>I know that the system has flaws, but it's better than having nowhere to go for these things.
But it's a lot worse than the systems some other countries use. New Zealand for example has "ACC" (Accident Compensation Corporation), which is essentially a national work insurance scheme. Everyone pays their premium (usually via their employer), which might sound socialist to a hardcore libertarian who overlooks the costs to society of the litigation system, but I'd choose it any day - even in an act of god when you can't pin the blame on anyone worth suing, you can get compensation, and you can also live your life without fear of some greedy asshole suing you for some far-fetched claim and losing everything on your lawer's fees - people don't make a living fraudulently suing the livelyhood off of other people.
That means that if you're dying on the street, people will help you, instead of shun you to avoid a possible lawsuit in case their helping fails to do everything a doctor could.
> Its not really that big a change if the taps are held to pre-existing standards of survielance.
No, it is a problem if held to pre-existing standards, because as Choudry pointed out, the existing standard of implementation already violates civil rights on an all-too-common basis. Until the fundamental issue of police tolerating free speech and thought is resolved, granting further powers of covert intrusion and surveillance is going to result in further persecution of innocents based on bigotry and idealogy. I feel that cost is too high because I seriously doubt such powers will revolutionise the abilities of the police to catch genuine criminals.
I support such powers, but not before the current problems with unreasonable police persecution have been fully resolved. And quite frankly, I don't see that happening any time soon.
Dr Smalls high profile case is unique in being a high profile, fought through the courts, and won. It is not unique as an instance of violation of civil rights by those charged with defending them.
>Effectively what this means is that the police cannot read my emails unless I give them permission to do so
Don't be so sure. I know of instances where the government is exempt from it's own legislation (eg Human Rights Act), and as a government agency, my understanding is that the police enjoy the same exemption. In the case of the Human Rights act, the exemption is a temporary thing to give the government departments time to comply. On the darker side however, the deadline for compliance has already passed and the govt simply made up a new deadline. It would not surprise me if there was similar crap involved with the Privacy Act.
My impression is that police do not need to inform someone when they are covertly investigating them, and if this is the case, the Privacy Act probably doesn't help much.
>In New Zealand, unlike the UK and the US, you cant get a copy of your police record.
Are you sure about that? Recent legislation means you can now see what the SIS is holding on you ('bout bloody time), and things like the Privacy Act require that any database holding personal information be acessable and correctable by the people covered. Might it be the case that the police, as an arm of the government are exempt from civial requirements until some compliance date? (eg I know that the govt is exempt from it's Human Rights Act, and has postponed compliance with the Act, might this be something similar?)
Firstly, some email addresses for those concerned by these events:
The Hon. Paul Swain: pswain@ministers.govt.nz (Minister of Information Technology, Associate Minister of Justice, and proponent of the increased powers in the NZ herald story)
The Hon. Phil Goff: pgoff@ministers.govt.nz (Minster of Justice)
Both can be snail-mailed at: Name Parliament Buildings, Wellington New Zealand (if you're overseas)
Now, does anyone know of any petitions or anything being organised that I can contribute too?
>Vote against all politicians who suggest, fund and advocate the usage of electronic surveilance of innocent civilians.
Unfortunately, that will make things worse here. The Government currently in power is pretty much a coalition of the parties least likely to endorse dubious police powers like this. The last government is (I think) still "on trial" for allegedly encouraging police abuse/over-reaction during the APEC summit here. Other notable features of that government included a huge campaign to get the public to anonymously report people who they suspected of recieving a social welfare benefit they were not entitled too. That one was right out of "Brazil" and had resident Jews who survived Nazi Germany writing of how fearfully reminiscient it was becoming. (Everybody yells "Nazi" against policy that they disagree with, but I sit up and pay attention when the people saying it are speaking from first-hand experience). Fortunately it was abandoned when something like over 80% of reports turned out be false alarms (read: made out of spite or ignorance)
The key, I think, is to bluff the Members of Parliment into thinking you would vote against them, and hope you never have to:-)
Or even better would be the ability to mix'n'match the policies of the different parties, cause there ain't a single one whose policies don't have big problems. (read: things I disagree with:-)
Re:Use some common sense - update
on
Inside Echelon
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· Score: 1
I just re-aquainted myself with the details of the SJ games case, and realised that the stuff I just posted has several mix-ups with things that happened in a different case alltogether. So disregard the post - it has some serious innaccuracies.
The general point however (abuse of power, contempt, incompetance, etc in agencies that are above public scrutiny) is of course well supported by the case, even if I screwed up many of the details:)
>If you mean the time they were raided during Operation Sundevil in 1990.. thats coz Loyd Blakenship was working there.. >he was a well known hacker/cracker type.. The NSA have been watchful of the company ever since.
From memory, the guy they were watching didn't work there, but had merely spoken on a few occasions to someone who did work there, and this is apparently grounds for raid and confiscation. But that's only the start of the incompetance and abuse. The place was raided without warrant. Usually this is a safe thing for agencies protected by "National Security" to do, but Jackson took it to court, which demanded their warrent, at which point they could only produce a warrent for someone else entirely (which had also expired months earlier) and lamely claim "we thought this one applied, honest!". They damaged and for up to two years refused to return vital equipment wrongfully taken, some of which I think was never returned and/or destroyed. SJG was a small company at the time and this abuse took them to the verge of bankruptcy. And this is by no means a complete list of what was done, and other incidents suggest this sort of incompetance and contempt of civil rights is the norm in "intelligence" work.
I can't remember all the details, so I reserve the right to have missed a few dirty deeds and/or have messed up some of the details:)
>2) Why in hell does everyone care if the government sees his or her precious >communications? Unless you're making a bomb the government probably doesn't care.
