Each piece of legislation should reqire that it is signed by the people who voted for it, with a statement asserting that they have read and understood the meaning of the law.
If they fail to sign it, or it can be demonstrated that they did not understand what they were signing (everone else) up for, then the law should be rendered automatically null and void.
If we were talking about a contract to which the legislators themselvs would personally be bound, you can be sure thhat if they did not read it personally, they would get thier lawyers to read it before they signed it.
Its absurd that they should be able to sign the whole poulation over to be bound by laws that they have not read before adding them to the statue books, and it is irresponsible for anyone to obey these laws.
Look at the labelels behind every song; each one is a monopoly label. The BBC has always been used to control the taste of the masses, and since Radio Coroline, it has consistently failed.
It will fail again.
Instead of doing the innovative thing and writing its own software toe take the true pulse of what the public (that pays the soon to be axed licence fee) is listening to, or outsourcing the service out from a legitimate company, they act as servants to the music monopoly. This is being done under the direct orders of Dame Pauline Neville Jones, ex head of NatWest and head of the British QinetiQ defense and security group, whose opinions on "the propaganda war" are interesting to say the least.
No matter what bogus, industry promoting chart they produce, they will be hard pressed to put the genie back in the bottle. As broadband spreads throughout the UK people will increasingly turn to free music, and we will see alternative, meaningful, non corporate charts take their place as the centers of attention.
Charts by people like Audioscrobbler are far more representative and are precisely what I am talking about.
ATHENS 2004 Organising Commitee for the Olympic Games -Website Hyperlink Policy
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If this new economy behaves like other network phenominae, i.e. following a power law then it will produce a bevy of Billionaires.
Now, I dont have any problem with Billionaires or even Millionaires, but think about it in this way; which of the "root bloggers" or internet celebrities would you select to be the first multi Brillionaire of this new economy if you had the choice?
More to the point, which one would you trust to have that much power? They would not only have the cash, but they would also dominate this new economy, and being first movers, it would be VERY difficult to find a place let alone compete effectively.
Then again, if it is more fair than the real world economy, it may act like a frictionless meritocracy. That would be ideal; take paypal out of the equation and replace it with Chaumian e-cash and then we might finally achieve "detachment" (spontaneous, mass independence from regulation).
I'd rather see individuals that cared be able to quickly and efficiently prove citizenship
For what possible purpose? This addiction to speed is a curse; you only need to prove you are a citizen when you are going to get a passport, going to vote, or when you are going to join the army, and your birth certificate and a letter vouching for you from your doctor is more than enough for that. You dont need to do these things fast, and the current system is more than efficient enough.
ID cards, and relying on machines for identity and vouching erode the social fabric; making us rely on machines instead of the natural relationships and trust that has existed between people since there have been people.
As for "proving individuality", I dont even know what that means; proving that you are not your twin brother or sister?
Disenfranchising people has nothing to do with getting ID, and everything to do with sheer illiteracy, apathy and ignorance.
Read any slashdot thread about ID cards, biometrics and the new passports they are trying to issue. Some of the people who post here, who really should know better because they can READ, are aplolgists for all of these techniques and technologies.
The number of times that I have read "i dont have a problem with it as long as"...that is how we have arrived at this juncture; people who should know better are apathetic, compliant or simply asleep. Then you have the morons who whip out the "Tin Hat" jibe whenever someone posts that a Totalitarian state is being built right in front of your eyes; they are also a part of the reason why these measures can be introduced without even a fight.
That question is really quite astonishing; "how we got here" is right in front of you, and has been for three years. It isnt too late to turn it all around; the "joined up government" isnt joined up yet. If you are not willing to use this place to solve the problem (and by the tone of this question, I am presuming that you DO think its a bad thing) then don't even ask; its completely infuriating.
By "use this place" I mean consistently promote the FIPR, Privacy International, No2ID and the other organizations that are trying to orgainze resistance to these measures both in USUK.
If you are not willing to do this, then accept what is being done to you and your country quietly. This should be one of the loudest places screaming against these measures, not somewhere where once in a while, we get a single stunned question.
It was a big win. The Australians turned around a major government initiative through a grass roots movement of ordinary citizens. That is no small thing.
You VOLUNTARILY renew your drivers licence. The government ID card scheme that was defeated was to be COMPULSORY for all Australians.
I really detest the flippant and ignorant dismissal of victories like this. Its mostly done by people who have not even thought about this subject, or how democracy is being destroyed by governments that dont listen to their electorate.
