Being innocent of file sharing doesn't mean you won't get sued. I seem to recall a story about a Macintosh using Granny who was accused of using Kazaa (not available on Macs) to download rap music. It was only the publicity of the story that got the RIAA to back down. (And even then they reserved the right to go after her at any time.) It was obvious to everyone (except the RIAA) that she was misidentified. And if you are misidentified, your options are basically:
1. Spend a lot of time and money to fight to prove your innocence. If you are not successful, the fines will drive you into permanent bankruptcy. (If the legal fees don't do that first.)
2. Accept the RIAA's settlement offer to make it all go away. NOTE: Part of the settlement offer is admitting that you are a pirate even if you aren't one. But at least you won't face a long court battle and possible bankruptcy.
Most people chose Option #2 since it is the quicker and easier way to make it all go away. With recent RIAA court losses, though, it seems that more people are willing to try for Option #1. That's a good thing too. The last thing the RIAA wants is to actually fight these cases in court. They just want quick settlements so they can move on to the next victim... er, evil, bloodsucking pirate.
And perhaps that's why even Microsoft has said that they're not going to use OOXML as defined (to the extent that you can call it "defined") by the standard.
The Recording Labels used to provide four services to the artists and public:
1. Production. They would hook up artists with the equipment to produce professional sounding albums. A few decades back, this equipment was pricey so the artists could only dream about having access to it outside of a recording contract. Nowadays, though, you can buy equivalents to most of the equipment off the shelf for around $1,000 or so. You might not get a "100% professional" sound, but you'll get an album that sounds professional enough for 90% of the listening public. So a recording label isn't really needed for this anymore.
2. Distribution. If you wanted your album to get on the radio and in the stores, you needed contacts. This meant that you needed the recording label to contact the right people for you and set up the distribution channels. With digital distribution, though, any artist can upload their own music to their own website and instantly be their own distributer. If they want to parter with someone else, they can use a service like eMusic, iTunes, or Amie Street to distribute their music. They give up some of their revenue to do this, but not nearly as much as the recording label would take. A contract with a major label is no longer needed for this.
3. Filtering. Also could be called Separating the Diamonds from the Coals. Traditionally, the labels would promote the good music and filter out all of the bad stuff. With the Internet, the "bad stuff" problem grows exponentially since anyone can put their awful attempts at making music online. However, services like Amie Street are already coming up with ways of letting users themselves act as filters. (Amie Street's model increases the price the more people buy the song, to a maximum of 98 cents. So a bad song won't rise in price much, but a good song will rise in price quickly.) There's also an argument to be made that the traditional labels have failed in this service recently by releasing so many bad albums and so many bad artists.
4. Promotion. The labels would market new artists to get their names out and encourage people to buy their albums and attend their concerts. While Internet marketing and word of mouth might be nice, this is the only area that I can see a future for the labels. I think that they will eventually change into glorified marketing firms. Of course, their reduced roles will mean that a lot of fat will be trimmed from their organizations. It will also mean that they will have to accept less control over artists. I predict that, eventually, they won't seize the copyrights of the artist. Instead, they will enter into deals with artists to get a cut of album sales. (A much smaller cut than they currently get.) Artists will also be free to leave labels at any time if they are unsatisfied with their performance without worrying that all of their old music is "tied up" in the old label. I think that our grandchildren will grow up with music promoted by record labels, but will look at us oddly when we describe the power that record labels exerted over artists when we were their age.
I wasn't poor growing up, but I wasn't "well-to-do" either. My family was comfortably middle class. My father worked hard to earn a living just like I do today.
I was mainly taking issue with mlwmohawk's insistence that "we've all" done these things. Not everyone has. And there are ways of pushing the limits while not treading on other people's property. Want to test how secure a server is? Set one up yourself and see if you can hack it. Or have a friend set one up that you two agree you can try to hack into. There are entire contests built around this idea. I don't see why a community of "limits pushers" need to find out why rules exist by trashing other people's property and I don't accept any explanation of such vandalism as "youthful curiosity."
I wonder if the Safari EULA would hold up in court if Safari was installed with little to no user notification during the update of a completely unrelated product (iTunes or QuickTime). Could Apple sue me for violating Safari's EULA when all I really wanted to do was update my QuickTime software to a version without a newly discovered security hole?
