Sadly, some politicians will read your letter and think: "He said that criminals use anonymizers and encryption (whatever those things are), so we should ban those next!"
I think I need to develop the Terrorist Detector 3000. It will just be a plain metallic arch (but a *cool* looking metallic arch). It won't actually beep or have any electronics inside but it will detect terrorist by Advanced Probabilistic Reasoning. Each passenger that passes through has a nearly-zero chance of being a terrorist so it will read negative on them. My device will be 99.9999% accurate! (Perhaps even more accurate than that.) What's more, the Terrorist Detector 3000 will only cost airports $50,000 each, saving them tons of money. Hey, it'll be just as good at catching terrorists as the TSA is right now!
Sadly, that's exactly why it's so hard to get rid of "security" items even if they don't provide any actual security. "What if someone, at some point, does something that this would have stopped? I don't want to be remembered as the person who took away the security that would have stopped a terrorist from killing fifty people! I'd rather inconvenience ten thousand people unnecessarily than allow one terrorist to slip through and ruin my political career!"
Fear of a boogeyman scenario + possible political fallout = Security Theater Upon More Security Theater
There's a difference between censoring and stopping someone from inciting violence. Saying "I hate all Jews" is free speech. Saying "Let's get together and kill all Jews" isn't. That's a call for violence. Even saying "Someone should really kill some Jews" is inciting violence if said to the right group of people.
For the record, I'm Jewish and have had people tell me to drop dead because of my religious beliefs/practices. I don't mind someone telling me my religious beliefs are wrong (ok, I'll get annoyed at it, but it's their freedom of speech and I won't try to shut them up), but when you tell me that I should die because my religious beliefs don't match up with yours, you've crossed a line.
Freedom of speech may not be absolute, but it doesn't mean that keeping someone from inciting violence is violating their freedom of speech.
Actually, Judaism believes that once the Messiah comes, there will be eternal world peace. Since we obviously don't have world peace, Jews reason that the Messiah hasn't come yet. We recognize that many people have come forward to claim the title of "Messiah" but none of them have panned out. As for Jesus, opinions of his vary, but it basically boils down to: He was a rabbi of his time, but not even a majorly influential one. Certainly, no messiah.
Oh and Jews don't need an "internal savior" to die for them to absolve them of their sins. We have Yom Kippur every year where we can repent and be forgiven.
Both. It's a license or a sale depending on which benefits the RIAA more. Apparently, music files are like photons being waves or particles. They're both until observed (brought into a court of law) when they collapse into a single (RIAA-benefiting) state.
Not a surprise considering that they are still charging artists for record-era "breakage" fees not only on CDs but on MP3s. Somehow, they figure that 10% of MP3s "break" and thus shouldn't count towards royalties. They love playing the "We're supporting the artists" line publicly while doing all they can to screw the artists behind the scenes.
There's a reason that the inner city schools tend to pay more. They need to to attract teachers who will deal with the much larger classes, horrific teaching environments, etc.
There's another way: Private Schools that either don't report bad test scores or that don't admit students with special needs (thus raising their test scores and lowering the scores of the public schools in the area).
By me we have a glut of corporation-owned charter schools. These schools can accept/reject whomever they want and aren't audited when they report their test scores. So they can ditch bad scores/students and then claim that their school is a success because their scores are so high. Meanwhile, they drain funds from the public schools which also need to deal with the special needs students. The result? Weaker public schools and more profits for the corporations that own the charter schools.
I do think that there are some times when closed door is appropriate. National defense/security, for example. The problem is that any time they want to go off the record, they'll just claim "national security" whether it is true or not. There has to be some mechanism in place for allowing Congress to go off-the-record when they need to while providing a check that they won't abuse this privilege.
Keeping a birthday present secret is vastly different from keeping a law that will impact millions of people secret. In the former, you are maintaining the secrecy in order to surprise the recipient in what is hopefully a pleasant manner. In the latter, you are keeping the secret to prevent anyone from opposing your drive to codify your fondest wishes into law even though it will result in millions of people being negatively impacted. I'll definitely support the former (especially if you're buying me the birthday present!) but I'll never support the latter (even if, by some coincidence, I agreed with the content of the proposed law).
