Now with respect to the problems particularly around privacy, that giving things identifiers raises. The post-facto-lumping principle I posited above takes care of that. That is to say multiple identifiers in different contexts presents no problem. When there is a legitimate need to cross reference identities across policy domains, the uniform an guaranteed unique nature of an universal ID makes this much easier. So you can have pseudonomy as a gay rights activist -- you have an unique identifier which with some crypto -- can verify messages from you. If in the future you choose to associate your gay rights persona with your political party volunteer persona, you can provide any (or no) party with information proving the equivalence of your identity in each sphere.
I disagree. Your model here presumes some central repository of or reversible mechanism for IDs. The mere fact that whoever has access to the repository shouldn't cross-link them unless permitted doesn't mean that they won't.
In your particular mechanism the anonymity wouldn't be protected unless the derivational schemoonly dealt in pure prime numbers of a large order say large enough to make hashing a potential. Assuming such numbers could be produced in a programmatic way (by your splitting) but without making the next number guessable (a big assumption) we would still face problems with "ownership" of the keys. If my number is assigned by some central authority then they can use it. If not how is the rule-making enforced.
Your perspective, and that of the spokesman was from the perspective of people trying to catalogue a large number of things and wondering why they won't get in line. I am coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't want to be cataloged.
And again, I was talking about true anonymity not just pseudoanonymity.
What I want is for my home phone to warn me before I leave the house how my Desk Char is doing. That way I can know whether or not to bring my emergency chair.
All entities - everything from the particular chair I am sitting on to objects like the Lincoln Memorial monument should have a unique digital identifier.
Why? Seriously, why should my chair have some unique identifier, and why should you need to search it? It is a physical entity that I sit on. If it is physically present then I can sit there, if not then I'll hunt for it myself. I don't need google to find it.
As an example - let's start with people. I don't know if darren@yahoo.com is the same as darren@gmail.com. There is a problem of managing identity across the internet, so when I say Darren Waters I mean this person and all of the manifestations and representations and personas of that person.
Good!
Central management of internet identities and central linking also means no anonymity. No ability to create an identity on a per user group basis. Why should the people I discuss 40wheeling with be able to link to my identity as a campaigner for gay rights? The two are separate worlds and I like them that way. They don't need to interact and I see no reason that you should force them to interact.
The ability to knit those together is a huge challenge and opportunity for us as an industry.
Tough, go join another industry.
When last I checked Yahoo was in the business of searching out information not mapping all things including my chair. I don't want Yahoo to know about my chair, that is why I didn't make a webpage for it.
That's what I mean by resolving people - I mean this person and not the likely thousands of other people who share your name.
Yes well again I'm not wooed by your crocodile tears. Yes when looking up things there is the possibility of confusion but some global numbering system won't change that really. Even if such a system was implemented it would reduce privacy, probably by outing many a closet homosexual, but the people who really wanted to game it still would and even though you matched the serial number for Bob Henderson at 2213 Mockingbird Lane, and found that he likes Monster trucks, and old Judy Garland Movies you still wouldn't be able to believe it. Because someone who wanted to hide their love of Monster trucks may just have been posting under his name.
Even if you put the force of law and economics behind it, say the way that credit card fraud is banned it will still happen. The net result of an internet of things would be 1) My chair having its own fan club 2) Yahoo getting into the ChoicePoint voter-roll purging busines, and 3) people too weak to protect themselves being outed for no good reason.
Lest we forget there is a reason for anonymity in this world. Many people, esp those coping with personally difficult things, want to broach them under different identities for fear of persecution. Others, like me, just value our privacy as a matter of course and feel that more information only benefits others, not us. Finally dangerous or unpopular ideas (say phamplets advocating for the American Revolution, democracy, and the rights of man) cannot be published except anonymously for fear of violent reprisal. That's why Benjamin Franklin used the name 'Mrs. Silence Dogood'.
As per the Constitution of the United States of America the Vice-President is defined by election under Article II (The Presidency) thus making him a part of the Executive Branch. Mention in Article I (Legislative) describes only his duities with respect the the Senate. The intent I draw form making him elected as with the president and allowing for the senate to select a President pro-tempore for times when the Vice President doesn't feel like showing up, makes him firmly a member of the Executive.
I would note that the Legislative article also mentions the President's duties with respect to the legislative branch (i.e. signing bills and sitting when impeachment occurs). And that the Presidential article mentions the Legislative branch (i.e. functions as electors and for impeachment).
IANAL but the issue is where the office is "constituted" or defined not where it is mentioned for the purposes of duties. In the case of the Vice President that is firmly part of the executive.
Hell for those of you who don't believe in the constitution other than as a "Goddamn Piece of Paper", the bionic VP is funded as part of the executive branch. Thus making him 'fiscally' part of the executive branch.
Yes and no. While I agree with you that simply adding more laws is often counterproductive I think that your parking lot analogy is a little flawed. It is not the lack of laws that makes people take responsibility. Indeed many if not most of the same laws that apply on the road apply there but we are moving (per posted signs) at a much lower rate. Additionally the high frequency of pedestrians, and drivers awareness of this fact makes all but the dumbest realize that the (intuitive odds) are high for them to hit someone if they speed. As such they take more care. Conversely most of the things you see on highways are other cars that are moving according to the rules, the same rules as in most parking lots. However due to the speed of said travel parking-lot-acceptable things (e.g. passing on the left) is not always appropriate because of the high speed of oncoming traffic.
