Clinton AND Obama sponsored that amendment, and they both have supported it verbally. So your comments about excuses and "tech friendly" candidates remain misleading. After all, obama abstained from the final bill so he could avoid people taking it out of context--just like you're doing with Clinton. Democracy is better served if you inform people instead of misleading them.
And the reality of voting is that either one of them can sabotage any piece of legislation behind the scenes and then vote for it, knowing it will still die due to lack of votes on the floor or in conference.
besides...instead of dissing clinton, you should try convincing ron paul voters that he doesn't believe in a free internet, it's a lot more difficult and more rewarding.
Clinton was a cosponsor of the original amendment (S.AMDT.3907) and clearly cared about this issue. However, she knew the vote was going to be above 60 for both the bill and the amendment, and decided she had better things to do.
"too busy kissing babies" really isn't appropriate when Clinton was a co-sponsor of the initial bill. And for the record, Obama didn't vote on the final bill. Political decisions are complicated, but the truth is that both Obama and Clinton supported Dodd's amendment.
Obama abstained from voting on the final bill. So playing up Obama is misleading. And dissing Clinton is just as bad because politicians usually know the score ahead of time (esp. when their party controls the senate)
Your post and/or your link are biased toward Obama and don't contribute to an informed debate. Obama and Clinton both made what seems like less than perfect choices today--and that's why they are politicians.
Obama abstained from the final vote instead of voting against the overall bill. And given the margin, calling out Clinton seems pointless (since positions are usually known ahead of time).
Both clinton AND obama abstained from voting on the final bill. And Clinton didn't vote on ANY of the other votes today--possible because she wasn't there.
They are both politicians, but it is clear from the record that Obama was there. It is unclear if Clinton was there. And it is clear that Obama abstained from the final vote.
Polygraphs are done for a wide range of reasons--even city police dispatchers from CA to NC get them...as to the feds, they are ridiculously anal. Even _non-sensitive_ internships and volunteer work with federal agencies have to deal with a full FBI background, reference and credit checks--Just for being in the building. And being in a sensitive position (not secret or top secret) requires full medical disclosure of all records and a more thorough FBI check and interviews (sometimes a polygraph).
There are two or three different overall investigation programs at the federal level for security procedures, perhaps some of them are more lax (or enlightened), but I doubt polygraph is avoided for the cost. If anything, it probably produces false positives that single out minorities: "Have you ever done anything that might be considered amoral?" Right after sex practice questions. Asked to a lesbian police applicant. They told her she did "bad" on the test, made her take it three times, in an unventilated room. Noone bothered to explain to her that social anxiety and leading questions were probably impacting the results...
You misunderstand what a free market is, a free market is an unregulated market where businesses and consumers are free to do whatever they want to sell/buy products. This includes vendor lock-in, package deal requirements, purchasing groups, etc. It also includes no gov't mandated IP./ramble What you are actually implying is that you want a specific market regulation--choice of carrier for your phone. I think that IS reasonable (it's amusing too, because we used to have to rent phones from AT&T back before AT&T was broken up...oh wait...). And considering yesterday's politics article this should probably be tagged Ron Paul, because he and those like him are _against_ all market regulation protecting consumers from vendor lock-in and lock down of features--whether phone features or digital rights restrictions or filtering internet communications or net neutrality. Ron Paul's ideological stance is that regulation itself is bad and the private sector is good, and thus doesn't even match an economist's understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of "free markets."
My basic premise would be that since each of us are individuals with limited resources, we need regulation to reduce swindling (especially in financial services and insurance areas), reduce monopolistic control by large corporations (improve consumer product choices), and require standards of safety across the market (businesses cannot always agree on their own or defend against unsafe imports).
As it is, most of our services cost more and have fewer features than other 1st world countries because we are either too lazy to choose, have too little choices, or are too weak to regulate. I.e. Japan doesn't have vendor lock-in/lock-down of cell phone features. The only thing we're marginally good at is standardized safety requirements, but that gets foreign pressure(i.e., japan banned our beef imports because we dont do enough testing for mad cow)./endoframble
your analysis makes the most sense, at least if it's a single person or small organization project without much market share. Any other case would open the revoker up to strong liability and fraud charges (especially if someone had contributed on the project).
