There are hundreds of thousands of developers world wide following the "Stallman method" as you call it. We call ourselves contract programmers, or "solutions architects" if were hawking our wares bizniz types. We get paid for our time and skill, not per copy of the code. The client gets to (0) run the software for whatever purpose they chose; (1) inspect the code to verify it works the way they want and modify it to suit their needs (practically, they hire another guy to do code review, QA, modifications etc) (2) distribute copies to all their staff without onerous licensing agreements, and if they really want to give a copy of the software to others; they're a business so they won't, but they are free to do so, and finally (3) distribute modified copies of the code. The majority of software written in the world (measured by lines of code) supposedly falls into this category of development. Off-the shelf, or in the modern world, off the internet software accounts for a surprisingly small percentage of software in the real world; most developers don't work for micro-gapple sized companies.
Actually, this makes a twisted form of sense. The DMCA and earlier wire tapping and computer fraud laws state two things iirc 1) Attempting to access a system which you do not have permission to access is illegal, and 2) subverting a security mechanism to provide unintended access is illegal. Now (1) only applies if someone uses the back door to gain access to your system, but (2) applies just because the back door exists. The stated intent is that these routers are secure (read the advertising gumph), which means the existence of the back door was a subversion of the intent for security. Someone, somewhere did this, and should be held liable. Considering the "OMFG it's on a computer" factor and the peculiarly zealous manner in which violations are normally prosecuted, I don't see why this shouldn't carry jail time, and a lot of it, as a sentence. I make this argument in support of consistency. What's good for goose is good for the gander. I don't actually agree with the sentences recommended/allowed by those acts.
I have a friend who is a very junior lawyer at a local firm. The senior partner she reports to charges 8 times what my friend charges per hour. I asked her how they could justify this rate considering she was technically equally qualified, albeit way less experienced. She answered, because he can get eight times as much done in a hour as I can; he doesn't have to look stuff up.
Rock star programmers are the same. They are the guys who can just get to grips with the problem, and don't need to look at the reference books or google around to see if there's a library that they can use; they already know one exists, the names of several of them and probably the basics of API of one off the top of their head. In one hour of being left alone, they can do the work of eight hours of a 'regular' programmer. Yes they deserve to be paid eight times the other guys, if they get eight times the stuff done.
That being said, they don't have to be assholes. I've met a number of "rock star programmers" that were pretty easy to get on with. The one thing they do tend to have in common though, is that they don't suffer shitty developers gladly. They will happily tell management a) don't hire him, b) fine, don't make me work with him, c) it takes more time for me to delegate a simple task and watch that he does it right, than to just do it myself; he CAN'T PROGRAM. The problem there are a lot of so called developers who really cannot program, so the rock stars look like they throw their toys a lot
If there is one field/sector that REALLY needs to learn how to use a database, it's the sciences. Keeping experimental data from anything but the simplest of experiments in spreadsheets is just ridiculous.
I don't see what's so bad about SQL. I am forever hearing from business types who want their reporting to be more flexible, and complaining that there must already be some tool for the job. My answer is invariably, there is a tool for the job. It's called SQL. Your data is already in a relational database, so learn how to use it. But that's too hard. And SAP, and Oracle Forms, and web front ends etc. are just plaster over the crumbling wall that is the fact that people who don't know how to use the right tools for their job and refuse to learn to do so are always being hired.
If I have a conversation on the phone with someone, that's protected, even though the phone call is routed through a third party (the telecoms company). Why is it different on the internet, or on a computer? Consider these situations:
I have a conversation in a room in my house with two other people: There's a third party, depending on how you choose to group the three people. That conversation is private. The conversation isn't encrypted, and it's technically very easy to record, by bug or parabolic mic for example, but the police would require a warrant to record the conversation. The expectation of privacy is based on the physical boundaries involved, regardless of whether I own or rent the property. If the conversation was in the garden, and overheard. A prosecutor could use the testimony whoever overheard the conversation. But the police still couldn't record the conversation without a warrant.
