your statement oozes so much with republican bias that it pretty much discredits itself. sir, you have no idea what you're talking about.
As opposed to the original poster's oh-so-balanced description of Clinton, huh? Pffft. Democrats just can't stand it when a conservative has a little fun at their expense; it always sends them into their reflexive rant mode. By the way, which of my statements do you dispute: that Carter was an intellectual peer with Clinton, or that Republicans have held the Congress for past 6 years?
So...how do we clean up this country (and specifically the legislative body)? Any ideas?
How about we make serving in the legislature a requirement, like jury duty? Ok, seriously, I see term limits as being one big improvement. It's certainly done quite a bit to break up the dynastic power cliques that used to rule the California legislature. And it's finally gotten us a year in which Bill Clinton isn't running, thank God. Extending term limits to the U.S. congress would be a good thing, IMO.
Any time I see dire predictions like this, I recall the story that, in the early 1900s, the fledgling telephone system was supposed to come to a grinding halt because the number of operators required would soon exceed the entire female population of the U.S. Of course, direct dialing ultimately made the use of operators for each call unnecessary. I'm confident that the internet will survive this routing 'crisis' as well.
Actually, no 'you' didn't (what's it mean psychologically-speaking, when an individual derives his/her identity thru association with a government bureaucracy? Where's Jung when you need him?). The enumerators are supposed to count only those who are living in the residence, which I claimed was empty. I could tell from her response that she believed my story. Also, my neighbors haven't reported contacts in that regard, as they have in the past when the FBI was doing my security background check. So you didn't get me. Or the number of my toilets. Score one for privacy.
I don't think the "new Napster" is going to be Gnutella or Scour et al. I find the Napster method of file transfer to be much more usable than the alternatives. I think the OpenNap project will be where people end up going. There's a list of opennap servers here. If the numbers can be believed, some of these servers have populations rivaling the Napster servers themselves. Personally, I'm going to begin preparing myself for Napster's demise or transmogrification by getting myself an opennap client and trying out some of the other servers.
On the one hand are the "greedy multinationals" and on the other are government-encouraged roving packs of jackals^h^h^h^h^h^h^h trial lawyers attempting to extract as much tribute from them as possible. It's like watching a wrasslin' match where someone forgot to book a good guy, so we're left with two evil ones.
I got the census long form and was horrified at that they expected me to tell them. So I ignored it. After the third visit from the census person, I took pity on her and called the number listed on the card she left. I told her I was the brother of the man living there, and there was no one in residence, my brother being overseas. That was the end of it as far as they were concerned. If they just wanted to count me, then that would be one thing, but when they want to know how many toilets I have, am I Hispanic (and am I SURE I'm not Hispanic?), how much I earn, blah blah blah, they've gone over the line. This story just reinforces the wisdom of that decision. It's gotten so that if the government tells me one thing, my first inclination is to believe the exact opposite. And they wonder why.
If I ran a censorware company, I wouldn't want government meddling in this area either. Before long, they'd be mandating standards, examining results, holding hearings, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. It's not too much of a stretch to see some agency deciding that it's their duty to the people to regulate the censorware makers to assure that they're doing an adequate job, and to punish those who don't measure up.
My favorite license agreement was that of Interactive Easyflow from Haventree Software (a company that is no more, alas). An excerpt from what they titled their "Bloodthirsty License Agreement":
We don't claim Easyflow is good for anything. If you think it is: great, but it's up to you to decide.
If Easyflow doesn't work: tough. If you lose millions because Easyflow messes up: it's you who's out the millions, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing.
[snip]
The punishment for making copies other than as described above can be horrible. Sffice it to say that you should keep your doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
This reminds me of the battles the IT departments of companies waged when the IBM PC first started showing up in offices. The Big Iron alterboys got management to institute "no pc" policies, or to force people who wanted PCs to get them approved by the IT people (one guess how many approvals were given). The users responded by getting the vendors to call them "data analysis systems", or anything but "computer". If you want to maintain some semblance of control, it would be smart to capitulate to the inevitable and help out; at least then you'd have a prayer of nudging things in a manageable direction.
