...and in other news, at the *INSERT GOVERNMENTAL BODY HERE*, new legislation was passed that changes your rights *INSERT FUBARED RIGHTS HERE*. While there were a few objections voiced by citizens, elected officials praised the legislation a shining example of democracy in action.
First off, you need to start hitting CSPAN.org and thomas.gov. Those sites offer coverage of the meetings and events that happen BEFORE legislation makes it to the floor, at least on the national level. Some states' cable providers offer televised local and state coverage as well. Then you need to get people to watch those sites. Of course, nobody really watches those sites; given a choice between football, survivor, and cspan coverage, cspan will always be the loser.
Most news media makes no money on letting people know about legislative hearings and sessions before something hits the floor. Part of this is because the news media doesn't want to be in the business of trying to interpret laws for the public. The other side of it is that many of their stories come from governmental contacts and favors- and if you piss on someone's pet project, then you get less help later on (like when you need a building permit to make alterations to your office).
Right now, I am working on the problem of hidden legislation and what to do about it. I just moved to the capitol of my state, and I am finding further problems in that local governments do not offer any of their schedules, legislative copy, or postings in any kind of electronic form. In some cases, "last-minute" notices requesting community input are posted next to the printing office, which is in the basement of a building that you have to pass through a metal detector during business hours in order to reach. It is not as bad with the state, but the level of obfuscation on public hearing locations and names of legislation is truly astounding.
Something else for everyone here to think about- if you are finding it hard to make a living doing tech and science work, maybe you should consider taking a year or two off and going to law school. Really, activism only can go so far, and if it is not backed up with real experience and knowledge it ends up going nowhere fast.
Crashing noises as network guy tries to find batteries...
*FUCK!*
More crashing noises as network guy tries to mess with tiny plastic plate on back of Treo, beefy fingers dropping batteries and plastic parts everywhere.
*FUCK!*
Sounds of Treo being used as a hockey puck because when palm devices lose power, they lose really important things like your Cisco engineer's callback and trouble ticket numbers.
MORAL: when palm/handspring figures out that thing called flash or NV RAM, and comes out with easy to change batteries (like cell phones), then the product may become appealing in a work environment.
Only one lawmaker voted against giving the executive of this country broad, sweeping exemptions to following the rules laid out by our Constitution, and that's Barbara Lee. I may not agree with everything she does, but I am glad she is my rep in the house. And, no, she didn't vote against it because of some weird plot or whatever, she just simply refused to hand the reigns of power over to anyone without knowing who that power is being used against. That's the responsibility of Congress, and she stood up and accepted that in the face of the tyranny of the majority. Right now, because of the way the vote went, the US president basically can do whatever he wants to whoever he says is bad, and that is very not good.
I have no problem with finding and whacking whoever did this, but nobody needs to be crowned king in order to do so. We don't need to "go to war" over what is essentially an international law enforcement issue. We may need to go to war when we find whoever it is who was responsible, but not before.
What really pisses me off, and this is from the standpoint of a veteran that has lost friends due to assassinations and bombings, and having narrowly avoided being shot or blown up myself, is that we have all of these people waving flags and howling for blood.
FINE, IF YOU ARE UNDER 35, GO SIGN UP WITH THE ARMED FORCES AND GET SOME!!! IF YOU ARE TOO OLD OR DECREIPT, TAKE YOUR UNDER 35 KIDS DOWN TO THE RECRUITER AND SIGN THEM UP, AND GET SOME!!!!
Nothing strikes me as a greater act of cowardice than to expect OTHER people to do your killing for you, having them take all of the risks (depleted uranium, nerve agents, hell, just plain getting shot), while the person howling sits safely somewhere waving a flag while SOMEONE ELSE'S KIDS GO GET KILLED. You want blood? Fine, you back it up personally.
Thank you, you actually claim a source! Sorry if I sound a little out of it, but I don't own a television. This means that I don't really have a context for some of these posts, so a little more explanation actually helps. I do appreciate the extra effort.
I still don't see what the original poster has found out that has to do with cardboard cutters...maybe the original thread poster can give some insight?
Aditionally, I just heard, that Barbara Olsen, passenger on one of the planes, told her husband, that the terrorists were armed with no more than "knives and cardboard cutters".
Ummm...without trying to sound callous...how did CNN hear of this? Aren't all the passengers dead? Moderators, please READ the posts prior to hitting MODERATE. It helps.
Wow. How incredibly naive. Take it from someone who did some govt dirty work for a while...forget it. If you are lucky, the most you will get is a slap on the wrist, and a dossier opened up on you for future action re: SSSCA enforcement. The SSSCA is just the tip of a very large dildo shaped iceberg. Do not be the captain of the Titanic. If you are talking about something more than that, then you had better have more than 100k people backing you up. Try at least one million, or more. However, I don't think you could get 100k computer people to do anything at one time, unless it involved drinking red bull and talking about coding and star wars all night.
My fiancee and I just got done discussing how both of us are being affected by legislation on Capitol Hill- myself as a techie, and my fiancee as a biotech researcher. In our own discussions about the DMCA when it was introduced, we did predict that something like the SSSCA would come along later, but we thought that it would take a couple more years. Folks, this is happening VERY quickly. Both of us see the recent legislation as a foil for something bigger down the road. We both predict that the next thing that will happen will be the registration (and subsequent travel restrictions) of people with certain kinds of knowledge...specifically nano-tech, computer and bio-sciences people. That is, once the brain drain starts hitting the corporations and govt in the balls, anything that "protects their assets" is going to get locked down...and I mean people, not equipment or code.
We are seriously considering Canada. We are not the only ones. Its not just the SSSCA, its the DMCA, sentencing laws, the govt ignoring its own prohibitions against double jeopardy to persecute individuals, the "anti-dog-eat-dog laws", and all of the other crap that makes us consider moving now. Neither of us think that this will be solved through negotiation at any governmental level. It's too far down the path of the tyranny of the majority (for those of you who didn't have a very good history teacher, or slept through civics class, read the Federalist and Anti-federalist papers, and also especially read Democracy in America, the Lawrence transl). If things continue the way they have, we are very worried that it will only be a matter of time before both of us are targetted with laws like the SSSCA.
So, we will be opting out for Canada or maybe France. The next 2 or 3 years will be spent researching which countries will work best, and depending on what travel restrictions are in place, we'll be heading out before it gets any worse.
Good luck to anyone else considering jumping the border. And thanks to the Canadians on this board who have offered your encouragement.
This makes some sense, given Gulf War syndrome, etc.
Actually, from a veteran's perspective, it makes perfect sense. The dirtier we make our wars, the less likely it is that any democracy will be able to muster an effective all volunteer force.
There were a significant amount of soldiers that did not report for duty on operation Desert Shield (later Desert Storm). While some did not agree with reporting for a war that was never declared, quite a few of the people I have talked to did not want to be exposed to the toxins that we use in our own weapons. I suppose that putting your life on the line is one thing, but sacrificing your future generations' health is quite another. There was also a big move by a lot of reservists and NG folks to units that might not be sent over...these folks knew it would be a dirty war, and didn't want to be exposed to that shit. They knew there would be no support for them when they got back.
Most of my friends (none who match the above statements) who also served would never serve again, unless our borders were being invaded. Same reasons apply- they know how dirty a lot of our ammo is, as well as the propellants, etc. Nobody wants to be exposed to that stuff any longer than they have to be. Now, those aren't the only reasons, but those are some of the ones that I have heard.