I am conducting business via snail mail, sending a contract back and forth between myself and two other people, but it's probably going to be seen by by various secretaries and flunkies as they manage/facilitate the technicalities of getting the documents to and from their intended recipients, such as putting text on letterhead (formatting) putting it in an envelope (marshalling) and putting in the post box (transmitting), and photocopy it for record keeping (storing). That conversation is private. The police would require a warrant to intercept the mail. In fact, the police couldn't even ask for on of the receptionists to forward a copy of the mail to them, or even to report to them the dates, times and addresses on the envelopes. For that they would require a warrant.
I'm conducting a conversation on facebook/google+. I've set up my privacy settings so that only people I approve can see the conversation. The expectation of privacy is that people I haven't approved can't see the conversation, based on the "boundaries" of my settings. I don't own the digital space where the conversation is taking place, but I do in a sense rent it based on the agreements in the terms of service. Compared to the first case, why shouldn't this conversation be considered private. Sure, Facebook or Google or whoever it is can see the conversation as they FORMAT it into the correct protocol, MARSHAL it for network TRANSMISSION, ad STORE it it for eventual delivery. Compared to the second case, they are acting as my digital secretary, even if that secretary is a Kelly Temp, i.e. a third party.
Just because it's on a computer and EASIER to access, shouldn't make it LEGAL to access without a warrant.
The problem with your thinking is that the Dunbar number is limited by our brains. The internet and the NSA do not forget.
Remember that guy who emailed you about that craigslist posting you put up a few years ago? No? Well, the NSA does.
Exaclty! It's not about friends, it's about associations. Share a bank branch? That's an association. Shop at the same flower store, just once? That's an association. So the Dunbar number is not applicable. This is about all the people, institutions, companies, and services we interact with even only sporadically. 3 hops in this environment is a huge number of people
The U.S. might not be perfect, but they are a lot less oppressive than nations like Russia, China, Syria.
This is the crux of the fallacious argument to keep the internet under U.S. control. Yes the U.S. is less oppressive by some standards than countries like Russia, China, Syria. America is still a freedom (as in speech) loving nation, they're just not a privacy loving nation. According to U.S. law those are separate legal notions, and one does rely on the other. Privacy isn't even a "right" in the legal sense. The right to free speech is still guaranteed, but the right for anonymous speech doesn't exist. And it's all perfectly legal! Keep that in mind.
I'm a South African, old enough to remember the last decade of apartheid. I was too young to really understand a lot of what was going on, but I do remember talking about it with my mother in the late 90's. She always said, as a lawyer herself, that the apartheid government never, or more likely very rarely, broke the law. They just changed the law to make what they wanted to do legal. The kind of legal reasoning can only be thought out by minds so twisted they could hide behind a corkscrew. And looking at the U.S. I see exactly the same sort of legal manoeuvring.
So yes, the U.S. is not perfect. In fact it is just as bad as one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, or at the very lest fast heading that way.
It is NOT the "least worst option". Iceland would be a far better option. Or Sweden, or Norway, or Finland, or even Germany; All assuming they could "run the internet" without U.S. interference, which the U.S. has already proved it won't allow, not by acting in defence of freedom, but by imposing it's own laws in other countries (think Mega Upload and the Pirate Bay)
I have to disagree. The two biggest reasons for a home PC in 80's and 90's were text document writing and gaming. In that order. Parents wanted the first, kids used the PC for the second. That a changed slightly with after the endless September, including two more uses: email and web browsing, again in that order. Tablets and phones etc STILL SUCK for writing documents. It's not just the lack of keyboard; the biggest issue is cutting and pasting. When my folks want to write a letter (yes an actual letter) to their local ward councillor, they go back to the laptop every time. Drafting a will, writing a letter to the paper/lawyer/bank/etc, printing out documents; These are all things that are still a regular enough occurrence to make having only a tablet infeasible. Tablets are fundamentally bad at facilitating text generation larger that a quick email, and as a society the written word is still enmeshed far too deeply with our lives for us to say that no one ever needs tow rite anything longer that a quick email.
I can think of one reason for a civilization to "go inter-stellar"; Survival. If that civilisation is capable of inter planetary space travel, they will also know they have limited time before their own solar system becomes hostile. Also, side point, but I'd argue that terraforming is probably more achievable than FTL flight, or any of the other technologies required for sub-light interstellar travel. Assuming climate change is at least partially athropogenic, we're already part of the way there.
