You're talking to a native New Yorker, so let me clarify the reality to royal subjects:
Subways don't stop at your building, though mine does have a station in the basement. Subways also don't have a sunroof, swing by your girlfriend's place, wait outside the deli. They do have lots of strangers, often rude and even smelly. They make you wait for up to half an hour in the middle of the night. And you can't race the other guy.
Taxis usually don't let you race the other guy, either. They often come with rude and even smelly strangers, who often don't go the way you want. And they cost more per year than purchasing or owning a car. You can't keep your CDs in them, or an umbrella in the trunk. And they make you wait a long time in rush hour, the middle of the night, and when it's raining - and you without your umbrella.
BTW, NYC has plenty of bus depots in the city center - Manhattan. And the extra traffic going elsewhere than the very center, midtown Manhattan, is much less congesting than the double/triple parking for un/loading passengers/cargo.
So I don't know what public transport you're referring to. London's traffic is nothing compared to Manhattan's, but it would also be less congested with private cars parking themselves in garages instead of on the streets. Though perhaps the "slave" you're referring to driving you is something available to a monarch without even making the coffee. No wonder you covet one of your own, and think the principle must be universal.
Corporations can also be destroyed by the state which charters them when they operate outside the scope of their charter, or violate it, through charter revocation.
Now if these cars would just park themselves far from where they drop me off, we can get rid of street parking in Manhattan. The cars can park themselves outside the city center where parking is plentiful/cheap/free, and we can triple the capacity of our existing streets.
The problem with your approach is that people will "pay the fine" and destroy the environment, creating even more costs later. Exactly as we have been doing.
The problem has some complexity, as you point out, though a few exceptions still allow a manageable law to be enforced . Maybe the only way to handle it is to ration pollution credits to every American, for a total amount of allowed pollution, which must be traded for every bit of energy consumed. Whether transport, heating, lighting, or maybe even manufacturing. Tradeable credits in an open public market. But just requiring vehicles of different classes have minimum EPM seems enough to address the problem without government intervention in every transaction. It's not a perfect model, but it's manageable and effective in averting the destruction. Close enough is good enough.
You're such a stupid fuckhead that you're insisting on a strawman argument that "fair use" is in the Constitution, when all that I said is that the Constitution has the basic artificial monopoly that requires fair use be specified to prevent total destruction of our rights.
I have no problem finding people to listen to me and my sensible arguments. The problem is that obnoxious morons like you also listen, then make shit up that's easier to argue with than my clear reasoning. Stop giving me bad personal advice after you've earned nothing but disrespect with your nasty delivery of bad logic.
A "hard stop" is not necessarily "zero", nor have I suggested zero emissions. I'm distinguishing it from your completely fuzzy recommendation that we tax fuel, which will do little to ensure we reduce emissions to an acceptable (nonzero) level. Putting "energy" like car company legislation into minimum MPG or maximum EPM will do more to prevent a "hard stop" enforced by environmental, and civilization, collapse. Voluntary or involuntary, a hard stop is all that's left, now that we've squandered centuries in which we could have had a lot more flexibility.
No, there's no definition of "rich" that entitles them to more of a share of our public national resources and health, except maybe "plutocracy". Which is not what we defend in the US - except when we're the plutocrats.
There is no economically optimal level of pollution, except when accounting the benefits. The pyromaniac club has benefit from arson, not to mention various other beneficial results like clearing land, pest reduction, and preventing later fires, in my absurd but appropriate example.
Absolute enforcement would require a totally new system of individual pollution credits. Enforcement of emissions minimums, even indirectly by mileage minimums, will have the required effect of reducing total emissions. We already have emissions minimums enforced well, but the "light trucks" exception exploited by car companies to market SUVs destroys that effective regime. Most of what we need to do can be accomplished by merely removing the unjustified, privileged exception to our working system.
That is interesting considering the Greenhouse pollution we're talking about, governed by Bush's "Clear Skies" laws, is only increasing, even according to the page to which you linked.
