The Clinton Administration asked for 17 billion USD to fight the "War on Drugs" in 1998.
More federal and state wiretaps are for drug offenses than murder, kidnapping, extortion, and such like combined.
1 in 4 black males will spend some portion of their lives behind bars, usually for drug-related offenses. Only 1 in 17 white males will.
Possession of crack is a federal crime with a mandatory minimum of 5 years imprisonment. Crack is the only drug that has such a mandatory sentence.
Blacks make up about 13% of the United States population; whites are about 85% of the population. Whites are more likely to use crack than blacks, but blacks are more likely to go to jail for crack.
I find it interesting that there is a Slashdot article about Doubleclick cookies, but few people seem to have noticed that one of the banner ads here bears this link address:
This is the one featuring the boxer. There's at least one other, featuring characters from User Friendly advertising the latest version of SuSE. Isn't this interesting?
In 1998, the United States government collected about 1.7 trillion dollars in revenues.
Politicians keep talking about tax cuts, but they don't seem to materialize. Clinton's administration has seen a budget surplus for the first time in years, but this money is mostly being funnelled (or will be; the cash seems not to have materialized yet) back into crippled or near-useless programs (As early as the 1970s, it was recognized that the individual taxpayer would never see two-thirds of their Social Security benefits).
It is unsurprising, then, that the government is seeking ways to take more of our hard-earned wealth. Already, the average taxpayer must relenquish a third or more of their income for taxes--taxes that fund multi-billion dollar programs of questionable effectiveness and value (see the current tussle over the latest proposed ballistic missile defense).
In a culture as deeply rooted in consumerism and the pursuit of the almighty dollar as ours, is it any wonder that governments and corporations are doing their best to separate citizens from their money? Not at all. A poor citizen is in many ways a powerless one, and is that much easier to control.
Save your money. Invest it wisely. Beware the wolves and robbers that will try to steal the fruits of your labors.
It seems to me that Katz is in the habit of pandering to his audience. In an effort to generate some sort of ego boost for himself, he is willing to write long-winded, ridiculous articles about a lot of things that, in the end, simply don't matter.
"Open Media"? Balderdash and poppycock. Sure, every day, there are millions of people writing each other messages and posting information on the World Wide Web. This is not new, nor is it really different; after all, people have been gossiping and talking about the news for practically as long as we've had language. It's a part of what makes us human. The fact that it is taking place on the web only means that your innocent backyard gossip now has a wider audience (that mostly could not care less, though some enjoy the voyeuristic thrill) that, if anything, is less connected to you than before.
What's important here is that the Web is, in some ways, a powerfully divisive force in United States society. We must be cautious when using it, and careful not to let it absorb too much of our lives.
So long as I don't know the degree of "copyrightedness" of the file, it's not my fault.
False. In some cases, trafficking in stolen goods is just as bad as the actual theft, even if you can prove you had no knowledge that the goods were stolen. I imagine that something similar might apply here.
The editorial staff at The Alarmist have done a piece on the issue of the not-quite anonymity that Gnutella's users have.
The fact of the matter is that, despite its mostly decentralized and somewhat chaotic nature, certain entities within the Internet can and do make logs of user activity. True, perhaps they can only point to a dynamic IP address, but at the very least, you can usually trace back activity to a point of origin: an ISP, or a company line, for instance. From there, it is only a matter of pressuring the originating body into giving up a user list and submitting to monitoring of their activity, in much the way that a phone line can be tapped.
"But that invades my privacy!", you say. That's true, it does invade your privacy. But it is also perfectly legal--the ISP or the company is assisting the government in the investigation of a crime, and failure to do so can yield charges like obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting. If the crime is serious enough, it may also warrant a conspiracy charge. ISPs and companies hate that kind of pressure, and tend to fold under it rapidly, no matter what their stance is on user privacy. After all, a "you are totally anonymous" policy is hard to enforce when jackbooted thugs kick in your door and shut down your hosting operation.
We all have less privacy than we think. It's time to do something about this.
Katz is partially correct. After all, the growth of corporate power means that a company beholden to no one but its stockholders can dictate policy to a government. It used to be that governments were stronger entities than any other in the land; after all, the purpose of a good government is to maintain order and protect its citizens.
That time has passed. Governments everywhere are rapidly becoming parasitic monsters, good only for fleecing the populace while allowing them to be further robbed by other interests. Money talks, but money isn't the only currency in high places. Beyond a certain point, money is not what is important--power is what matters.