Common misconception. Get out more, read the papers. Talk to the victims firsthand (typically people who are active in things like peace organisations or those "dangerious" groups who promote things like "fair trade".) A protester here had agents invade his home because he dared to speak out against APEC policy. Of course, it took years of court cases before the agencies stopped dening involvement - years of enduring ignorant derision by people who niavely believe that these paranoid agencies are not interested in normal citizens, and so anyone who thinks they're under surveillance must have delusions of importance. A man who captured an agent violating civil rights had police storm his house days later. It took court battles before the hand of intelligence agencies emerged - though it was patently obvious to him from the start. These are just examples that happened in the last couple of years in the area in which I live, and the details get scarier than the overview I just gave.
3) Every one of you has probably had your life saved by systems like these (anti-terrorism). If you would use a little common sense you probably be thanking the government.
Dream on. Most terrorist action that takes place in the world is _perpetrated_ and/or funded by intelligence agencies. These people are the primary cause, and the least effective cure. A lovely example was the bombing of the "Rainbow Warrior" in New Zealand by French agents - why did the New Zealand SIS not detect and thwart the terrorist plan? Because to the SIS, the "terrorists" were the Nuclear-free campaigners, and the French (a nuclear power) were the good guys. So while the SIS were busy opening the mail of normal New Zealand citizens who supported a nuclear-free New Zealand (it's probably just an intimidation tactic, but still violates rights without justification, and it makes those citizens the targets of mockery from the niave and ignorant if they try to say anything about SIS opening their mail), their French allies were busy perpetrating terrorism and killing people on New Zealand sovreign territory. You think the CIA protects you and is somehow different?
This is the unromantic reality of intelligence - it is never held genuinely accountable to any outsiders, and thus is universally incompentant, paranoid, insular, out of touch with reality, dangerious, and above all law. Warrants may be required by law, but since they never need to be actually produced (any involvement at all is denied), actions without warrant are routine.
For another classic example, the Steve Jackson Games debacle illustrates several of these points.
You claim the agencies are not interested in normal people. How far from normal is a bunch of enthusiests working on a humourous card game about hacking? Hell, I've done something almost identical myself. Steve Jackson Games was very nearly destroyed by the arrogance, incompetance, abuse of power, and contempt of their rights shown by the agency involved.
Intelligence is real, and it destroys the lives of real people, people who are model citizens (they must be hiding something!) and have done nothing wrong. Intelligence is the enemy of freedom and democracy. And not even just figuratively either - when an emerging democracy is deliberately crushed by the CIA, because a puppet govt was better in the "interests" of the USA, niave justifications about it being "for our own good" because of "all those nasty terrorists that I've never seen but which the agencies make into superstars" seem really, really stupid.
Talk to trustworthy people with firsthand experience. It'll open your eyes.
>One thing about growing up is that you stop caring so much about what other >people think of you and your actions, atleast to a certain threshold. >So You Do Your Own Thing, For *You*
Just a nitpick - I don't think that last sentance should be concluded from the first. That last sentance describes a 5-year-old perfectly, and a mature person with mature relationships poorly. Caring less about what people think of you allows you to act with more independance from the herd (which is what I believe you're saying), but I think it a mistake to infer that this extra "freedom" causes people to starting looking after No. 1 - often it is what allows people to look beyond No. 1.
>Why can't these people realise there is more than one way to access a computer - >and that a command line is often the best for certain jobs, and a GUI for others?
Because as long as those who wish to use only the GUI are forced to also use the command line because the GUI just isn't up to the more technical jobs, then the OS doesn't offer the best for certain jobs, it offers a primitive command line, take it or leave it.
I wouldn't know, perhaps the GUI can cut it (I'm very new to Linux) but that's not the impression I get - could anyone here use Linux without ever so much as touching a command line for an entire year, and not run into major trouble (eg adding new hardware support, software, etc)?
>Can anyone not see how utterly hypocritical and illogical that is?
Some of it is, some of it isn't. I use the age old "If I were in the other guy's shoes" test, which, assuming a fairly humane level of treatment (as is usually the case for most farm animals where I live), I tend to see the animals as coming off pretty well out of the whole thing.
Nature is bloody. Death is inevitable, but life is not. For every creature that survives to adulthood, a million must die - the fecundity of this planet outstrips the resources availible for sustaining that life by orders of magnatude.
Applying this to livestock, it seems clear to me that the life of a cow is not a nice simple choice between a farm life of grazing (with slaughter), and some "natural" life free in the wild. It's more likely to be a choice between existing as a farm animal or never existing at all. Even where this is not the case, the advantages of farming to the animals should not be overlooked. In those rare instances when farming occurs outside the human animal, we point to it as another example of symbiosis and say it is a good thing.
It seems myopic to me to draw the line at the slaughterhouse. The death of an animal allows life in animals that would otherwise die (in much more significant ways that the insignificant but obvious one you're probably thinking of). Conversely, Life begets death, just in different animals.
I think it's the treatment of the animals that needs to be focused on. The fixation with slaughtering as some kind of wrong is just another symptom of our screwy worldview.
Laws differ around the world, but here for example, a retailer must either refund, repair or replace any product not fit for the purpose for which it was advertised. Further details make it clear that something like that logo which might reasonably be expected to mean it's compatible with that software are sufficient grounds for this to kick in.
Ask around and find out what the deal is in your area. Once the retailer knows you know your rights, a satisfying resolution is often a lot easier. The retailer in turn might take the complaint to the manufacturer, who is far more likely to act on the desires of a bulk purchaser than the guy on the street.
