The answer is obviously "yes" but you ignore the corollary question:
Would you rather have liberty, or would you rather have government officials harassing you at every turn? I'd rather have liberty even if that means a few crooks sometimes succeed in holding-up banks. Being harassed would make me feel like I was a child again, rather than a freeman.
>>>But don't run about harassing the police as parent suggests.
Asking questions of strange people is not harassment. Lots of people wear uniforms (cop, electrician, fireman, et cetera) bought off the net and they SHOULD be questioned to find-out if they are genuine cops, or just people pretending to be cops. I'm tired of the "leave them alone" paradigm that has taken-over America.
That's the kind of thinking that caused a New Yorker to get hit by a car, laying in the middle of the street crying for help, and nobody did a damn thing. Stop being a coward. Legitimate authority comes from us, the people. Use your power and stand-up for what you believe in.
If you think a 2500 mile, 3-day crosscountry trip is long, try doing it in an electric car sometime. You can only travel 200 miles tops, and then you have to stop at a hotel room so you can recharge overnight (8 hours minimum). It's a 13 day trip instead of 3.
Even if you skip sleeping and drive at night, it will still take 7 days. I'll stick with gasoline or diesel.
Then they should focus on the "it's electric!" sales pitch, rather than spread lies about getting 100 MPG and ignoring the costs at the user's electric meter. This is the same crap Chevy does with its Volt, claiming you get 60 MPG and "save money" but they never bother to mention the $50/month increase for charging the Volt's battery. Such false advertising should be illegal.
Besides starting out with a fully-charged battery every morning (which is like 40 miles of "free" energy when the gas engine will be off), the overall fuel economy is only ~100 miles per gallon. My Honda Insight can do 98-99 MPG if I drive 50 miles and hour, and the Volkswagen Lupo 3L can get over 110 MPG at similar speeds.
All illegal, unconstitutional acts by the United States government. If the State governments want to own passenger ships or container ships or electric companies, that's okay (per amendment 10), but the U.S. Congress was never granted any of those powers.
>>>If Noscript was proprietary, people would have been stuck with the author's shady practices until some guy comes up with a (bad) free software replacement.
Author's shady practices??? Ooookay. And you're not shady too? I find it funny you justify "freedom" with an argument about using NoScript to steal people's bandwidth. Reminds me of Libertarian Party members* who refuse to pay taxes, but then they go to the library to get free books and videos. Parasites.
Anyway..... I don't think you have a right to drive-up somebody's web-hosting bills by several hundred dollars, and then refuse to "pay" those bills by blocking the banners. That's equivalent to going to the Soup Kitchen, eating the food, and then refusing to listen to the speaker who provided the food. The food is not free; neither is the website. Listening to/viewing the speaker/ads is the price.
I've used all kinds of OSes over the years, including Commodore BASIC/DOS and GEOS and AmigaOS (1,2,3) and MacOS (6,7,8,9,and 10) and Windoze (3,4,95,98,XP,wista) and Linux Ubuntu. When I was young and had tons of time to spare, I enjoyed hacking into my Commodore or Amiga to see what I could make them do, but now that I'm middle-aged I don't have many years left. I want my OS to "just work" like my car just works, so I can use my remaining time for other fun projects.
I gave Linux a fair shake, found it as frustrating as driving a Volkswagen Old Beetle that keeps breaking-down, and decided to go back to XP and MacOS. They cost money, but not that much, and that cost is offset by all the other free/libre programs like Firefox, Utorrent, Opera (not liberated but it is free), and so on.
BTW:
One other annoyance with Linux Ubuntu is when I switched my screen size to 640x480 to play some Atari and NES gaming. I found it impossible to switch it back to 1280x1024. Why? Because the dialogue box did not fit, and the "okay" button was off the screen! I ended-up stuck. That was pretty much the final straw that made me reach for my XP restore disc. What Linux needs is a user-friendliness consultant who is tasked to find all the problems that make the OS difficult for average people to navigate. Linux should be as easy to use as the Mac, or at least XP, and right now it's not even a quarter of the way there.
>>>take back the right to privacy through better technology and government policy.
Well first-off government law already states, "No search without warrant" so the policy should be to enforce that law. That's the point of the debate - to pressure politicians to observe their own laws.