Maybe Apple was inspired by the recording industry's "Sue Your Fans" business model.
Step 1: Install Safari on millions of PCs when they try to update iTunes or QuickTime Step 2: Sue those users for violating Safari's EULA Step 3: Profit!
I guess I'm just a "goody two shoes." When I was growing up, I never stole a pack of gum (or anything else) from a store. I never carved my name in a tree or participated in vandalizing something at all (much less as a "form of expression"). My motivations in my youth had nothing to do with mischief. I did experiment with computers, but they were my own computers or they were the school's and I was acting within the limits of my classroom activities. For example, when asked to program a slot machine program on an old Apple IIe, I finished *way* before everyone else. So I started adding in more features. I added in betting, and still people weren't done. So then I added in a mobster that you could borrow money from if you were broke. (I coded it so that you either paid him back in a certain number of turns or he broke an arm and a leg of yours, took all of your money, and the game ended.) I was exploring the limits of what my coding could do, but it was without causing harm/damage to someone else's property.
"Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use."
Of course, we have all of that (minus the automatic freezer-to-microwave system), but it all creates a ton of waste. If everyone in America were to toss out their prepackaged plastic meal trays, their plastic plates, and their plastic knives, forks, and spoons at every meal on every day, our landfills would overflow with them.
I also noted this segment:
"Traffic is heavy, typically, but there's no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn't been an accident since the system was inaugurated."
A complex system like that being rolled out and being 100% perfect? Either the programmers were geniuses beyond measure or there's an evil conspiracy trying to keep reports of accidents out of the news. (Now that would make for a good sci-fi story plot. Perfect traffic management software makes a pair of programmers national heroes only to turn out that their company has been systematically silencing any and all reports of bugs in the system.)
I'm not sure I like the webcam or ballot cam ideas. With the webcam, you would be introducing an Internet-connected system that might be compromised. I'm not sure how that might be used to compromise the integrity of the voting, but I would still leave it out. As for the ballot cam, I'd be worried about abuse of the system. The video might be scrubbed to remove faces, but a face might make it through. Or perhaps a corrupt official would secretly turn off the "face scrubber" or obtain a "pre-scrub" copy of the video. When you cast your ballot, you shouldn't think that someone is looking over your shoulder.
I do agree about recording any vote tallying that goes on. A recording system like this, though, would likely fall outside of any electronic voting solution. (It could be a part of increased security, but shouldn't be tied to the eVoting system.)
I agree. It shouldn't be this hard to design a system that would count votes quickly *and* accurately. I could make a website that would tally the results accurately. Why can't they do the same (with a better interface) via more robust languages?
I'm not a big fan of the argument that Open Source = Always Better and Closed Source = Always Worse, but in this case I think it applies. The voting machines' inner workings are hidden from view from everyone, including the government running the election. If you're running something like a public election system, your machines should be open for scrutiny. Your *ENTIRE* machines. This means hardware *AND* software. If a company cried foul when the government that bought their machines tries to get them independently evaluated, I start to smell something fishy. This is probably the only time I'd give credence to "Why do you complain if you have nothing to hide."
In my mind, the perfect eVoting system would be completely open (meaning the government officials could get any third-party individual to evaluate the code/hardware). The components would be off-the-shelf PC parts and would likely run on Linux or even on a hardened installation of Windows. (Yes, you can secure Windows, but that's another argument.) The machine would sit in plain view, but the monitor would be in the closed-off area. This would eliminate the possibility of a voter tampering with the machine while in the voting booth. They would only have access to a few components and not the main system.
The voter would select their choices via a simple (but large type) keypad. (Press 1 for Obama, Press 2 for Clinton, etc.) After voting in one race, the machine would switch to the next race. The voter could easily go back and review/change their vote. At the end of the voting session, the voter would be presented with their choices and be asked to confirm them. A receipt would be printed showing the choices also. The voter would be asked to review the receipt and confirm that it was accurate. A No answer might alert Poll workers to a problem. A Yes answer would prompt the voter to inset the receipt into a special slot. A random bar code printed on the receipt and read by a bar code reader would ensure that the correct receipt was inserted. Then the electronic vote would be recorded and the voting session would be over.