When it comes to laws I agree that more is not necessarily better, nor is less necessarily better. When dealing with the laws most people actually obey more rules that they think about and many of those are negotiated all of them should be (not necessarily are) representative of public will. What is best in most cases is the appropriate laws, what that level is, however, is debateable.
Keep in mind that the goal of stating laws in advance is to avoid disputes. If you don't spell out what is acceptable or unacceptable in advance then we end up figting later and that is capricous and random. So one decent yardstick is to figure out what conflicts will arise and then state in advance how to avoid them. That however is difficult because, as with appropriate, likely conflicts is a challenge.
How can a politician who is by definition a servant of the public demand that a law be crafted according to their interests. In a democracy their job is to serve the interests of the public not the other way around, at least on paper. Or is Canada no longer a democracy?
1) Microsoft has a patent office that spends its days generating patents based upon other people's work and the Eolas patent just ran through the mill. 2) Microsoft thinks, perhaps knows that they can get away with anything because its not about what your patent says but about how much money and bull you can throw behind it. In that event they elected to coopt the Eolas patent given how much fun they have had with this and the whole affair is really just a big kiss my ass to Eolas. 3) Microsoft is hoping to so annoy the Patent office with this conflict nonsense that they rule both patents invalid on the face of it rather than fight to justify one or the other. Yes the dates differ but perhaps the amount of money Microsoft can throw at fighting it will cow the patent office into submission.
Leaving aside the Monday morning quarterbacking there is ample evidence to suggest that the "ideas" of 9-11 from the tactical nature of the attacks to the identities of the attackers was in fact known or knowable. Al-Quaeda was, in fact on the intelligence community's radar screen and warnings about Osama Bin-Laden were prevalent even in Presidential Daily Briefings. Additionally there had been an exercise simulating exactly the kind of attack that occurred. So it wasn't that the idea had not arisen or that noone had suggested things.
Rather, its apparent that the suggestions were ignored. Whether they were ignored because Bush wanted to focus on other things or that the nature of the ideas somehow rendered them ignorable is unclear. What is clear is that they were, in fact, present and had been suggested.
Post 9-11 a great deal of effort has been spent on garnering "ideas" for attack styles on the grounds that "we didn't know". While it is nice to see people expanding their minds it is a little worrisome that they have not done so before. It is also a little worrisome because the new ideas seem to fall into two categories, those that get ignored and those that are overreacted upon.
In the former class we have things such as not throwing children year olds into Guantanamo Bay, and adding armor to protect our troops against IEDs (something that was so badly rejected that the solders were ordered by the White House to remove armor that they had added in the field). A great example of the latter comes from one of Bob Woodward's books on Bush. Some of you may remember that point about a year or so ago when the terror alert levels jumped and new, ominous, warnings came out about Al-Quaeda hijacking trains and filling them with chemicals. It turns out a bunch of guys were sitting around a meeting and one of them said: "You know it would suck if Al-Qaueda stole a train and loaded it with chemicals..." A few days later they lock down all the train stations.
So with all due respect to DHS's desire for new info but I'd like to see them make better use of what they've already got.
And yet at the same time he states that the White House should take the lead on Copyright reform and give it direction noting that "many in congress don't understand it. Why not let the free market prevail there?
Clearly he wants to be every large media company's favorite Republican.
Depends upon the paedo but it is still statutory. But lets be honest if something like this is rolled out at a college so that students can be "tracked for their protection" would it stay only there?
Once each student is equipped with a WiFi tag do theyr really imagine that only the school will have this info. Forget the overzealous parent that wants 24/7 monitoring. What about the creepy stalker who wants to follow the girl of his dreams? What about the kidnapper who wants to watch his target?
Forget claims about 'encryption' (it's a unique ID who cares what it "means") or limitations on distance, readers have already shown success at distances far beyond those claimed.
What about the paedophile who wants to track that one kid...
Amnesty is a legal state in which you are granted a proactive pardon for certain crimes. That is, we know that you have committed crimes but we guarantee not to prosecute you or penalize you legally according to some means. For example, many small-time drug dealers have been offered Amnesty for their (comparatively minor) crimes in exchange for information about their suppliers. More recently justice department official were granted amnesty for crimes including hiring people by political affiliation, illegally firing people for lack of political bias and violations of the Constitution of the United States by illegally tapping the telephone and internet use of Americans based upon little to no evidence. This was granted in order to simply get them to show up and speak before Congress a task which is nominally compulsory but apparently congressional warrants are now mere suggestions.
Crucially such amnesty is typically conditional and applies only to information gathered during the covered period. Additional outside information or a failure to be open results in a revocation of the amnesty or in the case of Congress a polite request not to do it again.
The two questions that the use of this term opens up are a) is using an iPod a crime at Microsoft, or perhaps listening to bands other than U2? and b) does this mean subsequent use of iPods or a return to non-microsoft products will result in punishment?