Second, escalating technology means nothing because the politicians will simply make it illegal to have an encryption key. And if you refuse to provide the key, then they will jail you, as is already the case in the UK. He who has the power to take away your freedom will ultimately win, no matter how many technology tricks you try. (Which brings us full circle to point number one again - enforce the law as written.)
>>>The vast majority of the population learns history FROM the government. The public schools are government-sponsored, staffed by government employees, with a curriculum that is created and approved by the government. As I've heard it said, if you send a child to a Catholic school they will be taught that Catholicism is great. If you send a child to a Baptist school they will be taught that Baptism is great. If you send a child to a government school... >>>
Which is why we need freedom to choose, even for poor persons.
Monopolies should not be allowed to stand. IMHO any person who sends a child to a private school, or even a neighboring government school, should be exempt from the School Tax for that year (with the tuition receipt used as proof). They should be allowed to keep the money they labored to earn for themselves, and direct it to whatever school they choose, rather than have to pay TWO tuitions. That's called liberty.
>>>As long as a warrant is obtained, I don't see why it would be illegal.
That's the problem. Many times NO warrant is obtained, which is a violation not just of the U.S. Constitution but also all 50 State Constitutions. And when the FBI or CIA officer gets caught, they just say "oops" and that's the end of it. IMHO they should receive double-counts of violating both national and state law, with time in prison.
Perhaps that's the great flaw of our constitution(s). They define the crime but not the punishment. Without punishment there's no deterrence.
Well that happens when Congress fails to read the bills placed in front of them. I found it amusing that representatives later said, "I didn't know that law was in the Patriot Act!" Well you would have known if you had bothered to read it.
I expect to hear similar representative cries of "I didn't know that was in the Stimulus Bill" in a few more months. If I was in Congress I would automatically vote "nay" on any bill I have not read at least once.
Then they next thing the people of New Zealand need to do is locate the judge, and the two officers, and tar-and-feather them. The People need to make examples of poor employees who would violate basic inalienable rights (i.e. arresting an innocent man and then making-up false charges).
"When the people fear the government, then there is tyranny. When the government functionaries fear the people, then there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson. You should also get yourself a small camcorder - only ~$100 on ebay. Video evidence helps to fight cops when they lie.
We need to stand together. When you observe an officer wiretapping somebody's connection or entering a house, be bold, and ask what they are doing. Wait for a reply and then ask if they have a warrant. If they don't have a warrant, then ask them to leave, and if they refuse then back away from the scene. Next call 911 to report observing a crime in progress (breaking-and-entering).
Don't be intimidated. These officers are your EMPLOYEES and you are the boss. You have every right to hold them to task for violating constitutional law. My brother ran into this recently where a cop demanded to be let into his mother-in-law's private apartment house. My brother refused even though the cop flashed his badge and claimed to be investigating a drug problem, but my brother told the cop to go get a warrant and refused to unlock the door to the house. Watch this video for some inspiration:
"Anyone who would give-up ESSENTIAL liberty for *temporary* security, deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin. Also while we may be able to trust a President Bush or President Obama with the ability to monitor our internet transactions, eventually there will arise a man like Julius Caesar or Nero or Napoleon who will use the ability of spying for his own enrichment and/or to eliminate enemies. Like Nixon did.
IMHO people who trust government are either fools, or they don't know history,
Well I just upgraded from 2.x to Firefox 3.0, and if 3.5 really is unstable then I don't want it. FF3 never crashes, even when I'm running flash. If FF3 can go days without crashing, then FF3.5 should be able to do the same. .
>>>"complicated setup and configuration can be a real turn-off."
This is why I stopped using Linux on my laptop. I couldn't get the darn thing to connect to Netscape ISP, and after frakking with it for several hours, I finally gave up and reinstalled Windows XP. I had it connected in just 5 minutes. There are advantages to proprietary software that "just works".
Besides is Linus really "free"? My time has value too (about $50/hour) and the hours I spent trying to connect to my ISP could have been spent earning overtime at work, buying Windoze for ~$120, and still having some cash leftover in my pocket. Sometimes it's worth handing-over the credit card to get plug-and-play software, rather than put-up with free software's constant need to "configure" everything.
Actually it's never worked. Even in the 1800s authors had problems with people copying their books illegally. Charles Dickens frequently complained about unauthorized copies of his works appearing, and even though the government tried to punish those persons, the copies kept appearing.
