I used to have an iBook -- the graphite-looking one -- for about 7 years (until I fell on it and broke it). I still own a 1st gen iPod. And I own a shiny new (ok, now it's about 2 years old) 2nd gen MacBook.
But I'd really have a difficult time talking my conscience into buying Apple hardware again. I mean, up until not-so-long-ago, they used to be... aehm... different:-) Maybe they were always a little "stranger" than the rest, but that wasn't necessarily bad. Ok, their price tag was pretty impressive... but hey, at least Apple hardware had (and still does have) the looks:-)
...even if your data doesn't get stolen, doesn't get lost, and doesn't get compromised in any other way, this is a BadIdea(tm) from a privacy point of view.
Why? Because if you care about your privacy on-line, one single clue about who you are will give away who you are *everywhere* [on the websites using OpenID authentication]. Have your real name of Facebook? Everyone on the net will be able to find *your* MySpace, AOL, Yahoo, BlogThis and IMThat... account.
Even if you don't have your real name anywhere: you're still leaving a waaaay longer trail on the 'net than you're doing with a purpose-limited account. Anyone with a clue (and a sane cookie system, like Google) will sooner or later relate pretty much everything you do on the 'net to exactly *your* person. If you're really careful, then you *might* be able to keep those two words making up your name out of the game. But that's about the *only* thing that's not going to be known about your person...
Either that, or you'll keep creating 2, 3, or even more OpenID accounts -- one for each level of "privacy" you wish to enjoy. But then again, the need of having several OpenID accounts kinda kills the point of centralizing account management...
Privacy is not a matter of the information itself, it's a matter of how information is linked together (and/or to your person:-)
Eh, almost all manufacturers and professional groups in the US now refer to them as less-lethal not non-lethal.
So, I guess that if I used a paper tissue instead of no condom at all, my girlfriend would get less-pregnant, eh?:-)
But then, again, I'm a slashdotter, so why the worry...
And the truth is: the bible is a collectionof stories. You just don't read the bible as if it were a history manual, or some kind of unfallible transcription of PureTruth(tm)...
Let's look at the old and the new testament separately, shall we?
The old testament is a *typical* collection of short stories -- just like the ones you probably use to buy in your local book store.
But why is it so... "holy", then?
It's the origin and original purpose of the stories that make them... well, worth a reading:-) (Is this what "holy" means? Who knows... who cares.) You have to know that 3-3.5k of years ago, people in the middle east were mostly nomades. They wandered from place to place. Few of them were educated, almost none of them could write. But the more intelligent of them gathered their share of wisdom, along the years... about how to lead a life, about how to behave in a way that society (whatever their society was like) could function.
So, what does an old wise man do before he dies? Try to teach the younger ones. Not being able to write (and knowing that the youngsters won't be able to read), the only way to teach them wisdom of life is telling them.
Ok, so why not write down "wisdom" instead of the stories? Well, the old testament *is* full of "wisdom". Read the book of Salomon, for example... But it's also full of stories (the story of Job, for example), because of the way people back then and back there used to think... they didn't like to tell one "do this and to that to make things work", they'd rather tell one "things didn't work for me the other day, so then I did this and that, and they they worked!" and then leave it for you to do the same.
In a nutshell: people 3.5k years ago in the middle east shared life experience and life wisdom by telling stories and passing legends around the camp fire -- stories about arguments, about wars, about... "enlightening" experiences, aboud what they believed to be an experience of God etc. Of course, stories got exagerated, they became legend-like, but hey... that can happen to a story if it's being carried on from father to son for several hundred years:-) The key point here is that they shared life experience (and experience of what they thought to be "God") through stories.
(As a sidenote: read the genesis once again with the information I just gave you in mind: you'll clearly notice the fact that there are at least two texts having been mixed up that actually make up the genesis as we read it... you clearly notice two different wrinting styles, belonging to two different authors. And there are even some passages that seem to repeat and/or contradict, further supporting the fact that a third author/redactor carefully put together some kind of a "Genesis" story from bits & pieces of information that he could find on the topic... a "Genesis" story that could possibly explain the origin of the world back then.)
Well, at some point, some guy decided to write down a besf-of collection those stories. *That* became the old testament. More or less...:-)
New testament.