From the article:Finally, Whitelaw demonstrates steganography - the art of concealing text within more text. "Steganography is considered the third biggest threat to US security after biological and chemical attack," he says.
I was taking this article seriously until I hit this paragraph. Anyone making this kind of statement doesn't have his elevator going all the way to the top.
. But is it possible for someone to just make an identical copy of my smart ID card, and 'become me'?"
My guess is yes. Here in the great state of California, they went to driver's licenses with holograms on them in order to combat forgery. The forgers had them available about ten seconds after the DMV started issuing them. People who want the 'real thing' have even figured out that they can go to the DMV and get a 'replacement' license, and the clerks won't even check whether the new photo they're taking matches the one on the license you're asking for. Ditto for the new thumbprint. Or, they simply bribe some DMV clerks, a bunch of which have recently been indicted. Which is my long-winded way of saying, if people are determined to get copies of these things, they'll find a way.
Here's a really interesting story on The New Science of Character Assassination which lists a bunch of things gore said that the media has used regularly to misrepresent him.
It's suddenly dawning on you that the media does this? Welcome to political reality. Once the media gets its teeth on a vision of a politician, that's his/her image forever. Any reinforcement is noted, while contrary evidence is ignored. Gerald Ford was probably one of the most athletic Presidents, yet a couple of missteps and he bacame known as a stumblebum. Dan Quayle did a bad intro of himself to the press and forever after he was tarred with the brush of being a complete moron. Bush is now seen as a word-slurring dimwit frat-boy, contradictory evidence notwithstanding. Gore is just geting his turn in the barrel. I think what bugs you is that it's now happening to a candidate you favor.
From the article: While the United States is not part of the 41-member Council of Europe, members from the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have aided in the drafting of the treaty.
Clearly this is a plot by U.S. business interests to saddle the Euros with a bunch of onerous laws that will hobble their ability to compete. We'll encourage them to adopt this crap then say "Well, let's see how it works out for you and then we'll consider signing on. Don't call us, we'll call you." Man, are we sneaky or what?
Quite frankly, I welcome voter apathy. The apathetic are - almost by definition - ignorant, so why would I want them mucking up something as important as an election? It also gives the vote of a rabid political junkie like me more leverage so that my views have a better chance to prevail. As far as I'm concerned, I wish all of you would stay away from the polls and let me benevolently run the nation on your behalf;-).
NSI is simultaneously a registrar and the maintainer of the database of registrations from itself and other registrars. It's a fundamentally-flawed arrangement. The company ought to be broken into two (a registrar business and a database-maintainer business) to get away from this conflict. As it is, there's an inherent incentive for the company to self-deal.
For the non-lawyers (include me in that category), self-dealing is an interesting concept in the law. Here's the definition from Black's Law Dictionary: Relates to transactions wherein a trustee, acting for himself and also as "trustee," a relation which demands strict fidelity to others, seeks to consummate a deal wherein self-interest is opposed to duty.
When NSI announced a policy of holding on to expired domain names and auctioning them a while back, I knew that they were up to something. This news makes it clear that their policy change was just codifying what they'd been doing for a while. The minute they put that policy into effect, I changed my registrar, not wanting to have to ransom my domain back if I accidentally let it expire. People accuse Microsoft of being arrogant, but they pale in comparison to these bloody jackals.
I've long thought that the eventual method of production of ultra-miniaturized electronics (if they still qualify for that name) will be to essentially have them grow themselves. I have a great deal of respect for our engineer's ability to get ever-smaller semiconductor feature sizes out of a given frequency of light, but the present system of using ever-decreasing wavelengths will hit the wall before it reaches the molecular level, IMO. Even though we can probably get to these sizes using direct-write electron beams, I don't see this as being viable for mass-production, since it would take a looong time to expose an entire wafer. I think some sort of self-producing system is where we'll end up, and it's encouraging to see these advances being made in organic substances.