After the polls closed, the machines would burn their results to CD and would be hooked up (via wired connection most likely) to a VPN connection to a central server. The central server would take in all of the votes and tabulate them. If any voting irregularities were suspected, you could go back to the burnt CD results or the paper receipts.
I'm sure this system would have holes (any electronic system would... even non-electronic voting systems are subject to fraud), but it'd likely be a lot more secure/accurate than Sequoia. Now I just need to convince some government worker to pay me a couple million dollars to build it.
In the comments, Felton mentions that he has looked at two tapes so far. One is shown in the article. The other one has a column that is off by 2 votes. That pretty much eliminates the "Array Counter" theory.
There's a standard drunk driving test that I've seen done many times. I believe even Mythbusters did it once. First, you drive through an obstacle course of cones sober. Then you have a few beers (or some other alcoholic beverage) and drive through the same course. Invariably, you knock over more cones when drunk than when sober. Being intoxicated can wreck havoc with your sense of timing and space, which isn't a good thing when maneuvering a two ton pile of steel at 30mph or more past other two ton piles of steel. On the obstacle course it is just a matter of some flattened cones. On the road, it's a life ended. Is it possible to be drunk and still drive without incident? Sure. However, I still wouldn't say that a drunk driver could ever be considered a safe driver.
My OpenOffice.org installation seems to like crashing on me when I paste text into a spreadsheet. It doesn't happen every time and there doesn't seem to be a pattern to it. When it happens, though, all open documents lock up and I need to open Task Manager to close down the processes. When I restart OpenOffice.org, the documents claim to be "recovered" but the changes aren't really there. I can then re-do my Paste operation and it won't crash. It's quite annoying. And yes, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling. And yes, I've submitted bug reports which weren't fixed. (Granted, I know that it's hard to fix bugs that seem to crop up at random times.)
I can't remember where I read it (probably I, Asimov), but Asimov used to have three typewriters set out on three sides of him. He would type one story on one, swivel around in his chair and then work on another story, then swivel again and work on a third. He would be working on three completely different stories at the same time! He was probably one of the original multi-taskers.
Not to mention that "their" political views are subject to change at every election. So perhaps someone is comfortable with a right-wing president having the unchecked ability to listen in on whomever he wants whenever he wants. However, would that person be comfortable with an ultra-left president having that same power?
It's all a matter of checks and balances. Sure, anyone could hire a PI to gather information. That PI, however, has to be licensed by the government to perform his information gathering duties. Otherwise, it's called stalking and can land you in jail. If a PI steps over the line, they can have their license revoked.
The way it stood prior to the warrantless wiretapping, the government had to get a warrant from a judge to tap someone's phone or search their physical premises. Yes, this did slow police officers down, but it was a good thing because it helped to rein in corruption. An officer couldn't just bust down your door and go searching for something to write you up on. If he did that without a warrant, anything he found would be tossed out of court and he would find himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. In the case of terrorism and other national security investigations, the government would get approval from the FISA courts. They could even begin wiretapping and then get approval 72 hours later.
With warrantless wiretapping, however, that all goes out the window. The Executive Branch gets to decide who to listen in on and when and whether it is appropriate or not. It's not a matter of whether this would be abused, but when. Even assuming that it hasn't already happened in this administration (big assumption), who's to say that it won't happen in the next one? The one after that? Think of your worst case scenario for a person elected President. Now give them warrantless wiretapping abilities. Are you comfortable that they won't abuse it?
Finally, if it is ok for the government to listen in on all of your phone calls without a warrant, how about opening all of your mail or stopping by your house for periodic searches? If you answer yes, then let's just scrap that pesky Constitution and Bill of Rights and return to a monarchy. There is a reason that the Founding Fathers set up checks and balances between different branches of government. It reduces corruption and keeps one branch from gaining too much power. Checks and Balances keep our Democracy safe more than any anti-terror legislation has ever done.
With the House recently refusing to rubber-stamp legislation to let Bush continue his warrantless wiretap program and *gasp* insist that he go through legal channels (the FISA courts which pretty much approve every request and can approve requests up to 72 hours after the wiretap begins), a commercial started running over and over on our local stations. It used extremely slanted language to insinuate that *all* terrorism surveillance had stopped since the House refused to approve Bush's plan. It further insisted that we were now vulnerable to a terrorism attack and that the only way to restore our safety was to call our local Representatives and tell them to approve the plan.
