Do you see why Yahoo HK was evil, but Google was not? Hong Kong is a seperate government than mainland China. Yahoo in Hong Kong had no legal requirement to cooperate with mainland Chinese police (first evil deed). Then, Yahoo stated that they will comply with local "customs".
Why do you say that Hong Kong is a separate government than mainland China? For historical and political reasons, HK is (for a while) treated a little differently, but since 1999(?) it's a part of the People's Republic of China. Yahoo HK was just abiding by the law. And how is "local customs" different from US companies who turned data over to the US govt after 9/11 even though there was no valid legal compulsion?
Not that I know what the answer is. If you're going to be "law-abiding", you're probably going to screw people over at the behest of whatever local regime.
Once you send it out, that copy of the data belongs to the ISP, not you.
Ah, but is that what a reasonable person would believe? Let's ask 10 email users. Q. When you send out an email, do the contents belong to your ISP? Bet all 10 answer, "what are you, nuts?"
When I got an FCC radio license, one of the things I was supposed to know was that if a communication was not sent to me or parties that I was an agent for, I was not allowed to disclose it. The law didn't make an exception for disclosure to government employees. And that was with a technology that everybody understood could be overheard by anyone who was listening. Should email be different?
If I can hack the software, I can certainly modify it to record one thing and print out another.
Of course. That's why you do a manual recount of a randomly selected 5% of the precincts. To check whether it comes out the same as the machines' count.
Suppose there is a stray mark in a box, and the reader just ignores it and accepts the ballot. Then in two weeks people are arguing over whether it was intended to be a vote.
Obviously there's going to be some cutoff point where the mark is so slight that it isn't counted. But here, voters are given black fiber-tip pens to make their marks with, not 3H pencils. In my experience the pens are pretty binary. Either you make a mark that's obvious and heavy, or you don't make any mark at all, it would be pretty hard to make a faint mark. Maybe if you used an old, dried-out pen, but I think the pens are fresh every election (a couple of boxes of new pens per polling place is a trivial expense). While I haven't had an opportunity to experiment, I suspect that any stray marks that were sufficient to make the vote ambiguous would also be sufficient to make the machine reject the ballot.
Some number of random precincts (3%?) are recounted by hand each election, as a check. I haven't heard of any problems with discrepancies, though we haven't had an occasion where the Presidency depended on it either.
they can only be hand-read in the sense that the famous "hanging chad" ballots in Florida could.
I can see you've never actually used a mark-sense voting machine. I have.
What happens when somebody votes for two people for one office by mistake, but leaves the next spot blank. Now you have arguments about which dot was meant for which line.
Wrong. The voter sticks the filled-out paper ballot into the machine, and the machine beeps and spits it back out. Invalid, try again.
The advantage of a computer-generated ballot is that it is validated - the computer ensures that the voter did not cast an illegal vote, therefore you don't have to guess intent once the ballot is filed.
What's important is not that the computer generates the ballot, but that it validates the ballot. The mark-sense reader does that. It is programmed so it won't accept a ballot with "illegal" choices.
Most P2P programs download chunks of a song, not the whole song (usually unless there's only one source) from many different computers. So, she's not even technically giving the whole song, just chunks of it.
I'd expect that uploading a chunk is pretty much the same as uploading the whole thing, from a copyright perspective. A chunk is still a copy of (part of) the copyrighted work.
I can't help wondering, though, where he got/how he maintained a supply of 5 1/4" floppies.
5 1/4"? It's not that hard to find even 8". Lots of places have 5 1/4". Hmm.. maybe I ought to buy a couple of boxes of 8" for my DisplayWriter. Should be about $10/box on eBay.
The difference is that embracing pacifism not only won't get you a violence-free world, it's guaranteed to fail. If no one opposes the violent, the violent win. Period.
So are you saying that the only way to stop Bush and Cheney is to kill them?
You do realize that there are other means of opposition besides violence, even when the people you are opposing are violent, don't you?
Would you really want to live in a world so devoid of passion, original thought, and striving for change that no one is ever willing to put their life on the line for what they believe?