>I already have a chuckle at the 'execs' on the commuter trains in the morning who wear rollerblades, and use those motor scooter things.
Wow, I wish we had that sort of thing here. I'd applaud them. A few months ago I actually saw two consecutive cars carrying more than one lone occupant (admittedly it was the weekend rather than a weekday, so family trips were more comman and commuting to work less so, but anyway, it's not something you see everyday here...)
Where was I - yeah, living here, every moron and his dog takes a car to get to work and back each day (one moron per car), and each day we choke on the smog. Then those same morons (successfully) petition the council to ban skating in parts of the city, and sneer at and stigmitise public transport as the "looser cruiser" that only people too poor to own a car would use.
Salute those guys on their blades. The execs here are a far lesser breed.
>The future I see has the large multinationals providing the basics - fast food, groceries, etc. >Regional cuisines and delicacies will move upstream, differentiating based on preparation times, quality, or presentation.
One problem - the multinationals deliberately adopt tactics to put the "upstream" specialised stores out of business - if no one can buy "upstream", they all have to buy "downstream".
You might think that if there is a demand it will be filled, but in reality what happens is that when an independant shop attempts to cater such demand, to offer alternatives, then the multinationals fill the demand at a cost a smaller business cannot meet (even running at a loss if that is what it takes) until that smaller business is shut down, whereapon the corp ceases catering to that (less profitable) demand, and everyone has to shop at the lowest common denominator again.
Sure, it doesn't happen in every market, and it's still taking place in many parts of the world, but where I live, independant stores are a thing of the past. With that threat of diversity well and truly dead, the chains turned their attention to each other, and a series of buyouts resulted in even fewer chains (but with more stores) operating. Thus even less choice, but greater profits.
I tend to ignore mainstream press on the subject, but I recently saw an article trying to defend GM technology by pointing to all the good things under developement - golden rice, things that would help third world farmers, and so on. It sort of backfired because they indicated who was doing what research. The big money (Monsanto etc) was going toward developing new ways to make the third world pay through the nose to grow their own crops. The beneficial stuff was struggling along in underfunded public and goverment research institutes.
I'm a supporter of genetic technology, but how it is being used is another matter, and much of what is going on is simply indefensible. The screw-everything-for-money attitude that the big players in the biotech industry have earned is part of the image problem - health scares about GM foods might not have a very sound basis in science, but they are certainly re-inforced by the actions of the big players in the industry. When Monstanto, in claiming their crop tests are safe, boasts a flawless compliance record, when three of their violations of that law are on public record for the last year alone, you can understand that the image of the entire industry suffers,
> People still have free will, and free choice. Don't like McDonalds? Don't go there.
I don't know where you live, but this simply isn't true where I live. Shops that stock unique products have been pretty much absent for a decade now. To my knowledge, _every_ mall in the _entire_ city is populated solely by chainstores (if not, then at least 95-99% are chain stores). Not only do all the stores in each chain carry exactly the same products, but the chains have spent the last decade buying each other out and so further reducing in number and diversity, thus for example there is only _one_ consumer electronics chain in the city - that's right - just one. Lots of stores, but they all sell exactly the same thing.
I've been to other places in the world that are little behind in this trend, and absolutely loved the shopping there.
One important truth that you seem to be overlooking is that varied and specialised markets by definition are small markets, thus stores that sell "the spice of life" can rarely afford to sell only specialised stuff - not because it's unprofitable (the opposite is usually true), but because sales are slow and rent bills are not.
these conglomorates are not just good at fulfilling some needs, they use their existing position to put small stores out of business Meanwhile conglomerates specialise in deliberately running these stores out of business - because so many people _do_ prefer to spend money there while such stores exist. But the marginal profits of specialised markets make such stores sitting ducks for an agressor with already-paid-for infrastructure and vast revenue streams to dip into.
Make no mistake - these chain stores _do_ destroy choice, and they frequently _don't_ do it by providing better options. Cynical profit-driven abuse is quicker and more effective.
You say the rest of us like our Nikes, Levi's etc. Where I live, it would be far more accurate to say that rest of us have either never lived in a time when there was anything else, or have long forgotten what choice was. It took a trip overseas to remind me of what this place used to be like.
Unwitting ignorance of alternatives is not quite the same as preference for what you are given and told to accept.
I never used to notice how many empty storefronts line the streets here, or remember the variety from the days when they were used. This is one consumer who wouldn't mind a higher cost of living as the price of choice.
But I doubt there will be a return - the current generation have never known anything else.
"plain old anti-Americanism" Is "brainwashing" too strong a term here?
Why are so many foreigners "anti-American"? Answer - they're not - they actually have genuine three-dimensional motives with reasons, but rather than listen, acknowledge or or face up to these things, a lot of people find it far easier to dismiss them and pretend they don't exist. Just like the homeless "have only themselves to blame" - the belief allows one to feel morally sound in ignoring their situation.
Like the sane man committed to an asylum from which he will never escape because his pleas of sanity are met with unthinking "of course dear, now take your pills and settle down", the use of "anti-american" to deprive people of a voice for a legitimate grievance (which usually has little or nothing to do with nationalities) is a disgusting dismissal of intellect and justice.
During the cold war, people worried about "sleepers" - US citizens whom the Commies had brainwashed to turn into enemy agents upon hearing a code phrase (from an anonymous telephone caller for example). Ironically, this is not far from the truth. If someone campaigns to change a particular US policy after bearing the brunt of its shortfalls, all it takes is one presenter on CNN to say the magic code-word "anti-American" and the minds of the nation snap closed without question or reason.
That's an impressively engineered populace, albeit one prone to overlooking certain designated injustices.
