded, it matters little to me whether or not a week's worth of my labor was spent fashioning a dining room table or writing code -- both consumed part of my life and are fruits of my labor, and I want both to be guarded from those who would take them without my giving me something in exchange.
The (unspoken) implication is that copyright, patents, and other forms of IP are OK, although strictly speaking he did not state that explicitly.
I think he (and a lot of people, both here and elsewhere) need to be educated and made to realize (or at least confront and argue against) the notion that a government mandated and enforced monopoly isn't necessary for IP creators to be fairly compensated and, furthermore, has a stifling impact on the field of endeavor so affected, not to mention the society, culture, and the economy as a whole.
Nevertheless, while Libertarians are split on the question of IP (and he perhaps falls on the wrong side of that debate), he is quite correct in saying that "our first step on the road to freedom is to return to the Constitution as the rule of law for our nation." We can (and must) fix the debacle that is IP, but he argues (perhaps correctly) that getting bogged down in that is putting the cart before the horse.
Although I disagree with his (implied) stance on patents and copyrights, I have been persuaded to vote for Harry Browne over Ralph Nader nevertheless. There is no candidate I agree with on every issue, but I agree with Harry Browne's agenda on far more points than I do with any other candidate.
(And yes, as someone who was going to vote for Ralph Nader based on his stance WRT corporate and special interests influencing government, I have had my mind changed. This happens from time to time, if one's mind is truly open.)
Sure it will. Check out this link. Bush is known for his big oil contributors, he will stop all forms of advancement in the alternative energy fuels when given the word of big oil.
The same thing happened when Reagan was elected. All research into Solar Power a Argonne Natl. Laboratory was killed almost immediately and remained dead throughout their administrations. In many respects the Reagan/Bush administration was to alternative power as Microsoft was to Computer Science -- they slowed the technological development down for at least 10 years or so.
The other post was correct -- any career politician will be a whore to the contributor with the biggest check, but historically the Republicans have been the worst offendors when it comes to fossil fuels vs. alternative energy, with the Reagan/Bush administrations being the worst offendors by far.
Not only humorous, but an explanaition of exactly how prophecies are self-fulfilling that even the most paranoid and closed minded bible thumper can understand.
It doesn't mean the warning isn't valid, but it does demonstrate that these are people postulating the behavior of other people, not divine forknowledge handed down from on high.
And no, modern society isn't the first to invent the notion of assigning numbers to names -- the Romans did that in their censuses as well (which, as we all know, was a regular occurance during the time in which that was written). That passage was almost certainly the contemporary equivelent of the fearmongering we hear today about Big Brother (with perhaps the same amount of relevance -- after all, these people were routinely fed to Lions for sport a few short generations later, and the future of Free Mankind doesn't look a whole lot rosier these days).
Instead of taking it out on the slashdot accepted enemy DC, why aren't we enraged by a patent that is unbelievably obvious.
"We" are, or at least I am. However, I think the community is at least as outraged by corporate idiots who help make such reprehensible patents profitable by paying $100M to license such obvious notions.
Amen.
[begin rant]
And, with any luck, another nail in the coffin for patents. It is generations past time to scrap the entire patent system and close the patent office. Patents have never served to promote progress, indeed, they have only served to slow it down.
Consider for a moment: when a new (even non-obvious invention) comes along, there is almost always a footrace between multiple inventors to the patent office, with the winner gaining exclusive rights and the losers (who also invented the device) out in the cold. Why is this? Because nearly every invention builds upon a mountain of public knowledge, and an invention "whose time has come" will occur to several independent minds at about the same time.
So what do we do? We stiff several inventors to disproportionately reward one. The irony is that it isn't even necessary -- individuals and companies were inventive before the patent system was created and will remain so after it goes away. Why? Because, as the free market shows us in every other arena, a monopoly isn't required to be profitable, or even to recoup development costs.