Simply rescinding the right to _new_ free licenses and distribute should be allowed and plausible for a small project imho. However, if a large company did so (i.e. MS) they would still face major legal challenges and liability--it wouldn't be feasible in any case.
I'd much prefer people check out new stuff over Monopoly and Life. Though Boggle and Scrabble are hard to improve upon....but overall there are some really great games out there.
<ramble> I wasn't intending to dis scrabble or suggesting scrabulous is better--I'm saying that Scrabulous is simply making money off of our awareness of Scrabble and also providing additional distribution of the Scrabble brand (because everyone knows that scrabulous==scrabble). I'm also making a value judgment and stating that such behavior is bad because normally companies like Hasbro are slow to adapt, and that provides opportunities for new companies and ideas to enter the marketplace. Scrabble IS a classic, but what about the new guys?
And, in this case the guys who made scrabulous did so knowing full well they could be sued or issued a take-down. In fact, I'd bet money that their business strategy from day one involved a counteroffer of profit sharing or licensing. My opinion is that we shouldn't reward that type of business strategy (and hasbro will probably reject any licensing deal or just sue them--they DID use their name).
As an fyi, I actually own scrabble and the scrabble computer game and i've even played the expansion (which is stupid beyond belief because it just adds a couple rows and more tiles). But I'd rather see bookworm adventures or platform or other small companies creating a new generation of classics. I say this because the word/puzzle game industry is going through a lot of changes and I'd like to have diversity instead of EAification.
And if you like board games, check out http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/12/09/PKRLTKGO9.DTL
Scrabulous props up Hasbro's brand and continues its popularity--when it hasn't innovated in years. As such, it limits the facebook market and illegally keeps out small, legitimate board and video game companies that could acquire the facebook market. It's a stolen corporate brand name that guarantees people will click on it over legit indie games.
I have no pity for Hasbro and the companies that dominate and ruin a potentially diverse and strong US board game market (as compared to europe). But I also have no pity for folks that can't innovate, are just out to make a quick buck, and have the gall to issue a press release on the BBC. please. they got their cash, they should either innovate or start working for someone that can. and they should pray they don't get sued out of their profits.
Congressional investigations are about agenda setting, political capital (getting more people on board), and/or chicken.
1) Congress can elevate issues of policy/culture into the media when conducting an "investigation." Whether about steroids or blowjobs or whether the family network can have an a la carte anti-abortion show.
2) Senators and Reps can get an ass-ton of sound bites out to interested parties--citizens, corporations, and their monied representatives (lobbyists, family groups, net neutrality folks). In this case you can get your message out to a VERY diverse set of groups...from family issues to tech issues, without pissing either group off. Goldmine.
3) Chicken. Ohhhh chicken, how I love the: "Dear corporation, if you don't a) give us more money or b) clean up your act, we will be forced to pwn you." That is not an exaggeration when it comes to regulatory action. The gov't can and does wield immense power over corporations through taking control of processes--and it is a simple risk analysis for a corp to decide whether or not to change behavior or play fast and loose. After all, the longer it takes for congress to act, the more profit you can make.
Examples of the tit for tat: Industry blinks: Movie Ratings, Health Care reform (portions of clinton's 90s playbook was used by the medical industry), Big Pharma advertising on TV about free medicine for poor people (avoiding price controls).
Industry runs congress over: Ummm, automakers, tobacco
Congress runs em over: safety, but mainly because competitive industry players actually want gov't regulation on product safety issues.
Congress blinks: MPG standards (we could have been at 50 mpg in 2000-2002, according to the auto industry), anything involving financial services
Note that congress never "wins," they just change the rules of the game by cutting off a profit option and their actions are rarely draconian because many of them are concerned about jobs lost in their state.
Is this legit, or is their company funded by folks trying to undercut OLPC? Either way, vaporware is a very good strategy to get folks not to buy OLPC and to slow down the development (heh) of that market.