If KDE runs on every distro of Linux and BSD and Solaris, it will be impossible to make it a tighter part of the OS because there are so many possible ways which the filesystem or other parts of the kernel can behave. So they are forced to make it behave in a generic manner to make everyone happy.
Well, I don't know what you mean by generic. KDE pretty much relies on several Linux specific hooks into the underlying kernel already. I have had personal experience getting KDE to run on OpenBSD. *shudders*. Not that bad. I did have code from the OpenBSD port for this, but even then it didn't compile cleanly. I didn't have to go through a lot of source code, but there is linux specific shit in there that causes any other *nix to chork on compile from source. I got it to work, but de-installed to try another browser (mistake!). However, the precompiled binaries made by the OpenBSD ports team work beautifully- hence, I am typing my response on Konq 2...with only minor kvetching from kdesud and X about secure.cpp and tmp/ICE-blah.
From my point of view, I don't see how the KDE dev team thinks cross-platform is much of a priority. They will commit bugfixes that get pointed out to them regarding these issues (but they never release patches though, have to wait for the new effing version) when they get around to them, but the KDE dev team does NOT plan cross platform compatability as a primary or even secondary goal. That is made clear in their source code and mostly linux specific comments.
As far as criticisms go, that is not so bad for KDE. But it is annoying every so often. If there would be one thing I could wish for, it wouldn't be more attention to cross platform compatability, but for them to go back and fix most of the KDE 2 bugs (javascript issues, etc in konq) and add some better comments into their code before moving on to version 3.
Yes, US laws are a bit different than German ones, both in the letter and in the application.
If a foreign citizen is arrested, that person is supposed to be allowed to contact their local consular officials prior to questioning. This legal requirement is often passed over and ignored by the arresting officers. If the foreign citizen does not know this right, then anything they say or do will still be used against them in court. There have been several people executed in the US in cases just like this, because they didn't understand their right to access their own foreign consulate, and have the matter transferred to the State Department for disposition. To make matters worse, the officers arresting rarely know of this requirement for foreign citizens, so even if the right to speak to a consular official is demanded, it is likely the demands will simply be ignored. And if it is ignored by the arresting officers, the courts will likely ignore it too.
Additionally, if you were detained by the State Department or the INS, or some agency that is not specifically law enforcement (such as the FBI or the local police), then you have no rights under the law, and can be detained indefinitely in a prison of their choice. Sometimes, when law officers feel they don't have a case against a foreigner that they have arrested, they simply turn that person over to INS or the State Department for deportation. Deportation hearings can take up to three years to complete, during which you are locked up in a jail or prison local to the hearing officers with your case. If you are being deported because the US Govt thinks you committed a crime, then one of the stipulations may be that you will be forced to complete your sentence in a prison in your home country (whether you committed a crime or not, or were even tried, or even if whatever you did in the US was perfectly legal in Germany). Since you have no rights as a US citizen at this point, you can also be held incommunicado indefinitely. If you consular officials find out where you are, then they can petition to speak to you...but YOU have no rights to contact THEM at that point.
Now, for the real kicker, the US courts have never recognized their own jursdictional boundaries for any suit brought before them, criminal or civil. On the other hand, these same courts don't recognize foreign rulings, as those would interfere with their own sovereign rights under the US Constitution, et cetera. This means that I can file civil suit against you, a German citizen living and working in Germany, for any legally recognizable reason (that is pretty broad), and if I win, I can pursue collection against you. Now, collection might not be recognized in your country (I hope not!), but if you land in the US, I can have you arrested for non-payment. See the previous paragraphs for the outcome.
In federal criminal cases, this also means that the US Govt can use this, um, discrepancy in legal jurisdiction to kidnap anyone anywhere in the world, provided that this person was indicted in a US court. Not tried, just indicted. Your simply not presenting yourself for the indictment can be a federal offense on its own, even if you were innocent of the charges against you. They get you coming and going.
If you do happen to show up on US soil to defend yourself in a criminal case, you have to post bail in order to stay out of jail until the trial date comes up. Should you decide that you would rather ignore US law and go back home, the bail bondsman is entitled under US law to pay a "finders fee" to anyone who can bring you back to the US. So, if you skip bail, you could be kidnapped at any time, legally by US standings, from your home in Germany, and brought back for trial in the US, to which further charges against you would be pressed for ignoring the court.
Now, if you are simply not there for ANY of this, and this is a criminal case, you will be tried and convicted in absentia. Meaning, you get no appeals later on because you thumbed your nose at the court by not being there for a trial you may not have even known about, or might not have went to because you know that the case would not be fairly presented- that is if you even recognize the US as having a right to try you. As such, the US govt, if they really don't like you, will use the conviction as a "reason" for doing whatever they like to you later on, like bombing your home with cruise missiles (they have to REALLY not like you) or putting you on a list of people that US-based international companies can never ever do business with. Then again, someone will eventually find you...because you are a fugitive, the FBI will have a reward for your return to the US. Bounty hunters DO make a living at kidnapping people and bringing those folks back to the US...I have actually met people who make their money doing just that.
All in all, we here in the US are mostly just a bunch of thugs. Like the saying here goes: Don't steal, the government hates the competition.
Hmmm...that would be interesting. Might want to add on there: "all knowledge is god, one must know as much of god as possible to attain a heavenly state".
Yep, I bet Jack Valenti is feeling something crawling up his skin right now...
Heh. Most of my friends claim to have read it, but I have never been able to find it. I think the existence of those stories must just be some kind of hoax or something.;)
Actually, I have been having some pretty serious discussions about this with friends of mine, most of whom are grads from divinity and transpersonal psych backgrounds, as well as with my tech friends (the two happen to coincide quite often as well).
Truth is, freedom of religion pretty much trumps just about every other right in the US. There are exceptions, but in general, even those who have lost on gambles such as polygamy and controlled substances still have a pretty wide berth on just about anything else.
As such, many of my friends thought that creating a religion that covers code as an expressive form of religion has come up very often. If you think about it, people who have a deep understanding (deep by the average citizens' point of view, shallow in the tech world) of computers and technology are pretty much regarded as witches by most folks out in the world. The best way, my friends and I thought, to fight this kind of mindset is simply to adopt a shroud of religion.
Hey Joe, you got a problem with the fact that I know things you don't? Well, I know this because God says ITS OK TO KNOW IT. Join my religion, and you can know it too. Just follow the rules. All of the sudden, most of the arguements over whether it should be legal to even KNOW about system security or info sec goes out the window by most peoples' standards if a christian church says its ok, then maybe it isnt the work of the devil, or witches, or evil haxors. Its ok, because god says it can exist.
Yeah, I know that there is some moral reckoning in how the above is presented that wouldn't wash with some knowledgeable and highly ethical people. I don't care. I care about not being picked out of a crowd because I know something other people don't. I care about having something besides the EFF to back my ass up when someone decides to sue me or press charges over something nobody really understands, but hey, THATS OK to press charges, HE knows TECH. He's GOT TO be a witch/evil haxor/apostate.
Fact is, I really do think whatever force that holds it all together talks through us and what we do. I don't think that it would be too unusual to start a church or temple or whatever to back that up, and to spread more knowledge around. Yeah, there are the baptists down the street, they are having a bake sale; the Catholics are having roulette night...oh, look over there, that new church, they are having free computer lessons!
Anyways, we never got around to getting that IDEA off the ground. It was a nice one. However, that may happen in the future. Essentially, at the time, nobody wanted to do the research to write the canon and background literature. Everybody was busy working. Well, now that the bubble has burst, we've got that time. Maybe it will happen, maybe not.