The oldest evanghelium of the new testament was written sometime 70 AD, and the youngest one around 300 AD. So most of the "evanghelists" were certainly not around to witness Christ. Whoever wrote the evangheliums, they gathered whatever information they could, and then put it togegher to somehow make sense.
This would be like somebody *now* trying to write down what happened during the Civil War in USA, couple of hundreds of years ago, using nothing but information that somehow... well, just made it through to here:-)
How would it look like? Well, there would probably be a lot of documents with official Government stamps, some letters between this general and that other general, some orders, some plans... all kinds of stuff which's genuinity could somehow be proved. We'd take all tha
If he's older then 12 (say 14, 15...), then teach him C. It's not so difficult, and that way, he gets to learn a lot about how computers work on the inside. Doesn't need to be anything fancy... like kernel hacking or so. Some basic stuff.
In fact, on second thought, forget about the language... It's mostly not about the language, but about what's the problem at hand that needs to be solved. If the problem is interesting, he'll feel well having solved it. Then he'll automatically stick to it (or, if he won't, than chances are that he's not bound to be a programmer... try not to be to disappointed, in that case:-)
Examples: for the beginning: suggest him to make a program to compute the average of his scool marks. More advanced: or make a program that can ask him words in a foreign language and have him type the english word for it... Or suggest him to make a program that allows him to keep track of what objects (books / CDs / PC games) he borrowed to whom.
When I was a child, I always forgot what I borrowed to whom. And writing such a program isn't all that difficult...
A famous romanian sculptor, Constantin Brancusi (http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Br%C3%A2ncu%C5%9Fi), stated that he doesn't create things.
He said he just looks at a stone... it's all there, already. He then just has to figure out the superfluous parts of the stone and merely remove them:-)
While this is more of a "funny" thing to state, there's some truth to it, and even some depth beyond the fact that sculpture is basically... well... *removing* material.
It's about where creativity comes from: nobody just pops out of his own mom and exclamantes "Hey! I just got an idea! Guess I'm 'creative', heh...". All 'creativity' has a complete range of 'inspirations' lyning at its base and therefore by definition predating it. And 'inspiration' comes, by definition, from outside of the artist's head -- be it from another artits's head, from nature, from society, from somebody's oppinition to another artis's work...
So, in the end, the very act of being 'creative' is already a testimony of having used somebody or something else's work prior to or while creating your own -- be it to a more or less extensive ammount. It's already a proof for the artist infriging somebody else's copyright, to some extent! Now, isn't disallowing everybody any other further use of one's work very... hypocrite?
Most of the uploads they are interested in have already been taken down by Google after Viacom filed takedown requests.
Ah, ok. Thanks:-)
Heh... Perfect example of "first think, then speak up":-) If Viacom would have bothered to look for that information prior to sending takedown notices (hardly expensive: couple of lines written in python should do it), then they wouldn't have had to start this kind of controversy in order to gather all the info they need.
Although people say "there's no such thing as bad publicity", I somehow doubt Viacom is doing itself a favor (regarding public relations) pulling the stunt they just did...
What does a parabolical dish do? It concentrates parallel radiation (a.k.a. radio waves) into the focal point of the dish -- that's where your sat receiver typically resides.
Why not the other way round: replace the sat receiver by some wave *emitter* -- the the wave generator from an old microwave oven comes to mind:-)
And point that emitter to radiate towards the dish. The dish will then reflect the radiation coming from the dot-like emitter sitting at the focal point nicely into parallel waves going out *from* the dish to... well, wherever you choose to point it at:-)
Pigeons on your neighbour's roof come to mind spontaneously...
Just try not to fry the electronics of passing by planes on clear days, will you... 'd be gainst the law!
"See, he uploaded 4 episodes of Spongebob which was viewed 41 million times in total. That is 41 million sales we lost!"
Then... why would you need the logs for that? Youtube will tell you the # of views right there on the front page. And if one actually one can be bothered to click on the user profile, one can also see which other videos the user has uploaded.
We need to move towards generating electricity locally, instead of trying to generate it all in one place and then move it to where needed.
As soon as you're pleased to manage high-temperature reactors (>700deg Celsius) in your basement, sure.