Americans do not have to sole claim to ideals like partiotism, morality, freedom, and civil liberties. You don't have to be American to understand a desire for privacy, a live and let live attitude. When you refer to 'Americans' you are actually referring to a subset of people with a word view similar to yours (presumably) to you like to identify with on the basis of a geographical area. I'm guessing that those who don't share your world view would be deemed 'unAmerican'.
That said, I happen to agree with the idea of civil liberties, due process, mutual respect of rights, and in general a live-and-let-live attitude towards life. But I call myself a liberal (in the broad political sense; I'm South African), not an American. Also from the outside, it's becoming increasingly 'unAmerican' to support your world view. Going by the apparent majority, to be 'American' these days seems to be the exact opposite; trample on other people's and nation's rights, screw mutual respect, support the erosion of civil liberties in favour of maintaining an obnoxiously opulent life style etc. I know this isn't true of all Americans, but you (as a nation) lost the right to associate 'the American way' with your ideals of civil liberties and personal freedoms somewhere in the 60's when as a nation you started screwing around in South America and the middle East.
And Richard Nixon wasn't ashamed of what he'd done, he ashamed he got caught!
You mean we should take our pensions and healthcare and give them to an 18 year old? No problem, wall street seems to be getting along nicely in that regard.
Buying some land and growing some vegetables on it does not attract capital gains tax either, but nor does it attract income tax until you SELL the vegetables. Also, it doesn't attract tax if you barter the vegetables for something else. From TFA:
GAO said that strict virtual (or “closed flow”) transactions in which virtual currency is used only within a game or virtual environment to purchase virtual goods and services were not taxable.
The IRS is saying the creation/accrual of bitcoins and other virtual currencies is taxable at the point of barter as well as sale. It's not even income, as you've earned no money from selling something. I don't know, this seems like a real over reach on the part of the IRS. It makes perfect sense to tax someone when they sell their bit coins for cash; that's income, but taxing the BUYER for buying an online subscription, or some tech gadget, or a T-shirt and then taxing the SELLER for changing those bitcoins into USD. That's double taxation. As long as you can't pay some countries taxes with it, it shouldn't be taxable IMHO.
We covered this situation in our Human Computer Interaction module back in my undergrad in 1997. From a data(base) storage point of view, the solution is two have two fields, sex (as in phenotype -- male genitalia vs female genitalia vs both) and gender (as in identity concept -- I think of myself as male/female/Intersex/other). These two fields cover male, female, transgender, intersex, and hermaphrodite. What this doesn't solve is the problems of discrimination and lack of familiarity with dealing with changes in these fields on the part of the humans who capture and alter the information, although that's a little ridiculous too. I am a straight male, as in I look male and I consider myself male, and I've been incorrectly captured in a database as female once. Probably a typo. I know a couple of other people to whom this has happened. Fixing it was as simple as phoning up and saying, "err, guys, I'm a guy". I realise this is less of an issue than having a driver's license stating you are male, and then appearing female, but it's not necessarily an information systems problem.
How about this? Non-natural persons get a two 2 year copyright on a particular work for free, with indefinite applications for renewal, with one catch; The first renewal costs $1000 (or some small but non-trivial amount of money to get rid of the jokers), the next renewal costs double that, and it keeps doubling every renewal period. Natural persons get 5 year periods, or something along those lines, to cater for differences in ability to pay for renewals between businesses and natural people
Once it gets to the point where you're paying more money than you're making off the copyright, even corporations would stop extending. You'd also have to register your renewals (to pay for them), so the licensing terms will always be available in a central system so everyone else can see whether it's still under copyright, and who owns it. Copyrights can also be inherited, assuming the renewal periods are paid for up front, but the inheritors only get it to the end of the registered and paid for renewal period.
This works really well for most things: prose (books, poems, other literatrue), music (as in sheet music and lyrics), recorded performances (recorded audio, recorded video); If you publish, you get two years to see if your work is popular enough to make you money in the short to medium term; If you feel it's profitable to renew, do so. For those things that are going to be classics in 20 years time, put your money where your mouth is. As a corporation, it'll only cost you $511,000 if you're corp, or $7,000 if you're a natural person... spread over 20 years. The exact numbers can be tweaked; Personally, I think corps should renew every year.