That is what many corporations are after: power. After all, when your closest five competitors all make billions per year in revenues, you can all agree that money isn't the only indicator of success (it's practically a necessity for competition); mindshare is.
Mindshare is a slightly disturbing idea: train the consumers so that whenever they think of a particular product, they think of your company. In the U.S. southern states, for instance, the word "Coke" is practically a synonym for "carbonated beverage." That's the power of mindshare.
So what happens when someone says (for instance) "Microsoft" and you think "George W. Bush"?
Katz is right in that corporations have slowly grown to be major influences in our lives. Where he falls short is realizing that there are other influences at work, that the government is not a monolithic entity that dances to the tune of the corporations with the most money. What he misses is that there are always other organizations, some working behind the scenes and some not, and that those organizations are just as powerful and influential in your lives.
This is akin to saying that there's no point in research and development for automobiles, because everything today is basically a copy of Cugnot's gun carriage of the 1790s.
Why would anyone in a position of any prominence make such a ludicrous statement? There is always new work to be done, even if it is merely refining an old idea. The GPS we use these days is really a refined solution to the same problems that the backstaff and sextant tackled; however, it's much harder to screw up finding your location with a GPS than it is if you use a sextant.
Is this man a shill? Is he trying to say, "No, there's no need to go behind that door. Ignore the guys back there who are developing all sorts of new wonders that will be used later on to exploit you."
Really, this is not much different from the arguments regarding the use of force in defending one's home against a burglar. True, the stakes are different (lives versus property), but the story is the same, as are the concerns:
There is the danger of injuring innocent bystanders (shooting through the wall and hitting someone else/destroying a hapless innocent's machine).
The use of force may deter the individual offender, but won't necessarily stop potential offenders.
The difference here is that in cracking attempts, one can easily find oneself enmired in a situation where attempts escalate as the cracker and defender each try to outdo the other. This isn't the case with breaking and entering, as it usually only happens once, and if someone is killed, they cannot continue the escalation.
What recourse do system administrators have? They can build the best defenses possible, but any system built to connect to another can be compromised. The law may or may not be on their side should they decide to retaliate, but law enforecment is notoriously slow to respond in cases of electronic intrusion.
Perhaps the only viable alternative at this time is to strike back. Who can say?
Re:The Internet may end governments and taxes.
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Privacy vs. Anonymity
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· Score: 1
The anonymity and more importantly the privacy of the Internet denies an essential element to the survival of any goverment: the ability to tax its citizens.
I disagree. While more commerce will be conducted online, governments will deal with this in much the same way that they have always dealt with it: income taxes, excise taxes, perhaps even poll taxes before all is said and done.
If nothing else, governments are very good at making sure that they get their very own over-large slice of the pie. While money made in cyberspace is hard to track, it will be made up for with more real-world taxes. Count on it.
"The power to tax is the power to destroy." It was true 250 years ago, and it has never been truer than it is today.
Think about it the war on drugs was all about power. The whole thing about violence and crime all about power.
Later today (or perhaps tomorrow), www.alarmist.org will feature an article talking about the War on Drugs. If you simply cannot wait to get your hands on some interesting facts, try going to www.csdp.org. They present the facts in an occasionally biased way, but the figures seem sound and paint a grim picture.
With online services offering any citizen's credit report for 39.95 USD, I cannot say that this is an especially surprising development. Alarming, certainly, and upsetting, but not surprising.
I expect that something like this will be available before long for Gnutella.
If any of you have samizdat to distribute, you'd better do it now or find alternate communication channels. The day when we will be issued microphones to be worn at all times cannot be far off.
And isn't it possible that the best way for a government(at least a republic/democracy type) to continue its survival is to be reponsive to its citizens and to encourage freedom?
What you forget is that governments are typically composed of people. People, as we all know, have their good sides and their bad sides. In a reasonably perfect world, a representative or purely democratic nation would respond to its citizens and encourage freedom, as you said.
The problem, though, is that the United States and several other governments are dominated by leeches. It is easier for these people of low moral fiber to hoodwink, confuse, and mislead the governed in order to maintain their own power. They are not interested in the welfare of the state, except as that pertains to their own personal wellbeing. They are interested in maintaining the status quo--with themselves at the top of the heap--for as long as possible.
That is why novels like Nineteen Eighty-Four are plausible--because Orwell pointed out (subtly or not) that the powers that be want to maintain their own power. If they have to do that at the expense of the people, then so be it. The situation that we are faced with today is no different.