Also interesting is the broad consensus that "Clear Skies" increases pollution compared with the laws it replaces. Concessions to polluters like discarding requirements to upgrade old coal plants to clean ones when they're replaced, requirements which the coal/power industry accepted in exchange for less tough original requirements when the prior laws were passed. The reality of "Clear Skies", better titled "Dirty Skies", is interesting to everyone except the polluters and their covert actions to protect their pollution privileges. Dick Cheney, is that you?
Every gallon of gas, every cubic meter of pollution, is wrong. Penalizing people for generating it isn't useful unless it stops them. It won't stop people who can afford to pay. A hard stop is required. Choose between enforcing that hard stop on America's millions of drivers, rather than on a handful of manufacturers who have all kinds of government controls already installed - MPG limits are clearly the manageable, equitable way to do it. And MPG surely is the best way to define efficiency, unless we switch to "EPM", or "emissions per mile", which is probably better - but a bigger change, therefore less likely to succeed. Worth doing, though.
CEOs and their underlings rarely do jail time for violating environmental laws, though that's one case where even the "limited liability" of incorporation doesn't protect executives and board directors. And though I didn't say jail time is suitable for criminal polluters, just fines, I do believe we have to jail these people, just like the law says. We're talking about changing the system, and enforcing the rules is a good place to start. Even the auto weasels who escaped emissions controls did so by changing the rules, rather than breaking them. Especially with American car companies now facing bankruptcy even without paying their environmental costs, they're a better target than ever to put under legal pressure. Once they start begging for Chrysler-style government bailouts, they'll have to make such concessions.
We've run out of paved easy roads on pollution. Americans, as shown in the story we're discussing, are now ready to make changes for self-preservation. If we don't, we're going to see a lot more polluters facing angry American mobs demanding blood, after the catastrophes take unredeemable tolls, and the PR is finally no match for the blame emanating from every exhaust pipe.
Most developers face a dilemma when mass marketing a new development: market it directly, competing with the existing sales channels to the market, or sell/license it to a competitor. It's a kind of "coopetition" more necessary these days when branding and distribution controls most market access. The risk is that the developer will merely educate the competition to the worthiness of the product in the market, and the established seller will decide to sell their own version, without "partnering" with the developer who invested in its development. Patents can help, but they're expensive, time consuming and no guarantee against a well-funded competitor with legal expertise and experience. And a patent like the one at the heart of TiVo's lawsuit against EchoStar is also overly broad, applying legal devices like the Equivalents Doctrine to patent an entire class of inventions, not just the one actually invented. Many developers who make our livings from substantially improving on existing inventions avoid such patents that we would hate to see used against us in the hands of another inventor.
So we usually require a nondisclosure, noncompete, noncircumvent agreement before disclosing any details to the dangerous potential partner. Where is that NDA in this conflict? Was there one, which turns out to be unenforceable? That would be an important lesson for our whole profession. Did TiVo not have one, but gained millions in investment anyway, while EchoStar consumed their business? Another valuable lesson, this time for everyone. Are NDAs worth the paper they're signed upon?
So rich people can afford to pollute, and poor people can't? Rich people can buy up more of the air, soil and water, the agricultural system, the future of our climate to merely destroy for convenience, while poor people get less of it? Maybe if those taxes could pay for the extra damage the pollution does - but we don't have ways to do it.
It's like saying there should be no jailtime for setting wildfires, just fines. Then the pyromaniac club can light up California, paying for better fire departments in Texas, right?
We have a system which needs absolute minimums enforced, and the hidden costs incremental use paid as well. That means minimum MPG and a tax on gasoline.
The current state of government regulation on polluting products is entirely too low. Car companies weaseled out of their total emissions limits in the 1990s. Bush's "Clear Skies" and other environmental deregulation has increased pollution, while its accumulating closer to various breaking points. I don't want more government regulation, more constraints on production. I also don't want to die from the pollution. The survival urge is greater than the desire for more powerful and toxic toys.
"IT: Security Fears Prod Firms to Limit Staff Web Use"
Who else read that as "IT Security fears that product firms are to limit staff web use"? Meaning that vendors won't be Web-savvy any more? That their products will cut off from the Web the staff the IT Security team supports? Whichever, it's hard to see IT Security being afraid, rather than vindicated, at that news.