If your government hides something for longer than one election cycle, then that "something" is guaranteed to lose them votes, i.e. they're not representing their constiuents interests.
When a radio show calls a minister in their offices for comment, does that mean the radio broadcast originates in the minister's office? This was a phone call, not a camera crew.
Okay, there's a lot at play here. Firstly, there are issues with the terminology. From a tech perspective, Mr. Hughes didn't perform the broadcast, the BBC did - from England. Mr. Hughes made a video call. That's not a broadcast, it's a point-to-point transmission from the perspective of information transfer. Yes, the cellular phone (asuming it was cellular) was broadcasting omnidirectionally, but it was doing that anyway just for voice, which seems to be okay. From the article, it definitely seems like they're complaining about the content of the transmission, rather than the transmission itself.
That said everyone assumes the rules are for environmental reasons, but the article mentions 'a restricted area'. From my travels in the Himalayas in India, I know pretty much the entire provice of Kashmir is a restricted area. No internet data on pre-paid sims for foreigners, or even SMS's. It's crawling with the military. I don't know what the political situation in Nepal is, but is it possible this is a similar concept of 'restricted area'? If so I'm sure the military doesn't want strange broadcasts happening, but if the smartphone used a standard cellular network, and as opposed to a satellite phone, or even video+voice over IP, then I still don't see how it could upset anyone. The article leaves out a fair amount of detail unfortunately.
Put civil liberties and the general princicples of individual liberty (in the Jeffersonian sense) first, before national security or profit motive
Electoral reform (Distributed Direct Democracy would be nice, but there are much less radical improvements that could be easily made, e.g. overturning Citizen's United)
Technological literacy (for want of a better term), i.e. representatives who either understand (at least in principle) how the technologies that affect our daily lives work, or who are willing to take approriate impartial advice on matters; we have laws that deal inapproraite/unfair/immoral/illegal interactions between various legal entities (including people), no need to make more of them just because those interactions happen over the internet or on a mobile phone
Just an aside, I'm not a libertarian. and I strongly believe point 1 would require more regulation of companies and industries, not less.
Hmm, maybe the alleged drug dealer should get his lawyer to go after the cops for violations of terms of service, Aaron Swarts style. Life in prison sound fair according to prevailing prosecution opinion.
I'd agree with this. Ease of use is more often than not a bad phrasing of "familiar to the user". Windows isn't easy to use. My parents can't use it any more than they can use linux. They could use WP 5.1 and DOS just fine, but back then my dad was writing a Phd and my mum was drafting municipal legislation, both of them using them the computer daily. Since then their computer usage has eased off to the point of just email and web browsing, and the odd letter. I could give them an XFCE desktop with firefox, and thunderbird and libreoffice or a windows desktop with the same and it would probably take them a while tel notice that there are differences between the two that aren't cosmetic. Hell! It they've used my laptop, only commenting on the difference in available fonts.
In this vein, gentoo isn't "hard to use" if your familiar with it. It's easy enough to follow the handbook and install it. It scrolls a lot of intimidating text past during compiles, but that doesn't make it hard to use. What gentoo does do is put a lot of choice and control into the user's hands. More than any other distro I find gentoo has "intelligent defaults". I can emerge almost anything from stable, and not only does it work straight out, but it doesn't auto-start, open a security hole, or otherwise fuck with other stuff on my system. PostgreSQL springs to mind here. I was frutrated to tears trying to figure out how to log in to postgres in a vanilla ubuntu install, until I discovered I had to sudo su postgres. It's been a while since I had a fresh postgres install in gentoo, but I remeber it was obvious to get into, becasue the default install creates a role for local access with a password, iirc
Okay, I didn't notice the kopimi logo before, but subsequent investigation turns up the following
The kopimi logo only exists on the front page, and what it covers is not specified explicitly. Presumably, in source file licence notices would override the somewhat vague domain covered by a linked image. At most generous interpretation, it covers entire front page (html, css, js, images), more likely it could be argued that since the logo is only linked in the html, that's all it covers.