This comes back to the old citizen's rights-versus-state's-convenience argument. Our governments want to monitor on-line usage to "protect the children" and "protect the artists" and "protect the country."
Hogwash, ladies and gentlemen.
The goal of any organization is, first and foremost, continued survival. Beyond a certain point, organizations take on characteristics of living things: they consume, they repair damage, they grow. They also defend themselves against perceived threats.
Governments (and large corporations, but it's really the same story) everywhere in the industrialized world realize that the Internet is a powerful weapon against them if they choose to deprive their citizens of freedom. The Internet is an excellent medium for dissemination of information and collection of same. As it is difficult to defeat a knowledgable citizenry without the use of arms, every government bent on maintaining itself as a parasite on its people will try to regulate (and perhaps eventually, eliminate) access to the Internet.
The era of thoughtcrime and the Ministry of Love is not far away, if we do not do something about this now. Remember this: your government may not have your best interests at heart. Realize this and act accordingly.
What's Really Important Here
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Virtual War
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What we need to keep in mind is that the "war" in Kosovo was merely a ploy to direct public attention away from a developing scandal in the government. While we may agree that genocide and murder are bad things, they were not the real reason for an American-led presence in that troubled land.
We should also ask ourselves the real reasons for the Persian Gulf "war". Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't about oil--only 11% of the United States total oil consumption for that year came from nations that could possibly have been affected (Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE). In fact, we were getting more oil from Iraq than from Kuwait in the year before the war started. Even after the war, the United States government repeatedly chastized the restored Kuwaiti government for its poor human-rights record, but did this out of the spotlight in venues that the U.S. public was unlikely to explore.
What's the agenda here? Why is the United States spending so much time and effort bombing people with alleged "precision" munitions (munitions which, in the Gulf War at least, were later shown to have only a 40% hit rate--a far cry from the perception that every bomb hit every target). We need to ask ourselves what the government is doing with all of this money, and who the next target of those weapons will be.
The United States government has shown, in recent years, a great intolerance for certain "fringe" groups. These munitions, once honed to perfection (after being tested on foreign soil in conflicts that are generated out of thin air), may be used in the future to silence groups that dare to speak out against the government.
We are right to be afraid of this, but we should not let that fear paralyze us. The government prefers to use smoke and mirrors when fighting these battles; only the blinding light of the truth will save us.
Re:Why wasn't it controlled before?
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At The Crossroads
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We have a massive War on Drugs at which we throw billions of dollars, and you can buy crack on just about any street corner. Do we want to create a "War on Piracy" that endlessly gobbles money with little or no return?
Fact: the United States collects over one trillion dollars in revenue every year.
What could a trillion dollars do? Imagine what would happen if the billions devoted to the War on Drugs was suddenly freed up for other interests (Social Security, improving public education, a decent space program, a more intelligent defense program, social reforms, et cetera ad nauseam).
Yet this money is wasted in an ideological war that cannot be won.
The United States government is not full of stupid people. Most certainly, it is not run by stupid people. These people may act stupidly, they may come across as stupid, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they are, for the most part, not stupid.
So why this flagrant misuse of resources? It serves three purposes, one of which you touch on below:
The result of the War on Drugs is generally that the poor and/or minorities end up in prison.
First, the War on Drugs creates a large oppressed underclass, fit only for minimum-wage jobs or those considered odious to the powers that be. This has the dual effect of providing a cheap workforce and having an element that can by its mere existence threaten other segments of society: "Be good, or you'll end up like the crack junkie over there!"
Second, the creation of this underclass gives the government free license (more or less) to pass legislation that strips all citizens of civil rights under the guise of persecuting the guilty. We have more police with broader, less well-defined powers because we have created an underclass of unruly citizens who have little incentive to obey the law.
Third, we have effectively wasted a lot of resources that could have been put to better use improving the lot of everyone in the United States and a fair number of people elsewhere around the globe. The powers that be are not interested in a good society. They are not interested in world peace. They are interested in the easiest path to power, which is to keep the public ignorant and powerless, unable to fight back or even to understand what is going on.
A War on Piracy will punish a much "higher class" (in the sense of social standing, not social fitness) of people and will get much less public support.
This would be true, but the events at Columbine have given them an effective tool to use against us: we're now "protecting the children." The freedom of access to information will be curtailed sharply, not because little Johnny wants to look at pictures of naked people, and not because little Johnny could find out information on illegal drugs or bombs. No, it will be regulated because little Johnny might find out that he's been lied to. Even worse, he might start telling people that they've been lied to as well.