The founder of the Democratic Party Thomas Jefferson said the idea made little sense, because if you own a printing press, along with paper and ink, why shouldn't you be able to use your OWN property however you see fit? It's your property - nobody else should be able to tell you how to use (or not use) your own stuff. The only reason he tolerated it was because it was a time-limited privilege (7 years in the early 1800s), and therefore didn't cause too much hassle.
But now it's around 1000 years which is insane. Copy PRIVILEGE should be time limited. It shouldn't be like Mickey Mouse which is still copyrighted 50 years after the original artist (Walter Elias Disney) died. In order to enrich society, works need to fall into the public domain, just like all the other great works of fiction (Paradise Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Pilgrims Progress, Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield) have fallen into public domain. That's how you enrich a culture.
We have observed that customer IPs ____, ____, ____,....., ____, _____, and _____ have been sharing files. We also observed this is their third offense. Please unplug their connection from your service or else we will... blah blah blah.
Thank you RIAA.
.
Dear RIAA,
Fuck off. It's not my job to police YOUR limited, temporary copy privileges. I need those people to survive in this poor economy, and will continue providing a connection so long as they continue paying. Sue the customers in court if you want, but don't involve me in your paranoia.
Well the 5 1/4" disks are more reliable. My old Commodore 64 games on 5 1/4 still work, while the higher density 3.5" disks have essentially erased themselves. I say stick with the lower density but higher reliability 5 and a quarter format.
You mean the wireless modems don't come with Flash ROM that can be updated by the user? That's whack. The old USR Robotics modems were upgrdeable from 19.2 to 28.8 to 56k as each new standard was released.
Slashdot Mirror
The answer is obviously "yes" but you ignore the corollary question:
Would you rather have liberty, or would you rather have government officials harassing you at every turn? I'd rather have liberty even if that means a few crooks sometimes succeed in holding-up banks. Being harassed would make me feel like I was a child again, rather than a freeman.
>>>But don't run about harassing the police as parent suggests.
Asking questions of strange people is not harassment. Lots of people wear uniforms (cop, electrician, fireman, et cetera) bought off the net and they SHOULD be questioned to find-out if they are genuine cops, or just people pretending to be cops. I'm tired of the "leave them alone" paradigm that has taken-over America.
That's the kind of thinking that caused a New Yorker to get hit by a car, laying in the middle of the street crying for help, and nobody did a damn thing. Stop being a coward. Legitimate authority comes from us, the people. Use your power and stand-up for what you believe in.
If you think a 2500 mile, 3-day crosscountry trip is long, try doing it in an electric car sometime. You can only travel 200 miles tops, and then you have to stop at a hotel room so you can recharge overnight (8 hours minimum). It's a 13 day trip instead of 3.
Even if you skip sleeping and drive at night, it will still take 7 days. I'll stick with gasoline or diesel.
Then they should focus on the "it's electric!" sales pitch, rather than spread lies about getting 100 MPG and ignoring the costs at the user's electric meter. This is the same crap Chevy does with its Volt, claiming you get 60 MPG and "save money" but they never bother to mention the $50/month increase for charging the Volt's battery. Such false advertising should be illegal.
Louisiana will be the new Texas. "Louisiana tea - algae oil y'all. Strike it rich."
Yes.
Besides starting out with a fully-charged battery every morning (which is like 40 miles of "free" energy when the gas engine will be off), the overall fuel economy is only ~100 miles per gallon. My Honda Insight can do 98-99 MPG if I drive 50 miles and hour, and the Volkswagen Lupo 3L can get over 110 MPG at similar speeds.
All illegal, unconstitutional acts by the United States government. If the State governments want to own passenger ships or container ships or electric companies, that's okay (per amendment 10), but the U.S. Congress was never granted any of those powers.
>>>If Noscript was proprietary, people would have been stuck with the author's shady practices until some guy comes up with a (bad) free software replacement.
Author's shady practices??? Ooookay. And you're not shady too? I find it funny you justify "freedom" with an argument about using NoScript to steal people's bandwidth. Reminds me of Libertarian Party members* who refuse to pay taxes, but then they go to the library to get free books and videos. Parasites.
