I want to see vorbis & theora succeed, but is it right to cheer on the FF team while they're going around the W3C? I'm a little uninformed here, so I don't mean this to sound snarky but: why is it okay for Firefox to break or extend the standards when we all acknowledge that it was bad when Netscape & Microsoft kept doing it?
I know that it was supposed to be in the spec, and it was removed for political reasons. I hate DRM, and I know that Nokia and others want to see a solution that supports DRM. But look at it from a user's perspective: once again, the industry can't agree on a standard and so everyone's going to try to force a de facto standard.
And once again, everyone wins except the poor saps who have to choose between a browser stuffed with of competing video codecs (which should probably stay in the OS, and yes you should get off my lawn) and lynx. Forward-thinking developers will use ogg's solution. Youtube will stay with Adobe's.
I can recognize the good intentions here. And more public support of theora is great. But I still have a sinking feeling from this. Even if the long term goals are to make the web a better all-around platform, with more features for multimedia and application development, wouldn't it be better to get there in harmony? How long is HTML6 going to take when the W3C has to clean up the mess from the latest round of the every-browser-company-deciding-they-know-what's-best-for-me wars.
You're right of course, but there is a difference between actual/direct cause and legal cause for the purpose of determining tort. If Google has a contract with these guys and knowingly turns a blind eye to any wrongdoing, then they're still on the hook. And this isn't the first one of these stories I've read about them trespassing. In food terms, if your supplier brings you soft cheese on a refrigerated truck, but their reefer fails and they don't tell you, you could try to pass the liability on to them. I have seen restaurants do this as a matter of course, regardless of actual fault, because the supplier is assumed to have better insurance. Anyway if they had a history of selling you spoiled cheese, and you served it in spite of the known risk, it's negligence at least.
I like Google but overall I think we should give individuals the benefit of the doubt and keep companies who make a living processing our information on a short leash. If they haven't done anything to respond to prior complaints, throw the book at them. If they are trying...well, it's a big undertaking, mistakes happen, but they can't just say "we hired them to do it" and walk away. Otherwise you could do whatever you wanted as long as you paid people to do it for you.
Your first sentence is dangerously close to the old "why be secretive, unless you have something to hide?" challenge. I have a few counters for that.
First: you learn in business to stay away from people who consider you to be untrustworthy. This is because they're usually trying to screw you over. They see you and everyone else as a potential thief because, as thieves themselves, they aren't morally developed enough to understand why someone with the same opportunity wouldn't do the same thing as them. As they say, "it takes one to know one".
Second: anonymity keeps other people honest. Try voting in a fixed election where everyone can see who you've chosen and the incumbent has hired guys with rifles to "guard" the ballots. Also, consider police informants. Or the US federal witness protection program. Or whistleblowers who help journalists.
In the service of a dishonest man, anonymity removes accountability. But in the service of honest men, it promotes it. Everything that wasn't classified or redacted in the US in the last 8 years is locked up in safe in the VP's office. If the people who answer to us expect privacy, then goddamit they'd better quit trying to take ours away.
I mean, if they have to avoid telling people they're using Vista, then they're acknowledging there's a negative perception of the OS out there.
But that's the point, right? They're trying to say that it's all preconceptions rather than legitimate grievances. Plus, it's not some admission of guilt if they say that Vista was badly received, or that people think that it was. It's fact at this point. I don't think they hurt their image by confirming that they do in fact have eyes.
In this case I think you have too much faith. A lot of people have real complaints with Vista. A lot of others have just heard from their case-modding grandson or whoever that "it sucks". I think this might be more for those people. Or who knows, maybe it's a pat on the back for the fanboys. My guess is the idea originated with someone at MS who really believed Vista was getting a bad rap.
Just as restaurants are responsible for following the health codes in place wherever they are located, Google is required to find out what's private property and what isn't for this project. Doesn't matter if it's hard or expensive, it's the cost of doing business. They don't get a free pass just because they made a good search engine. Restaurants don't get a free pass for not washing dishes if they make a good french onion soup.