It drove me crazy how much that commercial spun the facts around so much. (Even the word "spin" seems too benign. Contort maybe?) My wife wound up getting annoyed at me ranting every time the commercial aired.
No, "they" don't care about the mundane details of your life... until the way you live your life in some way threatens "them."
For example, suppose you decide to protest against the War in Iraq. All of a sudden you go from "mundane nobody" to "troublemaker." Your entire life could be examined and your secrets found. Everyone has one. Perhaps you speed while driving. Perhaps you had an affair a few years back. Perhaps you're just a lousy tipper at restaurants. They'll dig up your deepest, darkest secrets and either expose them to discredit you/ruin your life or threaten you with disclosure to control you. You've done nothing illegal but your political views run counter to the way the folks in power want things to be.
Or perhaps you're not very political, but you happen to be going through a messy divorce and your ex-wife's father works in the Justice Department. He quietly has you tracked to gather dirt on you and then uses that dirt to discredit you/ruin you/control you. This is an abuse of power, sure, but who is the public going to believe: A patriotic member of the Administration that is keeping us safe from terrorists, or a speeding, philandering, bad tipper who might be a person-of-interest in a new terror plot*?
If you plan to live your life completely at the will of whomever is in power and only support what they support and only do what they want you to do when they want you to do it, then you don't have anything to worry about. However, if that's to be the future of America, I hope that Those In Charge won't mind if we have a quiet burial ceremony for the poor, forgotten Constitution and Bill of Rights.
* Five months later to be quietly acquitted when it turns out that your only connection was that your dry cleaner's nephew once visited Pakistan. The accusation did the job, though, and stuck in the public mind.
Well, he already knows how to use a computer. Especially how to launch his favorite program: TuxPaint. So he's already started on the road to open source. It might be a few more years before he can code, though.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Upon hearing this news story, my wife had a good question: Does this mean they're going to sue Crayola?
This whole OOXML ISO Standards thing was just an elaborate April Fool's Joke that Microsoft orchestrated. Man, they really had us going, didn't they?
Being innocent of file sharing doesn't mean you won't get sued. I seem to recall a story about a Macintosh using Granny who was accused of using Kazaa (not available on Macs) to download rap music. It was only the publicity of the story that got the RIAA to back down. (And even then they reserved the right to go after her at any time.) It was obvious to everyone (except the RIAA) that she was misidentified. And if you are misidentified, your options are basically:
1. Spend a lot of time and money to fight to prove your innocence. If you are not successful, the fines will drive you into permanent bankruptcy. (If the legal fees don't do that first.)
2. Accept the RIAA's settlement offer to make it all go away. NOTE: Part of the settlement offer is admitting that you are a pirate even if you aren't one. But at least you won't face a long court battle and possible bankruptcy.
Most people chose Option #2 since it is the quicker and easier way to make it all go away. With recent RIAA court losses, though, it seems that more people are willing to try for Option #1. That's a good thing too. The last thing the RIAA wants is to actually fight these cases in court. They just want quick settlements so they can move on to the next victim... er, evil, bloodsucking pirate.
And perhaps that's why even Microsoft has said that they're not going to use OOXML as defined (to the extent that you can call it "defined") by the standard.
The Recording Labels used to provide four services to the artists and public:
1. Production. They would hook up artists with the equipment to produce professional sounding albums. A few decades back, this equipment was pricey so the artists could only dream about having access to it outside of a recording contract. Nowadays, though, you can buy equivalents to most of the equipment off the shelf for around $1,000 or so. You might not get a "100% professional" sound, but you'll get an album that sounds professional enough for 90% of the listening public. So a recording label isn't really needed for this anymore.
2. Distribution. If you wanted your album to get on the radio and in the stores, you needed contacts. This meant that you needed the recording label to contact the right people for you and set up the distribution channels. With digital distribution, though, any artist can upload their own music to their own website and instantly be their own distributer. If they want to parter with someone else, they can use a service like eMusic, iTunes, or Amie Street to distribute their music. They give up some of their revenue to do this, but not nearly as much as the recording label would take. A contract with a major label is no longer needed for this.