Of *course* you can generate electricity easier than that. It's only that you're wasting a whole bunch of ressources in doing so. Current power plants (both nuclear and coal-based) are designed to be highly efficient -- but this efficiency is bound to all kinds if physical upper and lower bounds in temperatures and temperature gradients. And then there is also the argument of advanced filtering systems designet to (try to) protect the environment... Making your own electricity means by default working with worse filters, simply because the expensive filters wouldn't be affordable for mere mortals.
So generating energy at a nano-scale currently means wasting ressources and destroying the environment more than necessary for things that could be done many times more efficiently when implemented at a larger scale.
Generating electricity at home -- at lest with currently available technology -- would not be doing anybody any favors.
Instead, building a world-wide superconduction backbone grid and generating energy wherever it's most favorable (in the mit of deserts or of oceans...), distributing large masses of energy to wherever it's needed, and then distributing the "last mile" through copper would bring us a giant step forward. Kind of like the Internet is built... Proposals going in this directions have existed for decades BTW. Just didn't go mainstream yet.
my position is: why does anyone expect communications going out on an open wire to be safe from snooping eyes? or even more absurd: why does anyone trust the government to ensure this illusion of privacy?
It's not only about what government does, it's about what government is *supposed* to do, legally.
The government is *not* supposed to snoop on your communication without a warrant. Period.
Of course you should be aware of the fact that they're going to do it anyway... and that any idiot with at least a litle clue will also snoop on your mails, if he can. But the fact that anybody who can do it, does it, does not make it legal. They should (theoretically) be punished, both the government and the idiot(s).
And here comes the clou: I *know* you're not going to go after "Joe Random with a root password on a node" -- it's not worth it. So the punishment of the idiot still remains "theoretical". But you should *always* go for the government and make the punishment real, if they do something illegal!
Why?
Because having the government illegally snoop on your communications occasionally will make it -- sooner or later -- to want to do that *always*, *legally*. You're... well... "spoiling" your government, so to speak:-)
It's like giving in to a child when he cries because he wants to have a (proably unexpensive) toy, but which you decided not to buy in the first place. Giving in would "spoil" the child pretty mych the same way you would "spoil" the government by refraining from brining its illegal actions to the court.
And what does a spoiled government (or child) want in the end? Exactly: more and more of whatever it is you spoiled it with. So one day you might wake up and realize that your government got so used to being able to snoop into your traffic, that it somehow believes having a "right to snoop". And that's when it passes laws to prohibit encryption -- to protect its "rights".
And why could it all happen? Because you didn't already object the very first time it snooped on you.
...to your government, since it doesn't directly promote free speech. Offering anonymous internet access to random persons passing by your house *does* promote free speech, and *is* thus a possible threat to your government.
So, why does the battered wife return to her husband even after she's been beaten to hamburger for the 15th time?
Could it *possibly* be a similar reason why we're still using Google for searching even after having had our personal data handed over to various '3rd parites' (governments, companies etc) repeatedly?
However... what you should learn from my post is that (1) every analogy can be used to prove either side of an argument if one only knows which details how to emphasize, and (2) that in a two-parties-relation, where one side screws the other, both sides have their part of the guilt at one point or another.
The mere fact the "screwing" party has done a moral bad doesn't necessarily free the "screwed" party of its responsibility to watch who they're assiciating with in the future... (Of *course* that doesn't free the "screwing" party of their guild either -- they're still guilty. Nonetheless, the "screwed" party had better learned something and be more careful in the future.)
In other words: "shame on you if you fool me once, shame on me if you fool me twice".
What puzzles me is why this would be something the Bavarian Parliment would do. I would think this would be done at the national level; US laws that enable wiretaps are all at the Federal level.
They tried to. It came as far as the constitutional court in Germany, and failed miserably. The law now returns, slightly changed.
You have to know that in Germany, each "Land" (~County) has its own law. If there's a matter on which both a county's law and federal law exist, the federal law supercedes county law. The federal law on computer trojans failed before the constitutional court. It's been slightly changed and they're going to give it another try on the federal level the next few weeks. Meanwhile, Bavaria layed out its own law regarding trojan infection of suspects' computers. It will probably also fail before court as soon as somebody bothers to sue (and a lot will, believe me), but until that happens, it's there and it's valid.
I suspect it's all some show-off attempt for big guys in politics, along the lines of "look, we were the first to arm our police with the necessary tools against terrorism", paired with a boxcar load of right-wing attitude...