Preferably, we should round up all copies of ACTA, make sausages out of those, and then feed them to the folks who pushed ACTA and tried to keep it a secret.
I think this is what he found so unfair. SOPA/PIPA opponents went about brandishing the truth when everyone knows that the truth is poison to the RIAA. This just in: Truth declared a WMD! (Weapon of Media-conglomerate Destruction)
Don't forget that it would require the blocking based on *allegations* of copyright infringement. Because, of course, waiting for due process takes too long! (See the RIAA's opposition to OPEN.)
I have, but that was only one component to my searching. I also queried Google and Amazon to check on pricing/features/reviews. Sometimes I'll also go to a brick-and-mortar store to see it in action. Social search has become part of my tool-set, but it hasn't tossed out all of the other tools.
A few years back, a few ISPs were caught selling user browsing information to NebuAd. NebuAd took that information to design ads targeted better to you.. Obviously, once it became known, users protested and the ISPs relented. Still, it would be very much in their business interests to do this again if they could figure out a way to do it without users protesting. (Say, via a government law mandating that they keep these records.)
Indie artists that use their websites to connect with the public instead of going through "RIAA Approved Channels" would be considered by the RIAA to be a competitor... and thus causing lost sales... and thus a site to have shut down.
It probably wouldn't even require all big labels to be taken over. If one big label was taken over by a consortium of tech companies (to avoid Label X's music from only being available on iTunes, or Amazon MP3, or some other music service), it would put market pressure on the other labels. Use that label to drag the others into the 21st century. As a bonus, the price would be split among the companies so Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc wouldn't have to pony up the full amount.
They represent small business in the same way they represent the artists. They'll put their arms around both and smile for the cameras, but when either goes into the back room with the RIAA... Well, you'd better hope they're in a mood to use lubricant this time.
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Sadly, some politicians will read your letter and think: "He said that criminals use anonymizers and encryption (whatever those things are), so we should ban those next!"
I think I need to develop the Terrorist Detector 3000. It will just be a plain metallic arch (but a *cool* looking metallic arch). It won't actually beep or have any electronics inside but it will detect terrorist by Advanced Probabilistic Reasoning. Each passenger that passes through has a nearly-zero chance of being a terrorist so it will read negative on them. My device will be 99.9999% accurate! (Perhaps even more accurate than that.) What's more, the Terrorist Detector 3000 will only cost airports $50,000 each, saving them tons of money. Hey, it'll be just as good at catching terrorists as the TSA is right now!
Sadly, that's exactly why it's so hard to get rid of "security" items even if they don't provide any actual security. "What if someone, at some point, does something that this would have stopped? I don't want to be remembered as the person who took away the security that would have stopped a terrorist from killing fifty people! I'd rather inconvenience ten thousand people unnecessarily than allow one terrorist to slip through and ruin my political career!"
Fear of a boogeyman scenario + possible political fallout = Security Theater Upon More Security Theater
Yes, but what's the password to get access.... Nevermind, I just found it: "12345"
There's a difference between censoring and stopping someone from inciting violence. Saying "I hate all Jews" is free speech. Saying "Let's get together and kill all Jews" isn't. That's a call for violence. Even saying "Someone should really kill some Jews" is inciting violence if said to the right group of people.
For the record, I'm Jewish and have had people tell me to drop dead because of my religious beliefs/practices. I don't mind someone telling me my religious beliefs are wrong (ok, I'll get annoyed at it, but it's their freedom of speech and I won't try to shut them up), but when you tell me that I should die because my religious beliefs don't match up with yours, you've crossed a line.
Freedom of speech may not be absolute, but it doesn't mean that keeping someone from inciting violence is violating their freedom of speech.
Actually, Judaism believes that once the Messiah comes, there will be eternal world peace. Since we obviously don't have world peace, Jews reason that the Messiah hasn't come yet. We recognize that many people have come forward to claim the title of "Messiah" but none of them have panned out. As for Jesus, opinions of his vary, but it basically boils down to: He was a rabbi of his time, but not even a majorly influential one. Certainly, no messiah.