But really think about it...not many organizations can pull off the kind of stunts that folks need when shit hits the fan. Maybe a religion might not be a bad idea, jokes aside.
Easier access to this information can be used by spammers, telemarketers, etc. to create mailing lists that bombard us with all kinds of garbage.
That is already happening. There is a thriving and quite profitable industry in the selling of public record information from court and police records. People camp out in the lobbies of some offices, waiting for accident reports to come in. The information then goes to the highest bidders. Usually ambulance chasers and the like, but anybody can buy it.
Believe it or not, its from those same folks that the whole "net access to public docs" thing is meeting the most resistance. People in the information business want to continue getting paid. I think that as more public records become available, the average person is going to be able to access some of what is there, but real access and the fat pipes for it are probably going to go to the ones who pay their politicians in advance, rather than through taxes.
Yeah, NCR hands these out to their field techs to get work done. These puppies are VERY nice for field work. They used to be underpowered, but they now actually come with the same (800Mhz) chips everyone else is using. The one drawback is that the screens are still a bit small (13.1"). You can, literally, throw these across the room, pick them up, and use them again (not recommended, but that is what the tech did to show me they ARE shock resistant).
AND they have really neat toys. They now have a wireless interface. There is stuff made for this system specific for outdoor use (and I don't mean sitting in a coffeeshop either). They also have a port replicator, and other fun stuff. Yep, my next laptop, if I ever get tired of my Vaio.
Actually, in terms of making a difference by participating in elections, someone would be well served by reading Democracy in America by de Tocqueville. It is to good democratic governance as Knuth's Art of Programming is to writing good code. Be sure to get the George Lawrence translation- its the least abridged of them all.
Second thing is, don't JUST go out and vote. The election was decided several years before, when districts were re-apportioned in your state. In California, this is a ten year cycle. This means that you have to get enough 3rd party reps with enough clout to avoid being gerrymandered WITHIN the window occurring between [the two years before apportionment committees are created] and [the future elections happening before the next reapportionment]. In an election cycle where the two parties are fairly balanced, this means you probably need to hold about 3% of congressional seats by any single third party to completely fubar the two party checks and balances system. My suggestion would be to plan a massive grassroots campaign to start the year of the next district re-apportionment, and then shoot for key seats being taken and held within 4-5 years. If you don't make that window, then forget getting more than 7% of the vote after the next reapportionment. You will be gerrymandered out by BOTH parties as part of the back room dealing that goes on for the two years before the next reapportionment committee meeting for your state's districts.
Unless this is done, no amount of third party voting by knowledgeable and conscientious people will have any valuable effect on the process. This is because the powers behind the PACs value THEIR two parties more than THEY appreciate the threat of any conscientious third party. If ANY third party trips up one of the two big parties in an election, then the other big party gets all of the goodies for both, so that they gets mighty fat, and sit on any third party and kill their candidates and bills.
cf the sections on the Tyranny of the Majority in Democracy in America for more details. I can guarantee you that both the central commitees for the two major parties have. I went third party the day I heard Republican party leadership on C-SPAN quoting de Tocqueville in a speech outlining the goals and planks of the Republican party for the next decade. The parts being plagiarized by them (because they never gave proper credit for quoting parts verbatim)? Sections on how to destroy a democracy through a tyranny of the majority. And you know what? The party faithful CHEERED. They CHEERED as Newt Gingrich smiled and Trent Lott patted him on the back.
True true. I can understand WHY he did it the way he did it, because he is a stupid sales goob. Salespeople aren't hired to think, they are hired to get new customers in the door. That's what I have learned in the past, having been on the delivering end of salespeoples' promises. As a result, they rarely do anything that could be considered sensible, but what they do generally makes money, or should if they want to keep their jobs.
He DID go about reporting the hole the wrong way. I don't blame him for trying to make a buck (that's just his nature, kinda like expecting scorpions to sting you if you pick them up), but he should have covered his ass with paper from the very moment he found the site was insecure...preferably by going to his VP and making it HIS/HER problem, and documenting everything from there on out. At the very least, even if his company did not back him, he could plead out by implicating his boss, a bigger fish, on a conspiracy charge.
The problem is that this guy sounds just honest enough not to have thought what he did might be considered "wrong" by his competition (note...that is a BAD trait for sales staff- honesty, not the fucking the competition thing). Never mind that he never contacted his superiors NOR the site admin. Jeez. Yeah, contact the customer, who has ZERO clue, and tell them about a security hole. If the newsies didn't go with salesguy's company BEFORE this, they might actually think this salesguy is trying to blackmail them into being his customer...and that would be an expected reaction from a news editor. Editors are suspicious by nature, they have to be, its part of their job.
Yeah, doesn't sound really well thought through. Wait, I've visited Florida several times...it is pretty well thought out for Florida county election officials.
If that county were going to pull some kind of stupid "sword in the stone" test like this, they should have sponsored a conference on voting technology coinciding with the test window, and offered $10k to the first person to find a technical hole within a 2 week window. I mean, shit, considering how much a room would cost each person, they could easily make up the revenue in hotel tax alone.
That way, the county would come out a winner either way. Either they pay for an overpriced software package that they barely know how to run, but no security holes are found, and they made scads of revenue, OR someone finds a hole, they SAVE $20m, and their expenses are paid by hotel tax and other revenue (heck, they probably still make a profit). Its not as if they couldn't find people to show up...surf, sun, and hot bodies abounding for all those poor hackers (and the funny thing is, as soon as the skin starts turning pink after about 15min, its back inside to hack some more...best incentive plan in the world to get people to do your work for you).
But will they do that? Nope! */yokel mode on*Throw the childryun at it, Festus! Shit, they're the only folks round here who can get my damned Vee Cee Arrr to stop blinkin anyways!*/yokel mode* Hell, its not even that...read the article, and you pretty much find out that this is just a press stunt by the county to draw attention to the fact that election reforms are kind of happening. The "test" is just a mock election, literally. The students are just being used as a means of testing UI stability and functional security(wow, Billy made the machine stop by putting his asscheeks on the glass and farting)- which has nothing to do with software security nor much of anything to do with stopping voting fraud.
This is exactly what I have seen while working in the tech industry for the last 4 years. The number one unwritten hiring requirement that I have seen, either while interviewing or being interviewed, has been this:
find someone with the right experience and skills, but NEVER hire anyone with enough experience and skills to question stupid management decisions.
This pervasive mentality relegates people to maybe a 10 year lifespan within the industry, if you play your cards right. Beyond that, you are more of a threat than a benefit to most organizations. I have seen VERY qualified people turned down simply because they were not "fresh" enough, or because they did not spend every waking hour learning the "next new newest thing" at their last job. Most times, the reasons for management needing the next "new newest thing" is because management made poorly conceived business decisions that were badly considered, and then think that if they throw the latest technology at the problem, then any solution from it will dig them out of the hole that they created for themselves. Most hiring requirements are handed down based on this model, even if the tech staff are the ones who define the requirements.
This creates a culture of enforced idiocy through inexperience. So long as the candidate can concentrate only on FOO skillset, and has had a year or two playing with FOO toys on someone else's check, then they are hirable. Anyone who has more than that skill, or isn't willing to atrophy themselves to become a one trick FOO pony is out of the running. After a few years, the people hired to do FOO are in a nasty mess...looking over their shoulders, wondering if they get the axe if they will ever find another job again, because they are now "not fresh".