Back to the case in point. By the largely capitalist ideals of the USA, the consumer should be free to know what they are buying and free to choose to whether to buy it. A European study linking growth hormone beef with cancer might be controversial, and might not be believed by those in the USA (though critics in turn would partly attribute this to the extensive marketing in the USA), but the consumer has to right choose to eat or choose not to eat growth hormone beef, be it out of health concerns, or ethical concern, or whatever. Yet beef exporters attempted to deny this right. They were curtly informed that they must fully disclose the information about their product if they were to sell it. The USA goverment responded with 100% tarrifs on unrelated French goods. When someone's livelyhood goes down the drain because of retribution/punitive measures (depending where you stand) for something entirely unrelated to that person, someone who has does nothing to deserve such discrimination except happen to be of French nationality, then regardless of where you stand on the issue of beef, I think you have to acknowledge that an innocent has been wronged. Even if you think the beef exporters are the primary victims, this does not lessen the further injustice. To presume reasoning like "anti-Americanism" is as silly as discussing it in terms of "anti-Frenchism".
Do the world a favour - next time you hear of someone doing something because they are "anti-American", take the time to find out why they are _really_ doing it (and for that matter, what it is they are _actually_ doing and want, not what is claimed of them). Depending on the case, you might find this very difficult - like I said, the code-word "anti-Americanism" switches off a huge proportion of the minds of the nation, and might be the only "information" about the case that is easily acessible from within the USA.
Or you can just keep believing that people are strangly jealous of the USA for some reason, that they spontaniously resent it without reason (perhaps because it's big, wealthy or powerful?), or whatever the twisted reasoning it is that means "He doesn't like us, but we can disregard that because people are just like that and never have a reason worthy of contemplation".
"Anti-Americanism" is almost always a crock. And it is self perpetuating, for when someone tries to voice their grievance, and an entire nation treats them like an enemy in response (once the "anti-American" card has been played), it is only natural for them to respond the same way, and thus produce someone who genuinely is "anti-american".
> Oh, there will certainly be no "commercial-style" games, but they will certainly be modern. >Nothing raises my hackles more than seeing these two equated
I think you missed the reason I wrote what I did. I had in mind the subject of the degree to which games are a prerequisite for the success of a platform such as Linux. More to the point, while games of the type you describe will go down well with much of the existing demographic, serious expansion of that demographic is going to bring serious demand for commercial-style titles, especially the big-name titles (eg the sort of games that Loki ports). The merits of the commercial-style of modern game are not all thaty relevant to what I'm trying to say, nor the merits of non-commercial modern games.
For the record, by "commercial-style" I did not mean a game with a huge corporation behind it, but rather one that is sold in game shops, with a glitzy box that people can browse, and buy on the spot - no downloading or delivery wait. Plenty of these commercial style games do not have a big corporation behind them (though most do - getting the shelf space usually involves the distribution muscle of a major publisher).
My post was _not_ about whether the example games were better or worse than commerical games, it was about whether they demonstrate that open source can provide the sort of games Linux needs to greatly increase its demographic appeal. I suspect that they don't demonstrate this (though as you've probably guessed, I'm not familiar with all of them yet).
>we may come across some clueless newbies claiming to own Martian land:)
The company behind it is LunarEmbassy. http://www.lunarembassy.com/
Information on the legal status of their claim (which sounds not entirely unlike that of the Principality of SeaLand) are in the FAQ: http://www.lunarembassy.com/ls/legeneralfaq_e.sh tml
Also to consider - with enough "big players" buying land (and they claim quite a few), those players have a vested interest in protecting the claim from any challenges. With a bit of luck, Sealand may soon benefit from the same principle.
>Or, in other words: The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
Some devil's advocacy - many of the links are game components, not actual games. Many of the games are not really modern-commercial-style as discussed, and probably the biggest challenge in making a game is not "doing it", but finishing it. IOW, the jury is still out - the examples are not conclusive in either direction.
(Yeah ok, so it was more pessimistic negativity than actual devil's advocacy, but I'd like to stress that I'm _not_ knocking these excellent games or the outstanding efforts behind them - my point is limited to disagreement that they settle the question of whether OSS will produce commercial-style modern games in the near future.)
>Yes, it is definitely rewarding to meet in person and flesh out ideas, but as people are >becoming more accustomed spending their days online, discussing things on web forums might prove comparable.
I don't think so. I've done work along both lines. To make really successful work, you need hours of face to face discussion, with pen and paper, able to sketch with each other, gesture the nuances, talk and interupt at high speed, and be able to do this at pretty much any time of any day. Artistic collaboration creates something greater than the sum of the parts when the artistic vision is shared right down to subtle nuances. On the other hand, using chat and email, you end up spending hours typing and reading every day yet are aware things aren't geling the way they should, art created is sometimes useless or less than excellent because of discrepancies in vision.
It can work, but I think the better your artists are, the more greater depth of communication they will need to work optimally, because they will be able to communicate more with their work, and much of that will be in very subtle and/or intricate ways, and the artists need to be bang-on with each other and the game design to be able to capitalise on such things. When these nuances work in cohesion, the result can be very powerful, when they work in different or conflicting directions, the work is sabotaged.
No matter how many times this system works, so many people are going to get repeatedly burned when it doesn't (which will be frequently, (IMHO usually)) that it will lose whatever steam it had. And I don't really see it getting much steam up in the first place, though I would love to be wrong:-)
Slashdot Mirror
>I know that the system has flaws, but it's better than having nowhere to go for these things.