I want that law to define "security breach" to include any disclosure of personal info outside the immediate transaction into which the person delivered their info. To apply copyright protection to personal info, licensed for copying by the recipient solely to complete that immediate transaction. People pay for a huge public infrastructure to protect corporate info, including commercialized copyrights. We should have at least the same strength protection on our own info. Until corporations have that strong financial incentive to protect even one person's data, they will of course take the cheaper/profitable course, which exposes people to damage.
I don't know if your comments are even "nitpicks", since I agree with them. Though I'm curious how you know your planemate was who you say he was.
As for security guarantees, I've thought through an entire reconfiguration of American global military as "border cop". The DoD would replace US troops everywhere with local and regional (NATO, OAS, ASEAN, UN, etc) troops, except for a "skeleton crew" retained for interface. American troops would redeploy back to the US and to naval flotillas. The Navy would protect port security, including foreign ports which ship directly to the US, augmenting the programs like that we already have, especially where foreign ports are less secure, like those controlled directly by foreign governments like Dubai. Most of the forces would remain at sea, patrolling sea lanes (Malaysia/Indonesia and East Africa have a serious piracy problem). Naval materiel would include quickly redeployable land bases and equipment for interfacing with seaborne supplies, like fast-install rail lines. We'd also increase current R&D into cargo and communications blimps, and even faster cargo jets carrying "hanging payloads". The idea is to withdraw US troops from every country, including the US, except at the specific request of an allied government (not the forced requests left over from past wars).
The US would offers security guarantees to allies within current security organizations wherever the US belongs to one operating in that country, as well as directly when necessary (eg. Africa). America's overall strategy would change somewhere between the worn-out occupation model of the past century and the insanely overreaching and provocative "preemptive intervention" of the "Bush Doctrine", to "rapid response". "Security" means both military guarantees and natural disaster relief. As more developing countries develop infrastructure and population along previously deserted natural disaster areas (earthquakes, volcanoes, floodplains, wildfires, industrial disasters, etc), while those disasters become more frequent in the changing climate, and the global media exposes us all to compelling images of destruction, there will be lots of demand for US relief efforts. Since the US benefits the most from the global infrastructure threatened by disasters, has the best relief infrastructure, has the most generous relief donors (and agency infrastructure to support it), the US will be delivering that relief anyway. Most of the same rapid deployment disaster relief, in supplies, temporary housing, rugged transportation, etc will be dual-use for relief and for security assistance. The combined package will also increase the willingness of foreign governments to accept the security guarantees. Especially as the local US "skeleton crews" deliver their ongoing training of local military/relief until their government "calls in the US backup".
I'd like to see the over 350K overseas US troops reduced to something like 40K. I'd like to see all US bases taken over by our allied governments, perhaps "mothballing" some section of some facilities for repopulation upon emergency US redeployment. I want to see foreign governments primarily responsible for their own borders and security, including lives on the line and budgets. And I'd like to see the US redeploy those almost 30% of the 1M DoD personnel to local National Guard and Border Patrol, with maybe 50K on active duty in Naval vessels and foreign ports. I'd like to see Pentagon budgets drop, foreigners own their own security (with the option to upgrade on a moment's notice). I'd like to see American foreign presence based on integration rather than occupation, converting more staff to intelligence than to mere idle, threatening force. I'd like to see a productive force even in peacetime, helping foreigners invest in disaster preparedness and crisis intervention. Most of all, I'd like to see Americans quit our jobs as global "human shields" that enable neighbors to never integrate themselves, but keep fighting while Americans sometimes clean up the mess, while helping ensure there's always a mess to clean up.
Oh, yeah - I want Microsoft "supporting" my Linux installs, so they can count all my nonfunctioning instances against the Linux stats when they tell the world how Windows is "more reliable".
Read the Constitution, especially the part about the limited monopoly granted by Congress that enables copyrights, and thereby the retained rights called "Fair Use". Then tell me about them, when you have a clue what they actually are.
I introduced my example describing it as absurd, but nevertheless it's true. Your inability to understand its simple point is your mental incapacity, not mine.