Moreover, even if these people DID go after FOO skill, and then the latest BAR skill, they become skilled to a point where managers won't want to touch them, either because someone that experienced will push back when management makes another "business logic" gaffe, or because their skills are too "generalized" now. That person, with years of experience with FOO and BAR and SNA and FU will probably not be able to respond as quickly to highly specialized questions like "if we use this subset of the fifth element of the structural call for FOO, explain how that would work in the OSI model, from beginning to end of the process within, oh, this model"(said model being what their own FOO specialists had difficulty with last week).
The person who has been a FOO monkey for the last year will stick the question first try...the person with years of experience will sit back and have to sift through their knowledge to possibly come up with an answer, but the experienced one just blew the interview because they didn't respond quickly enough, or couldn't come up with exactly the answer the interviewer was looking for. Likely, the business doesn't need a FOO expert at all, but management decided to "move the business in a new direction" and preferred the instant gratification of hiring an atrophied specialist who will have the unfortunate effect of tying the business down to a single model for fulfilling their end goals. Someone more experienced would question such things, and would also provide a more flexible model, but that would be at the expense of upper management having the appearance of "being questioned" in their decisions and "shown up". What a shame.
All I could get to was the damned summary. For some reason, Konqueror won't display PDFs...sigh.
As for file sharing...sigh. I think this means yet ANOTHER law banning yet ANOTHER activity that most children will not do unless their parents allowed them to in the first place.
*Puts on his magic prediction hat*
A new law in about 2 years, similar in nature to COPA, but specifically targetting file sharing utilities, the users, their ISPs, and the authors with big fat huge fines. No prison time though, congress doesn't want to look heartless, they just want more of your money.
Contrary to what some people may say about giving out false information to cell phone companies (which won't work very well...they do check your credit. Ok, ok, so you can fake that; great, one felony on your record then), the only real option is to not participate. That's it.
Use services that you can pay for in cash or check only. More importantly, use services where you have the option of interacting with a human being who can actually make decisions. This will limit you to local or regional services. So you don't have a cell phone anymore...boo hoo. Chances are, you REALLY don't NEED one anyways.
The only exception to that "cash-n-carry" rule should be for institutions that you feel are important enough to contract services from. Your local college, for example, or your local utility. Local is nice. Local means you can find a real person who can be held locally accountable for their actions, i.e., you get to see their face when you legally or physically beat the snot out of them for being morons with your info. They know this is a possibility. They don't want that, so they will be *slightly* more careful than some faceless trans-national conglomerate.
Chances are, being local only, they will require MUCH less data from you. Most locally owned places that I go to only require that I flash a valid ID and this month's utility bill to start an account with them. Much better than your ID info, SSN, DOB, Mothers Maiden, and all that other crap being entered into some hackable database somewhere.
The only exception has been local banks and credit unions, but with them my information goes onto paper and usually stays there.
mrgoat
Re:Developers Have a Louder Voice than Speech
on
Still in DMCA Prison
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· Score: 2
But why are we playing by their rules? If we really want to be heard, we should use our abilities to make ourselves heard. America needs the developers, techies, and computer savvy people who oppose the DMCA to function as a country, to remain economically viable, and to remain internationally competetive.
Well, I would probably say that you should read "Democracy in America", specifically the portion on tyranny of the majority. The last hope we had was the courts, and they sided firmly with everyone else.
You are right that the creators have a lot of power. They make what everyone else uses and needs to live and continue to have US society function. But that power can only be checked in two ways, either by destroying what you make, or by denying access to that knowledge and future knowledge.
I don't see how destroying peoples' ability to go places on the web will make any friends. It will piss people off, and when you piss a lot of people off, they tend to pound on you and think later (if at all). By doing what you suggest, you may not realize that people become intractible in the face of adversity...they will kill the person that makes the fire if that person puts the fire out, and they will NOT feel sorry for killing you later.
I have another thought along those lines, though. Read the following quote:
"We believe that a careful effort was made by Congress to balance the rights of intellectual property owners and the rights of intellectual property consumers," says Allan Adler, vice president at the Association of American Publishers, which applauded Sklyarov's arrest last week.
Do you see what I see? These people are doing what their own expectations lead them to believe...the ones who own the money and the IP are happy (the owners) and the ones who use the stuff are happy (the consumers). But this guy and most folks in general COMPLETELY ignore the CREATORS. Being ignored is a good thing sometimes. Yeah, if the creators rock the boat, the owners will get pissed off and get something like the DMCA passed (oh, wait, that already happened). The consumers get pissed off if the creators trash everything, because the creators are not the owners in the US, or VERY rarely, but definitely not in this situation.
There is something every creator can do to stop the machinery. Walk away. Stop working for them. Whatever you do, don't do it all at once, and do it smart. Here is what I suggest, because if enough people stop working, I guarantee you the shit will hit the fan, just not immediately, and time can only help people who are ignored:
1. Get a passport. Start looking online at other countries who will protect your rights to create. Visit those countries, make sure you like what you see. Become conversant with ALL of the ways of getting legally inside their borders. You would even be better off getting a passport from a US protectorate, just so you can say you are not even from the US if you get stopped by the local cops before you can cross.
2. Follow the proposal and passage of laws closely, both federally and by border states in the US. When something actually gets to a committee that will prevent people with technical knowledge from freely travelling, get your things together. Don't look at me like I am some kind of crank- DMCA got passed on a voice vote on the floor, with ZERO arguements. FYI, acts that modify constitutional rights are supposed to be voted on by ballot, but that took to long for Congress. Don't think they won't do it again. Some kind of bill preventing "a rare and precious US resource" from moving outside the borders is all anyone needs to place coders and such folks under a special provisional status.
Hmmm...I actually think that money we are spending on missile defense is better spent on disease control (aka public health) anyways.
Making massive lethal doses of anthrax or some other airborne contagion is pretty easy. That is probably the reason some folks refer to biological weapons as "a poor man's nuke". Basically, all you need is a home brewing kit and some know-how. Well, bottling and transporting could be a bit more risky...
However, the smallpox scenario is pretty unlikely, but smallpox is an easily recognized disease. The "S" word is enough to make anyone's ears pop up. Better than anthrax (too many people might think that is a band or a bug spray).
Realistically, if the event were to happen in the US, anybody who has ever had US military service would be unaffected. Anyone vaccinated prior to, oh, about 10-15 years ago would also likely be unaffected. As for everyone else, getting cowpox ain't that hard (that IS the vaccine, btw). Find a farmer or rancher.
Now, anthrax, that would be easy to make and spread around. Not much you can do about vaccinating either (limited effect and duration). Problem is that the stuff lives in the soil forever. Not a big deal if you are a terrorist, I suppose.
Plague, though, now that could be made just as easily, and vaccination lasts for quite a while. Different types of plagues with different types of vectors (bubonic is just one...there is another that is spread airborne, and is more lethal). That is where the DoD scenario would really hit the fan, since AFAIK the vaccine only lasts for about 10 years, and most folks never go back for a booster unless they study bats or other stuff like that for a living. Hmmm...maybe I should get shot again, but that stuff hurts like heck.
"We are ordering free pizza tomorrow in the break room. Click on the link to confirm."
Nothing gets folks like free pizza...
mrgoat
Re:4. Is Alan Cox still not going to US convention
on
Adobe Backs Down
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· Score: 2
Um...ok, who says that when someone is being held against their will (i.e., a hostage), that the other party is out to kill them? Sometimes, you just want them quiet long enough to discredit them.
The EFF gained very little out of this whole event with Adobe. So Adobe has withdrawn their complaint, so what? Adobe has already had this man held. By withdrawing their complaint, and doing nothing else, Adobe does not right any wrongs perpetrated against this man. In fact, he is still a prisoner.