But it's a lot worse than the systems some other countries use. New Zealand for example has "ACC" (Accident Compensation Corporation), which is essentially a national work insurance scheme. Everyone pays their premium (usually via their employer), which might sound socialist to a hardcore libertarian who overlooks the costs to society of the litigation system, but I'd choose it any day - even in an act of god when you can't pin the blame on anyone worth suing, you can get compensation, and you can also live your life without fear of some greedy asshole suing you for some far-fetched claim and losing everything on your lawer's fees - people don't make a living fraudulently suing the livelyhood off of other people.
That means that if you're dying on the street, people will help you, instead of shun you to avoid a possible lawsuit in case their helping fails to do everything a doctor could.
> Its not really that big a change if the taps are held to pre-existing standards of survielance.
No, it is a problem if held to pre-existing standards, because as Choudry pointed out, the existing standard of implementation already violates civil rights on an all-too-common basis. Until the fundamental issue of police tolerating free speech and thought is resolved, granting further powers of covert intrusion and surveillance is going to result in further persecution of innocents based on bigotry and idealogy. I feel that cost is too high because I seriously doubt such powers will revolutionise the abilities of the police to catch genuine criminals.
I support such powers, but not before the current problems with unreasonable police persecution have been fully resolved. And quite frankly, I don't see that happening any time soon.
Dr Smalls high profile case is unique in being a high profile, fought through the courts, and won. It is not unique as an instance of violation of civil rights by those charged with defending them.
>Effectively what this means is that the police cannot read my emails unless I give them permission to do so
:)
Don't be so sure. I know of instances where the government is exempt from it's own legislation (eg Human Rights Act), and as a government agency, my understanding is that the police enjoy the same exemption. In the case of the Human Rights act, the exemption is a temporary thing to give the government departments time to comply. On the darker side however, the deadline for compliance has already passed and the govt simply made up a new deadline. It would not surprise me if there was similar crap involved with the Privacy Act.
My impression is that police do not need to inform someone when they are covertly investigating them, and if this is the case, the Privacy Act probably doesn't help much.
But I'll sign that petition
>In New Zealand, unlike the UK and the US, you cant get a copy of your police record.
Are you sure about that? Recent legislation means you can now see what the SIS is holding on you ('bout bloody time), and things like the Privacy Act require that any database holding personal information be acessable and correctable by the people covered. Might it be the case that the police, as an arm of the government are exempt from civial requirements until some compliance date? (eg I know that the govt is exempt from it's Human Rights Act, and has postponed compliance with the Act, might this be something similar?)
Firstly, some email addresses for those concerned by these events:
The Hon. Paul Swain: pswain@ministers.govt.nz
(Minister of Information Technology, Associate Minister of Justice, and proponent of the increased powers in the NZ herald story)
The Hon. Phil Goff: pgoff@ministers.govt.nz
(Minster of Justice)
Both can be snail-mailed at:
Name
Parliament Buildings,
Wellington
New Zealand (if you're overseas)
Now, does anyone know of any petitions or anything being organised that I can contribute too?
>Vote against all politicians who suggest, fund and advocate the usage of electronic surveilance of innocent civilians.
:-)
:-)
Unfortunately, that will make things worse here. The Government currently in power is pretty much a coalition of the parties least likely to endorse dubious police powers like this. The last government is (I think) still "on trial" for allegedly encouraging police abuse/over-reaction during the APEC summit here. Other notable features of that government included a huge campaign to get the public to anonymously report people who they suspected of recieving a social welfare benefit they were not entitled too. That one was right out of "Brazil" and had resident Jews who survived Nazi Germany writing of how fearfully reminiscient it was becoming. (Everybody yells "Nazi" against policy that they disagree with, but I sit up and pay attention when the people saying it are speaking from first-hand experience). Fortunately it was abandoned when something like over 80% of reports turned out be false alarms (read: made out of spite or ignorance)
The key, I think, is to bluff the Members of Parliment into thinking you would vote against them, and hope you never have to
Or even better would be the ability to mix'n'match the policies of the different parties, cause there ain't a single one whose policies don't have big problems. (read: things I disagree with
I just re-aquainted myself with the details of the SJ games case, and realised that the stuff I just posted has several mix-ups with things that happened in a different case alltogether. So disregard the post - it has some serious innaccuracies.
:)
The general point however (abuse of power, contempt, incompetance, etc in agencies that are above public scrutiny) is of course well supported by the case, even if I screwed up many of the details
>If you mean the time they were raided during Operation Sundevil in 1990.. thats coz Loyd Blakenship was working there..
:)
>he was a well known hacker/cracker type.. The NSA have been watchful of the company ever since.
From memory, the guy they were watching didn't work there, but had merely spoken on a few occasions to someone who did work there, and this is apparently grounds for raid and confiscation. But that's only the start of the incompetance and abuse. The place was raided without warrant. Usually this is a safe thing for agencies protected by "National Security" to do, but Jackson took it to court, which demanded their warrent, at which point they could only produce a warrent for someone else entirely (which had also expired months earlier) and lamely claim "we thought this one applied, honest!". They damaged and for up to two years refused to return vital equipment wrongfully taken, some of which I think was never returned and/or destroyed. SJG was a small company at the time and this abuse took them to the verge of bankruptcy. And this is by no means a complete list of what was done, and other incidents suggest this sort of incompetance and contempt of civil rights is the norm in "intelligence" work.
I can't remember all the details, so I reserve the right to have missed a few dirty deeds and/or have messed up some of the details
>2) Why in hell does everyone care if the government sees his or her precious
>communications? Unless you're making a bomb the government probably doesn't care.
Common misconception. Get out more, read the papers. Talk to the victims firsthand (typically people who are active in things like peace organisations or those "dangerious" groups who promote things like "fair trade".)