Having someone fire or sue you isn't the only danger. If you post using your own name on Usenet (or even here on SlashDot), there's always the danger that someone like a divorcing spouse or an employer is going to check out what you've been saying, and may use it against you. I personally know of one poster on Usenet who had to pledge to his new employer that he wouldn't post to Usenet any more. The employer had looked at his previous writings and was sufficiently perturbed to extract this promise. Personally, I use ZeroKnowledge Freedom for all of my postings here and elsewhere. You can also consider using Anonymizer, but I think the protection is less robust there if someone is really determined to find you.
Interesting. This is the way music used to be developed. Some aristocrat would put you on the payroll, and you'd produce your operas or whatever. If this caught on, I wonder if it might result in some software 'masterpieces'?
But the major difference between this law and, say, movies, is that the movie industry is fairly self-regulating. The government doesn't put the ratings on the films, and the government isn't the one disallowing children from seeing Saving Private Ryan in the theatres.
Another key difference is that the enforcement of film bans is voluntary, and government doesn't levy fines or jail time for letting a 12-year old into an 'R' rated film. Any time government talks about enforcing film ratings with criminal penalties, the movie industry has a collective stroke and starts screaming its guts out about how voluntary compliance is just fine and dandy. Of course it can't be because they know a substantial portion of their revenue comes from underage kids getting into these movies. No sir. Uh uh. The video game industry's problem here is that they aren't large enough, nor can they muster a bunch of movie stars, to fight a ban like this.
The Democrats have broken the Republican stranglehold on this city's government, and they're going to push all sorts of crazy laws like this down our throat before the next election "for the children"
??? Sounds like maybe the Republican 'stranglehold' was actually a good thing. I don't know how the idea got started that conservatives are the ones making all of these laws. Democrats seem to have a greater propensity to meddle in people's lives than Republicans. Two Democratic Senators, Feinstein and Biden once authored a bill that would have imposed a $250K fine and 20 years in prison for publishing bomb-making instructions on the internet. Two laws, the Communications Decency Act and Children's Online Protection Act, both with Democrat co-sponsors and signed with great fanfare by the Clinton administration, have been found unconstitutional. Carnivore is an invention of the Clinton Justice department. The list goes on (but I shan't).
Having been involved in contracting to the gummint for my entire professional life, let me tell you why government will never use open source to any great degree: Because there's no one to sell it to them ('sell' in the sense of being an advocate). For a corporation, there's a profit to be made, and the more custom the job, the bigger the profit. So "the government" is always going to have a horde of salesbeings hammering them on why they need a fancy-dancy custom solution, while the open source folks will have a few nerds writing the odd letter or two. Oh, sometimes you'll get an enlightened and energetic individual within government who will be the advocate, but it's rare. So generally speaking, there's no contest.
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to the original poster's oh-so-balanced description of Clinton, huh? Pffft. Democrats just can't stand it when a conservative has a little fun at their expense; it always sends them into their reflexive rant mode. By the way, which of my statements do you dispute: that Carter was an intellectual peer with Clinton, or that Republicans have held the Congress for past 6 years?
How about we make serving in the legislature a requirement, like jury duty? Ok, seriously, I see term limits as being one big improvement. It's certainly done quite a bit to break up the dynastic power cliques that used to rule the California legislature. And it's finally gotten us a year in which Bill Clinton isn't running, thank God. Extending term limits to the U.S. congress would be a good thing, IMO.
Any time I see dire predictions like this, I recall the story that, in the early 1900s, the fledgling telephone system was supposed to come to a grinding halt because the number of operators required would soon exceed the entire female population of the U.S. Of course, direct dialing ultimately made the use of operators for each call unnecessary. I'm confident that the internet will survive this routing 'crisis' as well.
Actually, no 'you' didn't (what's it mean psychologically-speaking, when an individual derives his/her identity thru association with a government bureaucracy? Where's Jung when you need him?). The enumerators are supposed to count only those who are living in the residence, which I claimed was empty. I could tell from her response that she believed my story. Also, my neighbors haven't reported contacts in that regard, as they have in the past when the FBI was doing my security background check. So you didn't get me. Or the number of my toilets. Score one for privacy.