We all assume we'll continue to have exponential growth in knowledge and technology we've grown accustomed to, particularly in the high tech computer industry. This would be true, except that with 20 year monopolies being granted on even the most trivial and obvious ideas, the exponent in question has been reduced from "greater than one" to "nearly equal to one."
This may serve the purposes of the entrenched industries and governments, who can't abide new technologies until they figure out how to dominate and control them and are desperate to slow progress down by any means, but it is a disservice to the rest of mankind.
As was said by the European representative at ICANN, intellectual property is nothing more than theft from the public domain. Nowhere is this more true than with patents.
Of course, Drugs could not be outlawed at a federal level by any means short of a constitutional amendment either. Seem like there are some loopholes there, maybe?
No, there are no loopholes there.
The courts have simply decided to ignore the constitution when it is convinient to do so. The constitution explicitly states that, except for those powers specificly granted by the constitution, the federal government has no authority to regulate anything.
The (in)famous interstate commerce clause has often been cited as an excuse for the federal government collecting new, unconstitutional powers, but with respect to drugs even that falls down.
California, Oregon, and Washington (among others) have all legalized the medicinal use of marijuana.
Right or wrong, that is their consititional right. However, a man growing marijuana in California, for lawful consumption in California, is not involved in any kind of interstate commerce. Nevertheless, he will be arrested, tried, convicted, and put in jail (it has already happened numerous times -- indeed a volunteer at a clinic is currently living in Canada, seeking political asylum from the US, because she was present when medicinal marijuana was being dispensed, even though she was guilty of nothing more than pushing the wheelchair).
Flagrantly unconstitutional, but that is little comfort when you're being raped by your cellmate during your years of incarceration, waiting for the appeal to work its way up to the supreme court (assuming they'd even be willing to hear it).
With all three branches of the government ignoring the constitution at will, the constitution means very little. Indeed, with half the bill of rights basically eliminated and the other half under concerted attack, this is little surprise.
I may disagree with much of the Libertarian agenda, but one thing they are absolutely correct about is this: It is past time to return our government to the constitutional boundries our founding fathers codified in the constitution. Then, if we really feel we need government to step in and do something (such as healthcare) we can do so as was originally intended: with a consitituional amendment granting the government said authority. Until then our politicians are little more than thieves, stealing money from our pockets and usurping the constitutional rights of the people.
Highly unlikly that one government employee has access or reason to access both your social security data and your tax return, since they are seperate organizations.
Not only that, but if a government employee does access both, and perhaps your census data in addition, there will be a record of these accesses. There is a small hope that such would discourage abuses, or at least provide an audit trail if and when such abuses occur.
Now they propose a one-stop shopping center for all your personal info, displayed very neatly no doubt in a fancy new GUI for any government employee to see (and possibly abused). Where before there was discouragement, now there is active temptation.
Aren't your IRS and Social Security files cross-corellated already?? I mean, they're both owned by the Federal Government, and you do put your social security number on your tax forms...
Yes, but now they want to cross reference this with your Census information. Not a big deal perhaps, if you were one of the lucky (like myself) who received the "short form," but a large number of people receive the "long form" questionaire which demands (under threat of legal action if you refuse) all kinds of personal information to which the government really isn't entitled.
Now that personal information will be correlated to your financial information, providing one-stop shopping for spooks, police, bureaucrats (who may just not like you because your dating their daughter/sister/girlfriend/wife), and any private person who has the right personal contacts to ask for the information illicitly.
It makes an already abysmal situation with respect to personal privacy that much more abysmal. Worse, it codifies the current trend of violating our privacy into law, which is exactly the opposite of what is needed.
For an example of a country with sane(r) privacy laws I refer you to Germany, which has made the trading of personal information illegal, even between government agencies. After getting used to having some personal privacy over there I have to say, returning to the United States was like a bucket of cold water in the face -- we have almost no privacy here, and now that status quo is about to take on the force of law and be eroded even further.
Not a happy development at all.