You really have nothing to say but "no". Loudly and repeatedly, with an obnoxoius tone. Whay purpose are you serving? Why would I pay any attention to your warbling?
No, the fundamental right is to do whatever I please, except where that interferes with rights. "Fair use" rights are those preserved despite the circumvention of property and expression rights by "limited time monopoly" copyright rules. Copyright 101 has a prerequisite: Constitutional Rights.
DRM as described in the story summary, and as likewise used by the recording industry, further restricts our rights. That's wrong.
Here's an absurd, by not necessarily impossible scenario: I use a CD I bought to prop up a wobbly table leg. Later the record label's parent company markets leg proppers of their own, marketed under the same brand as the CD. They try to stop me from my "unlicensed" propping. That's an extreme version of the current label policy that I can't copy my own purchased CD to every storage medium I own, everywhere I listen. Because it's not covered in the license, and it conflicts with their merchandising extra copies. They'll DRM-lock me from copying my CD to a HD, or copying my iTunes download to my CD. Even when their scheme allows a few copies, it puts them in charge of the amount - violating my property right to make as many copies as is convenient. These copyright industrialists would charge a royalty every time someone whistled "Dixie", if they could. And soon enough, mere tech limits won't stop them. And neither will the law protect our rights from that kind of hijacking.
I'm not confusing them. Nor am I conflating them, as your vague but pedantic post accuses. DRM is enforcement of nonexistent or contrived rights. The rules and systems underlying the DRM tool are all a problem. That doesn't exclude DRM, which is the subject of the story we're discussing.
I've been involved with the music business for two decades. Many of my friends are professional musicians. I feel no guilt whatsoever doing whatever I want with a music recording, because I know I put more money in the pockets of musicians directly do than the "copyright license owners".
Besides, I've never signed or otherwise agreed to any contract or license whenever I've bought any recording. The music business might have decided I've got only a license, but they've also decided musicians and listeners are privileged obstacles to their grand marketing utopia. And they've decided that we want to listen to hours of mass-produced drivel from fake corporate spokesmodels.
They have zero hold on my conscience, either by merit or by agreement. Burn, Hollywood, burn.
How about consumers get to "access" the content we ownany which way we please? Not just some restricted way that fits the transient business model of whoever used to own it before they sold it to us. Not just through some extra intermediary who adds no value, just enforces "rights" the seller feels privileged to retain in violation of actual property rights. Just sell us the damn stuff, and keep your greasy fingers out of our pockets while we use it however we want.
If we actually do something that violates a law or agreement with you, then by all means prosecute/sue us. Or stay out of the business if it's too risky for you. Just stop selling me yet another copy of _Dark Side of the Moon_ just because you made my last player obsolete.
I was pretty disillusioned with the Metamod system back in December, when I was overrun by a TrollMod horde presumably reinforced by lots of Winter Break. My usual TrollMod warnings to metamods didn't seem to have any effect. Nor did pointing out the obvious modbomb attack to Slashdot. So I continue to just post my comments without much regard to their mods, except when they're arbitrarily mod-attacked rather than replied to. I post less these days, partly from fewer worthwhile stories running on Slashdot, and partly because I'm too busy.
But seeing "Fans" interested in the give and take is satisfying in its own way. Maybe once the Eye of Moron is ripped from the skies above our wasted lands, the scattered TrollMod refugees can be picked off individually, or just shackled as pets for a little drudge work.
Republicans, not Democrats, control the government that is issuing subpoenas to 34 ISPs. You can't have the control but not the responsibility. Certainly not according to Republicans' professed values of personal responsibility.
I note that my post did not elicit predictable responses, including flames, nor was it so designed. Neither "Troll" nor "Flamebait". Maybe "Unpleasant Reminder of Republican Hypocrisy", but that's spelled "Insightful".
When Republicans are so insane that merely restating their core platform is mod'ed "Flamebait", their TrollMod army must be stopped. There's no "moderation" in that kind of tyrannical repression.