At the end of the day we have four powers to attack these cartels with: 1) Stop purchasing their stuff. Seeing as how a portion of every dollar spent on an RIAA CD or Microsoft item goes to groups like this that seek to undermine our freedoms in exchange for their own cash flows the only way to cut off that flow from the company is to cut off our own flow to the company.
For those jonsesing for new music, check out your local bands or those bands that sell their own stuff. Libraries are also excellent sources of things you only listen to, read, or watch occasionally. With Microsoft Put up or shut up to other vendors stop whining about Bill and then ponying up for Vista "because everyone else is using it". Between Ubuntu and Openoffice even Grandma should be able to use Linux these days.
Spend some time reading a book or talking to your friends, get outside even the air isn't copyrighted, yet.
2) Write your reps and make a simple point: I won't vote for you if you listen to them. Make it clear that your vote is conditioned on these things and that you are paying attention.
3) Donate to groups like the EFF who lobby against this shit.
4) This is the hardest, if you are a director, musician or author, don't sell your work to these cartels. Consider marketing it on your own or via another group that doesn't play these games. I know that this isn't trivial and that you need to eat but if you can go it alone that makes the most difference. These cartels are not capable of making things on their own only gobbling up your gems and sitting on them. They are unimaginative slugs who seek only to feed. If you really want to get them out of there and get your ideas into the world then try an alternate route.
I remember back in the 80's when people first noticed that the FCC was serving the interests of companies more than the populace. Everything else that has followed since from fighting for the rights of large media companies to merge to seeking to suppress internet content at the behest of AOL Time Warner started then with Regan's appointees. Now the FCC openly behaves as a tool of the conglomerates. Or in the case of the illegal wiretapping, a tool of the NSA.
A similar lack of complaint was heard when the food and drug administration reevaluated aspertame for the third time and declared it safe despite their own warnings to the contrary see here. Thanks again Donald Rumsfeld.
Then the Food and Drug administration recently was accused of stepping down enforcement of many complaints and 'streamlining' the process of approval for the drug companies.
Now this. Realistically speaking I would hope that sooner or later events like this, you know large companies committing fraud and spying on people for money, lying, etc. and being given only a slap on the wrist, would say piss people off so much that they would Write their Congressional Representative, and Their U.S. Senator, and even The President. A few e-mails saying, either this is a government of by and for the people or we'll vote for someone else. A few e-mails saying, I pay my taxes why are they being spent to harm me? A few e-mails just reminding them that we are paying attention. Lacking that they can do whatever they want and we're no longer the greatest nation on earth.
When Bush and Congress stand up for their stump speeches and tout how well they've done they feel that its important that we actually believe that, particularly when they say they've done a good job studying global warming because we don't know enough as Bush is wont to say.
If, however the general public actually learns that the problem is real and hasn't been attacked aggressively then they'll start shopping around for someone else to protect them.
While historically speaking the comparison to evolution is apt it might be better to compare it with the level of "terrorist threat" or the war with Eurasia. In the former case the issue is one of protection, are we making our "way of life" safer. With the War on Terror(tm) the claim is that Bush and Cronies are fighting the enemy and succeeding (look how many terrorists we have convicted and put behind bars). With Global Warming the claim is that it isn't a problem so they don't have to act on it. In either case the tendency to lash out at those who say that they are doing a bad job with respect to terror (journalists, PBS, research scientists) or global warming (scientists again, schools and museums) is just a natural reaction. Because if they aren't doing a good job they lose the license to give kickbacks and generally ruin things that they now have.
At the end of the day it is all about power and money.
I find the requirement of this rather interesting. I mean on one level why wouldn't people report their suspicions to the cops. The only plausible reasons are that they are disinterested in what happens (i.e. it's not my town) or that they don't trust the cops.
In the former case that would point to a larger-scale disaffection for the community that can't be solved simply by ordering people to be good. Rather you have to address why they don't care (i.e. no ownership of the social space or feeling of control or involvement in its governance). In the second you have to ask wy the fear exists between the public and police. Likely said fear is spawned by a lack of familiarity with them or connection to the police. That cannot be solved by ordering people to act as if they trust them, spying on said people from above, or sending in the SWAT team (the favored solution in the U.S.) Rather it can only be solved by community-based policing with the same cops walking the same beats and eating at the same neighborhood donut shops day after day until the local residents know them and their faces enough to trust them. Otherwise it's better the criminal that you know over the police that you don't.
I'd be curious to note how long these systems had been in place and what the effect on the surrounding areas was. Some anecdotal evidence is available to suggest that in the short term crime is reduced in the CCTV areas but increased in the surrounding areas where it is "pushed" to. This has been employed by those arguing that the CCTV areas just be expanded until crime is "pushed" indefinitely far away. However there exists other evidence to indicate that, after the initial installation crime will again return to an area once the cameras have been around for a while making the reduction short term at best.
Similarly I would bet that some of the installs might coincide with other investment in an area. As such the effects of the cameras might not be separable from the effects of repaired sidewalks, new stores, open buildings, etc. All of which are known to change the patterns of crime.
As such it would seem to me that the studies face the potential for mitigating factors. When I have time I'll read them and see if they are even reported.
And that governments, law enforcement entities, and municipalities have increasing access to and leverage technologies to become more effective at the jobs with which they are charged by the public?