That said, I can't find any licence notices in the html or css source either. It'll be interesting to see whether automatic assumed copyright will take precedence over the vague assertions of the kopimi logo or not. Are copyright (dis)claims automatically inherited by by derivative/associated works? Considering the language in the GPL probably not.
Finally, the kopimi wording doesn't explicitly grant permission. Flimsy, I know, but also a posisble argument.
All in all, you raise a good point, but I don't think it'll sink TPB's case
Slashdot Mirror
Well put!
There are hundreds of thousands of developers world wide following the "Stallman method" as you call it. We call ourselves contract programmers, or "solutions architects" if were hawking our wares bizniz types. We get paid for our time and skill, not per copy of the code. The client gets to (0) run the software for whatever purpose they chose; (1) inspect the code to verify it works the way they want and modify it to suit their needs (practically, they hire another guy to do code review, QA, modifications etc) (2) distribute copies to all their staff without onerous licensing agreements, and if they really want to give a copy of the software to others; they're a business so they won't, but they are free to do so, and finally (3) distribute modified copies of the code. The majority of software written in the world (measured by lines of code) supposedly falls into this category of development. Off-the shelf, or in the modern world, off the internet software accounts for a surprisingly small percentage of software in the real world; most developers don't work for micro-gapple sized companies.
Actually, this makes a twisted form of sense. The DMCA and earlier wire tapping and computer fraud laws state two things iirc 1) Attempting to access a system which you do not have permission to access is illegal, and 2) subverting a security mechanism to provide unintended access is illegal. Now (1) only applies if someone uses the back door to gain access to your system, but (2) applies just because the back door exists. The stated intent is that these routers are secure (read the advertising gumph), which means the existence of the back door was a subversion of the intent for security. Someone, somewhere did this, and should be held liable. Considering the "OMFG it's on a computer" factor and the peculiarly zealous manner in which violations are normally prosecuted, I don't see why this shouldn't carry jail time, and a lot of it, as a sentence. I make this argument in support of consistency. What's good for goose is good for the gander. I don't actually agree with the sentences recommended/allowed by those acts.
.. in a law firm
I have a friend who is a very junior lawyer at a local firm. The senior partner she reports to charges 8 times what my friend charges per hour. I asked her how they could justify this rate considering she was technically equally qualified, albeit way less experienced. She answered, because he can get eight times as much done in a hour as I can; he doesn't have to look stuff up.
Rock star programmers are the same. They are the guys who can just get to grips with the problem, and don't need to look at the reference books or google around to see if there's a library that they can use; they already know one exists, the names of several of them and probably the basics of API of one off the top of their head. In one hour of being left alone, they can do the work of eight hours of a 'regular' programmer. Yes they deserve to be paid eight times the other guys, if they get eight times the stuff done.
That being said, they don't have to be assholes. I've met a number of "rock star programmers" that were pretty easy to get on with. The one thing they do tend to have in common though, is that they don't suffer shitty developers gladly. They will happily tell management a) don't hire him, b) fine, don't make me work with him, c) it takes more time for me to delegate a simple task and watch that he does it right, than to just do it myself; he CAN'T PROGRAM. The problem there are a lot of so called developers who really cannot program, so the rock stars look like they throw their toys a lot
If there is one field/sector that REALLY needs to learn how to use a database, it's the sciences. Keeping experimental data from anything but the simplest of experiments in spreadsheets is just ridiculous.
I don't see what's so bad about SQL. I am forever hearing from business types who want their reporting to be more flexible, and complaining that there must already be some tool for the job. My answer is invariably, there is a tool for the job. It's called SQL. Your data is already in a relational database, so learn how to use it. But that's too hard. And SAP, and Oracle Forms, and web front ends etc. are just plaster over the crumbling wall that is the fact that people who don't know how to use the right tools for their job and refuse to learn to do so are always being hired.