Although this law will get smashed soon, it pretty much shows there the wind blows from in Germany. Or Europe, for that matter. Or the world...
While I share your oppinion (for the record:-), disregarding other people's words (in this case: disregarding ID) by re-defining their work in your eyes won't do anybody any good.
"Why?" one might wonder... "In the end, they're talking nonsense, and I base my facts on science!"
Well... it's difficult to draw the line between "real nonsense" and "stuff that I/we believe to be nonsense". And it's very dangerous... Some people believe western medicine to be nonsense, others believe chinese medicine to be nonsense, some believe to the string theory to be nonsense... you get the picture:-)
So, what's the simple way to disregard people talking such (to us) obvious nonsese as the ID people?
Unfortunately, there's no simple way, but what parent said is IHMO the best approach; don't attack the theory, attack the "science" part of their name. Because, fortunately, "science" is a pretty well defined term. There's a wide consensus about what's science and what's not: if it's falsifiable (i.e. if there's a way to *prove* it right or wrong, e.g. by experiment), then it's science. Else it's not.
And that is something that's difficult for ID people stand up against just by being stupid, because it is (for a change) simple enough for everybody else to understand...
And. as soon as you've reached a bright consesus that ID is *not* sicence, just count on the desire of normal people not to trust in science. They'll step away from ID simply because it's not science:-)
(of course, if normal people choose *not* to trust in science, then you've lost and ID has won, but then you've lost anyway, because the outcome of the discussion is not a matter of arguments anymore...)
Slashdot Mirror
If they don't want you to listen to their music, don't. Don't download, don't listen, don't buy.
:-) either. Just don't.
Don't stea... I mean infringe copyright
being a Mac user since 1988
I see that pain is nothing new to you :-)
I used to have an iBook -- the graphite-looking one -- for about 7 years (until I fell on it and broke it). I still own a 1st gen iPod. And I own a shiny new (ok, now it's about 2 years old) 2nd gen MacBook.
But I'd really have a difficult time talking my conscience into buying Apple hardware again. I mean, up until not-so-long-ago, they used to be... aehm... different :-) Maybe they were always a little "stranger" than the rest, but that wasn't necessarily bad. Ok, their price tag was pretty impressive... but hey, at least Apple hardware had (and still does have) the looks :-)
But lately they're outright turning evil.
Tata Apple, was nice while it lasted!
...even if your data doesn't get stolen, doesn't get lost, and doesn't get compromised in any other way, this is a BadIdea(tm) from a privacy point of view.
Why? Because if you care about your privacy on-line, one single clue about who you are will give away who you are *everywhere* [on the websites using OpenID authentication]. Have your real name of Facebook? Everyone on the net will be able to find *your* MySpace, AOL, Yahoo, BlogThis and IMThat... account.
Even if you don't have your real name anywhere: you're still leaving a waaaay longer trail on the 'net than you're doing with a purpose-limited account. Anyone with a clue (and a sane cookie system, like Google) will sooner or later relate pretty much everything you do on the 'net to exactly *your* person. If you're really careful, then you *might* be able to keep those two words making up your name out of the game. But that's about the *only* thing that's not going to be known about your person...
Either that, or you'll keep creating 2, 3, or even more OpenID accounts -- one for each level of "privacy" you wish to enjoy. But then again, the need of having several OpenID accounts kinda kills the point of centralizing account management...
Privacy is not a matter of the information itself, it's a matter of how information is linked together (and/or to your person :-)
Eh, almost all manufacturers and professional groups in the US now refer to them as less-lethal not non-lethal.
So, I guess that if I used a paper tissue instead of no condom at all, my girlfriend would get less-pregnant, eh? :-)
But then, again, I'm a slashdotter, so why the worry...
And the truth is: the bible is a collectionof stories. You just don't read the bible as if it were a history manual, or some kind of unfallible transcription of PureTruth(tm)...
Let's look at the old and the new testament separately, shall we?
The old testament is a *typical* collection of short stories -- just like the ones you probably use to buy in your local book store.
But why is it so ... "holy", then?
It's the origin and original purpose of the stories that make them... well, worth a reading :-) (Is this what "holy" means? Who knows... who cares.) You have to know that 3-3.5k of years ago, people in the middle east were mostly nomades. They wandered from place to place. Few of them were educated, almost none of them could write. But the more intelligent of them gathered their share of wisdom, along the years... about how to lead a life, about how to behave in a way that society (whatever their society was like) could function.