In order to back up that statement you have to prove to me that they are indeed being used to perform the jobs that they are charged with as opposed to engaging in their own forms of spying, and that they are more effective.
In the former case I would point out that the jobs of governments and police officers is to serve the citizens in their community. All too often however that has been twisted to the point where said individuals are, in fact, using their powers to pursue private agendas against the very citizens they claim to protect. Here in the U.S. for example during World War I laws were passed making it a crime to criticize the president "for our protection". During World War II the massive information compiled as part of the Census was used to hunt down American Citizens of Japanese descent and throw them into prison "for their own protection". During the Kennedy years the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover used the powers of his office to spy on politicians he disproved of and to subvert both the anti-war and civil rights movements including the well-documented blackmailing of Martin Luther King. During the 60's Nixon used the tools available to spy on his political rivals. In more recent years 'anti-terror' tools have been used to spy on anti-war groups (because how dare we oppose the Iraq war) and execute increasingly harsh surveillance of "problem communities" (aka black neighborhoods) in the War On Drugs.
In each case the claim was that they were serving their constituents. Nixon himself said that he "thought it would be bad for the country if the president lost an election". And despite claims that it "won't happen again" we can see even modern U.S. Congressmen claiming that it is a good idea:
On February 4, 2003, during a radio talk show, a North Carolina Congressman, Howard Coble, defended the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. "We were at war," Coble noted. "Some [Japanese-Americans] probably were intent on doing harm to us, just as some of these Arab-Americans are probably intent on doing harm to us [today]". (source here
Similar comments have been made about the recent attempts to spy on American's internet use and telephone traffic "for our own good".
Which brings me to my second point. There is, indeed little to no evidence that the modern tools (e.g. large scale databases or CCTV networks) actually help prevent crime which is, after all the goal. With repsect to "big name" items like the terror suspect lists and the internet surveillance their effectiveness is difficult to judge as they are largely secretive (too secretive) and the evidence that they obtain will never be used in a court of law. While the Justice department likes to point to high-name cases like Jose Padilla and the rest of us like to point out that Padilla is a) being charged in a carefully rigged situation, b) being charged for a small fraction of what they claimed they could prove but did not, and c) is himself surrounded by many many cases which seem likely to never reach trial because nothing at all really happened.
If you want a better arguing point we should look at the large-scale sweeps that were done in New York shortly after 9/11. While these netted a few illegal aliens (at least one of whom died under highly questionable circumstances) and pissed off a large segment of an otherwise legitimate population it failed to net anything useful. But this too might be considered "exceptional".
So let us turn to the daily street crime scenario. While some noise has been made about Chicago's heavy use of surveillance cameras and databases there is little scientific evidence that the cameras "did the trick". While Chicago's rate of cri
the old, over-inflated ratings were higher in part because the cars idled a lot, allowing the hybrids to completely turn off their engines. The new ratings should be more in line with what hybrid drivers are actually seeing.
seems particularly odd.
How would, excess idle be the issue? When driving in the city the very thing that you do a lot is idle (unless you run red lights, traffic jams, etc). Indeed much of the time is really spent starting, stopping, idling, speeding up, swearing, etc. All of which reduces gas mileage. Unless they leave the cars idling for days it makes no sense to me that this would be the core issue.
Also, unless they have been arbitrarily adding 10 to all totals or weren't counting the use of battery acid for hybrids there is no reason why a change in calculations should affect hybrids alone so the title is quite misleading.
Europe is warmed by a steady current that carries warm water from the 'West Indies' (i.e. the Caribbean) to the coasts of Europe. Extant climate predictions indicate that said current will be disrupted by global warming meaning that Europe might actually get colder on average than it has been up until now. The last time this occurred (the 'Mini Ice Age') coincided with the Dark Ages in Europe which was marked by widespread crop shortages.
If I were Der Speigel I would keep in mind that "Global Warming" still allows for "local cooling". And even if Europe gets warmer I would think that coming off of their disastrously hot previous summers that an increase in temperature might not be ideal.
At the time that the U.S. Was founded British politics was dominated by two major parties, the Whigs and the Tories. Despite initial differences in the philosophies of the two groups (according to some) they were in essence pure factions fighting less over any extant policy (since both groups answered to the same basic economic interests) than over "beating the other guy." This infighting occupied almost the whole of the government and included disputes such as what party the generals should be from and the potential for advancement in the military less attached to qualifications than to political connections. At least one Naval officer was court martialed on false charges. It is also just possible that a few of their many many wars were driven by the need for party gain as opposed to any real Causus Belli. The two parties had become an end in themselves and to hell with actually governing.
At the time of the U.S.' founding the founding fathers believed, rightly, that the two groups were soley interested in serving themselves and didn't give a damn about making life better in the colonies, as evidenced by the bizarre handling of the French and Indian Wars.
Because of this the founder believed that parties should be avoided at all costs lest we go the way of the British and cease to be so focused on the struggle to survive as opposed to petty factionalism. As such they sought to avoid parties at all costs even as they unwittingly laid the groundwork for them in the early federalist-states-rights fights. They knew, and feared, that any nation governed by entrenched parties would be divided more than united by them, and driven more to irrational opposition than actual operation.