One thing is for certain; as more and more works enter the public domain here in the UK, the likelyhood of a hit coming from one of these works increases. This confrontation is going to happen.
based on the amount of data you use rather than an amount of time.
So this spells the eventual end of unmetered broadband from BT. Which means that when this happens, any other ISP that offers unmetered broadband will eat up BTs business. Why should anyone pay for a per gig broadband account with BT when they can pay the same money for an unlimited account from another ISP AND get Skype/VOIP for telephony as well?
When Skype come out with their telephone kit that plugs straight into the new BT network will BT cut off people trying to use another handset? They might, but they wont get away with it.
This is going to be the biggest revolution in telephony the UK has ever seen. Whilst a Skype handset might not connect you to phones that are not on their network, if enough people use it, it could supplant the BT network and destroy their business.
I wonder how they are going to charge for the service, obviously line rental, which will be the minimum they will be able to collect from each user, but taking into consideration the ease with which people will be able to switch providers, their churn rate will be very high indeed.
Basically, they are going to spend 3 billion to put themselvs out of business. Great!
Passfaces uses a similar idea; you can remember the faces that make up your password, but you cannot describe that password to anyone. It relies on your brains ability to recognise faces, and your brains inability to accurately describe the same faces.
People who whinge about the pacing are just typical speed junkies - everything has to match their hamster sized attention spans and monkey brained prurience - very similar to the sadistic crap THX watches on TV in the movie.
"Excellent!"
"Thou art a subject of the divine, created in the image of man, by the masses, for the masses..."
And of the "deviants" you accurately characterize above:
American goes to Germany. Presents her passport. Passport is scanned Data checked against EU shit-list Record of crosing created in EU Database. If record already exists, add crossing details to record. If record does not exist, create new record.
This is what will happen if biometric passports are unleashed. The EU is already well advanced in its plans to build its centralized database of all biometric identifiers; do you really believe that they wont keep a detailed record of who crosses into and out of the EU, and how many times and where they have done it? And do you really believe that they will not share this data? Like I say elsewhere in this thread, the EU has already agreed to share passenger data with the USA; this will be no different.
Im afraid you are wrong about the bi-directionality:
EU Agrees to Give U.S. Airline Passenger Data
By Sara Kehaulani Goo Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 15, 2004; Page A02
European airlines will soon share information about their passengers with U.S. officials so they can be screened for security reasons, under an agreement approved yesterday by the European Commission.
The agreement also would allow U.S. carriers to share information about their passengers with European Union countries. The data swapping would likely begin in the next several weeks, officials familiar with the talks said yesterday...
AMERICANS entering the EU will have their passport scanned ONCE. Then, that record of entry will be stored on the EU passport control system.
Of course, inter governmental data sharing agreements will ensure that every government on earth will have not only the personal details that I mention above, but a complete record of every time you have crossed a national border, anywhere on earth.
The EU and the USA have already agreed this week to share passenger data between themselvs, passport data must logically follow; the only thing missing from passenger data is your photograph, so its not a great leap.
Slashdot Mirror
If you love that movie, you ABSOLUTELY must see "Strain Andromeda The".
It will completely, and utterly open your mind.
And I am not just saying that.
should be shot
Each piece of legislation should reqire that it is signed by the people who voted for it, with a statement asserting that they have read and understood the meaning of the law.
If they fail to sign it, or it can be demonstrated that they did not understand what they were signing (everone else) up for, then the law should be rendered automatically null and void.
If we were talking about a contract to which the legislators themselvs would personally be bound, you can be sure thhat if they did not read it personally, they would get thier lawyers to read it before they signed it.
Its absurd that they should be able to sign the whole poulation over to be bound by laws that they have not read before adding them to the statue books, and it is irresponsible for anyone to obey these laws.
It just encourages them.
How are we supposed to follow a law when the law itself can't be disclosed?
Thats the wrong question / statement. The poster should have said:
"I refuse to obey a law that I cannot read".
For heavens sake, have you not read "The Trial"?
I managed to crash it and Explorer simply by dragging and dropping an AVI onto WM10 while it was playing an MPEG. This is on an SP2/XPPro machine btw.
More garbage, poorly thought out, buggy, tiresome and uninspiring.
Also, it tried to access the internet three times without permission during install.
Did'nt really expect anything else, including the crash.
licence
that was a joke obviously.
As for their server problems, I paid my years fee yesterday.
Check out this article in The Guardian which is a fully paid for advert for this bollocks.
Look at the labelels behind every song; each one is a monopoly label. The BBC has always been used to control the taste of the masses, and since Radio Coroline, it has consistently failed.