I haven't had my coffee, but this sort of announcement is also great cover for players (intel?, ms?) who want more time to boost alternatives to OLPC with more vendor/tech lock-in. Buyers/countries will consider waiting even longer to make a decision (the buyers aren't in a rush) based on lower price and new tech expectations.
Some asshat in the whitehouse decided not to send congress any copies this year. now THAT would be hilarious...just order the GPO not to print it and thus force congress to pay for much more inefficient one-off copies while claiming a green-friendly whitehouse. I should note that I don't think the GPO would have done it as an administrative action--that would be blatantly smacking the reps/senators around...and why would you blatantly do that to the folks that approve your budget?
They should have just polled congress every year and cut their production accordingly once they went digital. Cause I know it's been digital for a while.
The actual TSA guidelines said it was _optional_ for the longest time (not sure after the shoe-bomber), but the same regulations stated you are required to follow the directions of TSA folks -- they had absolutely no incentive to let you pass without removing shoes.
If you aren't having to remove your shoes now then either a new regulation or new incentive was put in place. Maybe there is a speed incentive these days or maybe the gov't changed the regulation to be based on threat level...or maybe the airport gained some leverage over the process.
Either way, anyone that creates an "optional" enforcement regulation is just asking for misuse and/or clueless about management. it's about time they cleaned that one up. my personal fave is flying with dinnerware after one christmas...all i had was a carryon bag and my parents gave me tableware for christmas. There were no steak knives, so TSA let it through.
Basically facebook is already two-faced, so their participation in this seems like it could be a mission to slow/derail/control development. Yesterday's article on facebook banning those who use aggregators from their site (with user permission) is just one example of where facebook does one thing and demands another.
In addition to one-sided policies, facebook has a feature system that requires you to give full access to any application any of your friends is using/spamming you with--just to receive their message. Every time I get a message on that site I am required to add the application and check 4 boxes giving full access to my information (there is no middle road) in order to read the message.
Facebook's privacy functionality is completely unacceptable to me but seems okay with the huge numbers of folks adding 3 feet of application on their profiles. Sadly, I suspect facebook is not a fad, but instead a new and more obnoxious myspace with even less privacy controls--and a poorer track record.
oops. that was a rant.
------------
"To say that the backdrop is 'recession like' is akin to an obstetrician telling a woman that she is 'sort of pregnant'" -- Merrill Lynch
A decent lawyer for non-citizens needs to denote the difference between a suitcase and a laptop--a suitcase can contain physical objects that may be dangerous or damaging to "commerce" or security. A laptop only contains information, information that under current law can be transferred across our borders in encrypted format. Without similar laws and right to inspect-or-refuse for encrypted communication, there is little rationale for mandating inspect-or-refuse at borders.
imho, privacy needs to expand in the information age, not shrink to include red-scare ideas of the right to inspect everything we do and track all our communications over some vague threat.
A US citizen cannot be compelled to produce a password for decryption, and I do not believe they can be sent away under existing law for possessing legal technology (it may require a suit or a lawyer to enforce your right to enter though).
Most policy options to attempt to set up such a system would fail on numerous legal grounds or leave big enough loopholes (you can always upload your encrypted data and wipe your drive) that a border-targeted reduction of civil liberties would not be valid from a security or commerce clause standpoint. Not to mention that it would fail from a political capital standpoint--you are selectively targeting international business folks and any false positives forcing US citizens or visitors to relinquish (or mail back) laptops would be extremely damaging.
My guess is that this policy gets challenged or changed very quickly.
Last I checked, facebook does the same thing and hassles you to give facebook your email passwords so that it can log in and then invite/find people. And in general facebook makes it unnecessarily difficult to search for friends by email--thereby encouraging you to just give them full access.
Unbalanced TOS aside, facebook isn't going to start banning all wiki users (I don't think), instead they're going to have to keep those sites from aggregating. Of course, someone could probably just create a facebook app that does the same thing...facebook already gives an ass-ton of info away. I mean, I have to click affirmative on 4 info-sharing checkboxes just to play a pirate game???