EFF gets little or nothing out of this deal- what they should have gotten was Adobe's ACTIVE participation in freeing this man. Such did not occur. Protests would have gained Adobe's withdrawal from this anyways, because Adobe doesn't need bad publicity, and because Sklyarov is facing Federal detention (and all of the byzantine mess that such detention entails). Adobe had nothing to lose by withdrawing at that point, whether EFF entered into negotiations with them or not.
My other statements in my post still stand until the EFF disproves them. I actually hope the EFF does just that. I would hate to think my donations to them went up in smoke.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, you need to start hitting CSPAN.org and thomas.gov. Those sites offer coverage of the meetings and events that happen BEFORE legislation makes it to the floor, at least on the national level. Some states' cable providers offer televised local and state coverage as well. Then you need to get people to watch those sites. Of course, nobody really watches those sites; given a choice between football, survivor, and cspan coverage, cspan will always be the loser.
Most news media makes no money on letting people know about legislative hearings and sessions before something hits the floor. Part of this is because the news media doesn't want to be in the business of trying to interpret laws for the public. The other side of it is that many of their stories come from governmental contacts and favors- and if you piss on someone's pet project, then you get less help later on (like when you need a building permit to make alterations to your office).
Right now, I am working on the problem of hidden legislation and what to do about it. I just moved to the capitol of my state, and I am finding further problems in that local governments do not offer any of their schedules, legislative copy, or postings in any kind of electronic form. In some cases, "last-minute" notices requesting community input are posted next to the printing office, which is in the basement of a building that you have to pass through a metal detector during business hours in order to reach. It is not as bad with the state, but the level of obfuscation on public hearing locations and names of legislation is truly astounding.
Something else for everyone here to think about- if you are finding it hard to make a living doing tech and science work, maybe you should consider taking a year or two off and going to law school. Really, activism only can go so far, and if it is not backed up with real experience and knowledge it ends up going nowhere fast.
Ring...
Click, conversation starts with Cisco...
*FUCK!*
Crashing noises as network guy tries to find batteries...
*FUCK!*
More crashing noises as network guy tries to mess with tiny plastic plate on back of Treo, beefy fingers dropping batteries and plastic parts everywhere.
*FUCK!*
Sounds of Treo being used as a hockey puck because when palm devices lose power, they lose really important things like your Cisco engineer's callback and trouble ticket numbers.
MORAL: when palm/handspring figures out that thing called flash or NV RAM, and comes out with easy to change batteries (like cell phones), then the product may become appealing in a work environment.
Only one lawmaker voted against giving the executive of this country broad, sweeping exemptions to following the rules laid out by our Constitution, and that's Barbara Lee. I may not agree with everything she does, but I am glad she is my rep in the house. And, no, she didn't vote against it because of some weird plot or whatever, she just simply refused to hand the reigns of power over to anyone without knowing who that power is being used against. That's the responsibility of Congress, and she stood up and accepted that in the face of the tyranny of the majority. Right now, because of the way the vote went, the US president basically can do whatever he wants to whoever he says is bad, and that is very not good.
I have no problem with finding and whacking whoever did this, but nobody needs to be crowned king in order to do so. We don't need to "go to war" over what is essentially an international law enforcement issue. We may need to go to war when we find whoever it is who was responsible, but not before.
What really pisses me off, and this is from the standpoint of a veteran that has lost friends due to assassinations and bombings, and having narrowly avoided being shot or blown up myself, is that we have all of these people waving flags and howling for blood.
FINE, IF YOU ARE UNDER 35, GO SIGN UP WITH THE ARMED FORCES AND GET SOME!!! IF YOU ARE TOO OLD OR DECREIPT, TAKE YOUR UNDER 35 KIDS DOWN TO THE RECRUITER AND SIGN THEM UP, AND GET SOME!!!!
Nothing strikes me as a greater act of cowardice than to expect OTHER people to do your killing for you, having them take all of the risks (depleted uranium, nerve agents, hell, just plain getting shot), while the person howling sits safely somewhere waving a flag while SOMEONE ELSE'S KIDS GO GET KILLED. You want blood? Fine, you back it up personally.
Thank you, you actually claim a source! Sorry if I sound a little out of it, but I don't own a television. This means that I don't really have a context for some of these posts, so a little more explanation actually helps. I do appreciate the extra effort. I still don't see what the original poster has found out that has to do with cardboard cutters...maybe the original thread poster can give some insight?
Ummm...without trying to sound callous...how did CNN hear of this? Aren't all the passengers dead? Moderators, please READ the posts prior to hitting MODERATE. It helps.
Wow. How incredibly naive. Take it from someone who did some govt dirty work for a while...forget it. If you are lucky, the most you will get is a slap on the wrist, and a dossier opened up on you for future action re: SSSCA enforcement. The SSSCA is just the tip of a very large dildo shaped iceberg. Do not be the captain of the Titanic. If you are talking about something more than that, then you had better have more than 100k people backing you up. Try at least one million, or more. However, I don't think you could get 100k computer people to do anything at one time, unless it involved drinking red bull and talking about coding and star wars all night.
My fiancee and I just got done discussing how both of us are being affected by legislation on Capitol Hill- myself as a techie, and my fiancee as a biotech researcher. In our own discussions about the DMCA when it was introduced, we did predict that something like the SSSCA would come along later, but we thought that it would take a couple more years. Folks, this is happening VERY quickly. Both of us see the recent legislation as a foil for something bigger down the road. We both predict that the next thing that will happen will be the registration (and subsequent travel restrictions) of people with certain kinds of knowledge...specifically nano-tech, computer and bio-sciences people. That is, once the brain drain starts hitting the corporations and govt in the balls, anything that "protects their assets" is going to get locked down...and I mean people, not equipment or code.
We are seriously considering Canada. We are not the only ones. Its not just the SSSCA, its the DMCA, sentencing laws, the govt ignoring its own prohibitions against double jeopardy to persecute individuals, the "anti-dog-eat-dog laws", and all of the other crap that makes us consider moving now. Neither of us think that this will be solved through negotiation at any governmental level. It's too far down the path of the tyranny of the majority (for those of you who didn't have a very good history teacher, or slept through civics class, read the Federalist and Anti-federalist papers, and also especially read Democracy in America, the Lawrence transl). If things continue the way they have, we are very worried that it will only be a matter of time before both of us are targetted with laws like the SSSCA.
So, we will be opting out for Canada or maybe France. The next 2 or 3 years will be spent researching which countries will work best, and depending on what travel restrictions are in place, we'll be heading out before it gets any worse.
Good luck to anyone else considering jumping the border. And thanks to the Canadians on this board who have offered your encouragement.
Actually, from a veteran's perspective, it makes perfect sense. The dirtier we make our wars, the less likely it is that any democracy will be able to muster an effective all volunteer force.
There were a significant amount of soldiers that did not report for duty on operation Desert Shield (later Desert Storm). While some did not agree with reporting for a war that was never declared, quite a few of the people I have talked to did not want to be exposed to the toxins that we use in our own weapons. I suppose that putting your life on the line is one thing, but sacrificing your future generations' health is quite another. There was also a big move by a lot of reservists and NG folks to units that might not be sent over...these folks knew it would be a dirty war, and didn't want to be exposed to that shit. They knew there would be no support for them when they got back.
Most of my friends (none who match the above statements) who also served would never serve again, unless our borders were being invaded. Same reasons apply- they know how dirty a lot of our ammo is, as well as the propellants, etc. Nobody wants to be exposed to that stuff any longer than they have to be. Now, those aren't the only reasons, but those are some of the ones that I have heard.