3. Filtering. Also could be called Separating the Diamonds from the Coals. Traditionally, the labels would promote the good music and filter out all of the bad stuff. With the Internet, the "bad stuff" problem grows exponentially since anyone can put their awful attempts at making music online. However, services like Amie Street are already coming up with ways of letting users themselves act as filters. (Amie Street's model increases the price the more people buy the song, to a maximum of 98 cents. So a bad song won't rise in price much, but a good song will rise in price quickly.) There's also an argument to be made that the traditional labels have failed in this service recently by releasing so many bad albums and so many bad artists.
4. Promotion. The labels would market new artists to get their names out and encourage people to buy their albums and attend their concerts. While Internet marketing and word of mouth might be nice, this is the only area that I can see a future for the labels. I think that they will eventually change into glorified marketing firms. Of course, their reduced roles will mean that a lot of fat will be trimmed from their organizations. It will also mean that they will have to accept less control over artists. I predict that, eventually, they won't seize the copyrights of the artist. Instead, they will enter into deals with artists to get a cut of album sales. (A much smaller cut than they currently get.) Artists will also be free to leave labels at any time if they are unsatisfied with their performance without worrying that all of their old music is "tied up" in the old label. I think that our grandchildren will grow up with music promoted by record labels, but will look at us oddly when we describe the power that record labels exerted over artists when we were their age.
I wasn't poor growing up, but I wasn't "well-to-do" either. My family was comfortably middle class. My father worked hard to earn a living just like I do today.
I was mainly taking issue with mlwmohawk's insistence that "we've all" done these things. Not everyone has. And there are ways of pushing the limits while not treading on other people's property. Want to test how secure a server is? Set one up yourself and see if you can hack it. Or have a friend set one up that you two agree you can try to hack into. There are entire contests built around this idea. I don't see why a community of "limits pushers" need to find out why rules exist by trashing other people's property and I don't accept any explanation of such vandalism as "youthful curiosity."
I wonder if the Safari EULA would hold up in court if Safari was installed with little to no user notification during the update of a completely unrelated product (iTunes or QuickTime). Could Apple sue me for violating Safari's EULA when all I really wanted to do was update my QuickTime software to a version without a newly discovered security hole?
Maybe Apple was inspired by the recording industry's "Sue Your Fans" business model.
Step 1: Install Safari on millions of PCs when they try to update iTunes or QuickTime
Step 2: Sue those users for violating Safari's EULA
Step 3: Profit!
I guess I'm just a "goody two shoes." When I was growing up, I never stole a pack of gum (or anything else) from a store. I never carved my name in a tree or participated in vandalizing something at all (much less as a "form of expression"). My motivations in my youth had nothing to do with mischief. I did experiment with computers, but they were my own computers or they were the school's and I was acting within the limits of my classroom activities. For example, when asked to program a slot machine program on an old Apple IIe, I finished *way* before everyone else. So I started adding in more features. I added in betting, and still people weren't done. So then I added in a mobster that you could borrow money from if you were broke. (I coded it so that you either paid him back in a certain number of turns or he broke an arm and a leg of yours, took all of your money, and the game ended.) I was exploring the limits of what my coding could do, but it was without causing harm/damage to someone else's property.
That was my thought with this passage:
"Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use."
Of course, we have all of that (minus the automatic freezer-to-microwave system), but it all creates a ton of waste. If everyone in America were to toss out their prepackaged plastic meal trays, their plastic plates, and their plastic knives, forks, and spoons at every meal on every day, our landfills would overflow with them.
I also noted this segment:
"Traffic is heavy, typically, but there's no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn't been an accident since the system was inaugurated."
A complex system like that being rolled out and being 100% perfect? Either the programmers were geniuses beyond measure or there's an evil conspiracy trying to keep reports of accidents out of the news. (Now that would make for a good sci-fi story plot. Perfect traffic management software makes a pair of programmers national heroes only to turn out that their company has been systematically silencing any and all reports of bugs in the system.)
http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/how_big.htm
I'm not sure I like the webcam or ballot cam ideas. With the webcam, you would be introducing an Internet-connected system that might be compromised. I'm not sure how that might be used to compromise the integrity of the voting, but I would still leave it out. As for the ballot cam, I'd be worried about abuse of the system. The video might be scrubbed to remove faces, but a face might make it through. Or perhaps a corrupt official would secretly turn off the "face scrubber" or obtain a "pre-scrub" copy of the video. When you cast your ballot, you shouldn't think that someone is looking over your shoulder.