Did you read the post? He committed a misdemeanor, and the arresting officer lied in order to make it a felony. Or should we just give everyone the death penalty because "a crime's a crime"?
If you trust the police, good for you. There are many of us who don't. More than once I have been pulled over for a traffic violation and had my car and person searched...the only reason I can think of is that I have a bumper sticker that says support local musicians. I have close friends who've been strip searched for having a case of beer, and acquaintances who've been outright robbed of cash by the police.
He didn't say he was afraid of criminals snitching...he was saying, like the OP said, don't snitch. The key word here is snitched. If you see an old lady getting mugged at an ATM, obviously you call the cops. If someone's growing pot in California and you drive by it, do your best not to be a complete douche.
You misunderstood me...of course you can find them if you know where to look (dell.com/linux or the menu options you mentioned), but the chances are very low that someone who didn't know what linux is could go to dell.com and end up buying a linux machine. If you stick to the usual "desktop system", "laptop system" options, it's all Vista until you intentionally navigate away from those.
I don't think this is *quite* the same thing. These guys sound pretty unprofessional...they don't have an actual product shipping yet (how hard is it to put an intel board & nvidia card in a box) and they make it sound like they're gunning for Apple. I'm guessing the latter is because they're just some dudes from the hackintosh or osx86 scene. Motorola they are not. Apple is once again a premium brand and they make some nice margins on the hardware. Plus, I'm sure they knew this would happen when they went Intel. I can already get hardware like this, how is Open Tech changing anything?
Bingo. It's good hardware. I don't get why Slashdot readers assume they're a representative sample of the population. OSX still has to be hacked to run on this hardware, right? Good luck trying to get people get it from you rather than newegg...they already declined to buy it from Apple. Plus, they seem sketchy as well (refusing to divulge location, like it's a secret or something, refused to say when they're ready to ship). If they're not vapor, they're still dumb, unlike Apple, who has little to fear from this.
What would I recommend for a corporation? Don't use e-mail at all.
You weren't expecting to be taken seriously, were you?
Sometimes technology is worth the risks. Like paper money. I'm not going to be converting any of mine to gold as you suggest...weak as the USD is now, at least I can pay bills with it (utilities don't like it when you mail them gold bullion). And not all of us hate our jobs so much that we're unwilling to even lift our heads up. I'm calling troll on this one.
Well, it's not as if Dell isn't selling Windows PCs as well. Aunt Mildred's situation was unfortunate in that her nephew knew just enough to be dangerous. But if you're just looking for a computer on the Dell site, you're not even going to find the Linux machines. They're not really front and center.
I think the larger issue is that (ideally) you can't rule where you don't have jurisdiction. In practice, yeah, if you enjoy your citizenship, then you have to shut up and get in line. Someone said it was like a land grab, I tend to agree.
Federal law generally trumps state law.
Marijuana is a drug and is covered under federal law where it is illegal.
Growing and using marijuana is not a thought crime. Trying to lie and say it is a thought crime is disingenuous.
You are a lying, self-serving, asshole.
It's not nearly that simple. It depends on who's prosecuting.
Trespassing is illegal too.
An exaggeration, I'll admit. My point was that it's often victimless. Where it's not, we have other laws (like DUI) to deal with those cases.
I agree with you. But you're opening the door to more semantic arguments about what's free and what isn't. Obviously the FSF's definition of free is the GPL. Not freedom of choice. I'm not going to applaud or criticize their goals, I just want to point out that nobody gains anything by confusing freedom of choice with what the free software movement stands for.
And for those who keep joking about "free to do what we tell you"...yeah, we get it. It was old twenty years ago. Can we please just acknowledge that different people are using the word differently, and comment instead about the validity of their goals, or their approach?
Personally, I see lots of parallels with FSF and PETA. It's the "anything to get noticed" tactic. The difference is that PETA knows the value of using attractive women in your ads. Who knows, maybe the FSF asked some and they ran away screaming.