Nope. What I want is to live in a world where no one is willing to put someone else's life on the line.
I personally would prefer war to simply become precise and high-tech enough that the civilians don't suffer so much
Well, now we have precision guided weapons that militaries use to blow up apartment blocks and passenger trains. High tech is fun, but don't kid yourself about it being used in war to prevent suffering, it's used to cause more suffering. And that's pretty much the history of high tech, from the invention of the machine gun (which would make war too terrible to conduct) to nuclear weapons (which would make war too terrible to conduct).
Even in cooperatives power is generally doled out according to who put in the most capital... The folks fronting the money get to make the decisions.
Not true, in my experience. Most coops are one member, one vote. The member with $10 on deposit at the credit union has one vote, same as the member with $10M on deposit. The small-business worker cooperatives I am familiar with are one worker, one vote. IIRC, mutual insurance companies, farm cooperatives, and consumer cooperatives are the same. If they produce a return (rebate) to members, the amount is usually proportional to the amount spent (invested), but that's a different issue than governance.
Any sort of business endeavor that is organized differently is doomed to failure.
Which is why there no longer are any mutual insurance companies, credit unions, farm coops, worker coops, or consumer coops, some of which have been in existance for over 100 years.
if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed.
I think first we need to take care of the people who funded the Nicaraguan Contra terrorists. We even know where to find most of them. A lot of them are still in Washington, so start by taking that city out.
Or do you insist on limiting this to attacking one religious group?
This terrorism thing is a real can of worms. Bomb a building in NYC and you're a terrorist. Bomb a building in Tripoli (where the USA killed Khadafy's baby) and you're a hero. Bomb an apartment block in Lebanon and you're exercising self-defense. Machinegun a pregnant woman on her way to the hospital, and you're just a jumpy soldier in Bagdahd, oops sorry about that. Can't tell the difference between terrorists, covert ops, liberators, occupiers, freedom fighters without a scorecard.
All of the ISPs, by law, must keep your web activity and email on file so that the feds can come and look through it.
Cite? Not in the USA, I think (though many of them probably do, to prove what compliant citizens they are). I believe that may now be true in the EU, and the feds are jealous of their EU counterparts, but so far all they can do is ask nicely ("It's up to you, you can help the enemy terrorist paedophiles, or you can help us. Entirely up to you. Did we mention that we have a big secret budget to investigate accomplices of the money laundering pornographic terrorists and executives who have played games with the books?") Or subpoena whatever records you do happen to have kept.
Maybe next year, if the feds aren't too preoccupied avoiding their own impeachment/inditement.
Most of the issues each and every one here is talking about is manners. Notice that the man that video taped the officer complained about the officer being rude.
Well, manners, and abuse of authority. But manners do go a long way to smoothing things. With good manners, the guy probably wouldn't have made the complaint, and the cops wouldn't have retaliated.
Of course the crap that most cops have to put up with day in and day out is just nuts.
No argument on that one. But my point is, even if the cop has had a crappy day, it's his job to be polite. And that doesn't excuse violations of the law on the part of a cop any more than it excuses them on the part of anyone else.
In this case the man's son was involved with the mugging!
Yep. But that doesn't excuse the cops. They just wanted to hassle the guy because he complained about them, and actually had evidence in hand.
If you constantly complain then you may be singled out as the problem, and might even lose your job. If you don't lose your job, then your colleagues may single you out and start harrassing you. Because, it won't be that hard to find out who filed the complaint.
True. I think what you just said was "in police work, personal benefit often is more important than the sworn duty to uphold the law." Do you suppose that makes citizens more respectful of "your colleagues"?
It's an absurd metaphor to compare a police officer to a casino dealer. Really you are comparing police officers to casino dealers?
Of course not. A casino dealer handles money, so he is watched every minute. A police officer is dealing with life/death, so they shouldn't be watched anywhere near as much. Right?
My brother in law is a police officer... My brother in law dislikes bad cops as much or more than you and I do.