Well, I don't know what you mean by generic. KDE pretty much relies on several Linux specific hooks into the underlying kernel already. I have had personal experience getting KDE to run on OpenBSD. *shudders*. Not that bad. I did have code from the OpenBSD port for this, but even then it didn't compile cleanly. I didn't have to go through a lot of source code, but there is linux specific shit in there that causes any other *nix to chork on compile from source. I got it to work, but de-installed to try another browser (mistake!). However, the precompiled binaries made by the OpenBSD ports team work beautifully- hence, I am typing my response on Konq 2...with only minor kvetching from kdesud and X about secure.cpp and tmp/ICE-blah.
From my point of view, I don't see how the KDE dev team thinks cross-platform is much of a priority. They will commit bugfixes that get pointed out to them regarding these issues (but they never release patches though, have to wait for the new effing version) when they get around to them, but the KDE dev team does NOT plan cross platform compatability as a primary or even secondary goal. That is made clear in their source code and mostly linux specific comments.
As far as criticisms go, that is not so bad for KDE. But it is annoying every so often. If there would be one thing I could wish for, it wouldn't be more attention to cross platform compatability, but for them to go back and fix most of the KDE 2 bugs (javascript issues, etc in konq) and add some better comments into their code before moving on to version 3.
Yes, US laws are a bit different than German ones, both in the letter and in the application.
If a foreign citizen is arrested, that person is supposed to be allowed to contact their local consular officials prior to questioning. This legal requirement is often passed over and ignored by the arresting officers. If the foreign citizen does not know this right, then anything they say or do will still be used against them in court. There have been several people executed in the US in cases just like this, because they didn't understand their right to access their own foreign consulate, and have the matter transferred to the State Department for disposition. To make matters worse, the officers arresting rarely know of this requirement for foreign citizens, so even if the right to speak to a consular official is demanded, it is likely the demands will simply be ignored. And if it is ignored by the arresting officers, the courts will likely ignore it too.
Additionally, if you were detained by the State Department or the INS, or some agency that is not specifically law enforcement (such as the FBI or the local police), then you have no rights under the law, and can be detained indefinitely in a prison of their choice. Sometimes, when law officers feel they don't have a case against a foreigner that they have arrested, they simply turn that person over to INS or the State Department for deportation. Deportation hearings can take up to three years to complete, during which you are locked up in a jail or prison local to the hearing officers with your case. If you are being deported because the US Govt thinks you committed a crime, then one of the stipulations may be that you will be forced to complete your sentence in a prison in your home country (whether you committed a crime or not, or were even tried, or even if whatever you did in the US was perfectly legal in Germany). Since you have no rights as a US citizen at this point, you can also be held incommunicado indefinitely. If you consular officials find out where you are, then they can petition to speak to you...but YOU have no rights to contact THEM at that point.
Now, for the real kicker, the US courts have never recognized their own jursdictional boundaries for any suit brought before them, criminal or civil. On the other hand, these same courts don't recognize foreign rulings, as those would interfere with their own sovereign rights under the US Constitution, et cetera. This means that I can file civil suit against you, a German citizen living and working in Germany, for any legally recognizable reason (that is pretty broad), and if I win, I can pursue collection against you. Now, collection might not be recognized in your country (I hope not!), but if you land in the US, I can have you arrested for non-payment. See the previous paragraphs for the outcome.
In federal criminal cases, this also means that the US Govt can use this, um, discrepancy in legal jurisdiction to kidnap anyone anywhere in the world, provided that this person was indicted in a US court. Not tried, just indicted. Your simply not presenting yourself for the indictment can be a federal offense on its own, even if you were innocent of the charges against you. They get you coming and going.
If you do happen to show up on US soil to defend yourself in a criminal case, you have to post bail in order to stay out of jail until the trial date comes up. Should you decide that you would rather ignore US law and go back home, the bail bondsman is entitled under US law to pay a "finders fee" to anyone who can bring you back to the US. So, if you skip bail, you could be kidnapped at any time, legally by US standings, from your home in Germany, and brought back for trial in the US, to which further charges against you would be pressed for ignoring the court.
Now, if you are simply not there for ANY of this, and this is a criminal case, you will be tried and convicted in absentia. Meaning, you get no appeals later on because you thumbed your nose at the court by not being there for a trial you may not have even known about, or might not have went to because you know that the case would not be fairly presented- that is if you even recognize the US as having a right to try you. As such, the US govt, if they really don't like you, will use the conviction as a "reason" for doing whatever they like to you later on, like bombing your home with cruise missiles (they have to REALLY not like you) or putting you on a list of people that US-based international companies can never ever do business with. Then again, someone will eventually find you...because you are a fugitive, the FBI will have a reward for your return to the US. Bounty hunters DO make a living at kidnapping people and bringing those folks back to the US...I have actually met people who make their money doing just that.
All in all, we here in the US are mostly just a bunch of thugs. Like the saying here goes: Don't steal, the government hates the competition.
Hmmm...that would be interesting. Might want to add on there: "all knowledge is god, one must know as much of god as possible to attain a heavenly state".
Yep, I bet Jack Valenti is feeling something crawling up his skin right now...
Heh. Most of my friends claim to have read it, but I have never been able to find it. I think the existence of those stories must just be some kind of hoax or something. ;)
Actually, I have been having some pretty serious discussions about this with friends of mine, most of whom are grads from divinity and transpersonal psych backgrounds, as well as with my tech friends (the two happen to coincide quite often as well).
Truth is, freedom of religion pretty much trumps just about every other right in the US. There are exceptions, but in general, even those who have lost on gambles such as polygamy and controlled substances still have a pretty wide berth on just about anything else.
As such, many of my friends thought that creating a religion that covers code as an expressive form of religion has come up very often. If you think about it, people who have a deep understanding (deep by the average citizens' point of view, shallow in the tech world) of computers and technology are pretty much regarded as witches by most folks out in the world. The best way, my friends and I thought, to fight this kind of mindset is simply to adopt a shroud of religion.
Hey Joe, you got a problem with the fact that I know things you don't? Well, I know this because God says ITS OK TO KNOW IT. Join my religion, and you can know it too. Just follow the rules. All of the sudden, most of the arguements over whether it should be legal to even KNOW about system security or info sec goes out the window by most peoples' standards if a christian church says its ok, then maybe it isnt the work of the devil, or witches, or evil haxors. Its ok, because god says it can exist.
Yeah, I know that there is some moral reckoning in how the above is presented that wouldn't wash with some knowledgeable and highly ethical people. I don't care. I care about not being picked out of a crowd because I know something other people don't. I care about having something besides the EFF to back my ass up when someone decides to sue me or press charges over something nobody really understands, but hey, THATS OK to press charges, HE knows TECH. He's GOT TO be a witch/evil haxor/apostate.
Fact is, I really do think whatever force that holds it all together talks through us and what we do. I don't think that it would be too unusual to start a church or temple or whatever to back that up, and to spread more knowledge around. Yeah, there are the baptists down the street, they are having a bake sale; the Catholics are having roulette night...oh, look over there, that new church, they are having free computer lessons!
Anyways, we never got around to getting that IDEA off the ground. It was a nice one. However, that may happen in the future. Essentially, at the time, nobody wanted to do the research to write the canon and background literature. Everybody was busy working. Well, now that the bubble has burst, we've got that time. Maybe it will happen, maybe not.
But really think about it...not many organizations can pull off the kind of stunts that folks need when shit hits the fan. Maybe a religion might not be a bad idea, jokes aside.