And before you say satellite, think about how awesome it is to have your TV and internet go down because of some big bad trees, or the occasional rain cloud. Or those blazing fast analog modem uploads. In the areas the Comcast operates, they have a monopoly on cable service. And for TV, most people get cable now rather than OTA. So the time when those protections were necessary to create infrastructure are long over. Not to mention, the regulations that made it somewhat fairer were dropped years ago.
There's no free market here. You can't go somewhere else and get similar service. You might just have to go without. Nothing wrong with that, but not everybody can or wants to...so it will take a lot more than P2P throttling or shitty customer service, or even no expectation of privacy or even uptime to make someone want to do that. There's no incentive for them, or any other US cable company to be competitive or to improve their service. I think the PR is just bet-hedging, and often reactive, like those ridiculous ads they're all running against FiOS, saying "our fiber is way bigger and cooler".
I wonder what you mean by "shitty to be an artist"?
For one thing, creation doesn't happen in a vacuum (except in religious creation stories, I guess). For a band to be able to legally play a cover song in a venue of their choice, that venue has to have already paid protection money to ASCAP and friends. This money goes to protect the copyright of established artists, rather than the guys who need protecting.
This is just one example. I am struggling to come up with more but I assure you that they're out there...like sampling or DJing. Let's be clear. These laws are written for Big Content. Not all artists are rich and famous. In fact, the vast majority of them are not. There are large problems in the industry for real people, in part because everyone thinks that anyone who plays music automatically is or wants to be a famous rock star. It's not like that, for the legions of session musicians, union guys, school teachers trying to arrange a popular tune to keep parents from falling asleep, and so on.
The bands out there actually trying to work are put at a disservice now, because they don't have a lawyer on retainer like the labels do. And yes, you still need a record contract. This does not mean you become famous. It just means that you have some small access to distributors and stores.
This legislation will protect jobs, no doubt. It will protect the jobs of a few old men who are completely out of touch, and afraid of a music market that rewards based on merit rather than who has access to a senator or two. It is all about legally creating barriers to entry.
You're right - there's plenty of unsigned indies trying to harness the power of the internet. But the media cartel hasn't given up an inch. I hope you can see the significance of what's going on: maybe they lost some ground, but they gained it back, and continue to gain it back, via legislation. The largest online music store is 90% DRM. People get routinely sued after ex parte hearings based on scant evidence. We cannot just let this go and hope the internet will straighten it out. Especially not with any guaranteed net neutrality. Youtube isn't going to create any stars when an an increasing percentage the videos on there are "featured" and companies like Viacom have free reign to pull down whatever they like.
If that was insightful, then this will be the post of the century.
When people say "middle America", they are talking about the average American. Average in skill set, or income, or number of kids, or whatever statistic is relevant to the discussion. Imagine a bell curve, start at the mean and grab maybe one and a half sigmas. Again, this is for whatever variable is relevant to the discussion (in this one, maybe computer skills, or political activism).
Yeah, it's a tortured term referring to imaginary people. But it's not like nobody's used it before. You'd have to be purposefully dense (that is, a pedant) to act like you don't know what it means.
It's sort of the opposite situation. Law enforcement needs warrants because they're a third party, and specifically because they're law enforcement. If the wire starts and ends with ISP-owned equipment, they don't really have to tap it to know what's on it. I'm sure their argument is that you agreed to the terms when you signed up, and if you don't like the new "enhancements" to the service, you're free to drop it.
It's not so simple, obviously. The fact that in any given spot in the US you only have 2 or 3 choices for broadband, and this the direct result of government-granted monopolies, tells me that they should not be so cavalier in how they treat their customers. Plus, say what you will about Americans, we do not take being spied upon lightly (unless someone brings up "sleeper cells", child porn, or record label IP, of course). But this has to do with ad delivery, and I hope Congress does the right thing here, even if it's only to emphasize the fact that the government has a monopoly on spying on citizens.
They told Charter to cut it out until they investigated. Now they're actually investigating Embarq. Depending on their findings, this could be very good news. I just hope that they remember that the free market doesn't apply here, since there never really has been a free market for telecom services, and that was by Congress's own hand.
