Government officials should be held accountable to the laws they create and enforce. This is *ESPECIALLY* true when the law is a bad law that blocks people from doing things that are completely reasonable. That helps ensure that "they" feel the same pain as "us," which in turn furthers the cause of getting the bad laws corrected.
One law for them and another for us is a basic ingredient of tyranny.
The motto is not "Do no evil," it is "Don't BE evil." That is important because a person can do a little evil now and then but still not really BE evil so long as he feels appropriately guilty afterwords (and tries to make up for it or not to continue doing it).
Not that this matters, of course. "Evil" is an ambiguous word, especially in an economic environment where everyone *must* compete over scarce resources.
What, you think being a programmer somehow cures someone of greed?
Just as businesses face real incentives to get as much work out of employees for as little money as possible, employees face real incentives to get as much money out of employers while contributing as few hours as possible.
While there are some people who are satisfied with "enough," it is human nature to want more.
The wealthy members of every nation are, naturally, united in their desire to remain wealthy. The introduction of globally-enforced artificial scarcity appears to be a great way of doing that. It isn't like the wealthy members of EU would rather see ACTA vanish, but are bowing their heads in submission to America. They are happily jumping at the chance to enter into such an agreement, because it directly benefits them. Or so they think.
Such oppression will only fan the flames of rebellion, and law enforcement will always have limits.
In theory, a user could upload all the maps to the car's computer while at home, after downloading them via an encrypted connection from a reputable source. That would need to be done maybe once a year or even less often.
Then the cars wouldn't need a wireless connection at all. They just run off of stored maps, and adapt and re-route when unexpected road closures or what-not are encountered, just like a human would.
In theory.
In practice, the cars will have wireless connections that do all kinds of routing, ostensibly to offer superior proactive route planning and event adaptation. Such a feature will allow businesses to easily harvest valuable marketing data, transmit valuable location-specific advertising, and would also grant authorities superior monitoring capacity and (best of all) the ability to remotely lock you in your car and make it drive right to the station.
All self-driving cars will have this...it will be mandated by law...and yes it will be sadly insecure and frequently hacked by criminals (of both varieties...self-employed and government-employed).
Thank you for submitting your petition. Bribery is a serious offence which threatens the stability of governance, and as such we will not tolerate this behavior and will of course prosecute anyone who is caught engaging in it. However, based on our preliminary investigation, there is not enough evidence to merit a case.
Campaign contribution is a means by which one can legally support the spreading of information about one's political ideals. In and of itself, this is not bribery. Furthermore, it is reasonable to expect a politician who represents himself as an advocate for a specific political party to openly support, and take action that directly supports, the stated political positions of that party.
Chris Dodd observed that some candidates deviated from their party's stated position. Further, he observed this after having made significant campaign contributions to the party in question. While his words may have been ill-chosen, the mere expression of frustration over such position-switching is not sufficient grounds for a bribery charge.
Thank you for your interest in governance, and please continue to share your concerns with us, whatever they may be.
The value of a unit of work entirely depends upon the perceptions of the people who benefit from said work. As such, it varies with many variables, including location, culture, material availability, labor availability, alternative benefit availability, time, etc.
It is very easy to deem that someone else is overpaid because of the low value their output has to you personally, without taking into account the high value it may have to the people who are actually paying for it. The opposite is also true.
The matter is further complicated by the possibility of economic predation, where people can position themselves so as to be able to force the extraction of pay that is way beyond the value provided in anyone's perception. Though this is the most visible and most hated issue driving income inequality, the other variables contribute just as significantly to the imbalances (or the incorrect perception thereof).
If a man has a sex-change operation and becomes a woman, can she then marry a man? Or is that still homosexual? And if she can't marry a man because genetically she is still a man...does that mean she can marry a woman?
Or are post-ops only allowed to marry complementary post-ops?
And who can hermaphrodites marry? Anyone but other hermaphrodites?