Turbine's Ascheron's Call 2 used MS chat (text) server technology and it didn't scale beyond several hundred users (a friggin chat server!). Chat and in-game action text was delayed, non-functional, or unreliable for several months. Turbine lost lots of subscribers and eventually left their MS "relationship." Sure turbine had huge issues with lack of content, but I wonder if the early release and MS technology requirements weren't MS mandates. I liked the AC2 franchise and now it's dead:/
But considering the quality of Lord of the Rings Online, either Turbine became a different company or moving away from MS improved their operations.
any sort of server side vulnerability means your passwords and destinations can be acquired by law enforcement with a court order (you cannot otherwise be compelled to give them). However, the fact that they are saying _all_ client data gets encrypted is important, because it means they cant issue subpoenas to other sites based on link information stored on the server.
not that i'm paranoid, but that information request could become a trivial law enforcement action in the near future...and we already have enough ways to easily add on to charges and intimidate people into plea-bargaing or pleaing guilty.
And no i'm not paranoid, I just know that it is already perfectly legal and regular practice for law enforcement to lie to suspects to get them to confess (even innocent ones)--so a widely-known, secure system is essential for peace of mind _and_ sound legal advice from techno-averse public defenders. Lying about evidence works great with small time crooks and emotionally traumatized people, but it would also work great with folks browsing the interwebs.
anyway, undercover work is fine but as long as dishonesty is a sanctioned component of the legal process, no one should regularly think the police have a better memory of your daily events than you do. and yeah, martin tankleff (the kid jailed for 17 years for killing his parents) is an extreme example, but power available is power abused.
It might help if people didn't confuse selective enforcement and racists laws with real crime numbers. Crime and prison numbers are complicated issues, but your example is a canard that ignores class issues--the toll of an enforcement system that targets ghetto kids getting high (frequently in public for various socio-economic reasons), provides them with a crappy defense (and/or has police lie to them to plea bargain a lesser sentence), and then sends them down a completely different life route than the middle class kids doing blow two blocks over.
The system is complicated, violent, and heartless--you shouldn't oversimplify it. "It might help if young black men stopped committing crime at 10x the national average. "
And I am not quote hunting, but it IS legal for police to lie to suspects to solicit confessions. It is statistically proven that poor people have poorer and minorities have worse results in court for the same crime. And it is anecdotally acknowledged (recently by the supreme court) that sentencing (and thus life options) for crack is unusually high...in fact sentencing for marijuana used to be very high for similar reasons, but send a few kids of state senators to jail for a while and things start to change.
The administrative decision process (read: the execution of existing law..under NEPA) will probably approve it as the most environmentally friendly (human and physical) alternative when compared with traditional bombing. They are required to discuss, document, and publish that decision (and response to criticism) before reaching a decision/deploying the tech. Once they do, they will request funding for operations because it _may_ be cost effective for deployment based on lower production costs over time, dual use savings, and savings from less area damage (both economic and political). However, I don't think this will see widespread deployment at the tank level for a very long time--unless that tank is in the city it would probably be more cost effective to bomb it.
I should note that the decision process in our government/political system will not account for systemic costs (additional warfare acceptance due to less collateral damage) and they will probably gloss over some of the environmental issues of the laser system (because long term effects are only partially understood). I don't know what the final analysis will be, I'm just guessing, but you really don't want post-war environmental problems...for both humanitarian and image reasons (sadly, we tend to get that wrong).
Disclaimer: My knowledge of defense laser projects comes from research into public involvement systems. During that research I read a couple defense environmental impact statements (and 70 other ones)--standardized administrative decision documents that look at economic, environmental, and human costs to make recommendations on Federal action. You can find information about the ADL at some libraries and they are currently required, by law, to involve the public in future decisions about these programs. I don't believe they have started the operational decision process (it should still be in the testing/development phase). Interestingly, they can also be sued and stopped (or delayed) for making uninformed or irrational decisions...but the ADL and their partner projects (such as the ATL mentioned here) seem to make sense to me. The ADL was for hitting rockets in the booster stage if i recall...and it was obvious from day one that they'd go offensive if the initial research was successful.