That's good to hear. When he sees a bad cop violate the law, does he arrest them? (Poor second choice: Does he report them to Internal Affairs?) An acquaintance of mine who is married to a cop once said, "I've never seen anyone break as many laws as cops". Of course, I took that to mean mostly "trivial" laws, the sort that a cop will overlook unless he's looking to hassle you.
If your brother in law looks the other way, then he is part of the problem.
Personally, I don't think a cop should be monitored on the job any more than say, a casino dealer. Even though a cop is dealing with life, death, and the public good, and a dealer is just dealing with money. I've heard that dealers are watched every minute, but I don't know if that's true.
I was under the impression that what hiring a lawyer "on contingency" meant was that they got their fee out of the winnings...
Their fee, yes. But the lawyer's fee is not the only expense in a court case, although it is a major one. There are other costs, such as filing fees (paid to the court), fees for copies of documents, payments to doctors (not for treatment, but to document my injuries.. it was a personal injury case) and photographers. The lawyer paid the parties involved, and passed the cost on to me. As far as I know, that's standard procedure, unlike a class action suit, where the lawyer absorbs the expenses. But I could be wrong, I just know that I paid the expenses in that case.
In the UK, it is possible to purchase insurance against losing. If you win, then the insurance fee is added to the legal fees which are claimed from the defendant.
I don't believe anything like this is available in the USA, at least not that I've heard of. Even recouping legal fees is not a sure thing, the judge may grant that, but also might not.
Actually as a plaintiff in a civil suit it doesn't cost you anything to bring forth a case (provided you use an attorney and you don't fire them). This is because if the attorney is willing to represent you, they assume all costs and expenses expecting a return when a verdict is reached in the plaintiffs favor.
Funny, my recollection is that when I was a plaintiff with a lawyer on contingency, I had to pay all the fees up front. You surely don't think the lawyer is going to take a chance on getting stiffed on the fees, do you?
And that's assuming you can find a lawyer who's willing to take the case on contingency. Who figures the payoff will be large enough so that his 1/3 will pay him well. And who is pretty certain that he will win the case.
Here we have an uncertain case. Can he prove (50%+1) that the MPAA was malicious or reckless? That they had no evidence? And even if he does, what monetary damages have you suffered that they will have to repay? Can he prove it was so egregious that triple damages should be awarded? No, I think you'll be paying his hourly $200, and he'll want a deposit up front (lawyers know how to make sure that they get paid).
Of course, it's unclear that he's broken any law; even if it's found to be unconstitutional and circumvents FISA, then it's unclear that anything could be done about it.
Well, I'd agree that not anything is likely to be done, most prosecutors are too gutless to insist that high elected officials have to obey the laws. But do note that there are criminal penalties (5 years in jail) for violating FISA. And I think inducing someone else to commit a felony is probably a crime in its own right.
Instead of just "Record the dates..." you might also try the "record the call"
But check first to make sure that recording the call is legal in your jurisdiction. Local laws vary. In some places, either party can record the call, in some places the consent of both parties is necessary. Some places, you need to announce that the call is being recorded (verbally or with a beeptone). And some places, that recorded message saying "calls may be monitored for quality assurance" can be taken as explicit permission;->
8 or 10 years ago we didn't have the wars of today, road side bombs, remote detonation with cell phones, and all other types of devices.
Yeah, "we" had a lot of that stuff (the Mossad was the world expert on killing people via cell phone), it's just that at that time the US hadn't attacked and occupied Iraq, so those things mostly weren't happening to Americans.
Consider it a neccesary evil of sorts. Not our fault, just a result of terror.
You're right that it's an evil, but it's not necessary. You don't think "bad people" can get copies of the data sheets? That's stupid. I can think of half a dozen ways to get the info, and you probably can too. Besides, you can't build a bomb from a chip data sheet. And on the other side of the coin, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the information will be used only for export control. Or, as far as that goes, even for legal purposes, since Bush has made it clear that he views himself and his security forces as above the law.
People who put their life on the line (IEDs) while you confortably sit back and code.