The real bitch about international law is that there isn't any force behind it besides treaties. And hell, this is almost interplanetary, so where's the jurisdiction?
Oh yeah, Lunar X. And they probably have to at least try to enforce this, so that the participants' crafts don't get shot out of the air. This seems to be might-means-right (we can and will stop you if you don't follow the rules) as opposed to any particular goverment's actual power to stop citizens' equipment from taking pictures *once they've left the goddam planet*. Just sayin'.
It's not black and white, and by treating it as such you risk disingenuousness. In this case there are different laws on the books for the same thing at the municipal, state, and federal level. Why? Because it's a hotly contested issue, which also means that some people feel strongly enough about it to put themselves at risk. Possession of even a decent amount in CA is a civil offense. A parking ticket. You don't have any of those, do you? Are you confident that everything in your house is up to building code?
Some people don't agree with having penalties for thoughtcrime. Some just think they can get away with it. I realize that laws are not "made to be broken", but those who defended the status quo during Jim Crow or Prohibition became history's losers, and rightly so. Plus, consider again the loss of privacy. I trust the system more than I trust some self-appointed vigilantes with internet access. But if this makes mainstream news, they will be judged and sentenced long before any cop arrives at their place.
Funny thing about the law: it applies to companies like Google just as well. Their quest to index the universe is at odds with people's right to privacy. Too bad. Find a business model that doesn't involve breaking the law. This is not the first of these stories. They lose the benefit of the doubt. I am left with one conclusion: that there's an unspoken rule for these drivers: "ignore those gates and signs, or we'll replace you with someone who will."
Non-smokers automatically are qualified to tell other people what to do. It comes with the territory. Bonus points if you used to smoke, since you can talk down to all your friends who still do it.
Slashdot Mirror
No I think they named the CTEA after him because he had recently died.
I want to see vorbis & theora succeed, but is it right to cheer on the FF team while they're going around the W3C? I'm a little uninformed here, so I don't mean this to sound snarky but: why is it okay for Firefox to break or extend the standards when we all acknowledge that it was bad when Netscape & Microsoft kept doing it?
I know that it was supposed to be in the spec, and it was removed for political reasons. I hate DRM, and I know that Nokia and others want to see a solution that supports DRM. But look at it from a user's perspective: once again, the industry can't agree on a standard and so everyone's going to try to force a de facto standard.
And once again, everyone wins except the poor saps who have to choose between a browser stuffed with of competing video codecs (which should probably stay in the OS, and yes you should get off my lawn) and lynx. Forward-thinking developers will use ogg's solution. Youtube will stay with Adobe's.
I can recognize the good intentions here. And more public support of theora is great. But I still have a sinking feeling from this. Even if the long term goals are to make the web a better all-around platform, with more features for multimedia and application development, wouldn't it be better to get there in harmony? How long is HTML6 going to take when the W3C has to clean up the mess from the latest round of the every-browser-company-deciding-they-know-what's-best-for-me wars.
You're right of course, but there is a difference between actual/direct cause and legal cause for the purpose of determining tort. If Google has a contract with these guys and knowingly turns a blind eye to any wrongdoing, then they're still on the hook. And this isn't the first one of these stories I've read about them trespassing. In food terms, if your supplier brings you soft cheese on a refrigerated truck, but their reefer fails and they don't tell you, you could try to pass the liability on to them. I have seen restaurants do this as a matter of course, regardless of actual fault, because the supplier is assumed to have better insurance. Anyway if they had a history of selling you spoiled cheese, and you served it in spite of the known risk, it's negligence at least.
I like Google but overall I think we should give individuals the benefit of the doubt and keep companies who make a living processing our information on a short leash. If they haven't done anything to respond to prior complaints, throw the book at them. If they are trying...well, it's a big undertaking, mistakes happen, but they can't just say "we hired them to do it" and walk away. Otherwise you could do whatever you wanted as long as you paid people to do it for you.