If I have a conversation on the phone with someone, that's protected, even though the phone call is routed through a third party (the telecoms company). Why is it different on the internet, or on a computer? Consider these situations:
I have a conversation in a room in my house with two other people: There's a third party, depending on how you choose to group the three people. That conversation is private. The conversation isn't encrypted, and it's technically very easy to record, by bug or parabolic mic for example, but the police would require a warrant to record the conversation. The expectation of privacy is based on the physical boundaries involved, regardless of whether I own or rent the property. If the conversation was in the garden, and overheard. A prosecutor could use the testimony whoever overheard the conversation. But the police still couldn't record the conversation without a warrant.
I am conducting business via snail mail, sending a contract back and forth between myself and two other people, but it's probably going to be seen by by various secretaries and flunkies as they manage/facilitate the technicalities of getting the documents to and from their intended recipients, such as putting text on letterhead (formatting) putting it in an envelope (marshalling) and putting in the post box (transmitting), and photocopy it for record keeping (storing). That conversation is private. The police would require a warrant to intercept the mail. In fact, the police couldn't even ask for on of the receptionists to forward a copy of the mail to them, or even to report to them the dates, times and addresses on the envelopes. For that they would require a warrant.
I'm conducting a conversation on facebook/google+. I've set up my privacy settings so that only people I approve can see the conversation. The expectation of privacy is that people I haven't approved can't see the conversation, based on the "boundaries" of my settings. I don't own the digital space where the conversation is taking place, but I do in a sense rent it based on the agreements in the terms of service. Compared to the first case, why shouldn't this conversation be considered private. Sure, Facebook or Google or whoever it is can see the conversation as they FORMAT it into the correct protocol, MARSHAL it for network TRANSMISSION, ad STORE it it for eventual delivery. Compared to the second case, they are acting as my digital secretary, even if that secretary is a Kelly Temp, i.e. a third party.
Just because it's on a computer and EASIER to access, shouldn't make it LEGAL to access without a warrant.
The problem with your thinking is that the Dunbar number is limited by our brains. The internet and the NSA do not forget.
Remember that guy who emailed you about that craigslist posting you put up a few years ago? No? Well, the NSA does.
Exaclty! It's not about friends, it's about associations. Share a bank branch? That's an association. Shop at the same flower store, just once? That's an association. So the Dunbar number is not applicable. This is about all the people, institutions, companies, and services we interact with even only sporadically. 3 hops in this environment is a huge number of people
The U.S. might not be perfect, but they are a lot less oppressive than nations like Russia, China, Syria.
This is the crux of the fallacious argument to keep the internet under U.S. control. Yes the U.S. is less oppressive by some standards than countries like Russia, China, Syria. America is still a freedom (as in speech) loving nation, they're just not a privacy loving nation. According to U.S. law those are separate legal notions, and one does rely on the other. Privacy isn't even a "right" in the legal sense. The right to free speech is still guaranteed, but the right for anonymous speech doesn't exist. And it's all perfectly legal! Keep that in mind.
I'm a South African, old enough to remember the last decade of apartheid. I was too young to really understand a lot of what was going on, but I do remember talking about it with my mother in the late 90's. She always said, as a lawyer herself, that the apartheid government never, or more likely very rarely, broke the law. They just changed the law to make what they wanted to do legal. The kind of legal reasoning can only be thought out by minds so twisted they could hide behind a corkscrew. And looking at the U.S. I see exactly the same sort of legal manoeuvring.
So yes, the U.S. is not perfect. In fact it is just as bad as one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, or at the very lest fast heading that way.
It is NOT the "least worst option". Iceland would be a far better option. Or Sweden, or Norway, or Finland, or even Germany; All assuming they could "run the internet" without U.S. interference, which the U.S. has already proved it won't allow, not by acting in defence of freedom, but by imposing it's own laws in other countries (think Mega Upload and the Pirate Bay)
I have to disagree. The two biggest reasons for a home PC in 80's and 90's were text document writing and gaming. In that order. Parents wanted the first, kids used the PC for the second. That a changed slightly with after the endless September, including two more uses: email and web browsing, again in that order. Tablets and phones etc STILL SUCK for writing documents. It's not just the lack of keyboard; the biggest issue is cutting and pasting. When my folks want to write a letter (yes an actual letter) to their local ward councillor, they go back to the laptop every time. Drafting a will, writing a letter to the paper/lawyer/bank/etc, printing out documents; These are all things that are still a regular enough occurrence to make having only a tablet infeasible. Tablets are fundamentally bad at facilitating text generation larger that a quick email, and as a society the written word is still enmeshed far too deeply with our lives for us to say that no one ever needs tow rite anything longer that a quick email.