These events bode ill not only for us, but for all of humanity.
It's been said a thousand times if it's been said once, but it holds true: knowledge is power.
For the first time, many people are waking up to the access to information that is at their fingertips. Though little is available on the Internet that did not already exist in other forms, it is now easier to sift through that data noise and extract a few useful nuggets of information.
Naturally, the powers that be are concerned about this. An ill-informed, mentally-deficient populace is easier for a clever government to rule (all you need, really, is bread and circuses.) People who are incapable of critical reasoning are prone to impulse buys and less able to resist the siren song of marketing.
As a result of these forces colliding, we have on the one hand a rabble of loud-mouthed, self-concerned individuals who lash out against anyone who tramples on their perceived right to any information they please. On the other, we have large governments and corporations who know that the hoodwink they've kept over the eyes of the people for centuries is starting to slip. Naturally, there will be friction.
Surrounding the periphery of these contestants, we have those who are largely unconcerned by these events, and those who realize that neither the large organizations nor the rabble have their best interests at heart, and in this day and age, intelligent, like-minded people everywhere must stand together to defend the few rights they have left. It won't be an easy battle: there are many of them and few of us, but we do have advantages. A sighted dwarf can beat a blind giant.
One is almost tempted to wonder whether the current United States public education system is designed to produce unthinking, unquestioning mass consumers to be exploited at every turn by the powers that be. It certainly seems to be doing its job. What should we do about that?
So, the United States Department of Justice thinks that the best solution is to split Microsoft into three separate companies that will not be allowed to exchange information with each other or cooperate in any real sense of the term.
Since when has the United States decided to have such a naive, Pollyanna-ish view of the world? The Microsoft fragments can and probably will cooperate with each other beyond the extent allowed by law. They just won't do it above-board where everyone can see it. They'll do it in smoke-filled rooms and in dark alleys. What the DoJ has essentially asked us to do is to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
This breakup will not change Microsoft's practices. If anything, the mere threat of such action has encouraged the company in its scofflaw ways. By applying this weak, seemingly impressive but in actuality quite pitiful solution, the United States has given Microsoft carte blanche to conduct business as usual.
You've built a large cluster of machines on a relatively pea-sized budget.
Are other government agencies going to duplicate your work? Have they already? If so, for what purposes?
Re:But here's a question...Plse help
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Universal Access
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Talking to one exec about this, she said, and I quote directly: "But one problem we're already encountering is that many people just can't use computers and have trouble navigating the Net.[...] but some people are already asking us for some education as well, especially in other countries. Do you know anyone who does this or specializes in this? How difficult would this be?"
Giving universal access to third-world countries and trying to teach people how to use the internet is almost the moral equivalent of bread and circuses. The truth is that many people will be too busy being robbed by the government/rebels/some thug down the street, or too worried about starving to death or dying of some disease to learn much about using this information.
The internet is not a bandaid. Its introduction into a chaotic society will not suddenly make everyone polite and good to each other. It is a wasted gesture until the society in question is stable enough that the people don't have to worry about starvation, disease, and violence and actually have the resources to learn how to use the information given to them. Until then, it is mostly a feel-good gesture on the part of paternalistic first-world powers.
Providing good net access is quite beneficial to a family.
It can also fragment the family. I know of people who barely speak to their families because they're too busy surfing the 'net.
Browsing sites seems to satisfy something in our hunter-gatherer natures that is lacking in most modern societies. It would seem counter-intuitive, then, that it could be a divisive force, but it can be.
Universal access to information is probably a good thing. After all, nobody can destroy the Library of Alexandria if everyone has a copy, nor can someone be denied information on the basis of where they live of how much they make.
But at what cost? We already know that major corporations pay for marketing information collected from unwitting surfers. Are we willing to bring universal access to humanity at the price of making everyone a target for marketers? Certainly, universal access is a good thing. Eavesdropping and commercial voyeurism are not.
Think about universal access and about what it takes to bring it about before you mindlessly enthuse about it. Then see if there's another way to finance this venture, one that doesn't depend on turning hapless people into cash cows to be milked by the highest bidder.
The nation will perish, not as the result of foreign invasion, nor by natural disaster, but because of the fragmentation of its society by factions who wish to capture power. Together, 280 million people are quite a force, one that is difficult to stand against. But with the factionalization along race, socio-economic, religious, and gender lines, that 280 million people united quickly becomes a bickering, squabbling mass of humanity incapable of defending themselves or anyone else from ruthless exploitation and domination by entities that work under the cloak of secrecy.