So, what does an old wise man do before he dies? Try to teach the younger ones. Not being able to write (and knowing that the youngsters won't be able to read), the only way to teach them wisdom of life is telling them.
Ok, so why not write down "wisdom" instead of the stories? Well, the old testament *is* full of "wisdom". Read the book of Salomon, for example... But it's also full of stories (the story of Job, for example), because of the way people back then and back there used to think... they didn't like to tell one "do this and to that to make things work", they'd rather tell one "things didn't work for me the other day, so then I did this and that, and they they worked!" and then leave it for you to do the same.
In a nutshell: people 3.5k years ago in the middle east shared life experience and life wisdom by telling stories and passing legends around the camp fire -- stories about arguments, about wars, about ... "enlightening" experiences, aboud what they believed to be an experience of God etc. Of course, stories got exagerated, they became legend-like, but hey... that can happen to a story if it's being carried on from father to son for several hundred years :-) The key point here is that they shared life experience (and experience of what they thought to be "God") through stories.
(As a sidenote: read the genesis once again with the information I just gave you in mind: you'll clearly notice the fact that there are at least two texts having been mixed up that actually make up the genesis as we read it ... you clearly notice two different wrinting styles, belonging to two different authors. And there are even some passages that seem to repeat and/or contradict, further supporting the fact that a third author/redactor carefully put together some kind of a "Genesis" story from bits & pieces of information that he could find on the topic... a "Genesis" story that could possibly explain the origin of the world back then.)
Well, at some point, some guy decided to write down a besf-of collection those stories. *That* became the old testament. More or less... :-)
New testament.
The oldest evanghelium of the new testament was written sometime 70 AD, and the youngest one around 300 AD. So most of the "evanghelists" were certainly not around to witness Christ. Whoever wrote the evangheliums, they gathered whatever information they could, and then put it togegher to somehow make sense.
This would be like somebody *now* trying to write down what happened during the Civil War in USA, couple of hundreds of years ago, using nothing but information that somehow... well, just made it through to here :-)
How would it look like? Well, there would probably be a lot of documents with official Government stamps, some letters between this general and that other general, some orders, some plans... all kinds of stuff which's genuinity could somehow be proved. We'd take all tha
If he's older then 12 (say 14, 15...), then teach him C. It's not so difficult, and that way, he gets to learn a lot about how computers work on the inside. Doesn't need to be anything fancy... like kernel hacking or so. Some basic stuff.
:-)
In fact, on second thought, forget about the language... It's mostly not about the language, but about what's the problem at hand that needs to be solved. If the problem is interesting, he'll feel well having solved it. Then he'll automatically stick to it (or, if he won't, than chances are that he's not bound to be a programmer... try not to be to disappointed, in that case
Examples: for the beginning: suggest him to make a program to compute the average of his scool marks. More advanced: or make a program that can ask him words in a foreign language and have him type the english word for it... Or suggest him to make a program that allows him to keep track of what objects (books / CDs / PC games) he borrowed to whom.
When I was a child, I always forgot what I borrowed to whom. And writing such a program isn't all that difficult...
This guy has already proven that he will break
...the rules, so, guess that makes him perfect for...
working for the police department
A famous romanian sculptor, Constantin Brancusi (http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Br%C3%A2ncu%C5%9Fi), stated that he doesn't create things.
:-)
... hypocrite?
He said he just looks at a stone... it's all there, already. He then just has to figure out the superfluous parts of the stone and merely remove them
While this is more of a "funny" thing to state, there's some truth to it, and even some depth beyond the fact that sculpture is basically... well... *removing* material.
It's about where creativity comes from: nobody just pops out of his own mom and exclamantes "Hey! I just got an idea! Guess I'm 'creative', heh...". All 'creativity' has a complete range of 'inspirations' lyning at its base and therefore by definition predating it. And 'inspiration' comes, by definition, from outside of the artist's head -- be it from another artits's head, from nature, from society, from somebody's oppinition to another artis's work...
So, in the end, the very act of being 'creative' is already a testimony of having used somebody or something else's work prior to or while creating your own -- be it to a more or less extensive ammount. It's already a proof for the artist infriging somebody else's copyright, to some extent! Now, isn't disallowing everybody any other further use of one's work very
Most of the uploads they are interested in have already been taken down by Google after Viacom filed takedown requests.