Corporate domination of politics has made America effectively a Fascist nation.
In this particular case, one corporation happens to be lobbying in favor of a very important civil liberty....but ideally Microsoft would have no power to do this and ordinary people would be championing this cause through voting and letter-writing campaigns and so on.
And it is a sad state of affairs when only corporate pressure can bring the government to protect freedoms as basic and important as marriage.
Corporations should not dominate politics. This doesn't change the fact that sometimes some corporate interests actually align with the greater good of the people. This temporary alliance in no way changes the fact that corporations should not be treated as people.
If, as you say, civil unions are just as good as marriage, then why are you so adamant in insisting that homosexuals can have one but not the other?
Why don't we just abolish one completely and make the other available to both straight and gay couples? That sure would make things simple. And fair.
I am sorry that you find homosexual marriage threatening. But that doesn't change the fact that homosexuals are real people, who really fall in love, and really want all the legal/social benefits that marriage provides. You must share the world with homosexuals, whether you want to or not, and passing laws that deny important freedoms to your neighbors is flat out unjust.
I am curious....are you an American? And if so, do you actually believe that freedom for everyone is a core American value? It amazes me how many Americans, some of whom would even consider themselves patriots, work hard to deny freedom to their neighbors.
It doesn't matter how immature Anonymous is being, nor how their efforts are non-productive or even counter-productive. None of that matters to them because it is simply human nature to strike when angered.
Arrest every single member of Anonymous, and another group will spring up to do the same thing. This is because their behavior is a direct consequence of their situation: real human beings perceive that they are the victims of harmful and unjust laws. So, they will do what history has demonstrated again-and-again to be human nature: strike the oppressor.
This response was entirely predictable. And as the government passes even more restrictive laws, and becomes even more draconian in their enforcement, more and more people will get pissed off and will fight back.
Some will fight back through proper political channels. Most feel too politically disempowered for that, so they will fight back more directly. More enforcement will only add fuel to this fire.
Unless the authorities capitulate, things will only get worse. Many innocent people will get caught in the middle and harmed, but that won't inhibit the "revolutionaries" for a second. They will fight until they are satisfied. Count on it.
All of this has happened before and this will all happen again. Those who remember history are doomed to watch it be repeated.
Such distribution sites DO exist for music (the iTunes store, Amazon.com, and others). You even get some choices for the format, and non-DRM-encumbered MP3 is an option.
Such sites don't exist for movies mainly because the industry controllers don't want movies to ever exist in a non-DRM-encumbered format. They don't mind streaming movies so long as the data gets deleted as it is being watched...though even then they refuse to relax their grip on the copyrights, each studio requiring special contracts with any provider rather than just subletting to whoever is willing to pay.
By maintaining control of a desired commodity, they can make more money in the long run. So we have the eternal push for copyrights that never expire and draconian enforcement measures....paid for by us...to protect them.
It is not fair, just, or even reasonable. But artificial scarcity rarely is.
This will absolutely be abused, starting on day 1. In fact, the abusive possibilities are far more likely to be the driving reason for development of this tech. The line about not wanting to frisk arrestees is just PR to win hearts and minds.
People who have permits to carry concealed weapons can expect to be needlessly hassled and targeted more than they already are.
Terrorists! If all (or most) passengers were armed, there is no way a terrorist would be able to hijack the plane. In fact, I think, for safety, we should require all adult passengers to carry loaded guns when they board the plane. We can keep a supply of rentals at every airport.
Ok, I jest. I agree that passengers shouldn't have guns on the plane. However, the TSA's methods of preventing that are way beyond reasonable. We can keep safety within acceptable tolerances without sexually assaulting passengers and giving them cancer.
Like, locking the cabin door. That change did more for airplane security than the entire TSA. Metal detectors are sufficient for finding guns or knives, and sniffer dogs are fine for finding bombs. These levels of security would be more effective than what the TSA does now, far less intrusive/harmful to the passengers, and would save the taxpayers a fortune.