Thought police? There will be no thought police in the future. There won't need to be any; we'll be too busy killing each other in the streets over perceived differences, bamboozled and hoodwinked from birth into believing that this is the only way to survive.
Software companies own, collectively, probably thousands of copyrights on games that are not in general circulation. There's nothing new about this; technical people know that the instant a new product is released, interest in the old product will fade, until only a core of die-hards maintain the old product's memory at all. This is the nature of the game, and not something that can easily be changed.
However, what is befuddling is why those software companies would refuse to release the copyright to those games. That is, it is befuddling at the first glance. After all, nobody is making games for the original NES or Colecovision any more. The 8-bit graphics of the NES seem laughable to the N64 and the Dreamcast, and so the mass market would dismiss these products right away. Clearly, there is no money to be made in keeping up these copyrights.
We must remember, though, that a software company is driven (generally) by profits first. As silly as it sounds to us, Nintendo is right when it says that the old games directly compete with its newer lines. Remember--the old gaming platforms (and old PCs, for software based on PCs instead of consoles) were ridiculously limited by today's standards, and so the programming involved probably used a lot of nifty software hacks to squeeze every drop of performance out of those machines. Those same hacks, while not useful in their native form, could point the way towards design philosophies and methodologies that would enable a software company to create a product that is a little better, a little faster than its opponents. That is what the software companies fear.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps there is something else in those old ROMs that software companies don't want anyone finding out about. After all, it is easy to denounce a few gaming enthusiasts as misguided, paranoid, or wrong. It is much harder to denounce the majority of your target market, and much harder on profits.
Think of how many children and adolescents were turned into zombies by those old games. I know people that, even though they haven't touched a NES in years, can still remember where all the secrets in a particular game were. If that isn't brainwashing, then I don't know what is.
Slashdot Mirror
More federal and state wiretaps are for drug offenses than murder, kidnapping, extortion, and such like combined.
1 in 4 black males will spend some portion of their lives behind bars, usually for drug-related offenses. Only 1 in 17 white males will.
Possession of crack is a federal crime with a mandatory minimum of 5 years imprisonment. Crack is the only drug that has such a mandatory sentence.
Blacks make up about 13% of the United States population; whites are about 85% of the population. Whites are more likely to use crack than blacks, but blacks are more likely to go to jail for crack.
http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N668.SlashDot/B2020 1;sz=468x60;ord=961771260961771260?
This is the one featuring the boxer. There's at least one other, featuring characters from User Friendly advertising the latest version of SuSE. Isn't this interesting?
Politicians keep talking about tax cuts, but they don't seem to materialize. Clinton's administration has seen a budget surplus for the first time in years, but this money is mostly being funnelled (or will be; the cash seems not to have materialized yet) back into crippled or near-useless programs (As early as the 1970s, it was recognized that the individual taxpayer would never see two-thirds of their Social Security benefits).
It is unsurprising, then, that the government is seeking ways to take more of our hard-earned wealth. Already, the average taxpayer must relenquish a third or more of their income for taxes--taxes that fund multi-billion dollar programs of questionable effectiveness and value (see the current tussle over the latest proposed ballistic missile defense).
In a culture as deeply rooted in consumerism and the pursuit of the almighty dollar as ours, is it any wonder that governments and corporations are doing their best to separate citizens from their money? Not at all. A poor citizen is in many ways a powerless one, and is that much easier to control.
Save your money. Invest it wisely. Beware the wolves and robbers that will try to steal the fruits of your labors.
"Open Media"? Balderdash and poppycock. Sure, every day, there are millions of people writing each other messages and posting information on the World Wide Web. This is not new, nor is it really different; after all, people have been gossiping and talking about the news for practically as long as we've had language. It's a part of what makes us human. The fact that it is taking place on the web only means that your innocent backyard gossip now has a wider audience (that mostly could not care less, though some enjoy the voyeuristic thrill) that, if anything, is less connected to you than before.
What's important here is that the Web is, in some ways, a powerfully divisive force in United States society. We must be cautious when using it, and careful not to let it absorb too much of our lives.
False. In some cases, trafficking in stolen goods is just as bad as the actual theft, even if you can prove you had no knowledge that the goods were stolen. I imagine that something similar might apply here.