Ah, ok. Thanks :-)
:-) If Viacom would have bothered to look for that information prior to sending takedown notices (hardly expensive: couple of lines written in python should do it), then they wouldn't have had to start this kind of controversy in order to gather all the info they need.
Heh... Perfect example of "first think, then speak up"
Although people say "there's no such thing as bad publicity", I somehow doubt Viacom is doing itself a favor (regarding public relations) pulling the stunt they just did...
What does a parabolical dish do? It concentrates parallel radiation (a.k.a. radio waves) into the focal point of the dish -- that's where your sat receiver typically resides.
:-)
... well, wherever you choose to point it at :-)
Why not the other way round: replace the sat receiver by some wave *emitter* -- the the wave generator from an old microwave oven comes to mind
And point that emitter to radiate towards the dish. The dish will then reflect the radiation coming from the dot-like emitter sitting at the focal point nicely into parallel waves going out *from* the dish to
Pigeons on your neighbour's roof come to mind spontaneously...
Just try not to fry the electronics of passing by planes on clear days, will you... 'd be gainst the law!
"See, he uploaded 4 episodes of Spongebob which was viewed 41 million times in total. That is 41 million sales we lost!"
Then... why would you need the logs for that? Youtube will tell you the # of views right there on the front page. And if one actually one can be bothered to click on the user profile, one can also see which other videos the user has uploaded.
... or the wrong people die.
There's no right people when it comes to death by thermonuclear bomb.
"Warning: Life causes Death."
Not only that -- it's genetically transmitted. If your parents had it, you have it *for sure*.
We need to move towards generating electricity locally, instead of trying to generate it all in one place and then move it to where needed.
As soon as you're pleased to manage high-temperature reactors (>700deg Celsius) in your basement, sure.
Of *course* you can generate electricity easier than that. It's only that you're wasting a whole bunch of ressources in doing so. Current power plants (both nuclear and coal-based) are designed to be highly efficient -- but this efficiency is bound to all kinds if physical upper and lower bounds in temperatures and temperature gradients. And then there is also the argument of advanced filtering systems designet to (try to) protect the environment... Making your own electricity means by default working with worse filters, simply because the expensive filters wouldn't be affordable for mere mortals.
So generating energy at a nano-scale currently means wasting ressources and destroying the environment more than necessary for things that could be done many times more efficiently when implemented at a larger scale.
Generating electricity at home -- at lest with currently available technology -- would not be doing anybody any favors.
Instead, building a world-wide superconduction backbone grid and generating energy wherever it's most favorable (in the mit of deserts or of oceans...), distributing large masses of energy to wherever it's needed, and then distributing the "last mile" through copper would bring us a giant step forward. Kind of like the Internet is built... Proposals going in this directions have existed for decades BTW. Just didn't go mainstream yet.
life's indifferent -- that's what makes her such a bitch :-)
(ok, sorry, I'm off topic... couldn't resist)
my position is: why does anyone expect communications going out on an open wire to be safe from snooping eyes? or even more absurd: why does anyone trust the government to ensure this illusion of privacy?
It's not only about what government does, it's about what government is *supposed* to do, legally.
:-)
The government is *not* supposed to snoop on your communication without a warrant. Period.
Of course you should be aware of the fact that they're going to do it anyway... and that any idiot with at least a litle clue will also snoop on your mails, if he can. But the fact that anybody who can do it, does it, does not make it legal. They should (theoretically) be punished, both the government and the idiot(s).
And here comes the clou: I *know* you're not going to go after "Joe Random with a root password on a node" -- it's not worth it. So the punishment of the idiot still remains "theoretical". But you should *always* go for the government and make the punishment real, if they do something illegal!
Why?
Because having the government illegally snoop on your communications occasionally will make it -- sooner or later -- to want to do that *always*, *legally*. You're... well... "spoiling" your government, so to speak
It's like giving in to a child when he cries because he wants to have a (proably unexpensive) toy, but which you decided not to buy in the first place. Giving in would "spoil" the child pretty mych the same way you would "spoil" the government by refraining from brining its illegal actions to the court.