A protester here had agents invade his home because he dared to speak out against APEC policy.
Of course, it took years of court cases before the agencies stopped dening involvement - years of enduring ignorant derision by people who niavely believe that these paranoid agencies are not interested in normal citizens, and so anyone who thinks they're under surveillance must have delusions of importance. A man who captured an agent violating civil rights had police storm his house days later. It took court battles before the hand of intelligence agencies emerged - though it was patently obvious to him from the start. These are just examples that happened in the last couple of years in the area in which I live, and the details get scarier than the overview I just gave.
3) Every one of you has probably had your life saved by systems like these (anti-terrorism). If you would use a little common sense you probably be thanking the government.
Dream on. Most terrorist action that takes place in the world is _perpetrated_ and/or funded by intelligence agencies. These people are the primary cause, and the least effective cure.
A lovely example was the bombing of the "Rainbow Warrior" in New Zealand by French agents - why did the New Zealand SIS not detect and thwart the terrorist plan? Because to the SIS, the "terrorists" were the Nuclear-free campaigners, and the French (a nuclear power) were the good guys. So while the SIS were busy opening the mail of normal New Zealand citizens who supported a nuclear-free New Zealand (it's probably just an intimidation tactic, but still violates rights without justification, and it makes those citizens the targets of mockery from the niave and ignorant if they try to say anything about SIS opening their mail), their French allies were busy perpetrating terrorism and killing people on New Zealand sovreign territory. You think the CIA protects you and is somehow different?
This is the unromantic reality of intelligence - it is never held genuinely accountable to any outsiders, and thus is universally incompentant, paranoid, insular, out of touch with reality, dangerious, and above all law. Warrants may be required by law, but since they never need to be actually produced (any involvement at all is denied), actions without warrant are routine.
For another classic example, the Steve Jackson Games debacle illustrates several of these points.
You claim the agencies are not interested in normal people. How far from normal is a bunch of
enthusiests working on a humourous card game about hacking? Hell, I've done something almost identical myself. Steve Jackson Games was very nearly destroyed by the arrogance, incompetance, abuse of power, and contempt of their rights shown by the agency involved.
Intelligence is real, and it destroys the lives of real people, people who are model citizens (they must be hiding something!) and have done nothing wrong.
Intelligence is the enemy of freedom and democracy. And not even just figuratively either - when an emerging democracy is deliberately crushed by the CIA, because a puppet govt was better in the "interests" of the USA, niave justifications about it being "for our own good" because of "all those nasty terrorists that I've never seen but which the agencies make into superstars" seem really, really stupid.
Talk to trustworthy people with firsthand experience. It'll open your eyes.
>One thing about growing up is that you stop caring so much about what other
>people think of you and your actions, atleast to a certain threshold.
>So You Do Your Own Thing, For *You*
Just a nitpick - I don't think that last sentance should be concluded from the first. That last sentance describes a 5-year-old perfectly, and a mature person with mature relationships poorly. Caring less about what people think of you allows you to act with more independance from the herd (which is what I believe you're saying), but I think it a mistake to infer that this extra "freedom" causes people to starting looking after No. 1 - often it is what allows people to look beyond No. 1.
>Parking is a hassle when you live on campus anyway.
Actually, I'm not a student, and I cycle to work every day. Sorry.
>Why can't these people realise there is more than one way to access a computer -
>and that a command line is often the best for certain jobs, and a GUI for others?
Because as long as those who wish to use only the GUI are forced to also use the command line because the GUI just isn't up to the more technical jobs, then the OS doesn't offer the best for certain jobs, it offers a primitive command line, take it or leave it.
I wouldn't know, perhaps the GUI can cut it (I'm very new to Linux) but that's not the impression I get - could anyone here use Linux without ever so much as touching a command line for an entire year, and not run into major trouble (eg adding new hardware support, software, etc)?
>Can anyone not see how utterly hypocritical and illogical that is?
Some of it is, some of it isn't.
I use the age old "If I were in the other guy's shoes" test, which, assuming a fairly humane level of treatment (as is usually the case for most farm animals where I live), I tend to see the animals as coming off pretty well out of the whole thing.
Nature is bloody. Death is inevitable, but life is not. For every creature that survives to adulthood, a million must die - the fecundity of this planet outstrips the resources availible for sustaining that life by orders of magnatude.
Applying this to livestock, it seems clear to me that the life of a cow is not a nice simple choice between a farm life of grazing (with slaughter), and some "natural" life free in the wild. It's more likely to be a choice between existing as a farm animal or never existing at all. Even where this is not the case, the advantages of farming to the animals should not be overlooked. In those rare instances when farming occurs outside the human animal, we point to it as another example of symbiosis and say it is a good thing.
It seems myopic to me to draw the line at the slaughterhouse. The death of an animal allows life in animals that would otherwise die (in much more significant ways that the insignificant but obvious one you're probably thinking of). Conversely, Life begets death, just in different animals.
I think it's the treatment of the animals that needs to be focused on. The fixation with slaughtering as some kind of wrong is just another symptom of our screwy worldview.
Laws differ around the world, but here for example, a retailer must either refund, repair or replace any product not fit for the purpose for which it was advertised. Further details make it clear that something like that logo which might reasonably be expected to mean it's compatible with that software are sufficient grounds for this to kick in.
Ask around and find out what the deal is in your area. Once the retailer knows you know your rights, a satisfying resolution is often a lot easier. The retailer in turn might take the complaint to the manufacturer, who is far more likely to act on the desires of a bulk purchaser than the guy on the street.
>I already have a chuckle at the 'execs' on the commuter trains in the morning who wear rollerblades, and use those motor scooter things.