Your first sentence is dangerously close to the old "why be secretive, unless you have something to hide?" challenge. I have a few counters for that.
First: you learn in business to stay away from people who consider you to be untrustworthy. This is because they're usually trying to screw you over. They see you and everyone else as a potential thief because, as thieves themselves, they aren't morally developed enough to understand why someone with the same opportunity wouldn't do the same thing as them. As they say, "it takes one to know one".
Second: anonymity keeps other people honest. Try voting in a fixed election where everyone can see who you've chosen and the incumbent has hired guys with rifles to "guard" the ballots. Also, consider police informants. Or the US federal witness protection program. Or whistleblowers who help journalists.
In the service of a dishonest man, anonymity removes accountability. But in the service of honest men, it promotes it. Everything that wasn't classified or redacted in the US in the last 8 years is locked up in safe in the VP's office. If the people who answer to us expect privacy, then goddamit they'd better quit trying to take ours away.
Are you sure that your router isn't just crapping out every 2 days once the memory fills up?
Why would you assume that everyone's seen or used Vista? Having the beta versions of Vista makes you the exception, not the rule.
Whoops... meant "faith in people to evaluate Vista on its technical merits rather than hearsay" :D
I mean, if they have to avoid telling people they're using Vista, then they're acknowledging there's a negative perception of the OS out there.
But that's the point, right? They're trying to say that it's all preconceptions rather than legitimate grievances. Plus, it's not some admission of guilt if they say that Vista was badly received, or that people think that it was. It's fact at this point. I don't think they hurt their image by confirming that they do in fact have eyes.
In this case I think you have too much faith. A lot of people have real complaints with Vista. A lot of others have just heard from their case-modding grandson or whoever that "it sucks". I think this might be more for those people. Or who knows, maybe it's a pat on the back for the fanboys. My guess is the idea originated with someone at MS who really believed Vista was getting a bad rap.
Just as restaurants are responsible for following the health codes in place wherever they are located, Google is required to find out what's private property and what isn't for this project. Doesn't matter if it's hard or expensive, it's the cost of doing business. They don't get a free pass just because they made a good search engine. Restaurants don't get a free pass for not washing dishes if they make a good french onion soup.
Did you read the post? He committed a misdemeanor, and the arresting officer lied in order to make it a felony. Or should we just give everyone the death penalty because "a crime's a crime"?
If you trust the police, good for you. There are many of us who don't. More than once I have been pulled over for a traffic violation and had my car and person searched...the only reason I can think of is that I have a bumper sticker that says support local musicians. I have close friends who've been strip searched for having a case of beer, and acquaintances who've been outright robbed of cash by the police.
He didn't say he was afraid of criminals snitching...he was saying, like the OP said, don't snitch. The key word here is snitched. If you see an old lady getting mugged at an ATM, obviously you call the cops. If someone's growing pot in California and you drive by it, do your best not to be a complete douche.
You misunderstood me...of course you can find them if you know where to look (dell.com/linux or the menu options you mentioned), but the chances are very low that someone who didn't know what linux is could go to dell.com and end up buying a linux machine. If you stick to the usual "desktop system", "laptop system" options, it's all Vista until you intentionally navigate away from those.
I don't think this is *quite* the same thing. These guys sound pretty unprofessional...they don't have an actual product shipping yet (how hard is it to put an intel board & nvidia card in a box) and they make it sound like they're gunning for Apple. I'm guessing the latter is because they're just some dudes from the hackintosh or osx86 scene. Motorola they are not. Apple is once again a premium brand and they make some nice margins on the hardware. Plus, I'm sure they knew this would happen when they went Intel. I can already get hardware like this, how is Open Tech changing anything?
Bingo. It's good hardware. I don't get why Slashdot readers assume they're a representative sample of the population. OSX still has to be hacked to run on this hardware, right? Good luck trying to get people get it from you rather than newegg...they already declined to buy it from Apple. Plus, they seem sketchy as well (refusing to divulge location, like it's a secret or something, refused to say when they're ready to ship). If they're not vapor, they're still dumb, unlike Apple, who has little to fear from this.