Oh and Jews don't need an "internal savior" to die for them to absolve them of their sins. We have Yom Kippur every year where we can repent and be forgiven.
Both. It's a license or a sale depending on which benefits the RIAA more. Apparently, music files are like photons being waves or particles. They're both until observed (brought into a court of law) when they collapse into a single (RIAA-benefiting) state.
Not a surprise considering that they are still charging artists for record-era "breakage" fees not only on CDs but on MP3s. Somehow, they figure that 10% of MP3s "break" and thus shouldn't count towards royalties. They love playing the "We're supporting the artists" line publicly while doing all they can to screw the artists behind the scenes.
How soon?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeZ9HhHU86o
There's a reason that the inner city schools tend to pay more. They need to to attract teachers who will deal with the much larger classes, horrific teaching environments, etc.
There's another way: Private Schools that either don't report bad test scores or that don't admit students with special needs (thus raising their test scores and lowering the scores of the public schools in the area).
By me we have a glut of corporation-owned charter schools. These schools can accept/reject whomever they want and aren't audited when they report their test scores. So they can ditch bad scores/students and then claim that their school is a success because their scores are so high. Meanwhile, they drain funds from the public schools which also need to deal with the special needs students. The result? Weaker public schools and more profits for the corporations that own the charter schools.
2.1% of the United States is Jewish and yet we've never had a Jewish president. Does this prove any anti-Jewish bias in American society?
I do think that there are some times when closed door is appropriate. National defense/security, for example. The problem is that any time they want to go off the record, they'll just claim "national security" whether it is true or not. There has to be some mechanism in place for allowing Congress to go off-the-record when they need to while providing a check that they won't abuse this privilege.
Keeping a birthday present secret is vastly different from keeping a law that will impact millions of people secret. In the former, you are maintaining the secrecy in order to surprise the recipient in what is hopefully a pleasant manner. In the latter, you are keeping the secret to prevent anyone from opposing your drive to codify your fondest wishes into law even though it will result in millions of people being negatively impacted. I'll definitely support the former (especially if you're buying me the birthday present!) but I'll never support the latter (even if, by some coincidence, I agreed with the content of the proposed law).
Preferably, we should round up all copies of ACTA, make sausages out of those, and then feed them to the folks who pushed ACTA and tried to keep it a secret.
... We here at the RIAA prefer the term: Corporate Approved Network Demarking and Inhibiting. After all, who doesn't like a nice piece of CANDI?
I think this is what he found so unfair. SOPA/PIPA opponents went about brandishing the truth when everyone knows that the truth is poison to the RIAA. This just in: Truth declared a WMD! (Weapon of Media-conglomerate Destruction)
Don't forget that it would require the blocking based on *allegations* of copyright infringement. Because, of course, waiting for due process takes too long! (See the RIAA's opposition to OPEN.)
I have, but that was only one component to my searching. I also queried Google and Amazon to check on pricing/features/reviews. Sometimes I'll also go to a brick-and-mortar store to see it in action. Social search has become part of my tool-set, but it hasn't tossed out all of the other tools.
Apparently, in India, you have the right to say whatever you want... so long as the government decides it was ok for you to say that.
A few years back, a few ISPs were caught selling user browsing information to NebuAd. NebuAd took that information to design ads targeted better to you.. Obviously, once it became known, users protested and the ISPs relented. Still, it would be very much in their business interests to do this again if they could figure out a way to do it without users protesting. (Say, via a government law mandating that they keep these records.)
I hereby dub these: XKCD scanners!
Indie artists that use their websites to connect with the public instead of going through "RIAA Approved Channels" would be considered by the RIAA to be a competitor... and thus causing lost sales... and thus a site to have shut down.
It probably wouldn't even require all big labels to be taken over. If one big label was taken over by a consortium of tech companies (to avoid Label X's music from only being available on iTunes, or Amazon MP3, or some other music service), it would put market pressure on the other labels. Use that label to drag the others into the 21st century. As a bonus, the price would be split among the companies so Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc wouldn't have to pony up the full amount.
They represent small business in the same way they represent the artists. They'll put their arms around both and smile for the cameras, but when either goes into the back room with the RIAA... Well, you'd better hope they're in a mood to use lubricant this time.