I do agree about recording any vote tallying that goes on. A recording system like this, though, would likely fall outside of any electronic voting solution. (It could be a part of increased security, but shouldn't be tied to the eVoting system.)
I agree. It shouldn't be this hard to design a system that would count votes quickly *and* accurately. I could make a website that would tally the results accurately. Why can't they do the same (with a better interface) via more robust languages?
I'm not a big fan of the argument that Open Source = Always Better and Closed Source = Always Worse, but in this case I think it applies. The voting machines' inner workings are hidden from view from everyone, including the government running the election. If you're running something like a public election system, your machines should be open for scrutiny. Your *ENTIRE* machines. This means hardware *AND* software. If a company cried foul when the government that bought their machines tries to get them independently evaluated, I start to smell something fishy. This is probably the only time I'd give credence to "Why do you complain if you have nothing to hide."
In my mind, the perfect eVoting system would be completely open (meaning the government officials could get any third-party individual to evaluate the code/hardware). The components would be off-the-shelf PC parts and would likely run on Linux or even on a hardened installation of Windows. (Yes, you can secure Windows, but that's another argument.) The machine would sit in plain view, but the monitor would be in the closed-off area. This would eliminate the possibility of a voter tampering with the machine while in the voting booth. They would only have access to a few components and not the main system.
The voter would select their choices via a simple (but large type) keypad. (Press 1 for Obama, Press 2 for Clinton, etc.) After voting in one race, the machine would switch to the next race. The voter could easily go back and review/change their vote. At the end of the voting session, the voter would be presented with their choices and be asked to confirm them. A receipt would be printed showing the choices also. The voter would be asked to review the receipt and confirm that it was accurate. A No answer might alert Poll workers to a problem. A Yes answer would prompt the voter to inset the receipt into a special slot. A random bar code printed on the receipt and read by a bar code reader would ensure that the correct receipt was inserted. Then the electronic vote would be recorded and the voting session would be over.
After the polls closed, the machines would burn their results to CD and would be hooked up (via wired connection most likely) to a VPN connection to a central server. The central server would take in all of the votes and tabulate them. If any voting irregularities were suspected, you could go back to the burnt CD results or the paper receipts.
I'm sure this system would have holes (any electronic system would... even non-electronic voting systems are subject to fraud), but it'd likely be a lot more secure/accurate than Sequoia. Now I just need to convince some government worker to pay me a couple million dollars to build it.
In the comments, Felton mentions that he has looked at two tapes so far. One is shown in the article. The other one has a column that is off by 2 votes. That pretty much eliminates the "Array Counter" theory.
There's a standard drunk driving test that I've seen done many times. I believe even Mythbusters did it once. First, you drive through an obstacle course of cones sober. Then you have a few beers (or some other alcoholic beverage) and drive through the same course. Invariably, you knock over more cones when drunk than when sober. Being intoxicated can wreck havoc with your sense of timing and space, which isn't a good thing when maneuvering a two ton pile of steel at 30mph or more past other two ton piles of steel. On the obstacle course it is just a matter of some flattened cones. On the road, it's a life ended. Is it possible to be drunk and still drive without incident? Sure. However, I still wouldn't say that a drunk driver could ever be considered a safe driver.
It's sad, but I first read that as "This happened to Alistair Cookie" and thought something happened to Cookie Monster.
My OpenOffice.org installation seems to like crashing on me when I paste text into a spreadsheet. It doesn't happen every time and there doesn't seem to be a pattern to it. When it happens, though, all open documents lock up and I need to open Task Manager to close down the processes. When I restart OpenOffice.org, the documents claim to be "recovered" but the changes aren't really there. I can then re-do my Paste operation and it won't crash. It's quite annoying. And yes, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling. And yes, I've submitted bug reports which weren't fixed. (Granted, I know that it's hard to fix bugs that seem to crop up at random times.)
I can't remember where I read it (probably I, Asimov), but Asimov used to have three typewriters set out on three sides of him. He would type one story on one, swivel around in his chair and then work on another story, then swivel again and work on a third. He would be working on three completely different stories at the same time! He was probably one of the original multi-taskers.
"RoboPuppy Mistreatment Alert! RoboPuppy Mistreatment Alert!"