What would I recommend for a corporation? Don't use e-mail at all.
You weren't expecting to be taken seriously, were you?
Sometimes technology is worth the risks. Like paper money. I'm not going to be converting any of mine to gold as you suggest...weak as the USD is now, at least I can pay bills with it (utilities don't like it when you mail them gold bullion). And not all of us hate our jobs so much that we're unwilling to even lift our heads up. I'm calling troll on this one.
Well, it's not as if Dell isn't selling Windows PCs as well. Aunt Mildred's situation was unfortunate in that her nephew knew just enough to be dangerous. But if you're just looking for a computer on the Dell site, you're not even going to find the Linux machines. They're not really front and center.
I think the larger issue is that (ideally) you can't rule where you don't have jurisdiction. In practice, yeah, if you enjoy your citizenship, then you have to shut up and get in line. Someone said it was like a land grab, I tend to agree.
Federal law generally trumps state law.
Marijuana is a drug and is covered under federal law where it is illegal.
Growing and using marijuana is not a thought crime. Trying to lie and say it is a thought crime is disingenuous.
You are a lying, self-serving, asshole.
It's not nearly that simple. It depends on who's prosecuting.
Trespassing is illegal too.
An exaggeration, I'll admit. My point was that it's often victimless. Where it's not, we have other laws (like DUI) to deal with those cases.
You don't know me, and you swear too much.
I agree with you. But you're opening the door to more semantic arguments about what's free and what isn't. Obviously the FSF's definition of free is the GPL. Not freedom of choice. I'm not going to applaud or criticize their goals, I just want to point out that nobody gains anything by confusing freedom of choice with what the free software movement stands for.
And for those who keep joking about "free to do what we tell you"...yeah, we get it. It was old twenty years ago. Can we please just acknowledge that different people are using the word differently, and comment instead about the validity of their goals, or their approach?
Personally, I see lots of parallels with FSF and PETA. It's the "anything to get noticed" tactic. The difference is that PETA knows the value of using attractive women in your ads. Who knows, maybe the FSF asked some and they ran away screaming.
Go elsewhere? For cable service? You're crazy.
And before you say satellite, think about how awesome it is to have your TV and internet go down because of some big bad trees, or the occasional rain cloud. Or those blazing fast analog modem uploads. In the areas the Comcast operates, they have a monopoly on cable service. And for TV, most people get cable now rather than OTA. So the time when those protections were necessary to create infrastructure are long over. Not to mention, the regulations that made it somewhat fairer were dropped years ago.
There's no free market here. You can't go somewhere else and get similar service. You might just have to go without. Nothing wrong with that, but not everybody can or wants to...so it will take a lot more than P2P throttling or shitty customer service, or even no expectation of privacy or even uptime to make someone want to do that. There's no incentive for them, or any other US cable company to be competitive or to improve their service. I think the PR is just bet-hedging, and often reactive, like those ridiculous ads they're all running against FiOS, saying "our fiber is way bigger and cooler".
I wonder what you mean by "shitty to be an artist"?
For one thing, creation doesn't happen in a vacuum (except in religious creation stories, I guess). For a band to be able to legally play a cover song in a venue of their choice, that venue has to have already paid protection money to ASCAP and friends. This money goes to protect the copyright of established artists, rather than the guys who need protecting.
This is just one example. I am struggling to come up with more but I assure you that they're out there...like sampling or DJing. Let's be clear. These laws are written for Big Content. Not all artists are rich and famous. In fact, the vast majority of them are not. There are large problems in the industry for real people, in part because everyone thinks that anyone who plays music automatically is or wants to be a famous rock star. It's not like that, for the legions of session musicians, union guys, school teachers trying to arrange a popular tune to keep parents from falling asleep, and so on.
The bands out there actually trying to work are put at a disservice now, because they don't have a lawyer on retainer like the labels do. And yes, you still need a record contract. This does not mean you become famous. It just means that you have some small access to distributors and stores.