It is kind of like two cults duking it out over what color the priest's robes should be while their followers starve.
The parties are like injecting two types of concrete in the system each one will bond to its own kind but not the other. The only end result is gars that stick 'just because'.
IANAL but At least in some states of the U.S. the practice of sending someone something that they do not want and then demanding payment or otherwize extracting use has been banned. This has been extended to making it possible for you to use junk faxxers on the grounds that they are using your fax. Probably this would be time consuming for any one person but if the laws of your place of residence allow it a class action lawsuit might be doable, even government funded.
I Smell BestBuy's lobbyists on this one. With the rising price of CD's the only way they can compete is to axe some of their competition. Lacking the ability to ban the internet they can stomp on local used CD cariers who are their most immediate competition.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. Your model here presumes some central repository of or reversible mechanism for IDs. The mere fact that whoever has access to the repository shouldn't cross-link them unless permitted doesn't mean that they won't.
In your particular mechanism the anonymity wouldn't be protected unless the derivational schemoonly dealt in pure prime numbers of a large order say large enough to make hashing a potential. Assuming such numbers could be produced in a programmatic way (by your splitting) but without making the next number guessable (a big assumption) we would still face problems with "ownership" of the keys. If my number is assigned by some central authority then they can use it. If not how is the rule-making enforced.
Your perspective, and that of the spokesman was from the perspective of people trying to catalogue a large number of things and wondering why they won't get in line. I am coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't want to be cataloged.
And again, I was talking about true anonymity not just pseudoanonymity.
What I want is for my home phone to warn me before I leave the house how my Desk Char is doing. That way I can know whether or not to bring my emergency chair.
Advance planning is always good.
Why? Seriously, why should my chair have some unique identifier, and why should you need to search it? It is a physical entity that I sit on. If it is physically present then I can sit there, if not then I'll hunt for it myself. I don't need google to find it.
Good!
Central management of internet identities and central linking also means no anonymity. No ability to create an identity on a per user group basis. Why should the people I discuss 40wheeling with be able to link to my identity as a campaigner for gay rights? The two are separate worlds and I like them that way. They don't need to interact and I see no reason that you should force them to interact.
Tough, go join another industry.
When last I checked Yahoo was in the business of searching out information not mapping all things including my chair. I don't want Yahoo to know about my chair, that is why I didn't make a webpage for it.
Yes well again I'm not wooed by your crocodile tears. Yes when looking up things there is the possibility of confusion but some global numbering system won't change that really. Even if such a system was implemented it would reduce privacy, probably by outing many a closet homosexual, but the people who really wanted to game it still would and even though you matched the serial number for Bob Henderson at 2213 Mockingbird Lane, and found that he likes Monster trucks, and old Judy Garland Movies you still wouldn't be able to believe it. Because someone who wanted to hide their love of Monster trucks may just have been posting under his name.
Even if you put the force of law and economics behind it, say the way that credit card fraud is banned it will still happen. The net result of an internet of things would be 1) My chair having its own fan club 2) Yahoo getting into the ChoicePoint voter-roll purging busines, and 3) people too weak to protect themselves being outed for no good reason.
Lest we forget there is a reason for anonymity in this world. Many people, esp those coping with personally difficult things, want to broach them under different identities for fear of persecution. Others, like me, just value our privacy as a matter of course and feel that more information only benefits others, not us. Finally dangerous or unpopular ideas (say phamplets advocating for the American Revolution, democracy, and the rights of man) cannot be published except anonymously for fear of violent reprisal. That's why Benjamin Franklin used the name 'Mrs. Silence Dogood'.
As per the Constitution of the United States of America the Vice-President is defined by election under Article II (The Presidency) thus making him a part of the Executive Branch. Mention in Article I (Legislative) describes only his duities with respect the the Senate. The intent I draw form making him elected as with the president and allowing for the senate to select a President pro-tempore for times when the Vice President doesn't feel like showing up, makes him firmly a member of the Executive.
I would note that the Legislative article also mentions the President's duties with respect to the legislative branch (i.e. signing bills and sitting when impeachment occurs). And that the Presidential article mentions the Legislative branch (i.e. functions as electors and for impeachment).
IANAL but the issue is where the office is "constituted" or defined not where it is mentioned for the purposes of duties. In the case of the Vice President that is firmly part of the executive.
Hell for those of you who don't believe in the constitution other than as a "Goddamn Piece of Paper", the bionic VP is funded as part of the executive branch. Thus making him 'fiscally' part of the executive branch.
Yes and no. While I agree with you that simply adding more laws is often counterproductive I think that your parking lot analogy is a little flawed. It is not the lack of laws that makes people take responsibility. Indeed many if not most of the same laws that apply on the road apply there but we are moving (per posted signs) at a much lower rate. Additionally the high frequency of pedestrians, and drivers awareness of this fact makes all but the dumbest realize that the (intuitive odds) are high for them to hit someone if they speed. As such they take more care. Conversely most of the things you see on highways are other cars that are moving according to the rules, the same rules as in most parking lots. However due to the speed of said travel parking-lot-acceptable things (e.g. passing on the left) is not always appropriate because of the high speed of oncoming traffic.