Slashdot Mirror
You're talking to a native New Yorker, so let me clarify the reality to royal subjects:
Subways don't stop at your building, though mine does have a station in the basement. Subways also don't have a sunroof, swing by your girlfriend's place, wait outside the deli. They do have lots of strangers, often rude and even smelly. They make you wait for up to half an hour in the middle of the night. And you can't race the other guy.
Taxis usually don't let you race the other guy, either. They often come with rude and even smelly strangers, who often don't go the way you want. And they cost more per year than purchasing or owning a car. You can't keep your CDs in them, or an umbrella in the trunk. And they make you wait a long time in rush hour, the middle of the night, and when it's raining - and you without your umbrella.
BTW, NYC has plenty of bus depots in the city center - Manhattan. And the extra traffic going elsewhere than the very center, midtown Manhattan, is much less congesting than the double/triple parking for un/loading passengers/cargo.
So I don't know what public transport you're referring to. London's traffic is nothing compared to Manhattan's, but it would also be less congested with private cars parking themselves in garages instead of on the streets. Though perhaps the "slave" you're referring to driving you is something available to a monarch without even making the coffee. No wonder you covet one of your own, and think the principle must be universal.
Spitzer is the frontrunner in the upcoming 2006 NY state governor election. His career is starting to remind me of Teddy Roosevelt's.
Corporations can also be destroyed by the state which charters them when they operate outside the scope of their charter, or violate it, through charter revocation.
You think that corporations are persons, and entitled to the same Constitutional protection as humans?
Now if these cars would just park themselves far from where they drop me off, we can get rid of street parking in Manhattan. The cars can park themselves outside the city center where parking is plentiful/cheap/free, and we can triple the capacity of our existing streets.
The problem with your approach is that people will "pay the fine" and destroy the environment, creating even more costs later. Exactly as we have been doing.
The problem has some complexity, as you point out, though a few exceptions still allow a manageable law to be enforced . Maybe the only way to handle it is to ration pollution credits to every American, for a total amount of allowed pollution, which must be traded for every bit of energy consumed. Whether transport, heating, lighting, or maybe even manufacturing. Tradeable credits in an open public market. But just requiring vehicles of different classes have minimum EPM seems enough to address the problem without government intervention in every transaction. It's not a perfect model, but it's manageable and effective in averting the destruction. Close enough is good enough.
You're such a stupid fuckhead that you're insisting on a strawman argument that "fair use" is in the Constitution, when all that I said is that the Constitution has the basic artificial monopoly that requires fair use be specified to prevent total destruction of our rights.
I have no problem finding people to listen to me and my sensible arguments. The problem is that obnoxious morons like you also listen, then make shit up that's easier to argue with than my clear reasoning. Stop giving me bad personal advice after you've earned nothing but disrespect with your nasty delivery of bad logic.
A "hard stop" is not necessarily "zero", nor have I suggested zero emissions. I'm distinguishing it from your completely fuzzy recommendation that we tax fuel, which will do little to ensure we reduce emissions to an acceptable (nonzero) level. Putting "energy" like car company legislation into minimum MPG or maximum EPM will do more to prevent a "hard stop" enforced by environmental, and civilization, collapse. Voluntary or involuntary, a hard stop is all that's left, now that we've squandered centuries in which we could have had a lot more flexibility.
No, there's no definition of "rich" that entitles them to more of a share of our public national resources and health, except maybe "plutocracy". Which is not what we defend in the US - except when we're the plutocrats.
There is no economically optimal level of pollution, except when accounting the benefits. The pyromaniac club has benefit from arson, not to mention various other beneficial results like clearing land, pest reduction, and preventing later fires, in my absurd but appropriate example.
Absolute enforcement would require a totally new system of individual pollution credits. Enforcement of emissions minimums, even indirectly by mileage minimums, will have the required effect of reducing total emissions. We already have emissions minimums enforced well, but the "light trucks" exception exploited by car companies to market SUVs destroys that effective regime. Most of what we need to do can be accomplished by merely removing the unjustified, privileged exception to our working system.
That is interesting considering the Greenhouse pollution we're talking about, governed by Bush's "Clear Skies" laws, is only increasing, even according to the page to which you linked.