And what does a spoiled government (or child) want in the end? Exactly: more and more of whatever it is you spoiled it with. So one day you might wake up and realize that your government got so used to being able to snoop into your traffic, that it somehow believes having a "right to snoop". And that's when it passes laws to prohibit encryption -- to protect its "rights".
And why could it all happen? Because you didn't already object the very first time it snooped on you.
Corporate overlords... government... where's the difference?
...to your government, since it doesn't directly promote free speech. Offering anonymous internet access to random persons passing by your house *does* promote free speech, and *is* thus a possible threat to your government.
Obviously.
what kind of perverse reasoning is that.
It reminds me of battered wife syndrome.
So, why does the battered wife return to her husband even after she's been beaten to hamburger for the 15th time?
:-)
Could it *possibly* be a similar reason why we're still using Google for searching even after having had our personal data handed over to various '3rd parites' (governments, companies etc) repeatedly?
However... what you should learn from my post is that (1) every analogy can be used to prove either side of an argument if one only knows which details how to emphasize, and (2) that in a two-parties-relation, where one side screws the other, both sides have their part of the guilt at one point or another.
The mere fact the "screwing" party has done a moral bad doesn't necessarily free the "screwed" party of its responsibility to watch who they're assiciating with in the future... (Of *course* that doesn't free the "screwing" party of their guild either -- they're still guilty. Nonetheless, the "screwed" party had better learned something and be more careful in the future.)
In other words: "shame on you if you fool me once, shame on me if you fool me twice".
And "parent's right"
What puzzles me is why this would be something the Bavarian Parliment would do. I would think this would be done at the national level; US laws that enable wiretaps are all at the Federal level.
They tried to. It came as far as the constitutional court in Germany, and failed miserably. The law now returns, slightly changed.
You have to know that in Germany, each "Land" (~County) has its own law. If there's a matter on which both a county's law and federal law exist, the federal law supercedes county law. The federal law on computer trojans failed before the constitutional court. It's been slightly changed and they're going to give it another try on the federal level the next few weeks. Meanwhile, Bavaria layed out its own law regarding trojan infection of suspects' computers. It will probably also fail before court as soon as somebody bothers to sue (and a lot will, believe me), but until that happens, it's there and it's valid.
I suspect it's all some show-off attempt for big guys in politics, along the lines of "look, we were the first to arm our police with the necessary tools against terrorism", paired with a boxcar load of right-wing attitude...
Although this law will get smashed soon, it pretty much shows there the wind blows from in Germany. Or Europe, for that matter. Or the world...
Try this: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/110426
"The RFS may be used to read, delete, and alter data" Get ready to commit crimes that never happened, only in Bavaria!®
"Naw... wouldn't happen... Police wouldn't frame you with things you haven't done... 'd be against the law!"
Believe it or not, that's the first counter-argument if you speaking against the recent legislation.
(used to live there long enough)
What would you buy him as a retirement gift?
That's easy: a RAM bar! Because 640k is not enough after all :-p
While I share your oppinion (for the record :-), disregarding other people's words (in this case: disregarding ID) by re-defining their work in your eyes won't do anybody any good.
:-)
:-)
"Why?" one might wonder... "In the end, they're talking nonsense, and I base my facts on science!"
Well... it's difficult to draw the line between "real nonsense" and "stuff that I/we believe to be nonsense". And it's very dangerous... Some people believe western medicine to be nonsense, others believe chinese medicine to be nonsense, some believe to the string theory to be nonsense... you get the picture
So, what's the simple way to disregard people talking such (to us) obvious nonsese as the ID people?
Unfortunately, there's no simple way, but what parent said is IHMO the best approach; don't attack the theory, attack the "science" part of their name. Because, fortunately, "science" is a pretty well defined term. There's a wide consensus about what's science and what's not: if it's falsifiable (i.e. if there's a way to *prove* it right or wrong, e.g. by experiment), then it's science. Else it's not.
And that is something that's difficult for ID people stand up against just by being stupid, because it is (for a change) simple enough for everybody else to understand...
And. as soon as you've reached a bright consesus that ID is *not* sicence, just count on the desire of normal people not to trust in science. They'll step away from ID simply because it's not science
(of course, if normal people choose *not* to trust in science, then you've lost and ID has won, but then you've lost anyway, because the outcome of the discussion is not a matter of arguments anymore...)