When it comes to laws I agree that more is not necessarily better, nor is less necessarily better. When dealing with the laws most people actually obey more rules that they think about and many of those are negotiated all of them should be (not necessarily are) representative of public will. What is best in most cases is the appropriate laws, what that level is, however, is debateable.
Keep in mind that the goal of stating laws in advance is to avoid disputes. If you don't spell out what is acceptable or unacceptable in advance then we end up figting later and that is capricous and random. So one decent yardstick is to figure out what conflicts will arise and then state in advance how to avoid them. That however is difficult because, as with appropriate, likely conflicts is a challenge.
How can a politician who is by definition a servant of the public demand that a law be crafted according to their interests. In a democracy their job is to serve the interests of the public not the other way around, at least on paper. Or is Canada no longer a democracy?
1) Microsoft has a patent office that spends its days generating patents based upon other people's work and the Eolas patent just ran through the mill.
2) Microsoft thinks, perhaps knows that they can get away with anything because its not about what your patent says but about how much money and bull you can throw behind it. In that event they elected to coopt the Eolas patent given how much fun they have had with this and the whole affair is really just a big kiss my ass to Eolas.
3) Microsoft is hoping to so annoy the Patent office with this conflict nonsense that they rule both patents invalid on the face of it rather than fight to justify one or the other. Yes the dates differ but perhaps the amount of money Microsoft can throw at fighting it will cow the patent office into submission.
Leaving aside the Monday morning quarterbacking there is ample evidence to suggest that the "ideas" of 9-11 from the tactical nature of the attacks to the identities of the attackers was in fact known or knowable. Al-Quaeda was, in fact on the intelligence community's radar screen and warnings about Osama Bin-Laden were prevalent even in Presidential Daily Briefings. Additionally there had been an exercise simulating exactly the kind of attack that occurred. So it wasn't that the idea had not arisen or that noone had suggested things.
Rather, its apparent that the suggestions were ignored. Whether they were ignored because Bush wanted to focus on other things or that the nature of the ideas somehow rendered them ignorable is unclear. What is clear is that they were, in fact, present and had been suggested.
Post 9-11 a great deal of effort has been spent on garnering "ideas" for attack styles on the grounds that "we didn't know". While it is nice to see people expanding their minds it is a little worrisome that they have not done so before. It is also a little worrisome because the new ideas seem to fall into two categories, those that get ignored and those that are overreacted upon.
In the former class we have things such as not throwing children year olds into Guantanamo Bay, and adding armor to protect our troops against IEDs (something that was so badly rejected that the solders were ordered by the White House to remove armor that they had added in the field). A great example of the latter comes from one of Bob Woodward's books on Bush. Some of you may remember that point about a year or so ago when the terror alert levels jumped and new, ominous, warnings came out about Al-Quaeda hijacking trains and filling them with chemicals. It turns out a bunch of guys were sitting around a meeting and one of them said: "You know it would suck if Al-Qaueda stole a train and loaded it with chemicals..." A few days later they lock down all the train stations.
So with all due respect to DHS's desire for new info but I'd like to see them make better use of what they've already got.
And yet at the same time he states that the White House should take the lead on Copyright reform and give it direction noting that "many in congress don't understand it. Why not let the free market prevail there?
Clearly he wants to be every large media company's favorite Republican.
Depends upon the paedo but it is still statutory. But lets be honest if something like this is rolled out at a college so that students can be "tracked for their protection" would it stay only there?
17 year olds.
Once each student is equipped with a WiFi tag do theyr really imagine that only the school will have this info. Forget the overzealous parent that wants 24/7 monitoring. What about the creepy stalker who wants to follow the girl of his dreams? What about the kidnapper who wants to watch his target?
Forget claims about 'encryption' (it's a unique ID who cares what it "means") or limitations on distance, readers have already shown success at distances far beyond those claimed.
What about the paedophile who wants to track that one kid...
Amnesty is a legal state in which you are granted a proactive pardon for certain crimes. That is, we know that you have committed crimes but we guarantee not to prosecute you or penalize you legally according to some means. For example, many small-time drug dealers have been offered Amnesty for their (comparatively minor) crimes in exchange for information about their suppliers. More recently justice department official were granted amnesty for crimes including hiring people by political affiliation, illegally firing people for lack of political bias and violations of the Constitution of the United States by illegally tapping the telephone and internet use of Americans based upon little to no evidence. This was granted in order to simply get them to show up and speak before Congress a task which is nominally compulsory but apparently congressional warrants are now mere suggestions.
Crucially such amnesty is typically conditional and applies only to information gathered during the covered period. Additional outside information or a failure to be open results in a revocation of the amnesty or in the case of Congress a polite request not to do it again.
The two questions that the use of this term opens up are a) is using an iPod a crime at Microsoft, or perhaps listening to bands other than U2? and b) does this mean subsequent use of iPods or a return to non-microsoft products will result in punishment?
At the end of the day we have four powers to attack these cartels with:
1) Stop purchasing their stuff. Seeing as how a portion of every dollar spent on an RIAA CD or Microsoft item goes to groups like this that seek to undermine our freedoms in exchange for their own cash flows the only way to cut off that flow from the company is to cut off our own flow to the company.