Slashdot Mirror
Clinton AND Obama sponsored that amendment, and they both have supported it verbally. So your comments about excuses and "tech friendly" candidates remain misleading. After all, obama abstained from the final bill so he could avoid people taking it out of context--just like you're doing with Clinton. Democracy is better served if you inform people instead of misleading them.
And the reality of voting is that either one of them can sabotage any piece of legislation behind the scenes and then vote for it, knowing it will still die due to lack of votes on the floor or in conference.
besides...instead of dissing clinton, you should try convincing ron paul voters that he doesn't believe in a free internet, it's a lot more difficult and more rewarding.
Clinton was a cosponsor of the original amendment (S.AMDT.3907) and clearly cared about this issue. However, she knew the vote was going to be above 60 for both the bill and the amendment, and decided she had better things to do.
"too busy kissing babies" really isn't appropriate when Clinton was a co-sponsor of the initial bill. And for the record, Obama didn't vote on the final bill. Political decisions are complicated, but the truth is that both Obama and Clinton supported Dodd's amendment.
Obama abstained from voting on the final bill. So playing up Obama is misleading. And dissing Clinton is just as bad because politicians usually know the score ahead of time (esp. when their party controls the senate)
Your post and/or your link are biased toward Obama and don't contribute to an informed debate. Obama and Clinton both made what seems like less than perfect choices today--and that's why they are politicians.
Politics are complicated, as are sound bites.
Obama abstained from the final vote instead of voting against the overall bill. And given the margin, calling out Clinton seems pointless (since positions are usually known ahead of time).
Both clinton AND obama abstained from voting on the final bill. And Clinton didn't vote on ANY of the other votes today--possible because she wasn't there.
They are both politicians, but it is clear from the record that Obama was there. It is unclear if Clinton was there. And it is clear that Obama abstained from the final vote.
Polygraphs are done for a wide range of reasons--even city police dispatchers from CA to NC get them...as to the feds, they are ridiculously anal. Even _non-sensitive_ internships and volunteer work with federal agencies have to deal with a full FBI background, reference and credit checks--Just for being in the building. And being in a sensitive position (not secret or top secret) requires full medical disclosure of all records and a more thorough FBI check and interviews (sometimes a polygraph).
There are two or three different overall investigation programs at the federal level for security procedures, perhaps some of them are more lax (or enlightened), but I doubt polygraph is avoided for the cost. If anything, it probably produces false positives that single out minorities: "Have you ever done anything that might be considered amoral?" Right after sex practice questions. Asked to a lesbian police applicant. They told her she did "bad" on the test, made her take it three times, in an unventilated room. Noone bothered to explain to her that social anxiety and leading questions were probably impacting the results...
You misunderstand what a free market is, a free market is an unregulated market where businesses and consumers are free to do whatever they want to sell/buy products. This includes vendor lock-in, package deal requirements, purchasing groups, etc. It also includes no gov't mandated IP. /ramble
/endoframble
What you are actually implying is that you want a specific market regulation--choice of carrier for your phone. I think that IS reasonable (it's amusing too, because we used to have to rent phones from AT&T back before AT&T was broken up...oh wait...). And considering yesterday's politics article this should probably be tagged Ron Paul, because he and those like him are _against_ all market regulation protecting consumers from vendor lock-in and lock down of features--whether phone features or digital rights restrictions or filtering internet communications or net neutrality. Ron Paul's ideological stance is that regulation itself is bad and the private sector is good, and thus doesn't even match an economist's understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of "free markets."
My basic premise would be that since each of us are individuals with limited resources, we need regulation to reduce swindling (especially in financial services and insurance areas), reduce monopolistic control by large corporations (improve consumer product choices), and require standards of safety across the market (businesses cannot always agree on their own or defend against unsafe imports).
As it is, most of our services cost more and have fewer features than other 1st world countries because we are either too lazy to choose, have too little choices, or are too weak to regulate. I.e. Japan doesn't have vendor lock-in/lock-down of cell phone features. The only thing we're marginally good at is standardized safety requirements, but that gets foreign pressure(i.e., japan banned our beef imports because we dont do enough testing for mad cow).
your analysis makes the most sense, at least if it's a single person or small organization project without much market share. Any other case would open the revoker up to strong liability and fraud charges (especially if someone had contributed on the project).