Wow, I wish we had that sort of thing here. I'd applaud them. A few months ago I actually saw two consecutive cars carrying more than one lone occupant (admittedly it was the weekend rather than a weekday, so family trips were more comman and commuting to work less so, but anyway, it's not something you see everyday here...)
Where was I - yeah, living here, every moron and his dog takes a car to get to work and back each day (one moron per car), and each day we choke on the smog. Then those same morons (successfully) petition the council to ban skating in parts of the city, and sneer at and stigmitise public transport as the "looser cruiser" that only people too poor to own a car would use.
Salute those guys on their blades. The execs here are a far lesser breed.
>The future I see has the large multinationals providing the basics - fast food, groceries, etc.
>Regional cuisines and delicacies will move upstream, differentiating based on preparation times, quality, or presentation.
One problem - the multinationals deliberately adopt tactics to put the "upstream" specialised stores out of business - if no one can buy "upstream", they all have to buy "downstream".
You might think that if there is a demand it will be filled, but in reality what happens is that when an independant shop attempts to cater such demand, to offer alternatives, then the multinationals fill the demand at a cost a smaller business cannot meet (even running at a loss if that is what it takes) until that smaller business is shut down, whereapon the corp ceases catering to that (less profitable) demand, and everyone has to shop at the lowest common denominator again.
Sure, it doesn't happen in every market, and it's still taking place in many parts of the world, but where I live, independant stores are a thing of the past. With that threat of diversity well and truly dead, the chains turned their attention to each other, and a series of buyouts resulted in even fewer chains (but with more stores) operating. Thus even less choice, but greater profits.
Capitalism is great in theory...
I tend to ignore mainstream press on the subject, but I recently saw an article trying to defend GM technology by pointing to all the good things under developement - golden rice, things that would help third world farmers, and so on.
It sort of backfired because they indicated who was doing what research. The big money (Monsanto etc) was going toward developing new ways to make the third world pay through the nose to grow their own crops. The beneficial stuff was struggling along in underfunded public and goverment research institutes.
I'm a supporter of genetic technology, but how it is being used is another matter, and much of what is going on is simply indefensible. The screw-everything-for-money attitude that the big players in the biotech industry have earned is part of the image problem - health scares about GM foods might not have a very sound basis in science, but they are certainly re-inforced by the actions of the big players in the industry. When Monstanto, in claiming their crop tests are safe, boasts a flawless compliance record, when three of their violations of that law are on public record for the last year alone, you can understand that the image of the entire industry suffers,
> People still have free will, and free choice. Don't like McDonalds? Don't go there.
I don't know where you live, but this simply isn't true where I live. Shops that stock unique products have been pretty much absent for a decade now. To my knowledge, _every_ mall in the _entire_ city is populated solely by chainstores (if not, then at least 95-99% are chain stores). Not only do all the stores in each chain carry exactly the same products, but the chains have spent the last decade buying each other out and so further reducing in number and diversity, thus for example there is only _one_ consumer electronics chain in the city - that's right - just one. Lots of stores, but they all sell exactly the same thing.
I've been to other places in the world that are little behind in this trend, and absolutely loved the shopping there.
One important truth that you seem to be overlooking is that varied and specialised markets by definition are small markets, thus stores that sell "the spice of life" can rarely afford to sell only specialised stuff - not because it's unprofitable (the opposite is usually true), but because sales are slow and rent bills are not.
these conglomorates are not just good at fulfilling some needs, they use their existing position to put small stores out of business
Meanwhile conglomerates specialise in deliberately running these stores out of business - because so many people _do_ prefer to spend money there while such stores exist. But the marginal profits of specialised markets make such stores sitting ducks for an agressor with already-paid-for infrastructure and vast revenue streams to dip into.
Make no mistake - these chain stores _do_ destroy choice, and they frequently _don't_ do it by providing better options. Cynical profit-driven abuse is quicker and more effective.
You say the rest of us like our Nikes, Levi's etc. Where I live, it would be far more accurate to say that rest of us have either never lived in a time when there was anything else, or have long forgotten what choice was. It took a trip overseas to remind me of what this place used to be like.
Unwitting ignorance of alternatives is not quite the same as preference for what you are given and told to accept.
I never used to notice how many empty storefronts line the streets here, or remember the variety from the days when they were used. This is one consumer who wouldn't mind a higher cost of living as the price of choice.
But I doubt there will be a return - the current generation have never known anything else.
"plain old anti-Americanism"
Is "brainwashing" too strong a term here?
Why are so many foreigners "anti-American"? Answer - they're not - they actually have genuine three-dimensional motives with reasons, but rather than listen, acknowledge or or face up to these things, a lot of people find it far easier to dismiss them and pretend they don't exist. Just like the homeless "have only themselves to blame" - the belief allows one to feel morally sound in ignoring their situation.
Like the sane man committed to an asylum from which he will never escape because his pleas of sanity are met with unthinking "of course dear, now take your pills and settle down", the use of "anti-american" to deprive people of a voice for a legitimate grievance (which usually has little or nothing to do with nationalities) is a disgusting dismissal of intellect and justice.
During the cold war, people worried about "sleepers" - US citizens whom the Commies had brainwashed to turn into enemy agents upon hearing a code phrase (from an anonymous telephone caller for example). Ironically, this is not far from the truth. If someone campaigns to change a particular US policy after bearing the brunt of its shortfalls, all it takes is one presenter on CNN to say the magic code-word "anti-American" and the minds of the nation snap closed without question or reason.
That's an impressively engineered populace, albeit one prone to overlooking certain designated injustices.