Also interesting is the broad consensus that "Clear Skies" increases pollution compared with the laws it replaces. Concessions to polluters like discarding requirements to upgrade old coal plants to clean ones when they're replaced, requirements which the coal/power industry accepted in exchange for less tough original requirements when the prior laws were passed. The reality of "Clear Skies", better titled "Dirty Skies", is interesting to everyone except the polluters and their covert actions to protect their pollution privileges. Dick Cheney, is that you?
Every gallon of gas, every cubic meter of pollution, is wrong. Penalizing people for generating it isn't useful unless it stops them. It won't stop people who can afford to pay. A hard stop is required. Choose between enforcing that hard stop on America's millions of drivers, rather than on a handful of manufacturers who have all kinds of government controls already installed - MPG limits are clearly the manageable, equitable way to do it. And MPG surely is the best way to define efficiency, unless we switch to "EPM", or "emissions per mile", which is probably better - but a bigger change, therefore less likely to succeed. Worth doing, though.
CEOs and their underlings rarely do jail time for violating environmental laws, though that's one case where even the "limited liability" of incorporation doesn't protect executives and board directors. And though I didn't say jail time is suitable for criminal polluters, just fines, I do believe we have to jail these people, just like the law says. We're talking about changing the system, and enforcing the rules is a good place to start. Even the auto weasels who escaped emissions controls did so by changing the rules, rather than breaking them. Especially with American car companies now facing bankruptcy even without paying their environmental costs, they're a better target than ever to put under legal pressure. Once they start begging for Chrysler-style government bailouts, they'll have to make such concessions.
We've run out of paved easy roads on pollution. Americans, as shown in the story we're discussing, are now ready to make changes for self-preservation. If we don't, we're going to see a lot more polluters facing angry American mobs demanding blood, after the catastrophes take unredeemable tolls, and the PR is finally no match for the blame emanating from every exhaust pipe.
Most developers face a dilemma when mass marketing a new development: market it directly, competing with the existing sales channels to the market, or sell/license it to a competitor. It's a kind of "coopetition" more necessary these days when branding and distribution controls most market access. The risk is that the developer will merely educate the competition to the worthiness of the product in the market, and the established seller will decide to sell their own version, without "partnering" with the developer who invested in its development. Patents can help, but they're expensive, time consuming and no guarantee against a well-funded competitor with legal expertise and experience. And a patent like the one at the heart of TiVo's lawsuit against EchoStar is also overly broad, applying legal devices like the Equivalents Doctrine to patent an entire class of inventions, not just the one actually invented. Many developers who make our livings from substantially improving on existing inventions avoid such patents that we would hate to see used against us in the hands of another inventor.
So we usually require a nondisclosure, noncompete, noncircumvent agreement before disclosing any details to the dangerous potential partner. Where is that NDA in this conflict? Was there one, which turns out to be unenforceable? That would be an important lesson for our whole profession. Did TiVo not have one, but gained millions in investment anyway, while EchoStar consumed their business? Another valuable lesson, this time for everyone. Are NDAs worth the paper they're signed upon?
So rich people can afford to pollute, and poor people can't? Rich people can buy up more of the air, soil and water, the agricultural system, the future of our climate to merely destroy for convenience, while poor people get less of it? Maybe if those taxes could pay for the extra damage the pollution does - but we don't have ways to do it.
It's like saying there should be no jailtime for setting wildfires, just fines. Then the pyromaniac club can light up California, paying for better fire departments in Texas, right?
We have a system which needs absolute minimums enforced, and the hidden costs incremental use paid as well. That means minimum MPG and a tax on gasoline.
The current state of government regulation on polluting products is entirely too low. Car companies weaseled out of their total emissions limits in the 1990s. Bush's "Clear Skies" and other environmental deregulation has increased pollution, while its accumulating closer to various breaking points. I don't want more government regulation, more constraints on production. I also don't want to die from the pollution. The survival urge is greater than the desire for more powerful and toxic toys.
"IT: Security Fears Prod Firms to Limit Staff Web Use"
Who else read that as "IT Security fears that product firms are to limit staff web use"? Meaning that vendors won't be Web-savvy any more? That their products will cut off from the Web the staff the IT Security team supports? Whichever, it's hard to see IT Security being afraid, rather than vindicated, at that news.