That is already happening. There is a thriving and quite profitable industry in the selling of public record information from court and police records. People camp out in the lobbies of some offices, waiting for accident reports to come in. The information then goes to the highest bidders. Usually ambulance chasers and the like, but anybody can buy it.
Believe it or not, its from those same folks that the whole "net access to public docs" thing is meeting the most resistance. People in the information business want to continue getting paid. I think that as more public records become available, the average person is going to be able to access some of what is there, but real access and the fat pipes for it are probably going to go to the ones who pay their politicians in advance, rather than through taxes.
Yeah, NCR hands these out to their field techs to get work done. These puppies are VERY nice for field work. They used to be underpowered, but they now actually come with the same (800Mhz) chips everyone else is using. The one drawback is that the screens are still a bit small (13.1"). You can, literally, throw these across the room, pick them up, and use them again (not recommended, but that is what the tech did to show me they ARE shock resistant). AND they have really neat toys. They now have a wireless interface. There is stuff made for this system specific for outdoor use (and I don't mean sitting in a coffeeshop either). They also have a port replicator, and other fun stuff. Yep, my next laptop, if I ever get tired of my Vaio.
Actually, in terms of making a difference by participating in elections, someone would be well served by reading Democracy in America by de Tocqueville. It is to good democratic governance as Knuth's Art of Programming is to writing good code. Be sure to get the George Lawrence translation- its the least abridged of them all.
Second thing is, don't JUST go out and vote. The election was decided several years before, when districts were re-apportioned in your state. In California, this is a ten year cycle. This means that you have to get enough 3rd party reps with enough clout to avoid being gerrymandered WITHIN the window occurring between [the two years before apportionment committees are created] and [the future elections happening before the next reapportionment]. In an election cycle where the two parties are fairly balanced, this means you probably need to hold about 3% of congressional seats by any single third party to completely fubar the two party checks and balances system. My suggestion would be to plan a massive grassroots campaign to start the year of the next district re-apportionment, and then shoot for key seats being taken and held within 4-5 years. If you don't make that window, then forget getting more than 7% of the vote after the next reapportionment. You will be gerrymandered out by BOTH parties as part of the back room dealing that goes on for the two years before the next reapportionment committee meeting for your state's districts.
Unless this is done, no amount of third party voting by knowledgeable and conscientious people will have any valuable effect on the process. This is because the powers behind the PACs value THEIR two parties more than THEY appreciate the threat of any conscientious third party. If ANY third party trips up one of the two big parties in an election, then the other big party gets all of the goodies for both, so that they gets mighty fat, and sit on any third party and kill their candidates and bills.
cf the sections on the Tyranny of the Majority in Democracy in America for more details. I can guarantee you that both the central commitees for the two major parties have. I went third party the day I heard Republican party leadership on C-SPAN quoting de Tocqueville in a speech outlining the goals and planks of the Republican party for the next decade. The parts being plagiarized by them (because they never gave proper credit for quoting parts verbatim)? Sections on how to destroy a democracy through a tyranny of the majority. And you know what? The party faithful CHEERED. They CHEERED as Newt Gingrich smiled and Trent Lott patted him on the back.
True true. I can understand WHY he did it the way he did it, because he is a stupid sales goob. Salespeople aren't hired to think, they are hired to get new customers in the door. That's what I have learned in the past, having been on the delivering end of salespeoples' promises. As a result, they rarely do anything that could be considered sensible, but what they do generally makes money, or should if they want to keep their jobs.
He DID go about reporting the hole the wrong way. I don't blame him for trying to make a buck (that's just his nature, kinda like expecting scorpions to sting you if you pick them up), but he should have covered his ass with paper from the very moment he found the site was insecure...preferably by going to his VP and making it HIS/HER problem, and documenting everything from there on out. At the very least, even if his company did not back him, he could plead out by implicating his boss, a bigger fish, on a conspiracy charge.
The problem is that this guy sounds just honest enough not to have thought what he did might be considered "wrong" by his competition (note...that is a BAD trait for sales staff- honesty, not the fucking the competition thing). Never mind that he never contacted his superiors NOR the site admin. Jeez. Yeah, contact the customer, who has ZERO clue, and tell them about a security hole. If the newsies didn't go with salesguy's company BEFORE this, they might actually think this salesguy is trying to blackmail them into being his customer...and that would be an expected reaction from a news editor. Editors are suspicious by nature, they have to be, its part of their job.
Yeah, doesn't sound really well thought through. Wait, I've visited Florida several times...it is pretty well thought out for Florida county election officials.
If that county were going to pull some kind of stupid "sword in the stone" test like this, they should have sponsored a conference on voting technology coinciding with the test window, and offered $10k to the first person to find a technical hole within a 2 week window. I mean, shit, considering how much a room would cost each person, they could easily make up the revenue in hotel tax alone.
That way, the county would come out a winner either way. Either they pay for an overpriced software package that they barely know how to run, but no security holes are found, and they made scads of revenue, OR someone finds a hole, they SAVE $20m, and their expenses are paid by hotel tax and other revenue (heck, they probably still make a profit). Its not as if they couldn't find people to show up...surf, sun, and hot bodies abounding for all those poor hackers (and the funny thing is, as soon as the skin starts turning pink after about 15min, its back inside to hack some more...best incentive plan in the world to get people to do your work for you).
But will they do that? Nope! */yokel mode on*Throw the childryun at it, Festus! Shit, they're the only folks round here who can get my damned Vee Cee Arrr to stop blinkin anyways!*/yokel mode* Hell, its not even that...read the article, and you pretty much find out that this is just a press stunt by the county to draw attention to the fact that election reforms are kind of happening. The "test" is just a mock election, literally. The students are just being used as a means of testing UI stability and functional security(wow, Billy made the machine stop by putting his asscheeks on the glass and farting)- which has nothing to do with software security nor much of anything to do with stopping voting fraud.
Huh. Moderators are smoking crack again, that one was funny.
Somebody mod Spyder's post up!
This is exactly what I have seen while working in the tech industry for the last 4 years. The number one unwritten hiring requirement that I have seen, either while interviewing or being interviewed, has been this:
find someone with the right experience and skills, but NEVER hire anyone with enough experience and skills to question stupid management decisions.
This pervasive mentality relegates people to maybe a 10 year lifespan within the industry, if you play your cards right. Beyond that, you are more of a threat than a benefit to most organizations. I have seen VERY qualified people turned down simply because they were not "fresh" enough, or because they did not spend every waking hour learning the "next new newest thing" at their last job. Most times, the reasons for management needing the next "new newest thing" is because management made poorly conceived business decisions that were badly considered, and then think that if they throw the latest technology at the problem, then any solution from it will dig them out of the hole that they created for themselves. Most hiring requirements are handed down based on this model, even if the tech staff are the ones who define the requirements.
This creates a culture of enforced idiocy through inexperience. So long as the candidate can concentrate only on FOO skillset, and has had a year or two playing with FOO toys on someone else's check, then they are hirable. Anyone who has more than that skill, or isn't willing to atrophy themselves to become a one trick FOO pony is out of the running. After a few years, the people hired to do FOO are in a nasty mess...looking over their shoulders, wondering if they get the axe if they will ever find another job again, because they are now "not fresh".
Moreover, even if these people DID go after FOO skill, and then the latest BAR skill, they become skilled to a point where managers won't want to touch them, either because someone that experienced will push back when management makes another "business logic" gaffe, or because their skills are too "generalized" now. That person, with years of experience with FOO and BAR and SNA and FU will probably not be able to respond as quickly to highly specialized questions like "if we use this subset of the fifth element of the structural call for FOO, explain how that would work in the OSI model, from beginning to end of the process within, oh, this model"(said model being what their own FOO specialists had difficulty with last week).