Simply rescinding the right to _new_ free licenses and distribute should be allowed and plausible for a small project imho. However, if a large company did so (i.e. MS) they would still face major legal challenges and liability--it wouldn't be feasible in any case.
I'd much prefer people check out new stuff over Monopoly and Life. Though Boggle and Scrabble are hard to improve upon....but overall there are some really great games out there.
<ramble>
I wasn't intending to dis scrabble or suggesting scrabulous is better--I'm saying that Scrabulous is simply making money off of our awareness of Scrabble and also providing additional distribution of the Scrabble brand (because everyone knows that scrabulous==scrabble). I'm also making a value judgment and stating that such behavior is bad because normally companies like Hasbro are slow to adapt, and that provides opportunities for new companies and ideas to enter the marketplace. Scrabble IS a classic, but what about the new guys?
And, in this case the guys who made scrabulous did so knowing full well they could be sued or issued a take-down. In fact, I'd bet money that their business strategy from day one involved a counteroffer of profit sharing or licensing. My opinion is that we shouldn't reward that type of business strategy (and hasbro will probably reject any licensing deal or just sue them--they DID use their name).
As an fyi, I actually own scrabble and the scrabble computer game and i've even played the expansion (which is stupid beyond belief because it just adds a couple rows and more tiles). But I'd rather see bookworm adventures or platform or other small companies creating a new generation of classics. I say this because the word/puzzle game industry is going through a lot of changes and I'd like to have diversity instead of EAification.
And if you like board games, check out
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/12/09/PKRLTKGO9.DTL
or sfgames.org
</ramble>
Scrabulous props up Hasbro's brand and continues its popularity--when it hasn't innovated in years. As such, it limits the facebook market and illegally keeps out small, legitimate board and video game companies that could acquire the facebook market. It's a stolen corporate brand name that guarantees people will click on it over legit indie games.
I have no pity for Hasbro and the companies that dominate and ruin a potentially diverse and strong US board game market (as compared to europe). But I also have no pity for folks that can't innovate, are just out to make a quick buck, and have the gall to issue a press release on the BBC. please. they got their cash, they should either innovate or start working for someone that can. and they should pray they don't get sued out of their profits.
"the wiki notepad on crack"
does that mean you automagically get longer sentences?
*rimshot*
Congressional investigations are about agenda setting, political capital (getting more people on board), and/or chicken.
1) Congress can elevate issues of policy/culture into the media when conducting an "investigation." Whether about steroids or blowjobs or whether the family network can have an a la carte anti-abortion show.
2) Senators and Reps can get an ass-ton of sound bites out to interested parties--citizens, corporations, and their monied representatives (lobbyists, family groups, net neutrality folks). In this case you can get your message out to a VERY diverse set of groups...from family issues to tech issues, without pissing either group off. Goldmine.
3) Chicken. Ohhhh chicken, how I love the: "Dear corporation, if you don't a) give us more money or b) clean up your act, we will be forced to pwn you." That is not an exaggeration when it comes to regulatory action. The gov't can and does wield immense power over corporations through taking control of processes--and it is a simple risk analysis for a corp to decide whether or not to change behavior or play fast and loose. After all, the longer it takes for congress to act, the more profit you can make.
Examples of the tit for tat:
Industry blinks: Movie Ratings, Health Care reform (portions of clinton's 90s playbook was used by the medical industry), Big Pharma advertising on TV about free medicine for poor people (avoiding price controls).
Industry runs congress over: Ummm, automakers, tobacco
Congress runs em over: safety, but mainly because competitive industry players actually want gov't regulation on product safety issues.
Congress blinks: MPG standards (we could have been at 50 mpg in 2000-2002, according to the auto industry), anything involving financial services
Note that congress never "wins," they just change the rules of the game by cutting off a profit option and their actions are rarely draconian because many of them are concerned about jobs lost in their state.
Is this legit, or is their company funded by folks trying to undercut OLPC? Either way, vaporware is a very good strategy to get folks not to buy OLPC and to slow down the development (heh) of that market.