I feel terrible about that. But the thing is, they're not doing it for me (whatever they may think), because Iraq never was a threat to me. Bush & Cheney didn't invade Iraq because of terrorism, they did it for political reasons. And they didn't do it to "free the Iraqis", because there are any number of other countries whose governments are even more oppressive, but remain unattacked.
Before the attack, Iraqis lived under a thuggish dictator who killed thousands. They also had electricity, women could work outside the home, and they could drive their cars without fear of being stopped and killed at some random checkpoint or machine-gunned by panicky American troops. Today, the thousands are instead killed by US troops, Interior Ministry death squads, religious militias, Al Quaida, and random car bombs. And there's not much electricity.
I don't know what the answers are, but I'm positive that collecting identifying info on people who want to look at chip data sheets is not one of them.
In the US you have a right to be judged by your peers (in theory, atleast).
That's a misconception that many USAns also have. The US constitution guarantees a right to trial by jury, but doesn't say anything about "peers". In any case, the meaning of the word "peers" isn't the same in Y2K USA as it was 800 years ago in England. That right was created by the Magna Carta, indeed an important document in the development of democracy (or at least, limits on the monarchy). It was written by noblemen who had a beef with the king, and "peers" are the English nobility. So what it actually means is, if you're a duke you get a jury made up of noblemen, not rabble.
didn't Senator Hatch try to push through some legislation a couple years ago that would make this perfectly legal for copyright holders? That's about the time he made the statement about if being OK if the RIAA/MPAA "blew up their computers"
Yes. And about a week later, Senator Hatch got caught running pirated software on his government website.
We didn't hear much from him about blowing up computers after that.
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Do you see why Yahoo HK was evil, but Google was not? Hong Kong is a seperate government than mainland China. Yahoo in Hong Kong had no legal requirement to cooperate with mainland Chinese police (first evil deed). Then, Yahoo stated that they will comply with local "customs".
Why do you say that Hong Kong is a separate government than mainland China? For historical and political reasons, HK is (for a while) treated a little differently, but since 1999(?) it's a part of the People's Republic of China. Yahoo HK was just abiding by the law. And how is "local customs" different from US companies who turned data over to the US govt after 9/11 even though there was no valid legal compulsion?
Not that I know what the answer is. If you're going to be "law-abiding", you're probably going to screw people over at the behest of whatever local regime.
Once you send it out, that copy of the data belongs to the ISP, not you.
Ah, but is that what a reasonable person would believe? Let's ask 10 email users.
Q. When you send out an email, do the contents belong to your ISP?
Bet all 10 answer, "what are you, nuts?"
When I got an FCC radio license, one of the things I was supposed to know was that if a communication was not sent to me or parties that I was an agent for, I was not allowed to disclose it. The law didn't make an exception for disclosure to government employees. And that was with a technology that everybody understood could be overheard by anyone who was listening. Should email be different?
If I can hack the software, I can certainly modify it to record one thing and print out another.
Of course. That's why you do a manual recount of a randomly selected 5% of the precincts. To check whether it comes out the same as the machines' count.
There, wasn't that easy?
Suppose there is a stray mark in a box, and the reader just ignores it and accepts the ballot. Then in two weeks people are arguing over whether it was intended to be a vote.
Obviously there's going to be some cutoff point where the mark is so slight that it isn't counted. But here, voters are given black fiber-tip pens to make their marks with, not 3H pencils. In my experience the pens are pretty binary. Either you make a mark that's obvious and heavy, or you don't make any mark at all, it would be pretty hard to make a faint mark. Maybe if you used an old, dried-out pen, but I think the pens are fresh every election (a couple of boxes of new pens per polling place is a trivial expense). While I haven't had an opportunity to experiment, I suspect that any stray marks that were sufficient to make the vote ambiguous would also be sufficient to make the machine reject the ballot.
Some number of random precincts (3%?) are recounted by hand each election, as a check. I haven't heard of any problems with discrepancies, though we haven't had an occasion where the Presidency depended on it either.