Anyway..... I don't think you have a right to drive-up somebody's web-hosting bills by several hundred dollars, and then refuse to "pay" those bills by blocking the banners. That's equivalent to going to the Soup Kitchen, eating the food, and then refusing to listen to the speaker who provided the food. The food is not free; neither is the website. Listening to/viewing the speaker/ads is the price.
Precisely.
I've used all kinds of OSes over the years, including Commodore BASIC/DOS and GEOS and AmigaOS (1,2,3) and MacOS (6,7,8,9,and 10) and Windoze (3,4,95,98,XP,wista) and Linux Ubuntu. When I was young and had tons of time to spare, I enjoyed hacking into my Commodore or Amiga to see what I could make them do, but now that I'm middle-aged I don't have many years left. I want my OS to "just work" like my car just works, so I can use my remaining time for other fun projects.
I gave Linux a fair shake, found it as frustrating as driving a Volkswagen Old Beetle that keeps breaking-down, and decided to go back to XP and MacOS. They cost money, but not that much, and that cost is offset by all the other free/libre programs like Firefox, Utorrent, Opera (not liberated but it is free), and so on.
BTW:
One other annoyance with Linux Ubuntu is when I switched my screen size to 640x480 to play some Atari and NES gaming. I found it impossible to switch it back to 1280x1024. Why? Because the dialogue box did not fit, and the "okay" button was off the screen! I ended-up stuck. That was pretty much the final straw that made me reach for my XP restore disc. What Linux needs is a user-friendliness consultant who is tasked to find all the problems that make the OS difficult for average people to navigate. Linux should be as easy to use as the Mac, or at least XP, and right now it's not even a quarter of the way there.
>>>take back the right to privacy through better technology and government policy.
Well first-off government law already states, "No search without warrant" so the policy should be to enforce that law. That's the point of the debate - to pressure politicians to observe their own laws.
Second, escalating technology means nothing because the politicians will simply make it illegal to have an encryption key. And if you refuse to provide the key, then they will jail you, as is already the case in the UK. He who has the power to take away your freedom will ultimately win, no matter how many technology tricks you try. (Which brings us full circle to point number one again - enforce the law as written.)
Well to quote the other side:
- "But if you're doing nothing wrong, why would you want to be anonymous? I don't understand your fear."
- "But if you're doing nothing wrong, why would you refuse the yellow star? I don't understand your fear."
- "But if you're doing nothing wrong, why would you refuse the police entering your house? I don't understand your fear."
>>>The vast majority of the population learns history FROM the government. The public schools are government-sponsored, staffed by government employees, with a curriculum that is created and approved by the government. As I've heard it said, if you send a child to a Catholic school they will be taught that Catholicism is great. If you send a child to a Baptist school they will be taught that Baptism is great. If you send a child to a government school...
>>>
Which is why we need freedom to choose, even for poor persons.
Monopolies should not be allowed to stand. IMHO any person who sends a child to a private school, or even a neighboring government school, should be exempt from the School Tax for that year (with the tuition receipt used as proof). They should be allowed to keep the money they labored to earn for themselves, and direct it to whatever school they choose, rather than have to pay TWO tuitions. That's called liberty.
The alternative is slavery.
>>>As long as a warrant is obtained, I don't see why it would be illegal.
That's the problem. Many times NO warrant is obtained, which is a violation not just of the U.S. Constitution but also all 50 State Constitutions. And when the FBI or CIA officer gets caught, they just say "oops" and that's the end of it. IMHO they should receive double-counts of violating both national and state law, with time in prison.
Perhaps that's the great flaw of our constitution(s). They define the crime but not the punishment. Without punishment there's no deterrence.
Well that happens when Congress fails to read the bills placed in front of them. I found it amusing that representatives later said, "I didn't know that law was in the Patriot Act!" Well you would have known if you had bothered to read it.
I expect to hear similar representative cries of "I didn't know that was in the Stimulus Bill" in a few more months. If I was in Congress I would automatically vote "nay" on any bill I have not read at least once.
Then they next thing the people of New Zealand need to do is locate the judge, and the two officers, and tar-and-feather them. The People need to make examples of poor employees who would violate basic inalienable rights (i.e. arresting an innocent man and then making-up false charges).