The fact of the matter is that, despite its mostly decentralized and somewhat chaotic nature, certain entities within the Internet can and do make logs of user activity. True, perhaps they can only point to a dynamic IP address, but at the very least, you can usually trace back activity to a point of origin: an ISP, or a company line, for instance. From there, it is only a matter of pressuring the originating body into giving up a user list and submitting to monitoring of their activity, in much the way that a phone line can be tapped.
"But that invades my privacy!", you say. That's true, it does invade your privacy. But it is also perfectly legal--the ISP or the company is assisting the government in the investigation of a crime, and failure to do so can yield charges like obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting. If the crime is serious enough, it may also warrant a conspiracy charge. ISPs and companies hate that kind of pressure, and tend to fold under it rapidly, no matter what their stance is on user privacy. After all, a "you are totally anonymous" policy is hard to enforce when jackbooted thugs kick in your door and shut down your hosting operation.
We all have less privacy than we think. It's time to do something about this.
That time has passed. Governments everywhere are rapidly becoming parasitic monsters, good only for fleecing the populace while allowing them to be further robbed by other interests. Money talks, but money isn't the only currency in high places. Beyond a certain point, money is not what is important--power is what matters.
That is what many corporations are after: power. After all, when your closest five competitors all make billions per year in revenues, you can all agree that money isn't the only indicator of success (it's practically a necessity for competition); mindshare is.
Mindshare is a slightly disturbing idea: train the consumers so that whenever they think of a particular product, they think of your company. In the U.S. southern states, for instance, the word "Coke" is practically a synonym for "carbonated beverage." That's the power of mindshare.
So what happens when someone says (for instance) "Microsoft" and you think "George W. Bush"?
Katz is right in that corporations have slowly grown to be major influences in our lives. Where he falls short is realizing that there are other influences at work, that the government is not a monolithic entity that dances to the tune of the corporations with the most money. What he misses is that there are always other organizations, some working behind the scenes and some not, and that those organizations are just as powerful and influential in your lives.
Keep your eyes open. Think for yourself.
Why would anyone in a position of any prominence make such a ludicrous statement? There is always new work to be done, even if it is merely refining an old idea. The GPS we use these days is really a refined solution to the same problems that the backstaff and sextant tackled; however, it's much harder to screw up finding your location with a GPS than it is if you use a sextant.
Is this man a shill? Is he trying to say, "No, there's no need to go behind that door. Ignore the guys back there who are developing all sorts of new wonders that will be used later on to exploit you."
The difference here is that in cracking attempts, one can easily find oneself enmired in a situation where attempts escalate as the cracker and defender each try to outdo the other. This isn't the case with breaking and entering, as it usually only happens once, and if someone is killed, they cannot continue the escalation.
What recourse do system administrators have? They can build the best defenses possible, but any system built to connect to another can be compromised. The law may or may not be on their side should they decide to retaliate, but law enforecment is notoriously slow to respond in cases of electronic intrusion.
Perhaps the only viable alternative at this time is to strike back. Who can say?
I disagree. While more commerce will be conducted online, governments will deal with this in much the same way that they have always dealt with it: income taxes, excise taxes, perhaps even poll taxes before all is said and done.
If nothing else, governments are very good at making sure that they get their very own over-large slice of the pie. While money made in cyberspace is hard to track, it will be made up for with more real-world taxes. Count on it.
"The power to tax is the power to destroy." It was true 250 years ago, and it has never been truer than it is today.
Later today (or perhaps tomorrow), www.alarmist.org will feature an article talking about the War on Drugs. If you simply cannot wait to get your hands on some interesting facts, try going to www.csdp.org. They present the facts in an occasionally biased way, but the figures seem sound and paint a grim picture.
I expect that something like this will be available before long for Gnutella.
If any of you have samizdat to distribute, you'd better do it now or find alternate communication channels. The day when we will be issued microphones to be worn at all times cannot be far off.
What you forget is that governments are typically composed of people. People, as we all know, have their good sides and their bad sides. In a reasonably perfect world, a representative or purely democratic nation would respond to its citizens and encourage freedom, as you said.
The problem, though, is that the United States and several other governments are dominated by leeches. It is easier for these people of low moral fiber to hoodwink, confuse, and mislead the governed in order to maintain their own power. They are not interested in the welfare of the state, except as that pertains to their own personal wellbeing. They are interested in maintaining the status quo--with themselves at the top of the heap--for as long as possible.