I think it is in no way unreasonable to require valid state-issued photo ID to vote.
Not as long as the state is required to issue photo ID for free. As you know, in the US at least there can't be any cost to voting.
And in a timely manner. In states like mine with same-day registration, that would mean, while you wait. At the polling place.
Forget it. States 1) don't have the required level of competence, and 2) are too cheap.
they can only be hand-read in the sense that the famous "hanging chad" ballots in Florida could.
I can see you've never actually used a mark-sense voting machine. I have.
What happens when somebody votes for two people for one office by mistake, but leaves the next spot blank. Now you have arguments about which dot was meant for which line.
Wrong. The voter sticks the filled-out paper ballot into the machine, and the machine beeps and spits it back out. Invalid, try again.
The advantage of a computer-generated ballot is that it is validated - the computer ensures that the voter did not cast an illegal vote, therefore you don't have to guess intent once the ballot is filed.
What's important is not that the computer generates the ballot, but that it validates the ballot. The mark-sense reader does that. It is programmed so it won't accept a ballot with "illegal" choices.
Most P2P programs download chunks of a song, not the whole song (usually unless there's only one source) from many different computers. So, she's not even technically giving the whole song, just chunks of it.
I'd expect that uploading a chunk is pretty much the same as uploading the whole thing, from a copyright perspective. A chunk is still a copy of (part of) the copyrighted work.
I can't help wondering, though, where he got/how he maintained a supply of 5 1/4" floppies.
5 1/4"? It's not that hard to find even 8". Lots of places have 5 1/4". Hmm.. maybe I ought to buy a couple of boxes of 8" for my DisplayWriter. Should be about $10/box on eBay.
The difference is that embracing pacifism not only won't get you a violence-free world, it's guaranteed to fail. If no one opposes the violent, the violent win. Period.
So are you saying that the only way to stop Bush and Cheney is to kill them?
You do realize that there are other means of opposition besides violence, even when the people you are opposing are violent, don't you?
Would you really want to live in a world so devoid of passion, original thought, and striving for change that no one is ever willing to put their life on the line for what they believe?
Nope. What I want is to live in a world where no one is willing to put someone else's life on the line.
I personally would prefer war to simply become precise and high-tech enough that the civilians don't suffer so much
Well, now we have precision guided weapons that militaries use to blow up apartment blocks and passenger trains. High tech is fun, but don't kid yourself about it being used in war to prevent suffering, it's used to cause more suffering. And that's pretty much the history of high tech, from the invention of the machine gun (which would make war too terrible to conduct) to nuclear weapons (which would make war too terrible to conduct).
Even in cooperatives power is generally doled out according to who put in the most capital... The folks fronting the money get to make the decisions.
Not true, in my experience. Most coops are one member, one vote. The member with $10 on deposit at the credit union has one vote, same as the member with $10M on deposit. The small-business worker cooperatives I am familiar with are one worker, one vote. IIRC, mutual insurance companies, farm cooperatives, and consumer cooperatives are the same. If they produce a return (rebate) to members, the amount is usually proportional to the amount spent (invested), but that's a different issue than governance.
Any sort of business endeavor that is organized differently is doomed to failure.
Which is why there no longer are any mutual insurance companies, credit unions, farm coops, worker coops, or consumer coops, some of which have been in existance for over 100 years.
if there is another terrorist attack or attacks causing major loss of life, any country found to be harboring and/or funding Islamic terrorists will be attacked. Not invaded. Attacked. Their cities will be summarily carpet-bombed.
I think first we need to take care of the people who funded the Nicaraguan Contra terrorists. We even know where to find most of them. A lot of them are still in Washington, so start by taking that city out.
Or do you insist on limiting this to attacking one religious group?
This terrorism thing is a real can of worms. Bomb a building in NYC and you're a terrorist. Bomb a building in Tripoli (where the USA killed Khadafy's baby) and you're a hero. Bomb an apartment block in Lebanon and you're exercising self-defense. Machinegun a pregnant woman on her way to the hospital, and you're just a jumpy soldier in Bagdahd, oops sorry about that. Can't tell the difference between terrorists, covert ops, liberators, occupiers, freedom fighters without a scorecard.