I want that law to define "security breach" to include any disclosure of personal info outside the immediate transaction into which the person delivered their info. To apply copyright protection to personal info, licensed for copying by the recipient solely to complete that immediate transaction. People pay for a huge public infrastructure to protect corporate info, including commercialized copyrights. We should have at least the same strength protection on our own info. Until corporations have that strong financial incentive to protect even one person's data, they will of course take the cheaper/profitable course, which exposes people to damage.
I don't know if your comments are even "nitpicks", since I agree with them. Though I'm curious how you know your planemate was who you say he was.
As for security guarantees, I've thought through an entire reconfiguration of American global military as "border cop". The DoD would replace US troops everywhere with local and regional (NATO, OAS, ASEAN, UN, etc) troops, except for a "skeleton crew" retained for interface. American troops would redeploy back to the US and to naval flotillas. The Navy would protect port security, including foreign ports which ship directly to the US, augmenting the programs like that we already have, especially where foreign ports are less secure, like those controlled directly by foreign governments like Dubai. Most of the forces would remain at sea, patrolling sea lanes (Malaysia/Indonesia and East Africa have a serious piracy problem). Naval materiel would include quickly redeployable land bases and equipment for interfacing with seaborne supplies, like fast-install rail lines. We'd also increase current R&D into cargo and communications blimps, and even faster cargo jets carrying "hanging payloads". The idea is to withdraw US troops from every country, including the US, except at the specific request of an allied government (not the forced requests left over from past wars).
The US would offers security guarantees to allies within current security organizations wherever the US belongs to one operating in that country, as well as directly when necessary (eg. Africa). America's overall strategy would change somewhere between the worn-out occupation model of the past century and the insanely overreaching and provocative "preemptive intervention" of the "Bush Doctrine", to "rapid response". "Security" means both military guarantees and natural disaster relief. As more developing countries develop infrastructure and population along previously deserted natural disaster areas (earthquakes, volcanoes, floodplains, wildfires, industrial disasters, etc), while those disasters become more frequent in the changing climate, and the global media exposes us all to compelling images of destruction, there will be lots of demand for US relief efforts. Since the US benefits the most from the global infrastructure threatened by disasters, has the best relief infrastructure, has the most generous relief donors (and agency infrastructure to support it), the US will be delivering that relief anyway. Most of the same rapid deployment disaster relief, in supplies, temporary housing, rugged transportation, etc will be dual-use for relief and for security assistance. The combined package will also increase the willingness of foreign governments to accept the security guarantees. Especially as the local US "skeleton crews" deliver their ongoing training of local military/relief until their government "calls in the US backup".
I'd like to see the over 350K overseas US troops reduced to something like 40K. I'd like to see all US bases taken over by our allied governments, perhaps "mothballing" some section of some facilities for repopulation upon emergency US redeployment. I want to see foreign governments primarily responsible for their own borders and security, including lives on the line and budgets. And I'd like to see the US redeploy those almost 30% of the 1M DoD personnel to local National Guard and Border Patrol, with maybe 50K on active duty in Naval vessels and foreign ports. I'd like to see Pentagon budgets drop, foreigners own their own security (with the option to upgrade on a moment's notice). I'd like to see American foreign presence based on integration rather than occupation, converting more staff to intelligence than to mere idle, threatening force. I'd like to see a productive force even in peacetime, helping foreigners invest in disaster preparedness and crisis intervention. Most of all, I'd like to see Americans quit our jobs as global "human shields" that enable neighbors to never integrate themselves, but keep fighting while Americans sometimes clean up the mess, while helping ensure there's always a mess to clean up.
Oh, yeah - I want Microsoft "supporting" my Linux installs, so they can count all my nonfunctioning instances against the Linux stats when they tell the world how Windows is "more reliable".
Read the Constitution, especially the part about the limited monopoly granted by Congress that enables copyrights, and thereby the retained rights called "Fair Use". Then tell me about them, when you have a clue what they actually are.