I can think of one reason for a civilization to "go inter-stellar"; Survival. If that civilisation is capable of inter planetary space travel, they will also know they have limited time before their own solar system becomes hostile. Also, side point, but I'd argue that terraforming is probably more achievable than FTL flight, or any of the other technologies required for sub-light interstellar travel. Assuming climate change is at least partially athropogenic, we're already part of the way there.
Americans do not have to sole claim to ideals like partiotism, morality, freedom, and civil liberties. You don't have to be American to understand a desire for privacy, a live and let live attitude. When you refer to 'Americans' you are actually referring to a subset of people with a word view similar to yours (presumably) to you like to identify with on the basis of a geographical area. I'm guessing that those who don't share your world view would be deemed 'unAmerican'.
That said, I happen to agree with the idea of civil liberties, due process, mutual respect of rights, and in general a live-and-let-live attitude towards life. But I call myself a liberal (in the broad political sense; I'm South African), not an American. Also from the outside, it's becoming increasingly 'unAmerican' to support your world view. Going by the apparent majority, to be 'American' these days seems to be the exact opposite; trample on other people's and nation's rights, screw mutual respect, support the erosion of civil liberties in favour of maintaining an obnoxiously opulent life style etc. I know this isn't true of all Americans, but you (as a nation) lost the right to associate 'the American way' with your ideals of civil liberties and personal freedoms somewhere in the 60's when as a nation you started screwing around in South America and the middle East.
And Richard Nixon wasn't ashamed of what he'd done, he ashamed he got caught!
You mean we should take our pensions and healthcare and give them to an 18 year old? No problem, wall street seems to be getting along nicely in that regard.
Buying some land and growing some vegetables on it does not attract capital gains tax either, but nor does it attract income tax until you SELL the vegetables. Also, it doesn't attract tax if you barter the vegetables for something else. From TFA:
GAO said that strict virtual (or “closed flow”) transactions in which virtual currency is used only within a game or virtual environment to purchase virtual goods and services were not taxable.
The IRS is saying the creation/accrual of bitcoins and other virtual currencies is taxable at the point of barter as well as sale. It's not even income, as you've earned no money from selling something. I don't know, this seems like a real over reach on the part of the IRS. It makes perfect sense to tax someone when they sell their bit coins for cash; that's income, but taxing the BUYER for buying an online subscription, or some tech gadget, or a T-shirt and then taxing the SELLER for changing those bitcoins into USD. That's double taxation. As long as you can't pay some countries taxes with it, it shouldn't be taxable IMHO.
We covered this situation in our Human Computer Interaction module back in my undergrad in 1997. From a data(base) storage point of view, the solution is two have two fields, sex (as in phenotype -- male genitalia vs female genitalia vs both) and gender (as in identity concept -- I think of myself as male/female/Intersex/other). These two fields cover male, female, transgender, intersex, and hermaphrodite. What this doesn't solve is the problems of discrimination and lack of familiarity with dealing with changes in these fields on the part of the humans who capture and alter the information, although that's a little ridiculous too. I am a straight male, as in I look male and I consider myself male, and I've been incorrectly captured in a database as female once. Probably a typo. I know a couple of other people to whom this has happened. Fixing it was as simple as phoning up and saying, "err, guys, I'm a guy". I realise this is less of an issue than having a driver's license stating you are male, and then appearing female, but it's not necessarily an information systems problem.
How about this? Non-natural persons get a two 2 year copyright on a particular work for free, with indefinite applications for renewal, with one catch; The first renewal costs $1000 (or some small but non-trivial amount of money to get rid of the jokers), the next renewal costs double that, and it keeps doubling every renewal period. Natural persons get 5 year periods, or something along those lines, to cater for differences in ability to pay for renewals between businesses and natural people
Once it gets to the point where you're paying more money than you're making off the copyright, even corporations would stop extending. You'd also have to register your renewals (to pay for them), so the licensing terms will always be available in a central system so everyone else can see whether it's still under copyright, and who owns it. Copyrights can also be inherited, assuming the renewal periods are paid for up front, but the inheritors only get it to the end of the registered and paid for renewal period.