The person who has been a FOO monkey for the last year will stick the question first try...the person with years of experience will sit back and have to sift through their knowledge to possibly come up with an answer, but the experienced one just blew the interview because they didn't respond quickly enough, or couldn't come up with exactly the answer the interviewer was looking for. Likely, the business doesn't need a FOO expert at all, but management decided to "move the business in a new direction" and preferred the instant gratification of hiring an atrophied specialist who will have the unfortunate effect of tying the business down to a single model for fulfilling their end goals. Someone more experienced would question such things, and would also provide a more flexible model, but that would be at the expense of upper management having the appearance of "being questioned" in their decisions and "shown up". What a shame.
mrgoat
All I could get to was the damned summary. For some reason, Konqueror won't display PDFs...sigh.
As for file sharing...sigh. I think this means yet ANOTHER law banning yet ANOTHER activity that most children will not do unless their parents allowed them to in the first place.
*Puts on his magic prediction hat*
A new law in about 2 years, similar in nature to COPA, but specifically targetting file sharing utilities, the users, their ISPs, and the authors with big fat huge fines. No prison time though, congress doesn't want to look heartless, they just want more of your money.
mrgoat
Contrary to what some people may say about giving out false information to cell phone companies (which won't work very well...they do check your credit. Ok, ok, so you can fake that; great, one felony on your record then), the only real option is to not participate. That's it.
Use services that you can pay for in cash or check only. More importantly, use services where you have the option of interacting with a human being who can actually make decisions. This will limit you to local or regional services. So you don't have a cell phone anymore...boo hoo. Chances are, you REALLY don't NEED one anyways.
The only exception to that "cash-n-carry" rule should be for institutions that you feel are important enough to contract services from. Your local college, for example, or your local utility. Local is nice. Local means you can find a real person who can be held locally accountable for their actions, i.e., you get to see their face when you legally or physically beat the snot out of them for being morons with your info. They know this is a possibility. They don't want that, so they will be *slightly* more careful than some faceless trans-national conglomerate.
Chances are, being local only, they will require MUCH less data from you. Most locally owned places that I go to only require that I flash a valid ID and this month's utility bill to start an account with them. Much better than your ID info, SSN, DOB, Mothers Maiden, and all that other crap being entered into some hackable database somewhere.
The only exception has been local banks and credit unions, but with them my information goes onto paper and usually stays there.
mrgoat
Well, I would probably say that you should read "Democracy in America", specifically the portion on tyranny of the majority. The last hope we had was the courts, and they sided firmly with everyone else.
You are right that the creators have a lot of power. They make what everyone else uses and needs to live and continue to have US society function. But that power can only be checked in two ways, either by destroying what you make, or by denying access to that knowledge and future knowledge.
I don't see how destroying peoples' ability to go places on the web will make any friends. It will piss people off, and when you piss a lot of people off, they tend to pound on you and think later (if at all). By doing what you suggest, you may not realize that people become intractible in the face of adversity...they will kill the person that makes the fire if that person puts the fire out, and they will NOT feel sorry for killing you later.
I have another thought along those lines, though. Read the following quote:
"We believe that a careful effort was made by Congress to balance the rights of intellectual property owners and the rights of intellectual property consumers," says Allan Adler, vice president at the Association of American Publishers, which applauded Sklyarov's arrest last week.
Do you see what I see? These people are doing what their own expectations lead them to believe...the ones who own the money and the IP are happy (the owners) and the ones who use the stuff are happy (the consumers). But this guy and most folks in general COMPLETELY ignore the CREATORS. Being ignored is a good thing sometimes. Yeah, if the creators rock the boat, the owners will get pissed off and get something like the DMCA passed (oh, wait, that already happened). The consumers get pissed off if the creators trash everything, because the creators are not the owners in the US, or VERY rarely, but definitely not in this situation.
There is something every creator can do to stop the machinery. Walk away. Stop working for them. Whatever you do, don't do it all at once, and do it smart. Here is what I suggest, because if enough people stop working, I guarantee you the shit will hit the fan, just not immediately, and time can only help people who are ignored:
1. Get a passport. Start looking online at other countries who will protect your rights to create. Visit those countries, make sure you like what you see. Become conversant with ALL of the ways of getting legally inside their borders. You would even be better off getting a passport from a US protectorate, just so you can say you are not even from the US if you get stopped by the local cops before you can cross.
2. Follow the proposal and passage of laws closely, both federally and by border states in the US. When something actually gets to a committee that will prevent people with technical knowledge from freely travelling, get your things together. Don't look at me like I am some kind of crank- DMCA got passed on a voice vote on the floor, with ZERO arguements. FYI, acts that modify constitutional rights are supposed to be voted on by ballot, but that took to long for Congress. Don't think they won't do it again. Some kind of bill preventing "a rare and precious US resource" from moving outside the borders is all anyone needs to place coders and such folks under a special provisional status.
Hmmm...I actually think that money we are spending on missile defense is better spent on disease control (aka public health) anyways.
Making massive lethal doses of anthrax or some other airborne contagion is pretty easy. That is probably the reason some folks refer to biological weapons as "a poor man's nuke". Basically, all you need is a home brewing kit and some know-how. Well, bottling and transporting could be a bit more risky...
However, the smallpox scenario is pretty unlikely, but smallpox is an easily recognized disease. The "S" word is enough to make anyone's ears pop up. Better than anthrax (too many people might think that is a band or a bug spray).
Realistically, if the event were to happen in the US, anybody who has ever had US military service would be unaffected. Anyone vaccinated prior to, oh, about 10-15 years ago would also likely be unaffected. As for everyone else, getting cowpox ain't that hard (that IS the vaccine, btw). Find a farmer or rancher.
Now, anthrax, that would be easy to make and spread around. Not much you can do about vaccinating either (limited effect and duration). Problem is that the stuff lives in the soil forever. Not a big deal if you are a terrorist, I suppose.
Plague, though, now that could be made just as easily, and vaccination lasts for quite a while. Different types of plagues with different types of vectors (bubonic is just one...there is another that is spread airborne, and is more lethal). That is where the DoD scenario would really hit the fan, since AFAIK the vaccine only lasts for about 10 years, and most folks never go back for a booster unless they study bats or other stuff like that for a living. Hmmm...maybe I should get shot again, but that stuff hurts like heck.
mrgoat
Nah, it would say:
"We are ordering free pizza tomorrow in the break room. Click on the link to confirm."
Nothing gets folks like free pizza...
mrgoat
Um...ok, who says that when someone is being held against their will (i.e., a hostage), that the other party is out to kill them? Sometimes, you just want them quiet long enough to discredit them.
The EFF gained very little out of this whole event with Adobe. So Adobe has withdrawn their complaint, so what? Adobe has already had this man held. By withdrawing their complaint, and doing nothing else, Adobe does not right any wrongs perpetrated against this man. In fact, he is still a prisoner.
EFF gets little or nothing out of this deal- what they should have gotten was Adobe's ACTIVE participation in freeing this man. Such did not occur. Protests would have gained Adobe's withdrawal from this anyways, because Adobe doesn't need bad publicity, and because Sklyarov is facing Federal detention (and all of the byzantine mess that such detention entails). Adobe had nothing to lose by withdrawing at that point, whether EFF entered into negotiations with them or not.
My other statements in my post still stand until the EFF disproves them. I actually hope the EFF does just that. I would hate to think my donations to them went up in smoke.
mrgoat