But they wouldn't make Michael Chertoff even richer than he already is, so they are not acceptable.
"What do all men with power want? More power." -- The Oracle (from The Matrix).
Ideas are the most valuable commodity on the market today. Maintaining and increasing wealth is a simple matter of maintaining and increasing control over that which is valuable.
There is no principle of justice or reason which will not be trampled underfoot in the name of increasing the power of the aristocracy.
The only way to get the aristocracy to treat the rest of the world reasonably is to force them to do so. Appeals to fairness or practicality will not make them budge. The rest of us have a numbers advantage but that only helps when we are organized enough to use it. If you want reasonable copyright terms, you will have to force their hand. Count on it.
Sony released audio CDs that put rootkits on consumer's PCs, without informing them. After being sued for this, they did it again. They also failed their due diligence on security, causing their entire client base to have private data stolen. Combine this with their habit of selling features and then subsequently removing those very features, and I don't understand why *anybody* buys products form Sony.
Despite what the article says, a three machine activation limit for a game is NOT FAIR. It is an utterly unreasonable restriction of my use of the product, and I refuse to buy games that have such a restriction.
Of course, I don't pirate them either (out of a near OCD-level desire to keep my nose clean), I just buy other games instead.
I won't touch Ubisoft's products with a ten foot pole.
Many pirates pirate because of DRM. Some also pirate out of an interest in trying the game before buying it, some because they feel entitled to their license even though the CD got scratched, some because they have no disposable income of their own (or no room in their budget for it), and some out of sheer sloth/greed.
But to say that DRM doesn't create pirates is to completely fail to grasp some of the most basic principles that drive human behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
Government officials should be held accountable to the laws they create and enforce. This is *ESPECIALLY* true when the law is a bad law that blocks people from doing things that are completely reasonable. That helps ensure that "they" feel the same pain as "us," which in turn furthers the cause of getting the bad laws corrected.
One law for them and another for us is a basic ingredient of tyranny.
The motto is not "Do no evil," it is "Don't BE evil." That is important because a person can do a little evil now and then but still not really BE evil so long as he feels appropriately guilty afterwords (and tries to make up for it or not to continue doing it).
Not that this matters, of course. "Evil" is an ambiguous word, especially in an economic environment where everyone *must* compete over scarce resources.
What, you think being a programmer somehow cures someone of greed?
Just as businesses face real incentives to get as much work out of employees for as little money as possible, employees face real incentives to get as much money out of employers while contributing as few hours as possible.
While there are some people who are satisfied with "enough," it is human nature to want more.
The wealthy members of every nation are, naturally, united in their desire to remain wealthy. The introduction of globally-enforced artificial scarcity appears to be a great way of doing that. It isn't like the wealthy members of EU would rather see ACTA vanish, but are bowing their heads in submission to America. They are happily jumping at the chance to enter into such an agreement, because it directly benefits them. Or so they think.
Such oppression will only fan the flames of rebellion, and law enforcement will always have limits.
In theory, a user could upload all the maps to the car's computer while at home, after downloading them via an encrypted connection from a reputable source. That would need to be done maybe once a year or even less often.
Then the cars wouldn't need a wireless connection at all. They just run off of stored maps, and adapt and re-route when unexpected road closures or what-not are encountered, just like a human would.
In theory.
In practice, the cars will have wireless connections that do all kinds of routing, ostensibly to offer superior proactive route planning and event adaptation. Such a feature will allow businesses to easily harvest valuable marketing data, transmit valuable location-specific advertising, and would also grant authorities superior monitoring capacity and (best of all) the ability to remotely lock you in your car and make it drive right to the station.
All self-driving cars will have this...it will be mandated by law...and yes it will be sadly insecure and frequently hacked by criminals (of both varieties...self-employed and government-employed).