All of the ISPs, by law, must keep your web activity and email on file so that the feds can come and look through it.
Cite? Not in the USA, I think (though many of them probably do, to prove what compliant citizens they are). I believe that may now be true in the EU, and the feds are jealous of their EU counterparts, but so far all they can do is ask nicely ("It's up to you, you can help the enemy terrorist paedophiles, or you can help us. Entirely up to you. Did we mention that we have a big secret budget to investigate accomplices of the money laundering pornographic terrorists and executives who have played games with the books?") Or subpoena whatever records you do happen to have kept.
Maybe next year, if the feds aren't too preoccupied avoiding their own impeachment/inditement.
Most of the issues each and every one here is talking about is manners. Notice that the man that video taped the officer complained about the officer being rude.
Well, manners, and abuse of authority. But manners do go a long way to smoothing things. With good manners, the guy probably wouldn't have made the complaint, and the cops wouldn't have retaliated.
Of course the crap that most cops have to put up with day in and day out is just nuts.
No argument on that one. But my point is, even if the cop has had a crappy day, it's his job to be polite. And that doesn't excuse violations of the law on the part of a cop any more than it excuses them on the part of anyone else.
In this case the man's son was involved with the mugging!
Yep. But that doesn't excuse the cops. They just wanted to hassle the guy because he complained about them, and actually had evidence in hand.
If you constantly complain then you may be singled out as the problem, and might even lose your job. If you don't lose your job, then your colleagues may single you out and start harrassing you. Because, it won't be that hard to find out who filed the complaint.
True. I think what you just said was "in police work, personal benefit often is more important than the sworn duty to uphold the law." Do you suppose that makes citizens more respectful of "your colleagues"?
It's an absurd metaphor to compare a police officer to a casino dealer. Really you are comparing police officers to casino dealers?
Of course not. A casino dealer handles money, so he is watched every minute. A police officer is dealing with life/death, so they shouldn't be watched anywhere near as much. Right?
This whole situation could have been avoided if the man had signs posted that a video survalence system was in use.
He did. The cops said the signs weren't big enough. Presumably NH cops are accustomed to ignoring any evidence below a certain size.
My brother in law is a police officer... My brother in law dislikes bad cops as much or more than you and I do.
That's good to hear. When he sees a bad cop violate the law, does he arrest them? (Poor second choice: Does he report them to Internal Affairs?) An acquaintance of mine who is married to a cop once said, "I've never seen anyone break as many laws as cops". Of course, I took that to mean mostly "trivial" laws, the sort that a cop will overlook unless he's looking to hassle you.
If your brother in law looks the other way, then he is part of the problem.
Personally, I don't think a cop should be monitored on the job any more than say, a casino dealer. Even though a cop is dealing with life, death, and the public good, and a dealer is just dealing with money. I've heard that dealers are watched every minute, but I don't know if that's true.
I was under the impression that what hiring a lawyer "on contingency" meant was that they got their fee out of the winnings...
Their fee, yes. But the lawyer's fee is not the only expense in a court case, although it is a major one. There are other costs, such as filing fees (paid to the court), fees for copies of documents, payments to doctors (not for treatment, but to document my injuries.. it was a personal injury case) and photographers. The lawyer paid the parties involved, and passed the cost on to me. As far as I know, that's standard procedure, unlike a class action suit, where the lawyer absorbs the expenses. But I could be wrong, I just know that I paid the expenses in that case.
In the UK, it is possible to purchase insurance against losing. If you win, then the insurance fee is added to the legal fees which are claimed from the defendant.
I don't believe anything like this is available in the USA, at least not that I've heard of. Even recouping legal fees is not a sure thing, the judge may grant that, but also might not.
Actually as a plaintiff in a civil suit it doesn't cost you anything to bring forth a case (provided you use an attorney and you don't fire them). This is because if the attorney is willing to represent you, they assume all costs and expenses expecting a return when a verdict is reached in the plaintiffs favor.