I don't think the "new Napster" is going to be Gnutella or Scour et al. I find the Napster method of file transfer to be much more usable than the alternatives. I think the OpenNap project will be where people end up going. There's a list of opennap servers here. If the numbers can be believed, some of these servers have populations rivaling the Napster servers themselves. Personally, I'm going to begin preparing myself for Napster's demise or transmogrification by getting myself an opennap client and trying out some of the other servers.
On the one hand are the "greedy multinationals" and on the other are government-encouraged roving packs of jackals^h^h^h^h^h^h^h trial lawyers attempting to extract as much tribute from them as possible. It's like watching a wrasslin' match where someone forgot to book a good guy, so we're left with two evil ones.
I got the census long form and was horrified at that they expected me to tell them. So I ignored it. After the third visit from the census person, I took pity on her and called the number listed on the card she left. I told her I was the brother of the man living there, and there was no one in residence, my brother being overseas. That was the end of it as far as they were concerned. If they just wanted to count me, then that would be one thing, but when they want to know how many toilets I have, am I Hispanic (and am I SURE I'm not Hispanic?), how much I earn, blah blah blah, they've gone over the line. This story just reinforces the wisdom of that decision. It's gotten so that if the government tells me one thing, my first inclination is to believe the exact opposite. And they wonder why.
If I ran a censorware company, I wouldn't want government meddling in this area either. Before long, they'd be mandating standards, examining results, holding hearings, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. It's not too much of a stretch to see some agency deciding that it's their duty to the people to regulate the censorware makers to assure that they're doing an adequate job, and to punish those who don't measure up.
We don't claim Easyflow is good for anything. If you think it is: great, but it's up to you to decide.
If Easyflow doesn't work: tough. If you lose millions because Easyflow messes up: it's you who's out the millions, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing.
[snip]
The punishment for making copies other than as described above can be horrible. Sffice it to say that you should keep your doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
I still laugh when I read this.
This reminds me of the battles the IT departments of companies waged when the IBM PC first started showing up in offices. The Big Iron alterboys got management to institute "no pc" policies, or to force people who wanted PCs to get them approved by the IT people (one guess how many approvals were given). The users responded by getting the vendors to call them "data analysis systems", or anything but "computer". If you want to maintain some semblance of control, it would be smart to capitulate to the inevitable and help out; at least then you'd have a prayer of nudging things in a manageable direction.
I was taking this article seriously until I hit this paragraph. Anyone making this kind of statement doesn't have his elevator going all the way to the top.
My guess is yes. Here in the great state of California, they went to driver's licenses with holograms on them in order to combat forgery. The forgers had them available about ten seconds after the DMV started issuing them. People who want the 'real thing' have even figured out that they can go to the DMV and get a 'replacement' license, and the clerks won't even check whether the new photo they're taking matches the one on the license you're asking for. Ditto for the new thumbprint. Or, they simply bribe some DMV clerks, a bunch of which have recently been indicted. Which is my long-winded way of saying, if people are determined to get copies of these things, they'll find a way.
It's suddenly dawning on you that the media does this? Welcome to political reality. Once the media gets its teeth on a vision of a politician, that's his/her image forever. Any reinforcement is noted, while contrary evidence is ignored. Gerald Ford was probably one of the most athletic Presidents, yet a couple of missteps and he bacame known as a stumblebum. Dan Quayle did a bad intro of himself to the press and forever after he was tarred with the brush of being a complete moron. Bush is now seen as a word-slurring dimwit frat-boy, contradictory evidence notwithstanding. Gore is just geting his turn in the barrel. I think what bugs you is that it's now happening to a candidate you favor.
Clearly this is a plot by U.S. business interests to saddle the Euros with a bunch of onerous laws that will hobble their ability to compete. We'll encourage them to adopt this crap then say "Well, let's see how it works out for you and then we'll consider signing on. Don't call us, we'll call you." Man, are we sneaky or what?