Not to mention that "their" political views are subject to change at every election. So perhaps someone is comfortable with a right-wing president having the unchecked ability to listen in on whomever he wants whenever he wants. However, would that person be comfortable with an ultra-left president having that same power?
It's all a matter of checks and balances. Sure, anyone could hire a PI to gather information. That PI, however, has to be licensed by the government to perform his information gathering duties. Otherwise, it's called stalking and can land you in jail. If a PI steps over the line, they can have their license revoked.
The way it stood prior to the warrantless wiretapping, the government had to get a warrant from a judge to tap someone's phone or search their physical premises. Yes, this did slow police officers down, but it was a good thing because it helped to rein in corruption. An officer couldn't just bust down your door and go searching for something to write you up on. If he did that without a warrant, anything he found would be tossed out of court and he would find himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. In the case of terrorism and other national security investigations, the government would get approval from the FISA courts. They could even begin wiretapping and then get approval 72 hours later.
With warrantless wiretapping, however, that all goes out the window. The Executive Branch gets to decide who to listen in on and when and whether it is appropriate or not. It's not a matter of whether this would be abused, but when. Even assuming that it hasn't already happened in this administration (big assumption), who's to say that it won't happen in the next one? The one after that? Think of your worst case scenario for a person elected President. Now give them warrantless wiretapping abilities. Are you comfortable that they won't abuse it?
Finally, if it is ok for the government to listen in on all of your phone calls without a warrant, how about opening all of your mail or stopping by your house for periodic searches? If you answer yes, then let's just scrap that pesky Constitution and Bill of Rights and return to a monarchy. There is a reason that the Founding Fathers set up checks and balances between different branches of government. It reduces corruption and keeps one branch from gaining too much power. Checks and Balances keep our Democracy safe more than any anti-terror legislation has ever done.
With the House recently refusing to rubber-stamp legislation to let Bush continue his warrantless wiretap program and *gasp* insist that he go through legal channels (the FISA courts which pretty much approve every request and can approve requests up to 72 hours after the wiretap begins), a commercial started running over and over on our local stations. It used extremely slanted language to insinuate that *all* terrorism surveillance had stopped since the House refused to approve Bush's plan. It further insisted that we were now vulnerable to a terrorism attack and that the only way to restore our safety was to call our local Representatives and tell them to approve the plan.
It drove me crazy how much that commercial spun the facts around so much. (Even the word "spin" seems too benign. Contort maybe?) My wife wound up getting annoyed at me ranting every time the commercial aired.
No, "they" don't care about the mundane details of your life... until the way you live your life in some way threatens "them."
For example, suppose you decide to protest against the War in Iraq. All of a sudden you go from "mundane nobody" to "troublemaker." Your entire life could be examined and your secrets found. Everyone has one. Perhaps you speed while driving. Perhaps you had an affair a few years back. Perhaps you're just a lousy tipper at restaurants. They'll dig up your deepest, darkest secrets and either expose them to discredit you/ruin your life or threaten you with disclosure to control you. You've done nothing illegal but your political views run counter to the way the folks in power want things to be.
Or perhaps you're not very political, but you happen to be going through a messy divorce and your ex-wife's father works in the Justice Department. He quietly has you tracked to gather dirt on you and then uses that dirt to discredit you/ruin you/control you. This is an abuse of power, sure, but who is the public going to believe: A patriotic member of the Administration that is keeping us safe from terrorists, or a speeding, philandering, bad tipper who might be a person-of-interest in a new terror plot*?
If you plan to live your life completely at the will of whomever is in power and only support what they support and only do what they want you to do when they want you to do it, then you don't have anything to worry about. However, if that's to be the future of America, I hope that Those In Charge won't mind if we have a quiet burial ceremony for the poor, forgotten Constitution and Bill of Rights.
* Five months later to be quietly acquitted when it turns out that your only connection was that your dry cleaner's nephew once visited Pakistan. The accusation did the job, though, and stuck in the public mind.
Well, he already knows how to use a computer. Especially how to launch his favorite program: TuxPaint. So he's already started on the road to open source. It might be a few more years before he can code, though. ;-)
Perhaps I should take my 4 year old over for a playdate. ;-)
It could be the 4 year old equivalent of a Turing Test.