Funny, my recollection is that when I was a plaintiff with a lawyer on contingency, I had to pay all the fees up front. You surely don't think the lawyer is going to take a chance on getting stiffed on the fees, do you?
And that's assuming you can find a lawyer who's willing to take the case on contingency. Who figures the payoff will be large enough so that his 1/3 will pay him well. And who is pretty certain that he will win the case.
Here we have an uncertain case. Can he prove (50%+1) that the MPAA was malicious or reckless? That they had no evidence? And even if he does, what monetary damages have you suffered that they will have to repay? Can he prove it was so egregious that triple damages should be awarded? No, I think you'll be paying his hourly $200, and he'll want a deposit up front (lawyers know how to make sure that they get paid).
Of course, it's unclear that he's broken any law; even if it's found to be unconstitutional and circumvents FISA, then it's unclear that anything could be done about it.
Well, I'd agree that not anything is likely to be done, most prosecutors are too gutless to insist that high elected officials have to obey the laws. But do note that there are criminal penalties (5 years in jail) for violating FISA. And I think inducing someone else to commit a felony is probably a crime in its own right.
Instead of just "Record the dates..." you might also try the "record the call"
;->
But check first to make sure that recording the call is legal in your jurisdiction. Local laws vary. In some places, either party can record the call, in some places the consent of both parties is necessary. Some places, you need to announce that the call is being recorded (verbally or with a beeptone). And some places, that recorded message saying "calls may be monitored for quality assurance" can be taken as explicit permission
8 or 10 years ago we didn't have the wars of today, road side bombs, remote detonation with cell phones, and all other types of devices.
Yeah, "we" had a lot of that stuff (the Mossad was the world expert on killing people via cell phone), it's just that at that time the US hadn't attacked and occupied Iraq, so those things mostly weren't happening to Americans.
Consider it a neccesary evil of sorts. Not our fault, just a result of terror.
You're right that it's an evil, but it's not necessary. You don't think "bad people" can get copies of the data sheets? That's stupid. I can think of half a dozen ways to get the info, and you probably can too. Besides, you can't build a bomb from a chip data sheet. And on the other side of the coin, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the information will be used only for export control. Or, as far as that goes, even for legal purposes, since Bush has made it clear that he views himself and his security forces as above the law.
People who put their life on the line (IEDs) while you confortably sit back and code.
I feel terrible about that. But the thing is, they're not doing it for me (whatever they may think), because Iraq never was a threat to me. Bush & Cheney didn't invade Iraq because of terrorism, they did it for political reasons. And they didn't do it to "free the Iraqis", because there are any number of other countries whose governments are even more oppressive, but remain unattacked.
Before the attack, Iraqis lived under a thuggish dictator who killed thousands. They also had electricity, women could work outside the home, and they could drive their cars without fear of being stopped and killed at some random checkpoint or machine-gunned by panicky American troops. Today, the thousands are instead killed by US troops, Interior Ministry death squads, religious militias, Al Quaida, and random car bombs. And there's not much electricity.
I don't know what the answers are, but I'm positive that collecting identifying info on people who want to look at chip data sheets is not one of them.
In the US you have a right to be judged by your peers (in theory, atleast).
That's a misconception that many USAns also have. The US constitution guarantees a right to trial by jury, but doesn't say anything about "peers". In any case, the meaning of the word "peers" isn't the same in Y2K USA as it was 800 years ago in England. That right was created by the Magna Carta, indeed an important document in the development of democracy (or at least, limits on the monarchy). It was written by noblemen who had a beef with the king, and "peers" are the English nobility. So what it actually means is, if you're a duke you get a jury made up of noblemen, not rabble.
didn't Senator Hatch try to push through some legislation a couple years ago that would make this perfectly legal for copyright holders? That's about the time he made the statement about if being OK if the RIAA/MPAA "blew up their computers"
Yes. And about a week later, Senator Hatch got caught running pirated software on his government website.
We didn't hear much from him about blowing up computers after that.