I introduced my example describing it as absurd, but nevertheless it's true. Your inability to understand its simple point is your mental incapacity, not mine.
You really have nothing to say but "no". Loudly and repeatedly, with an obnoxoius tone. Whay purpose are you serving? Why would I pay any attention to your warbling?
No, the fundamental right is to do whatever I please, except where that interferes with rights. "Fair use" rights are those preserved despite the circumvention of property and expression rights by "limited time monopoly" copyright rules. Copyright 101 has a prerequisite: Constitutional Rights.
DRM as described in the story summary, and as likewise used by the recording industry, further restricts our rights. That's wrong.
Here's an absurd, by not necessarily impossible scenario: I use a CD I bought to prop up a wobbly table leg. Later the record label's parent company markets leg proppers of their own, marketed under the same brand as the CD. They try to stop me from my "unlicensed" propping. That's an extreme version of the current label policy that I can't copy my own purchased CD to every storage medium I own, everywhere I listen. Because it's not covered in the license, and it conflicts with their merchandising extra copies. They'll DRM-lock me from copying my CD to a HD, or copying my iTunes download to my CD. Even when their scheme allows a few copies, it puts them in charge of the amount - violating my property right to make as many copies as is convenient. These copyright industrialists would charge a royalty every time someone whistled "Dixie", if they could. And soon enough, mere tech limits won't stop them. And neither will the law protect our rights from that kind of hijacking.
I'm not confusing them. Nor am I conflating them, as your vague but pedantic post accuses. DRM is enforcement of nonexistent or contrived rights. The rules and systems underlying the DRM tool are all a problem. That doesn't exclude DRM, which is the subject of the story we're discussing.
I've been involved with the music business for two decades. Many of my friends are professional musicians. I feel no guilt whatsoever doing whatever I want with a music recording, because I know I put more money in the pockets of musicians directly do than the "copyright license owners".
Besides, I've never signed or otherwise agreed to any contract or license whenever I've bought any recording. The music business might have decided I've got only a license, but they've also decided musicians and listeners are privileged obstacles to their grand marketing utopia. And they've decided that we want to listen to hours of mass-produced drivel from fake corporate spokesmodels.
They have zero hold on my conscience, either by merit or by agreement. Burn, Hollywood, burn.
How about consumers get to "access" the content we own any which way we please? Not just some restricted way that fits the transient business model of whoever used to own it before they sold it to us. Not just through some extra intermediary who adds no value, just enforces "rights" the seller feels privileged to retain in violation of actual property rights. Just sell us the damn stuff, and keep your greasy fingers out of our pockets while we use it however we want.
If we actually do something that violates a law or agreement with you, then by all means prosecute/sue us. Or stay out of the business if it's too risky for you. Just stop selling me yet another copy of _Dark Side of the Moon_ just because you made my last player obsolete.
I was pretty disillusioned with the Metamod system back in December, when I was overrun by a TrollMod horde presumably reinforced by lots of Winter Break. My usual TrollMod warnings to metamods didn't seem to have any effect. Nor did pointing out the obvious modbomb attack to Slashdot. So I continue to just post my comments without much regard to their mods, except when they're arbitrarily mod-attacked rather than replied to. I post less these days, partly from fewer worthwhile stories running on Slashdot, and partly because I'm too busy.
But seeing "Fans" interested in the give and take is satisfying in its own way. Maybe once the Eye of Moron is ripped from the skies above our wasted lands, the scattered TrollMod refugees can be picked off individually, or just shackled as pets for a little drudge work.
Republicans, not Democrats, control the government that is issuing subpoenas to 34 ISPs. You can't have the control but not the responsibility. Certainly not according to Republicans' professed values of personal responsibility.
I note that my post did not elicit predictable responses, including flames, nor was it so designed. Neither "Troll" nor "Flamebait". Maybe "Unpleasant Reminder of Republican Hypocrisy", but that's spelled "Insightful".
Moderation +3
60% Funny
20% Flamebait
20% Insightful
When Republicans are so insane that merely restating their core platform is mod'ed "Flamebait", their TrollMod army must be stopped. There's no "moderation" in that kind of tyrannical repression.