It will fail again.
Instead of doing the innovative thing and writing its own software toe take the true pulse of what the public (that pays the soon to be axed licence fee) is listening to, or outsourcing the service out from a legitimate company, they act as servants to the music monopoly. This is being done under the direct orders of Dame Pauline Neville Jones, ex head of NatWest and head of the British QinetiQ defense and security group, whose opinions on "the propaganda war" are interesting to say the least.
No matter what bogus, industry promoting chart they produce, they will be hard pressed to put the genie back in the bottle. As broadband spreads throughout the UK people will increasingly turn to free music, and we will see alternative, meaningful, non corporate charts take their place as the centers of attention.
Charts by people like Audioscrobbler are far more representative and are precisely what I am talking about.
Links to the bleeding edge 1.8 Alpha versions are not immediately apparent...why?
And to think, I spunked off my mod points on some carp earlier today!
I just laughed my ASS off!!!!
Given this piece of utter cluelessness:
Hyperlink Policy
ATHENS 2004 Organising Commitee for the Olympic Games -Website Hyperlink Policy
For your protection and ours we have established a procedure for parties wishing to introduce a link to the ATHENS 2004 website on their site. By introducing a link to the ATHENS 2004 official Website on your site you are agreeing to comply with the ATHENS 2004 Website General Terms and Conditions. In order to place a link embedded in copy interested parties should:
a) Use the term ATHENS 2004 only, and no other term as the text referent
b) Not associate the link with any image, esp. the ATHENS 2004 Emblem (see paragraph below)
c) Send a request letter to the Internet Department stating:
* Short description of site
* Reason for linking
* Unique URL containing the link (if no unique URL than just the main URL)
* Publishing period
* Contact point (e-mail address)
Once the request has been mailed, interested parties can proceed to include the link and will only receive a response if ATHENS 2004 does not accept the link. All requests should be sent to:
The Internet Department
Iolkou 8 and Filikis Eterias str.
GR-142 34 N. Ionia, Athens
Tel: +30 210 2004 000
Fax: +30 210 2004 800
e-mail: (All information submitted using this e-mail address is governed by the ATHENS 2004 Privacy Policy)
terms@athens2004.gr
If this new economy behaves like other network phenominae, i.e. following a power law then it will produce a bevy of Billionaires.
Now, I dont have any problem with Billionaires or even Millionaires, but think about it in this way; which of the "root bloggers" or internet celebrities would you select to be the first multi Brillionaire of this new economy if you had the choice?
More to the point, which one would you trust to have that much power? They would not only have the cash, but they would also dominate this new economy, and being first movers, it would be VERY difficult to find a place let alone compete effectively.
Then again, if it is more fair than the real world economy, it may act like a frictionless meritocracy. That would be ideal; take paypal out of the equation and replace it with Chaumian e-cash and then we might finally achieve "detachment" (spontaneous, mass independence from regulation).
Which would really change everything.
I'd rather see individuals that cared be able to quickly and efficiently prove citizenship
For what possible purpose? This addiction to speed is a curse; you only need to prove you are a citizen when you are going to get a passport, going to vote, or when you are going to join the army, and your birth certificate and a letter vouching for you from your doctor is more than enough for that. You dont need to do these things fast, and the current system is more than efficient enough.
ID cards, and relying on machines for identity and vouching erode the social fabric; making us rely on machines instead of the natural relationships and trust that has existed between people since there have been people.
As for "proving individuality", I dont even know what that means; proving that you are not your twin brother or sister?
Disenfranchising people has nothing to do with getting ID, and everything to do with sheer illiteracy, apathy and ignorance.
"How did this happen?"
Read any slashdot thread about ID cards, biometrics and the new passports they are trying to issue. Some of the people who post here, who really should know better because they can READ, are aplolgists for all of these techniques and technologies.
The number of times that I have read "i dont have a problem with it as long as"...that is how we have arrived at this juncture; people who should know better are apathetic, compliant or simply asleep. Then you have the morons who whip out the "Tin Hat" jibe whenever someone posts that a Totalitarian state is being built right in front of your eyes; they are also a part of the reason why these measures can be introduced without even a fight.
That question is really quite astonishing; "how we got here" is right in front of you, and has been for three years. It isnt too late to turn it all around; the "joined up government" isnt joined up yet. If you are not willing to use this place to solve the problem (and by the tone of this question, I am presuming that you DO think its a bad thing) then don't even ask; its completely infuriating.
By "use this place" I mean consistently promote the FIPR, Privacy International, No2ID and the other organizations that are trying to orgainze resistance to these measures both in USUK.
