The idea that Specter is a "liberal" Republican or even a "moderate" reflects how far to the Right both the GOP and our overall political spectrum has shifted.
Consider Specter's most significant votes over the last eight years, ones cast in favor of such definitive right-wing measures as: the war on Iraq, the Military Commissions Act, Patriot Act renewal, confirmation of virtually every controversial Bush appointee, retroactive telecom immunity, warrantless eavesdropping expansions, and Bush tax cuts (several times). Time and again during the Bush era, Specter stood with Republicans on the most controversial and consequential issues.
In my opinion, what the DemocratIC party needs more of isn't warmed-over has-been Republicans but, rather, liberal Democrats who are actually, you know, LIBERAL.
If I were the admissions officer at a 4-year university, I would stop accepting Texas high-school biology coursework as college prep. Students from Texas public high-schools would have to take a real biology course somewhere else in order to satisfy a science requirement.
Do you think that would influence the Texas school board or would they just take the defacto dis-accreditation as a "badge of honor"?
I recall people freaking out when the human genome project revealed that Humans only have about 30,000 genes rather than the previous estimate of 150K.
It always seemed to me that measuring Human complexity based on the number of our genes is a little like judging a book by the number of words it contains. It completely ignores the fact that words have Meaning.
Poetry is both the most compact and the most subtle form of written expression.
This latest finding suggests to me that something similar applies to our genetic heritage.
I have to agree. I followed the early development of FreeNet pretty closely, but my own experience with FreeNet turned me off to the the system. Conceptually, it was great. I even donated money to the cause. But my personal experience with FreeNet was terrible. When I realized that 99.999% of the population would never tolerate such poor performance, I let them fall off the end of my consciousness.
The rest, I suppose, is history. After 10 years, they're still at version 0.7
Some of the suggestions in this thread are related the to technical measures you could take to prevent the authorities from destroying evidence of their misconduct.
This approaches the problem from the wrong end. Just as DRM has failed to prevent music copying in any meaningful way, so do these naive, technical fixes fail to address the central problem:
The watchers don't like being watched.
Furthermore, its not enough to simply monitor the behavior of the police because this does nothing to change the power-imbalance between the state and the citizenry. There was a good example of this in 2006 where a videographer in San Francisco was imprisoned for 8 months for refusing to turn over all the raw video footage he shot of a demonstration.
As this case demonstrated, simply "getting the truth out there" won't prevent a grand jury from digging through your life and certainly won't keep out of jail. If you want to monitor the police without martyring yourself, you're going to have to change the law.
And in this country, that means changing the politics.
A 5-4 decision means that the somewhat-sane members of the court outnumbered the completely-crazy members of the court by One Single Vote. We've got ourselves a Supreme Court that's divided on the meaning of some of the most fundamental aspects American law. This doesn't bode well for the next 30 years.
Its about controlling the distribution channels. That's why the MPAA doesn't freak out so much when people sell boot-leg DVDs. Its not a fundamental threat to their business model.
What the record and movie labels fear above all else is Disintermediation - the elmimination of the middle-man. Because THEY are the middle-man. Internet distribution of media makes them totally irrelevent.
If DVDBOXSET.COM was selling downloadable AVI movies of complete TV series, you can bet they'd no longer be in business today.
This is a bit off topic, but the discussion about Comcast and Microsoft reminded me of liberate.
Liberate made set-top-box software that competed with Microsoft but they seem to have fallen on hard times. When I interviewed there back in 2001 it looked like they had a chance of actually competing.
Basically, its a magnetic rail gun for launching space-craft into orbit. And in order to avoid the crushing G-forces involved, it has to be hundreds of miles long. So, while it may not be economically or politically viable, it is technically feasible. We know how to build a launch loop, as opposed to a Space Elevator, which can't be constructed with current technology.
Dianne Feinstein has a long history of being in the pockets of media industry, Time Warner and Disney in particular.
Joe Biden, as well, gets a great deal of money from the media instustry, its in his top 10.