This works really well for most things: prose (books, poems, other literatrue), music (as in sheet music and lyrics), recorded performances (recorded audio, recorded video); If you publish, you get two years to see if your work is popular enough to make you money in the short to medium term; If you feel it's profitable to renew, do so. For those things that are going to be classics in 20 years time, put your money where your mouth is. As a corporation, it'll only cost you $511,000 if you're corp, or $7,000 if you're a natural person... spread over 20 years. The exact numbers can be tweaked; Personally, I think corps should renew every year.
If your government hides something for longer than one election cycle, then that "something" is guaranteed to lose them votes, i.e. they're not representing their constiuents interests.
When a radio show calls a minister in their offices for comment, does that mean the radio broadcast originates in the minister's office? This was a phone call, not a camera crew.
Okay, there's a lot at play here. Firstly, there are issues with the terminology. From a tech perspective, Mr. Hughes didn't perform the broadcast, the BBC did - from England. Mr. Hughes made a video call. That's not a broadcast, it's a point-to-point transmission from the perspective of information transfer. Yes, the cellular phone (asuming it was cellular) was broadcasting omnidirectionally, but it was doing that anyway just for voice, which seems to be okay. From the article, it definitely seems like they're complaining about the content of the transmission, rather than the transmission itself.
That said everyone assumes the rules are for environmental reasons, but the article mentions 'a restricted area'. From my travels in the Himalayas in India, I know pretty much the entire provice of Kashmir is a restricted area. No internet data on pre-paid sims for foreigners, or even SMS's. It's crawling with the military. I don't know what the political situation in Nepal is, but is it possible this is a similar concept of 'restricted area'? If so I'm sure the military doesn't want strange broadcasts happening, but if the smartphone used a standard cellular network, and as opposed to a satellite phone, or even video+voice over IP, then I still don't see how it could upset anyone. The article leaves out a fair amount of detail unfortunately.
Just an aside, I'm not a libertarian. and I strongly believe point 1 would require more regulation of companies and industries, not less.
Citizens have a right to know that corporations will be held accountable — and not granted immunity —
Like the telecomms weren't granted immunity?
If there's a winner at "local", it's going to be somebody in the phone space.
You mean like the yellow pages?
Hmm, maybe the alleged drug dealer should get his lawyer to go after the cops for violations of terms of service, Aaron Swarts style. Life in prison sound fair according to prevailing prosecution opinion.
I'd agree with this. Ease of use is more often than not a bad phrasing of "familiar to the user". Windows isn't easy to use. My parents can't use it any more than they can use linux. They could use WP 5.1 and DOS just fine, but back then my dad was writing a Phd and my mum was drafting municipal legislation, both of them using them the computer daily. Since then their computer usage has eased off to the point of just email and web browsing, and the odd letter. I could give them an XFCE desktop with firefox, and thunderbird and libreoffice or a windows desktop with the same and it would probably take them a while tel notice that there are differences between the two that aren't cosmetic. Hell! It they've used my laptop, only commenting on the difference in available fonts.
In this vein, gentoo isn't "hard to use" if your familiar with it. It's easy enough to follow the handbook and install it. It scrolls a lot of intimidating text past during compiles, but that doesn't make it hard to use. What gentoo does do is put a lot of choice and control into the user's hands. More than any other distro I find gentoo has "intelligent defaults". I can emerge almost anything from stable, and not only does it work straight out, but it doesn't auto-start, open a security hole, or otherwise fuck with other stuff on my system. PostgreSQL springs to mind here. I was frutrated to tears trying to figure out how to log in to postgres in a vanilla ubuntu install, until I discovered I had to sudo su postgres. It's been a while since I had a fresh postgres install in gentoo, but I remeber it was obvious to get into, becasue the default install creates a role for local access with a password, iirc
Okay, I didn't notice the kopimi logo before, but subsequent investigation turns up the following
All in all, you raise a good point, but I don't think it'll sink TPB's case