This legislation will protect jobs, no doubt. It will protect the jobs of a few old men who are completely out of touch, and afraid of a music market that rewards based on merit rather than who has access to a senator or two. It is all about legally creating barriers to entry.
You're right - there's plenty of unsigned indies trying to harness the power of the internet. But the media cartel hasn't given up an inch. I hope you can see the significance of what's going on: maybe they lost some ground, but they gained it back, and continue to gain it back, via legislation. The largest online music store is 90% DRM. People get routinely sued after ex parte hearings based on scant evidence. We cannot just let this go and hope the internet will straighten it out. Especially not with any guaranteed net neutrality. Youtube isn't going to create any stars when an an increasing percentage the videos on there are "featured" and companies like Viacom have free reign to pull down whatever they like.
If that was insightful, then this will be the post of the century.
When people say "middle America", they are talking about the average American. Average in skill set, or income, or number of kids, or whatever statistic is relevant to the discussion. Imagine a bell curve, start at the mean and grab maybe one and a half sigmas. Again, this is for whatever variable is relevant to the discussion (in this one, maybe computer skills, or political activism).
Yeah, it's a tortured term referring to imaginary people. But it's not like nobody's used it before. You'd have to be purposefully dense (that is, a pedant) to act like you don't know what it means.
It's sort of the opposite situation. Law enforcement needs warrants because they're a third party, and specifically because they're law enforcement. If the wire starts and ends with ISP-owned equipment, they don't really have to tap it to know what's on it. I'm sure their argument is that you agreed to the terms when you signed up, and if you don't like the new "enhancements" to the service, you're free to drop it.
It's not so simple, obviously. The fact that in any given spot in the US you only have 2 or 3 choices for broadband, and this the direct result of government-granted monopolies, tells me that they should not be so cavalier in how they treat their customers. Plus, say what you will about Americans, we do not take being spied upon lightly (unless someone brings up "sleeper cells", child porn, or record label IP, of course). But this has to do with ad delivery, and I hope Congress does the right thing here, even if it's only to emphasize the fact that the government has a monopoly on spying on citizens.
They told Charter to cut it out until they investigated. Now they're actually investigating Embarq. Depending on their findings, this could be very good news. I just hope that they remember that the free market doesn't apply here, since there never really has been a free market for telecom services, and that was by Congress's own hand.
The real bitch about international law is that there isn't any force behind it besides treaties. And hell, this is almost interplanetary, so where's the jurisdiction?
Oh yeah, Lunar X. And they probably have to at least try to enforce this, so that the participants' crafts don't get shot out of the air. This seems to be might-means-right (we can and will stop you if you don't follow the rules) as opposed to any particular goverment's actual power to stop citizens' equipment from taking pictures *once they've left the goddam planet*. Just sayin'.
It's not black and white, and by treating it as such you risk disingenuousness. In this case there are different laws on the books for the same thing at the municipal, state, and federal level. Why? Because it's a hotly contested issue, which also means that some people feel strongly enough about it to put themselves at risk. Possession of even a decent amount in CA is a civil offense. A parking ticket. You don't have any of those, do you? Are you confident that everything in your house is up to building code?
Some people don't agree with having penalties for thoughtcrime. Some just think they can get away with it. I realize that laws are not "made to be broken", but those who defended the status quo during Jim Crow or Prohibition became history's losers, and rightly so. Plus, consider again the loss of privacy. I trust the system more than I trust some self-appointed vigilantes with internet access. But if this makes mainstream news, they will be judged and sentenced long before any cop arrives at their place.
Funny thing about the law: it applies to companies like Google just as well. Their quest to index the universe is at odds with people's right to privacy. Too bad. Find a business model that doesn't involve breaking the law. This is not the first of these stories. They lose the benefit of the doubt. I am left with one conclusion: that there's an unspoken rule for these drivers: "ignore those gates and signs, or we'll replace you with someone who will."
Non-smokers automatically are qualified to tell other people what to do. It comes with the territory. Bonus points if you used to smoke, since you can talk down to all your friends who still do it.