The motivating force behind Graham and Alexander is less obvious to me. I'm not optimistic that their reasons were any more noble than Feinstein and Biden, however.
The tragedy is, you don't actually have to be "Bad" or "Evil" to commit "Bad" or "Evil" acts. If somebody dies because of KP's IT screwups, you can't just say, "Well, its okay because they have their heart in the right place."
Companies are nothing more than a collection of people acting in the name of the few who run them. As such, the few who run the company need to be liable for their own screwups. The buck has to stop somewhere..
Pogue doesn't compare Windows to the Mac... he compares the Zune to the IPod and the ITunes music store. He's comparing "Apples" to "Apple's". In fact, he doesn't mention the Mac anywhere in the article. I think you're projecting some bias of your own.
His disdain for Microsoft's digital music business model is obvious and, arguably, well deserved.
Every journalist has bias, just as every person has bias. But it seems to me Pogue was expressing real and serious flaws in the Zune and Microsoft's DRM model rather than simply going on a partisan Mac vs. Windows rant.
Push the responsibility -- all of it -- for identity theft onto the financial institutions, and phishing will go away. This fraud will go away not because people will suddenly get smart and quit responding to phishing e-mails, because California has new criminal penalties for phishing, or because ISPs will recognize and delete the e-mails. It will go away because the information a criminal can get from a phishing attack won't be enough for him to commit fraud -- because the companies won't stand for all those losses.
I think this is absolutely right. Faced with the financial losses of phishing, banks will simply institute procedures, technologies and processes to protect against fraudulent financial TRANSACTIONS. Doubtless, banks will gripe and complain about their new liability. But it was exactly this same liability that made personal credit cards viable - and gave birth to a multi-billion dollar industry.
Slashdot Mirror
You know you're living in an alternate reality when a Republican congressman from Utah introduces a privacy-rights bill that is supported by the ACLU.
In other news: millions of damned souls are displaced by advancing glaciers.
-S
Glenn Greanwald says it well:
In my opinion, what the DemocratIC party needs more of isn't warmed-over has-been Republicans but, rather, liberal Democrats who are actually, you know, LIBERAL.
-S
If I were the admissions officer at a 4-year university, I would stop accepting Texas high-school biology coursework as college prep. Students from Texas public high-schools would have to take a real biology course somewhere else in order to satisfy a science requirement.
Do you think that would influence the Texas school board or would they just take the defacto dis-accreditation as a "badge of honor"?
-S
Mentos and Pepsi.
-Sean
Greed.
That's all this is about. That's all its ever been about.
-S
Yes. Seriously. Behold the Skylon
and its distant descendant, the Firefly class spacecraft.
Joss, you clever boy.
-S
I recall people freaking out when the human genome project revealed that Humans only have about 30,000 genes rather than the previous estimate of 150K.
It always seemed to me that measuring Human complexity based on the number of our genes is a little like judging a book by the number of words it contains. It completely ignores the fact that words have Meaning.
Poetry is both the most compact and the most subtle form of written expression.
This latest finding suggests to me that something similar applies to our genetic heritage.
-S
I have to agree. I followed the early development of FreeNet pretty closely, but my own experience with FreeNet turned me off to the the system. Conceptually, it was great. I even donated money to the cause. But my personal experience with FreeNet was terrible. When I realized that 99.999% of the population would never tolerate such poor performance, I let them fall off the end of my consciousness.
The rest, I suppose, is history. After 10 years, they're still at version 0.7
-S
The use of language is strange.
Unclonable: cannot be cloned
DNA: a molecule that clones itself.
Its not the best choice of marketing metaphor.
Its like saying that an event is possibly inevitable.
-Sean
Some of the suggestions in this thread are related the to technical measures you could take to prevent the authorities from destroying evidence of their misconduct.