"When the people fear the government, then there is tyranny. When the government functionaries fear the people, then there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson. You should also get yourself a small camcorder - only ~$100 on ebay. Video evidence helps to fight cops when they lie.
Yet another Unconstitutional, illegal search without warrant
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB_jp3Sm1BY
Another video that pisses me off - Warrantless Search - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2ZV_kQh048
We need to stand together. When you observe an officer wiretapping somebody's connection or entering a house, be bold, and ask what they are doing. Wait for a reply and then ask if they have a warrant. If they don't have a warrant, then ask them to leave, and if they refuse then back away from the scene. Next call 911 to report observing a crime in progress (breaking-and-entering).
Don't be intimidated. These officers are your EMPLOYEES and you are the boss. You have every right to hold them to task for violating constitutional law. My brother ran into this recently where a cop demanded to be let into his mother-in-law's private apartment house. My brother refused even though the cop flashed his badge and claimed to be investigating a drug problem, but my brother told the cop to go get a warrant and refused to unlock the door to the house. Watch this video for some inspiration:
NO WARRANT, No Search - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLpSY8d3gRc
"Anyone who would give-up ESSENTIAL liberty for *temporary* security, deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin. Also while we may be able to trust a President Bush or President Obama with the ability to monitor our internet transactions, eventually there will arise a man like Julius Caesar or Nero or Napoleon who will use the ability of spying for his own enrichment and/or to eliminate enemies. Like Nixon did.
IMHO people who trust government are either fools, or they don't know history,
Well I just upgraded from 2.x to Firefox 3.0, and if 3.5 really is unstable then I don't want it. FF3 never crashes, even when I'm running flash. If FF3 can go days without crashing, then FF3.5 should be able to do the same.
.
>>>"complicated setup and configuration can be a real turn-off."
This is why I stopped using Linux on my laptop. I couldn't get the darn thing to connect to Netscape ISP, and after frakking with it for several hours, I finally gave up and reinstalled Windows XP. I had it connected in just 5 minutes. There are advantages to proprietary software that "just works".
Besides is Linus really "free"? My time has value too (about $50/hour) and the hours I spent trying to connect to my ISP could have been spent earning overtime at work, buying Windoze for ~$120, and still having some cash leftover in my pocket. Sometimes it's worth handing-over the credit card to get plug-and-play software, rather than put-up with free software's constant need to "configure" everything.
>>>Copyright worked well for generations,
Actually it's never worked. Even in the 1800s authors had problems with people copying their books illegally. Charles Dickens frequently complained about unauthorized copies of his works appearing, and even though the government tried to punish those persons, the copies kept appearing.
The founder of the Democratic Party Thomas Jefferson said the idea made little sense, because if you own a printing press, along with paper and ink, why shouldn't you be able to use your OWN property however you see fit? It's your property - nobody else should be able to tell you how to use (or not use) your own stuff. The only reason he tolerated it was because it was a time-limited privilege (7 years in the early 1800s), and therefore didn't cause too much hassle.
But now it's around 1000 years which is insane. Copy PRIVILEGE should be time limited. It shouldn't be like Mickey Mouse which is still copyrighted 50 years after the original artist (Walter Elias Disney) died. In order to enrich society, works need to fall into the public domain, just like all the other great works of fiction (Paradise Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Pilgrims Progress, Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield) have fallen into public domain. That's how you enrich a culture.
Dear ISP Owner:
We have observed that customer IPs ____, ____, ____, ....., ____, _____, and _____ have been sharing files. We also observed this is their third offense. Please unplug their connection from your service or else we will... blah blah blah.
Thank you RIAA.
.
Dear RIAA,
Fuck off. It's not my job to police YOUR limited, temporary copy privileges. I need those people to survive in this poor economy, and will continue providing a connection so long as they continue paying. Sue the customers in court if you want, but don't involve me in your paranoia.
Signed,
ISP Owner
(-1, Only Anal People Nitpick Typos)
Well the 5 1/4" disks are more reliable. My old Commodore 64 games on 5 1/4 still work, while the higher density 3.5" disks have essentially erased themselves. I say stick with the lower density but higher reliability 5 and a quarter format.
You mean the wireless modems don't come with Flash ROM that can be updated by the user? That's whack. The old USR Robotics modems were upgrdeable from 19.2 to 28.8 to 56k as each new standard was released.