That is why novels like Nineteen Eighty-Four are plausible--because Orwell pointed out (subtly or not) that the powers that be want to maintain their own power. If they have to do that at the expense of the people, then so be it. The situation that we are faced with today is no different.
True. Nobody in Germany voted to start killing Jews and gypsies in 1933.
Likewise, the first income tax in the United States was 1%.
Hogwash, ladies and gentlemen.
The goal of any organization is, first and foremost, continued survival. Beyond a certain point, organizations take on characteristics of living things: they consume, they repair damage, they grow. They also defend themselves against perceived threats.
Governments (and large corporations, but it's really the same story) everywhere in the industrialized world realize that the Internet is a powerful weapon against them if they choose to deprive their citizens of freedom. The Internet is an excellent medium for dissemination of information and collection of same. As it is difficult to defeat a knowledgable citizenry without the use of arms, every government bent on maintaining itself as a parasite on its people will try to regulate (and perhaps eventually, eliminate) access to the Internet.
The era of thoughtcrime and the Ministry of Love is not far away, if we do not do something about this now. Remember this: your government may not have your best interests at heart. Realize this and act accordingly.
We should also ask ourselves the real reasons for the Persian Gulf "war". Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't about oil--only 11% of the United States total oil consumption for that year came from nations that could possibly have been affected (Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE). In fact, we were getting more oil from Iraq than from Kuwait in the year before the war started. Even after the war, the United States government repeatedly chastized the restored Kuwaiti government for its poor human-rights record, but did this out of the spotlight in venues that the U.S. public was unlikely to explore.
What's the agenda here? Why is the United States spending so much time and effort bombing people with alleged "precision" munitions (munitions which, in the Gulf War at least, were later shown to have only a 40% hit rate--a far cry from the perception that every bomb hit every target). We need to ask ourselves what the government is doing with all of this money, and who the next target of those weapons will be.
The United States government has shown, in recent years, a great intolerance for certain "fringe" groups. These munitions, once honed to perfection (after being tested on foreign soil in conflicts that are generated out of thin air), may be used in the future to silence groups that dare to speak out against the government.
We are right to be afraid of this, but we should not let that fear paralyze us. The government prefers to use smoke and mirrors when fighting these battles; only the blinding light of the truth will save us.
Fact: the United States collects over one trillion dollars in revenue every year.
What could a trillion dollars do? Imagine what would happen if the billions devoted to the War on Drugs was suddenly freed up for other interests (Social Security, improving public education, a decent space program, a more intelligent defense program, social reforms, et cetera ad nauseam).
Yet this money is wasted in an ideological war that cannot be won.
The United States government is not full of stupid people. Most certainly, it is not run by stupid people. These people may act stupidly, they may come across as stupid, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they are, for the most part, not stupid.
So why this flagrant misuse of resources? It serves three purposes, one of which you touch on below:
The result of the War on Drugs is generally that the poor and/or minorities end up in prison.
First, the War on Drugs creates a large oppressed underclass, fit only for minimum-wage jobs or those considered odious to the powers that be. This has the dual effect of providing a cheap workforce and having an element that can by its mere existence threaten other segments of society: "Be good, or you'll end up like the crack junkie over there!"
Second, the creation of this underclass gives the government free license (more or less) to pass legislation that strips all citizens of civil rights under the guise of persecuting the guilty. We have more police with broader, less well-defined powers because we have created an underclass of unruly citizens who have little incentive to obey the law.
Third, we have effectively wasted a lot of resources that could have been put to better use improving the lot of everyone in the United States and a fair number of people elsewhere around the globe. The powers that be are not interested in a good society. They are not interested in world peace. They are interested in the easiest path to power, which is to keep the public ignorant and powerless, unable to fight back or even to understand what is going on.
A War on Piracy will punish a much "higher class" (in the sense of social standing, not social fitness) of people and will get much less public support.
This would be true, but the events at Columbine have given them an effective tool to use against us: we're now "protecting the children." The freedom of access to information will be curtailed sharply, not because little Johnny wants to look at pictures of naked people, and not because little Johnny could find out information on illegal drugs or bombs. No, it will be regulated because little Johnny might find out that he's been lied to. Even worse, he might start telling people that they've been lied to as well.
These events bode ill not only for us, but for all of humanity.
For the first time, many people are waking up to the access to information that is at their fingertips. Though little is available on the Internet that did not already exist in other forms, it is now easier to sift through that data noise and extract a few useful nuggets of information.