For those jonsesing for new music, check out your local bands or those bands that sell their own stuff. Libraries are also excellent sources of things you only listen to, read, or watch occasionally. With Microsoft Put up or shut up to other vendors stop whining about Bill and then ponying up for Vista "because everyone else is using it". Between Ubuntu and Openoffice even Grandma should be able to use Linux these days.
Spend some time reading a book or talking to your friends, get outside even the air isn't copyrighted, yet.
2) Write your reps and make a simple point: I won't vote for you if you listen to them. Make it clear that your vote is conditioned on these things and that you are paying attention.
3) Donate to groups like the EFF who lobby against this shit.
4) This is the hardest, if you are a director, musician or author, don't sell your work to these cartels. Consider marketing it on your own or via another group that doesn't play these games. I know that this isn't trivial and that you need to eat but if you can go it alone that makes the most difference. These cartels are not capable of making things on their own only gobbling up your gems and sitting on them. They are unimaginative slugs who seek only to feed. If you really want to get them out of there and get your ideas into the world then try an alternate route.
I remember back in the 80's when people first noticed that the FCC was serving the interests of companies more than the populace. Everything else that has followed since from fighting for the rights of large media companies to merge to seeking to suppress internet content at the behest of AOL Time Warner started then with Regan's appointees. Now the FCC openly behaves as a tool of the conglomerates. Or in the case of the illegal wiretapping, a tool of the NSA.
A similar lack of complaint was heard when the food and drug administration reevaluated aspertame for the third time and declared it safe despite their own warnings to the contrary see here. Thanks again Donald Rumsfeld.
Then the Food and Drug administration recently was accused of stepping down enforcement of many complaints and 'streamlining' the process of approval for the drug companies.
Now this. Realistically speaking I would hope that sooner or later events like this, you know large companies committing fraud and spying on people for money, lying, etc. and being given only a slap on the wrist, would say piss people off so much that they would Write their Congressional Representative, and Their U.S. Senator, and even The President. A few e-mails saying, either this is a government of by and for the people or we'll vote for someone else. A few e-mails saying, I pay my taxes why are they being spent to harm me? A few e-mails just reminding them that we are paying attention. Lacking that they can do whatever they want and we're no longer the greatest nation on earth.
When Bush and Congress stand up for their stump speeches and tout how well they've done they feel that its important that we actually believe that, particularly when they say they've done a good job studying global warming because we don't know enough as Bush is wont to say.
If, however the general public actually learns that the problem is real and hasn't been attacked aggressively then they'll start shopping around for someone else to protect them.
While historically speaking the comparison to evolution is apt it might be better to compare it with the level of "terrorist threat" or the war with Eurasia. In the former case the issue is one of protection, are we making our "way of life" safer. With the War on Terror(tm) the claim is that Bush and Cronies are fighting the enemy and succeeding (look how many terrorists we have convicted and put behind bars). With Global Warming the claim is that it isn't a problem so they don't have to act on it. In either case the tendency to lash out at those who say that they are doing a bad job with respect to terror (journalists, PBS, research scientists) or global warming (scientists again, schools and museums) is just a natural reaction. Because if they aren't doing a good job they lose the license to give kickbacks and generally ruin things that they now have.
At the end of the day it is all about power and money.
Point. Not many people would turn someone in for jaywalking, copying a CD or even smoking dope (though less so on that one).
I find the requirement of this rather interesting. I mean on one level why wouldn't people report their suspicions to the cops. The only plausible reasons are that they are disinterested in what happens (i.e. it's not my town) or that they don't trust the cops.
In the former case that would point to a larger-scale disaffection for the community that can't be solved simply by ordering people to be good. Rather you have to address why they don't care (i.e. no ownership of the social space or feeling of control or involvement in its governance). In the second you have to ask wy the fear exists between the public and police. Likely said fear is spawned by a lack of familiarity with them or connection to the police. That cannot be solved by ordering people to act as if they trust them, spying on said people from above, or sending in the SWAT team (the favored solution in the U.S.) Rather it can only be solved by community-based policing with the same cops walking the same beats and eating at the same neighborhood donut shops day after day until the local residents know them and their faces enough to trust them. Otherwise it's better the criminal that you know over the police that you don't.
I'd be curious to note how long these systems had been in place and what the effect on the surrounding areas was. Some anecdotal evidence is available to suggest that in the short term crime is reduced in the CCTV areas but increased in the surrounding areas where it is "pushed" to. This has been employed by those arguing that the CCTV areas just be expanded until crime is "pushed" indefinitely far away. However there exists other evidence to indicate that, after the initial installation crime will again return to an area once the cameras have been around for a while making the reduction short term at best.
Similarly I would bet that some of the installs might coincide with other investment in an area. As such the effects of the cameras might not be separable from the effects of repaired sidewalks, new stores, open buildings, etc. All of which are known to change the patterns of crime.
As such it would seem to me that the studies face the potential for mitigating factors. When I have time I'll read them and see if they are even reported.
In order to back up that statement you have to prove to me that they are indeed being used to perform the jobs that they are charged with as opposed to engaging in their own forms of spying, and that they are more effective.