This approaches the problem from the wrong end. Just as DRM has failed to prevent music copying in any meaningful way, so do these naive, technical fixes fail to address the central problem:
Furthermore, its not enough to simply monitor the behavior of the police because this does nothing to change the power-imbalance between the state and the citizenry. There was a good example of this in 2006 where a videographer in San Francisco was imprisoned for 8 months for refusing to turn over all the raw video footage he shot of a demonstration.
As this case demonstrated, simply "getting the truth out there" won't prevent a grand jury from digging through your life and certainly won't keep out of jail. If you want to monitor the police without martyring yourself, you're going to have to change the law.
And in this country, that means changing the politics.
-S
A 5-4 decision means that the somewhat-sane members of the court outnumbered the completely-crazy members of the court by One Single Vote. We've got ourselves a Supreme Court that's divided on the meaning of some of the most fundamental aspects American law. This doesn't bode well for the next 30 years.
-Sean
Where have they been lately?
Are they cold at night?
Do they need food?
Have they been incarcerated?
Maybe I should make a donation?
-S
They already thought of that.
What a shiny brave new world we live in!
-S
Its about controlling the distribution channels. That's why the MPAA doesn't freak out so much when people sell boot-leg DVDs. Its not a fundamental threat to their business model.
What the record and movie labels fear above all else is Disintermediation - the elmimination of the middle-man. Because THEY are the middle-man.
Internet distribution of media makes them totally irrelevent.
If DVDBOXSET.COM was selling downloadable AVI movies of complete TV series, you can bet they'd no longer be in business today.
-S
-S
Just wondering.
-S
... and just waited to publish it until he was leaving PCMag.
As Molly Ivins said: "Ya gotta dance with them what brung you."
Louderback's job was to keep his advertisers happy and I'm sure that was a big factor in how he chose to color his experience with Vista.
Not surprising.
-S
Liberate made set-top-box software that competed with Microsoft but they seem to have fallen on hard times. When I interviewed there back in 2001 it looked like they had a chance of actually competing.
Today their web site is basically an e-tombstone.
Anybody out there know what led to their demise?
-S
Basically, its a magnetic rail gun for launching space-craft into orbit. And in order to avoid the crushing G-forces involved, it has to be hundreds of miles long. So, while it may not be economically or politically viable, it is technically feasible. We know how to build a launch loop, as opposed to a Space Elevator, which can't be constructed with current technology.
-Sean
Oh, all right:
"But, if the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated, what will become of FOX News?"
-S
Dianne Feinstein has a long history of being in the pockets of media industry, Time Warner and Disney in particular.
Joe Biden, as well, gets a great deal of money from the media instustry, its in his top 10.
The motivating force behind Graham and Alexander is less obvious to me.
I'm not optimistic that their reasons were any more noble than Feinstein and Biden, however.
-Sean
The tragedy is, you don't actually have to be "Bad" or "Evil" to commit "Bad" or "Evil" acts. If somebody dies because of KP's IT screwups, you can't just say, "Well, its okay because they have their heart in the right place."
Companies are nothing more than a collection of people acting in the name of the few who run them. As such, the few who run the company need to be liable for their own screwups. The buck has to stop somewhere..
-S
Pogue doesn't compare Windows to the Mac... he compares the Zune to the IPod and the ITunes music store. He's comparing "Apples" to "Apple's". In fact, he doesn't mention the Mac anywhere in the article. I think you're projecting some bias of your own.
His disdain for Microsoft's digital music business model is obvious and, arguably, well deserved.
Every journalist has bias, just as every person has bias. But it seems to me Pogue was expressing real and serious flaws in the Zune and Microsoft's DRM model rather than simply going on a partisan Mac vs. Windows rant.
-S
-S
In a Wired article from last year, Bruce Schneier said some very sensible things on this subject:
I think this is absolutely right. Faced with the financial losses of phishing, banks will simply institute procedures, technologies and processes to protect against fraudulent financial TRANSACTIONS. Doubtless, banks will gripe and complain about their new liability. But it was exactly this same liability that made personal credit cards viable - and gave birth to a multi-billion dollar industry.
-Sean