Quite frankly, I welcome voter apathy. The apathetic are - almost by definition - ignorant, so why would I want them mucking up something as important as an election? It also gives the vote of a rabid political junkie like me more leverage so that my views have a better chance to prevail. As far as I'm concerned, I wish all of you would stay away from the polls and let me benevolently run the nation on your behalf ;-).
If the kids get this sophisticated, I say they've earned their porn. :-)
For the non-lawyers (include me in that category), self-dealing is an interesting concept in the law. Here's the definition from Black's Law Dictionary: Relates to transactions wherein a trustee, acting for himself and also as "trustee," a relation which demands strict fidelity to others, seeks to consummate a deal wherein self-interest is opposed to duty.
When NSI announced a policy of holding on to expired domain names and auctioning them a while back, I knew that they were up to something. This news makes it clear that their policy change was just codifying what they'd been doing for a while. The minute they put that policy into effect, I changed my registrar, not wanting to have to ransom my domain back if I accidentally let it expire. People accuse Microsoft of being arrogant, but they pale in comparison to these bloody jackals.
I've long thought that the eventual method of production of ultra-miniaturized electronics (if they still qualify for that name) will be to essentially have them grow themselves. I have a great deal of respect for our engineer's ability to get ever-smaller semiconductor feature sizes out of a given frequency of light, but the present system of using ever-decreasing wavelengths will hit the wall before it reaches the molecular level, IMO. Even though we can probably get to these sizes using direct-write electron beams, I don't see this as being viable for mass-production, since it would take a looong time to expose an entire wafer. I think some sort of self-producing system is where we'll end up, and it's encouraging to see these advances being made in organic substances.
How about encoding it into a bar code readable with a CueCat?
Having someone fire or sue you isn't the only danger. If you post using your own name on Usenet (or even here on SlashDot), there's always the danger that someone like a divorcing spouse or an employer is going to check out what you've been saying, and may use it against you. I personally know of one poster on Usenet who had to pledge to his new employer that he wouldn't post to Usenet any more. The employer had looked at his previous writings and was sufficiently perturbed to extract this promise. Personally, I use ZeroKnowledge Freedom for all of my postings here and elsewhere. You can also consider using Anonymizer, but I think the protection is less robust there if someone is really determined to find you.
Interesting. This is the way music used to be developed. Some aristocrat would put you on the payroll, and you'd produce your operas or whatever. If this caught on, I wonder if it might result in some software 'masterpieces'?
Another key difference is that the enforcement of film bans is voluntary, and government doesn't levy fines or jail time for letting a 12-year old into an 'R' rated film. Any time government talks about enforcing film ratings with criminal penalties, the movie industry has a collective stroke and starts screaming its guts out about how voluntary compliance is just fine and dandy. Of course it can't be because they know a substantial portion of their revenue comes from underage kids getting into these movies. No sir. Uh uh. The video game industry's problem here is that they aren't large enough, nor can they muster a bunch of movie stars, to fight a ban like this.
??? Sounds like maybe the Republican 'stranglehold' was actually a good thing. I don't know how the idea got started that conservatives are the ones making all of these laws. Democrats seem to have a greater propensity to meddle in people's lives than Republicans. Two Democratic Senators, Feinstein and Biden once authored a bill that would have imposed a $250K fine and 20 years in prison for publishing bomb-making instructions on the internet. Two laws, the Communications Decency Act and Children's Online Protection Act, both with Democrat co-sponsors and signed with great fanfare by the Clinton administration, have been found unconstitutional. Carnivore is an invention of the Clinton Justice department. The list goes on (but I shan't).
Having been involved in contracting to the gummint for my entire professional life, let me tell you why government will never use open source to any great degree: Because there's no one to sell it to them ('sell' in the sense of being an advocate). For a corporation, there's a profit to be made, and the more custom the job, the bigger the profit. So "the government" is always going to have a horde of salesbeings hammering them on why they need a fancy-dancy custom solution, while the open source folks will have a few nerds writing the odd letter or two. Oh, sometimes you'll get an enlightened and energetic individual within government who will be the advocate, but it's rare. So generally speaking, there's no contest.