Naturally, the powers that be are concerned about this. An ill-informed, mentally-deficient populace is easier for a clever government to rule (all you need, really, is bread and circuses.) People who are incapable of critical reasoning are prone to impulse buys and less able to resist the siren song of marketing.
As a result of these forces colliding, we have on the one hand a rabble of loud-mouthed, self-concerned individuals who lash out against anyone who tramples on their perceived right to any information they please. On the other, we have large governments and corporations who know that the hoodwink they've kept over the eyes of the people for centuries is starting to slip. Naturally, there will be friction.
Surrounding the periphery of these contestants, we have those who are largely unconcerned by these events, and those who realize that neither the large organizations nor the rabble have their best interests at heart, and in this day and age, intelligent, like-minded people everywhere must stand together to defend the few rights they have left. It won't be an easy battle: there are many of them and few of us, but we do have advantages. A sighted dwarf can beat a blind giant.
One is almost tempted to wonder whether the current United States public education system is designed to produce unthinking, unquestioning mass consumers to be exploited at every turn by the powers that be. It certainly seems to be doing its job. What should we do about that?
Since when has the United States decided to have such a naive, Pollyanna-ish view of the world? The Microsoft fragments can and probably will cooperate with each other beyond the extent allowed by law. They just won't do it above-board where everyone can see it. They'll do it in smoke-filled rooms and in dark alleys. What the DoJ has essentially asked us to do is to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
This breakup will not change Microsoft's practices. If anything, the mere threat of such action has encouraged the company in its scofflaw ways. By applying this weak, seemingly impressive but in actuality quite pitiful solution, the United States has given Microsoft carte blanche to conduct business as usual.
Are other government agencies going to duplicate your work? Have they already? If so, for what purposes?
Giving universal access to third-world countries and trying to teach people how to use the internet is almost the moral equivalent of bread and circuses. The truth is that many people will be too busy being robbed by the government/rebels/some thug down the street, or too worried about starving to death or dying of some disease to learn much about using this information.
The internet is not a bandaid. Its introduction into a chaotic society will not suddenly make everyone polite and good to each other. It is a wasted gesture until the society in question is stable enough that the people don't have to worry about starvation, disease, and violence and actually have the resources to learn how to use the information given to them. Until then, it is mostly a feel-good gesture on the part of paternalistic first-world powers.
It can also fragment the family. I know of people who barely speak to their families because they're too busy surfing the 'net.
Browsing sites seems to satisfy something in our hunter-gatherer natures that is lacking in most modern societies. It would seem counter-intuitive, then, that it could be a divisive force, but it can be.
But at what cost? We already know that major corporations pay for marketing information collected from unwitting surfers. Are we willing to bring universal access to humanity at the price of making everyone a target for marketers? Certainly, universal access is a good thing. Eavesdropping and commercial voyeurism are not.
Think about universal access and about what it takes to bring it about before you mindlessly enthuse about it. Then see if there's another way to finance this venture, one that doesn't depend on turning hapless people into cash cows to be milked by the highest bidder.
Thought police? There will be no thought police in the future. There won't need to be any; we'll be too busy killing each other in the streets over perceived differences, bamboozled and hoodwinked from birth into believing that this is the only way to survive.
However, what is befuddling is why those software companies would refuse to release the copyright to those games. That is, it is befuddling at the first glance. After all, nobody is making games for the original NES or Colecovision any more. The 8-bit graphics of the NES seem laughable to the N64 and the Dreamcast, and so the mass market would dismiss these products right away. Clearly, there is no money to be made in keeping up these copyrights.
We must remember, though, that a software company is driven (generally) by profits first. As silly as it sounds to us, Nintendo is right when it says that the old games directly compete with its newer lines. Remember--the old gaming platforms (and old PCs, for software based on PCs instead of consoles) were ridiculously limited by today's standards, and so the programming involved probably used a lot of nifty software hacks to squeeze every drop of performance out of those machines. Those same hacks, while not useful in their native form, could point the way towards design philosophies and methodologies that would enable a software company to create a product that is a little better, a little faster than its opponents. That is what the software companies fear.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps there is something else in those old ROMs that software companies don't want anyone finding out about. After all, it is easy to denounce a few gaming enthusiasts as misguided, paranoid, or wrong. It is much harder to denounce the majority of your target market, and much harder on profits.
Think of how many children and adolescents were turned into zombies by those old games. I know people that, even though they haven't touched a NES in years, can still remember where all the secrets in a particular game were. If that isn't brainwashing, then I don't know what is.
What are they hiding?