In the former case I would point out that the jobs of governments and police officers is to serve the citizens in their community. All too often however that has been twisted to the point where said individuals are, in fact, using their powers to pursue private agendas against the very citizens they claim to protect. Here in the U.S. for example during World War I laws were passed making it a crime to criticize the president "for our protection". During World War II the massive information compiled as part of the Census was used to hunt down American Citizens of Japanese descent and throw them into prison "for their own protection". During the Kennedy years the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover used the powers of his office to spy on politicians he disproved of and to subvert both the anti-war and civil rights movements including the well-documented blackmailing of Martin Luther King. During the 60's Nixon used the tools available to spy on his political rivals. In more recent years 'anti-terror' tools have been used to spy on anti-war groups (because how dare we oppose the Iraq war) and execute increasingly harsh surveillance of "problem communities" (aka black neighborhoods) in the War On Drugs.
In each case the claim was that they were serving their constituents. Nixon himself said that he "thought it would be bad for the country if the president lost an election". And despite claims that it "won't happen again" we can see even modern U.S. Congressmen claiming that it is a good idea:
Similar comments have been made about the recent attempts to spy on American's internet use and telephone traffic "for our own good".
Which brings me to my second point. There is, indeed little to no evidence that the modern tools (e.g. large scale databases or CCTV networks) actually help prevent crime which is, after all the goal. With repsect to "big name" items like the terror suspect lists and the internet surveillance their effectiveness is difficult to judge as they are largely secretive (too secretive) and the evidence that they obtain will never be used in a court of law. While the Justice department likes to point to high-name cases like Jose Padilla and the rest of us like to point out that Padilla is a) being charged in a carefully rigged situation, b) being charged for a small fraction of what they claimed they could prove but did not, and c) is himself surrounded by many many cases which seem likely to never reach trial because nothing at all really happened.
If you want a better arguing point we should look at the large-scale sweeps that were done in New York shortly after 9/11. While these netted a few illegal aliens (at least one of whom died under highly questionable circumstances) and pissed off a large segment of an otherwise legitimate population it failed to net anything useful. But this too might be considered "exceptional".
So let us turn to the daily street crime scenario. While some noise has been made about Chicago's heavy use of surveillance cameras and databases there is little scientific evidence that the cameras "did the trick". While Chicago's rate of cri
seems particularly odd.
How would, excess idle be the issue? When driving in the city the very thing that you do a lot is idle (unless you run red lights, traffic jams, etc). Indeed much of the time is really spent starting, stopping, idling, speeding up, swearing, etc. All of which reduces gas mileage. Unless they leave the cars idling for days it makes no sense to me that this would be the core issue.
Also, unless they have been arbitrarily adding 10 to all totals or weren't counting the use of battery acid for hybrids there is no reason why a change in calculations should affect hybrids alone so the title is quite misleading.
Europe is warmed by a steady current that carries warm water from the 'West Indies' (i.e. the Caribbean) to the coasts of Europe. Extant climate predictions indicate that said current will be disrupted by global warming meaning that Europe might actually get colder on average than it has been up until now. The last time this occurred (the 'Mini Ice Age') coincided with the Dark Ages in Europe which was marked by widespread crop shortages.
If I were Der Speigel I would keep in mind that "Global Warming" still allows for "local cooling". And even if Europe gets warmer I would think that coming off of their disastrously hot previous summers that an increase in temperature might not be ideal.
At the time that the U.S. Was founded British politics was dominated by two major parties, the Whigs and the Tories. Despite initial differences in the philosophies of the two groups (according to some) they were in essence pure factions fighting less over any extant policy (since both groups answered to the same basic economic interests) than over "beating the other guy." This infighting occupied almost the whole of the government and included disputes such as what party the generals should be from and the potential for advancement in the military less attached to qualifications than to political connections. At least one Naval officer was court martialed on false charges. It is also just possible that a few of their many many wars were driven by the need for party gain as opposed to any real Causus Belli. The two parties had become an end in themselves and to hell with actually governing.
At the time of the U.S.' founding the founding fathers believed, rightly, that the two groups were soley interested in serving themselves and didn't give a damn about making life better in the colonies, as evidenced by the bizarre handling of the French and Indian Wars.
Because of this the founder believed that parties should be avoided at all costs lest we go the way of the British and cease to be so focused on the struggle to survive as opposed to petty factionalism. As such they sought to avoid parties at all costs even as they unwittingly laid the groundwork for them in the early federalist-states-rights fights. They knew, and feared, that any nation governed by entrenched parties would be divided more than united by them, and driven more to irrational opposition than actual operation.
It is kind of like two cults duking it out over what color the priest's robes should be while their followers starve.
The parties are like injecting two types of concrete in the system each one will bond to its own kind but not the other. The only end result is gars that stick 'just because'.
IANAL but At least in some states of the U.S. the practice of sending someone something that they do not want and then demanding payment or otherwize extracting use has been banned. This has been extended to making it possible for you to use junk faxxers on the grounds that they are using your fax. Probably this would be time consuming for any one person but if the laws of your place of residence allow it a class action lawsuit might be doable, even government funded.
I Smell BestBuy's lobbyists on this one. With the rising price of CD's the only way they can compete is to axe some of their competition. Lacking the ability to ban the internet they can stomp on local used CD cariers who are their most immediate competition.