I haven't had my coffee, but this sort of announcement is also great cover for players (intel?, ms?) who want more time to boost alternatives to OLPC with more vendor/tech lock-in. Buyers/countries will consider waiting even longer to make a decision (the buyers aren't in a rush) based on lower price and new tech expectations.
Some asshat in the whitehouse decided not to send congress any copies this year. now THAT would be hilarious...just order the GPO not to print it and thus force congress to pay for much more inefficient one-off copies while claiming a green-friendly whitehouse. I should note that I don't think the GPO would have done it as an administrative action--that would be blatantly smacking the reps/senators around...and why would you blatantly do that to the folks that approve your budget?
They should have just polled congress every year and cut their production accordingly once they went digital. Cause I know it's been digital for a while.
The actual TSA guidelines said it was _optional_ for the longest time (not sure after the shoe-bomber), but the same regulations stated you are required to follow the directions of TSA folks -- they had absolutely no incentive to let you pass without removing shoes.
If you aren't having to remove your shoes now then either a new regulation or new incentive was put in place. Maybe there is a speed incentive these days or maybe the gov't changed the regulation to be based on threat level...or maybe the airport gained some leverage over the process.
Either way, anyone that creates an "optional" enforcement regulation is just asking for misuse and/or clueless about management. it's about time they cleaned that one up. my personal fave is flying with dinnerware after one christmas...all i had was a carryon bag and my parents gave me tableware for christmas. There were no steak knives, so TSA let it through.
-b
Basically facebook is already two-faced, so their participation in this seems like it could be a mission to slow/derail/control development. Yesterday's article on facebook banning those who use aggregators from their site (with user permission) is just one example of where facebook does one thing and demands another.
In addition to one-sided policies, facebook has a feature system that requires you to give full access to any application any of your friends is using/spamming you with--just to receive their message. Every time I get a message on that site I am required to add the application and check 4 boxes giving full access to my information (there is no middle road) in order to read the message.
Facebook's privacy functionality is completely unacceptable to me but seems okay with the huge numbers of folks adding 3 feet of application on their profiles. Sadly, I suspect facebook is not a fad, but instead a new and more obnoxious myspace with even less privacy controls--and a poorer track record.
oops. that was a rant.
------------
"To say that the backdrop is 'recession like' is akin to an obstetrician telling a woman that she is 'sort of pregnant'" -- Merrill Lynch
A decent lawyer for non-citizens needs to denote the difference between a suitcase and a laptop--a suitcase can contain physical objects that may be dangerous or damaging to "commerce" or security. A laptop only contains information, information that under current law can be transferred across our borders in encrypted format. Without similar laws and right to inspect-or-refuse for encrypted communication, there is little rationale for mandating inspect-or-refuse at borders.
imho, privacy needs to expand in the information age, not shrink to include red-scare ideas of the right to inspect everything we do and track all our communications over some vague threat.
A US citizen cannot be compelled to produce a password for decryption, and I do not believe they can be sent away under existing law for possessing legal technology (it may require a suit or a lawyer to enforce your right to enter though).
Most policy options to attempt to set up such a system would fail on numerous legal grounds or leave big enough loopholes (you can always upload your encrypted data and wipe your drive) that a border-targeted reduction of civil liberties would not be valid from a security or commerce clause standpoint. Not to mention that it would fail from a political capital standpoint--you are selectively targeting international business folks and any false positives forcing US citizens or visitors to relinquish (or mail back) laptops would be extremely damaging.
My guess is that this policy gets challenged or changed very quickly.
Last I checked, facebook does the same thing and hassles you to give facebook your email passwords so that it can log in and then invite/find people. And in general facebook makes it unnecessarily difficult to search for friends by email--thereby encouraging you to just give them full access.
Unbalanced TOS aside, facebook isn't going to start banning all wiki users (I don't think), instead they're going to have to keep those sites from aggregating. Of course, someone could probably just create a facebook app that does the same thing...facebook already gives an ass-ton of info away. I mean, I have to click affirmative on 4 info-sharing checkboxes just to play a pirate game???