Thank you for submitting your petition. Bribery is a serious offence which threatens the stability of governance, and as such we will not tolerate this behavior and will of course prosecute anyone who is caught engaging in it. However, based on our preliminary investigation, there is not enough evidence to merit a case.
Campaign contribution is a means by which one can legally support the spreading of information about one's political ideals. In and of itself, this is not bribery. Furthermore, it is reasonable to expect a politician who represents himself as an advocate for a specific political party to openly support, and take action that directly supports, the stated political positions of that party.
Chris Dodd observed that some candidates deviated from their party's stated position. Further, he observed this after having made significant campaign contributions to the party in question. While his words may have been ill-chosen, the mere expression of frustration over such position-switching is not sufficient grounds for a bribery charge.
Thank you for your interest in governance, and please continue to share your concerns with us, whatever they may be.
The value of a unit of work entirely depends upon the perceptions of the people who benefit from said work. As such, it varies with many variables, including location, culture, material availability, labor availability, alternative benefit availability, time, etc.
It is very easy to deem that someone else is overpaid because of the low value their output has to you personally, without taking into account the high value it may have to the people who are actually paying for it. The opposite is also true.
The matter is further complicated by the possibility of economic predation, where people can position themselves so as to be able to force the extraction of pay that is way beyond the value provided in anyone's perception. Though this is the most visible and most hated issue driving income inequality, the other variables contribute just as significantly to the imbalances (or the incorrect perception thereof).
You cannot build a functional combustion engine out of any substance malleable enough to be usable by a cheap consumer-grade 3d printer.
Cars require metal parts, and metal parts require more powerful equipment to forge.
If a man has a sex-change operation and becomes a woman, can she then marry a man? Or is that still homosexual?
And if she can't marry a man because genetically she is still a man...does that mean she can marry a woman?
Or are post-ops only allowed to marry complementary post-ops?
And who can hermaphrodites marry? Anyone but other hermaphrodites?
Corporate domination of politics has made America effectively a Fascist nation.
In this particular case, one corporation happens to be lobbying in favor of a very important civil liberty....but ideally Microsoft would have no power to do this and ordinary people would be championing this cause through voting and letter-writing campaigns and so on.
And it is a sad state of affairs when only corporate pressure can bring the government to protect freedoms as basic and important as marriage.
Corporations should not dominate politics. This doesn't change the fact that sometimes some corporate interests actually align with the greater good of the people. This temporary alliance in no way changes the fact that corporations should not be treated as people.
If, as you say, civil unions are just as good as marriage, then why are you so adamant in insisting that homosexuals can have one but not the other?
Why don't we just abolish one completely and make the other available to both straight and gay couples? That sure would make things simple. And fair.
I am sorry that you find homosexual marriage threatening. But that doesn't change the fact that homosexuals are real people, who really fall in love, and really want all the legal/social benefits that marriage provides. You must share the world with homosexuals, whether you want to or not, and passing laws that deny important freedoms to your neighbors is flat out unjust.
I am curious....are you an American? And if so, do you actually believe that freedom for everyone is a core American value? It amazes me how many Americans, some of whom would even consider themselves patriots, work hard to deny freedom to their neighbors.
It doesn't matter how immature Anonymous is being, nor how their efforts are non-productive or even counter-productive. None of that matters to them because it is simply human nature to strike when angered.
Arrest every single member of Anonymous, and another group will spring up to do the same thing. This is because their behavior is a direct consequence of their situation: real human beings perceive that they are the victims of harmful and unjust laws. So, they will do what history has demonstrated again-and-again to be human nature: strike the oppressor.
This response was entirely predictable. And as the government passes even more restrictive laws, and becomes even more draconian in their enforcement, more and more people will get pissed off and will fight back.
Some will fight back through proper political channels. Most feel too politically disempowered for that, so they will fight back more directly. More enforcement will only add fuel to this fire.
Unless the authorities capitulate, things will only get worse. Many innocent people will get caught in the middle and harmed, but that won't inhibit the "revolutionaries" for a second. They will fight until they are satisfied. Count on it.