Back to the case in point. By the largely capitalist ideals of the USA, the consumer should be free to know what they are buying and free to choose to whether to buy it. A European study linking growth hormone beef with cancer might be controversial, and might not be believed by those in the USA (though critics in turn would partly attribute this to the extensive marketing in the USA), but the consumer has to right choose to eat or choose not to eat growth hormone beef, be it out of health concerns, or ethical concern, or whatever. Yet beef exporters attempted to deny this right. They were curtly informed that they must fully disclose the information about their product if they were to sell it. The USA goverment responded with 100% tarrifs on unrelated French goods. When someone's livelyhood goes down the drain because of retribution/punitive measures (depending where you stand) for something entirely unrelated to that person, someone who has does nothing to deserve such discrimination except happen to be of French nationality, then regardless of where you stand on the issue of beef, I think you have to acknowledge that an innocent has been wronged. Even if you think the beef exporters are the primary victims, this does not lessen the further injustice.
To presume reasoning like "anti-Americanism" is as silly as discussing it in terms of "anti-Frenchism".
Do the world a favour - next time you hear of someone doing something because they are "anti-American", take the time to find out why they are _really_ doing it (and for that matter, what it is they are _actually_ doing and want, not what is claimed of them). Depending on the case, you might find this very difficult - like I said, the code-word "anti-Americanism" switches off a huge proportion of the minds of the nation, and might be the only "information" about the case that is easily acessible from within the USA.
Or you can just keep believing that people are strangly jealous of the USA for some reason, that they spontaniously resent it without reason (perhaps because it's big, wealthy or powerful?), or whatever the twisted reasoning it is that means "He doesn't like us, but we can disregard that because people are just like that and never have a reason worthy of contemplation".
"Anti-Americanism" is almost always a crock.
And it is self perpetuating, for when someone tries to voice their grievance, and an entire nation treats them like an enemy in response (once the "anti-American" card has been played), it is only natural for them to respond the same way, and thus produce someone who genuinely is "anti-american".
> Oh, there will certainly be no "commercial-style" games, but they will certainly be modern.
>Nothing raises my hackles more than seeing these two equated
I think you missed the reason I wrote what I did. I had in mind the subject of the degree to which games are a prerequisite for the success of a platform such as Linux. More to the point, while games of the type you describe will go down well with much of the existing demographic, serious expansion of that demographic is going to bring serious demand for commercial-style titles, especially the big-name titles (eg the sort of games that Loki ports).
The merits of the commercial-style of modern game are not all thaty relevant to what I'm trying to say, nor the merits of non-commercial modern games.
For the record, by "commercial-style" I did not mean a game with a huge corporation behind it, but rather one that is sold in game shops, with a glitzy box that people can browse, and buy on the spot - no downloading or delivery wait. Plenty of these commercial style games do not have a big corporation behind them (though most do - getting the shelf space usually involves the distribution muscle of a major publisher).
My post was _not_ about whether the example games were better or worse than commerical games, it was about whether they demonstrate that open source can provide the sort of games Linux needs to greatly increase its demographic appeal. I suspect that they don't demonstrate this (though as you've probably guessed, I'm not familiar with all of them yet).
>we may come across some clueless newbies claiming to own Martian land :)
h tml
The company behind it is LunarEmbassy.
http://www.lunarembassy.com/
Information on the legal status of their claim (which sounds not entirely unlike that of the Principality of SeaLand) are in the FAQ:
http://www.lunarembassy.com/ls/legeneralfaq_e.s
Also to consider - with enough "big players" buying land (and they claim quite a few), those players have a vested interest in protecting the claim from any challenges. With a bit of luck, Sealand may soon benefit from the same principle.
They're really setting up a backdrop against which to fake another series of "Moon Landings" and in desperate need a plausible cover story.
Think about it - NASA obviously can't _really_ be practising for Mars when they haven't even managed to put a man on the moon yet!
(I hear the gravity is weaker in Canada)
>Or, in other words: The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
Some devil's advocacy - many of the links are game components, not actual games. Many of the games are not really modern-commercial-style as discussed, and probably the biggest challenge in making a game is not "doing it", but finishing it. IOW, the jury is still out - the examples are not conclusive in either direction.
(Yeah ok, so it was more pessimistic negativity than actual devil's advocacy, but I'd like to stress that I'm _not_ knocking these excellent games or the outstanding efforts behind them - my point is limited to disagreement that they settle the question of whether OSS will produce commercial-style modern games in the near future.)
>Yes, it is definitely rewarding to meet in person and flesh out ideas, but as people are
>becoming more accustomed spending their days online, discussing things on web forums might prove comparable.
I don't think so. I've done work along both lines. To make really successful work, you need hours of face to face discussion, with pen and paper, able to sketch with each other, gesture the nuances, talk and interupt at high speed, and be able to do this at pretty much any time of any day. Artistic collaboration creates something greater than the sum of the parts when the artistic vision is shared right down to subtle nuances.
On the other hand, using chat and email, you end up spending hours typing and reading every day yet are aware things aren't geling the way they should, art created is sometimes useless or less than excellent because of discrepancies in vision.
It can work, but I think the better your artists are, the more greater depth of communication they will need to work optimally, because they will be able to communicate more with their work, and much of that will be in very subtle and/or intricate ways, and the artists need to be bang-on with each other and the game design to be able to capitalise on such things. When these nuances work in cohesion, the result can be very powerful, when they work in different or conflicting directions, the work is sabotaged.
No matter how many times this system works, so many people are going to get repeatedly burned when it doesn't (which will be frequently, (IMHO usually)) that it will lose whatever steam it had. :-)
And I don't really see it getting much steam up in the first place, though I would love to be wrong