Turbine's Ascheron's Call 2 used MS chat (text) server technology and it didn't scale beyond several hundred users (a friggin chat server!). Chat and in-game action text was delayed, non-functional, or unreliable for several months. Turbine lost lots of subscribers and eventually left their MS "relationship." Sure turbine had huge issues with lack of content, but I wonder if the early release and MS technology requirements weren't MS mandates. I liked the AC2 franchise and now it's dead :/
But considering the quality of Lord of the Rings Online, either Turbine became a different company or moving away from MS improved their operations.
any sort of server side vulnerability means your passwords and destinations can be acquired by law enforcement with a court order (you cannot otherwise be compelled to give them). However, the fact that they are saying _all_ client data gets encrypted is important, because it means they cant issue subpoenas to other sites based on link information stored on the server.
not that i'm paranoid, but that information request could become a trivial law enforcement action in the near future...and we already have enough ways to easily add on to charges and intimidate people into plea-bargaing or pleaing guilty.
And no i'm not paranoid, I just know that it is already perfectly legal and regular practice for law enforcement to lie to suspects to get them to confess (even innocent ones)--so a widely-known, secure system is essential for peace of mind _and_ sound legal advice from techno-averse public defenders. Lying about evidence works great with small time crooks and emotionally traumatized people, but it would also work great with folks browsing the interwebs.
anyway, undercover work is fine but as long as dishonesty is a sanctioned component of the legal process, no one should regularly think the police have a better memory of your daily events than you do. and yeah, martin tankleff (the kid jailed for 17 years for killing his parents) is an extreme example, but power available is power abused.
It might help if people didn't confuse selective enforcement and racists laws with real crime numbers. Crime and prison numbers are complicated issues, but your example is a canard that ignores class issues--the toll of an enforcement system that targets ghetto kids getting high (frequently in public for various socio-economic reasons), provides them with a crappy defense (and/or has police lie to them to plea bargain a lesser sentence), and then sends them down a completely different life route than the middle class kids doing blow two blocks over.
The system is complicated, violent, and heartless--you shouldn't oversimplify it.
"It might help if young black men stopped committing crime at 10x the national average. "
And I am not quote hunting, but it IS legal for police to lie to suspects to solicit confessions. It is statistically proven that poor people have poorer and minorities have worse results in court for the same crime. And it is anecdotally acknowledged (recently by the supreme court) that sentencing (and thus life options) for crack is unusually high...in fact sentencing for marijuana used to be very high for similar reasons, but send a few kids of state senators to jail for a while and things start to change.
The administrative decision process (read: the execution of existing law..under NEPA) will probably approve it as the most environmentally friendly (human and physical) alternative when compared with traditional bombing. They are required to discuss, document, and publish that decision (and response to criticism) before reaching a decision/deploying the tech. Once they do, they will request funding for operations because it _may_ be cost effective for deployment based on lower production costs over time, dual use savings, and savings from less area damage (both economic and political). However, I don't think this will see widespread deployment at the tank level for a very long time--unless that tank is in the city it would probably be more cost effective to bomb it.
I should note that the decision process in our government/political system will not account for systemic costs (additional warfare acceptance due to less collateral damage) and they will probably gloss over some of the environmental issues of the laser system (because long term effects are only partially understood). I don't know what the final analysis will be, I'm just guessing, but you really don't want post-war environmental problems...for both humanitarian and image reasons (sadly, we tend to get that wrong).
Disclaimer: My knowledge of defense laser projects comes from research into public involvement systems. During that research I read a couple defense environmental impact statements (and 70 other ones)--standardized administrative decision documents that look at economic, environmental, and human costs to make recommendations on Federal action. You can find information about the ADL at some libraries and they are currently required, by law, to involve the public in future decisions about these programs. I don't believe they have started the operational decision process (it should still be in the testing/development phase). Interestingly, they can also be sued and stopped (or delayed) for making uninformed or irrational decisions...but the ADL and their partner projects (such as the ATL mentioned here) seem to make sense to me. The ADL was for hitting rockets in the booster stage if i recall...and it was obvious from day one that they'd go offensive if the initial research was successful.
best,
-b, m.p.a.