All of this has happened before and this will all happen again. Those who remember history are doomed to watch it be repeated.
Such distribution sites DO exist for music (the iTunes store, Amazon.com, and others). You even get some choices for the format, and non-DRM-encumbered MP3 is an option.
Such sites don't exist for movies mainly because the industry controllers don't want movies to ever exist in a non-DRM-encumbered format. They don't mind streaming movies so long as the data gets deleted as it is being watched...though even then they refuse to relax their grip on the copyrights, each studio requiring special contracts with any provider rather than just subletting to whoever is willing to pay.
By maintaining control of a desired commodity, they can make more money in the long run. So we have the eternal push for copyrights that never expire and draconian enforcement measures....paid for by us...to protect them.
It is not fair, just, or even reasonable. But artificial scarcity rarely is.
Not
paying
attention?
This will absolutely be abused, starting on day 1. In fact, the abusive possibilities are far more likely to be the driving reason for development of this tech. The line about not wanting to frisk arrestees is just PR to win hearts and minds.
People who have permits to carry concealed weapons can expect to be needlessly hassled and targeted more than they already are.
Terrorists! If all (or most) passengers were armed, there is no way a terrorist would be able to hijack the plane. In fact, I think, for safety, we should require all adult passengers to carry loaded guns when they board the plane. We can keep a supply of rentals at every airport.
Ok, I jest. I agree that passengers shouldn't have guns on the plane. However, the TSA's methods of preventing that are way beyond reasonable. We can keep safety within acceptable tolerances without sexually assaulting passengers and giving them cancer.
Like, locking the cabin door. That change did more for airplane security than the entire TSA. Metal detectors are sufficient for finding guns or knives, and sniffer dogs are fine for finding bombs. These levels of security would be more effective than what the TSA does now, far less intrusive/harmful to the passengers, and would save the taxpayers a fortune.
But they wouldn't make Michael Chertoff even richer than he already is, so they are not acceptable.
"What do all men with power want? More power." -- The Oracle (from The Matrix).
Ideas are the most valuable commodity on the market today. Maintaining and increasing wealth is a simple matter of maintaining and increasing control over that which is valuable.
There is no principle of justice or reason which will not be trampled underfoot in the name of increasing the power of the aristocracy.
The only way to get the aristocracy to treat the rest of the world reasonably is to force them to do so. Appeals to fairness or practicality will not make them budge. The rest of us have a numbers advantage but that only helps when we are organized enough to use it. If you want reasonable copyright terms, you will have to force their hand. Count on it.
When proposed legislation pisses off enough powerful corporate executives, awareness-raising is easy!
It turns out eternal vigilance is actually pretty hard.
Sony released audio CDs that put rootkits on consumer's PCs, without informing them. After being sued for this, they did it again. They also failed their due diligence on security, causing their entire client base to have private data stolen. Combine this with their habit of selling features and then subsequently removing those very features, and I don't understand why *anybody* buys products form Sony.
I will never trust Sony again.
Steam is notorious for not posting the 3rd party DRM disclosure until a good month or two after the game's release.
In some cases, they mention the DRM under "system requirements" instead, and never post it in the usual place.
Despite what the article says, a three machine activation limit for a game is NOT FAIR. It is an utterly unreasonable restriction of my use of the product, and I refuse to buy games that have such a restriction.
Of course, I don't pirate them either (out of a near OCD-level desire to keep my nose clean), I just buy other games instead.
I won't touch Ubisoft's products with a ten foot pole.
Many pirates pirate because of DRM. Some also pirate out of an interest in trying the game before buying it, some because they feel entitled to their license even though the CD got scratched, some because they have no disposable income of their own (or no room in their budget for it), and some out of sheer sloth/greed.
But to say that DRM doesn't create pirates is to completely fail to grasp some of the most basic principles that drive human behavior.
All these posts on Slashdot about how bad the bill is really made a difference!