If you are not willing to do this, then accept what is being done to you and your country quietly. This should be one of the loudest places screaming against these measures, not somewhere where once in a while, we get a single stunned question.
It was a big win. The Australians turned around a major government initiative through a grass roots movement of ordinary citizens. That is no small thing.
You VOLUNTARILY renew your drivers licence. The government ID card scheme that was defeated was to be COMPULSORY for all Australians.
I really detest the flippant and ignorant dismissal of victories like this. Its mostly done by people who have not even thought about this subject, or how democracy is being destroyed by governments that dont listen to their electorate.
is a system that relies on a mix of documents that you choose to provide, and not something provided to you by the state, no matter how cool it is.
Estonians, dont whine about ID cards; do what the Australians did and refuse to carry them at all.
Your government will withdraw the scheme. Guaranteed.
Anyone remember A Little Less Conversation Elvis vs JXL? it reached Number One in 20 countries, including the USA.
This song becoming a hit is more likely than one might imagine.
As for "rights owners" we need to say who this phrase really means: The American monopoly music companies.
They have already said that they will try and block the importation of products containing legally produced public domain works; it would be the most delicious of situations if this song did become a huge smash after it entered the public domain in the UK, and the RIAA tried to block its importation.
One thing is for certain; as more and more works enter the public domain here in the UK, the likelyhood of a hit coming from one of these works increases. This confrontation is going to happen.
Is there a market for an ISP with a TOS that includes "we dont kneejerk takedown"?
This is all we are really talking about; who is going to run a hosting company that has a pair of grapefriuts instead of bbs.
based on the amount of data you use rather than an amount of time.
So this spells the eventual end of unmetered broadband from BT. Which means that when this happens, any other ISP that offers unmetered broadband will eat up BTs business. Why should anyone pay for a per gig broadband account with BT when they can pay the same money for an unlimited account from another ISP AND get Skype/VOIP for telephony as well?
When Skype come out with their telephone kit that plugs straight into the new BT network will BT cut off people trying to use another handset? They might, but they wont get away with it.
This is going to be the biggest revolution in telephony the UK has ever seen. Whilst a Skype handset might not connect you to phones that are not on their network, if enough people use it, it could supplant the BT network and destroy their business.
I wonder how they are going to charge for the service, obviously line rental, which will be the minimum they will be able to collect from each user, but taking into consideration the ease with which people will be able to switch providers, their churn rate will be very high indeed.
Basically, they are going to spend 3 billion to put themselvs out of business. Great!
Passfaces uses a similar idea; you can remember the faces that make up your password, but you cannot describe that password to anyone. It relies on your brains ability to recognise faces, and your brains inability to accurately describe the same faces.
Useless for the blind of course.
Are you a citizen of any of the states that own a piece of the Sahara desert territory?
If no, then its "how did our oil get under their soil" all over again.
Any energy coming out of those states will belong to those states, and anyone who wants access to it is going to have to pay.
People who whinge about the pacing are just typical speed junkies - everything has to match their hamster sized attention spans and monkey brained prurience - very similar to the sadistic crap THX watches on TV in the movie.
"Excellent!"
"Thou art a subject of the divine, created in the image of man, by the masses, for the masses..."
And of the "deviants" you accurately characterize above:
"This is not a race issue"
!!!!!
In closing, I say "go fuck yourself".
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.
Dullards; the insomniacs cure!
I think you crossed EU and US.
Wow. Ok lets do it step by step:
American goes to Germany.
Presents her passport.
Passport is scanned
Data checked against EU shit-list
Record of crosing created in EU Database.
If record already exists, add crossing details to record.
If record does not exist, create new record.
This is what will happen if biometric passports are unleashed. The EU is already well advanced in its plans to build its centralized database of all biometric identifiers; do you really believe that they wont keep a detailed record of who crosses into and out of the EU, and how many times and where they have done it? And do you really believe that they will not share this data? Like I say elsewhere in this thread, the EU has already agreed to share passenger data with the USA; this will be no different.
Its going to be two way, for sure.
I feed the troll.
AMERICANS entering the EU will have their passport scanned ONCE. Then, that record of entry will be stored on the EU passport control system.
Of course, inter governmental data sharing agreements will ensure that every government on earth will have not only the personal details that I mention above, but a complete record of every time you have crossed a national border, anywhere on earth.
The EU and the USA have already agreed this week to share passenger data between themselvs, passport data must logically follow; the only thing missing from passenger data is your photograph, so its not a great leap.